Below is the intervention read by Dave Petteys, representing the ACT For America 5280 Coalition at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, Session 12 “Combating Hate Crimes and Ensuring Effective Protection against Discrimination”, Warsaw, September 29, 2015.
OSCE 2015 Human Dimension Implementation Meeting
Working Session 12: Combating hate crimes and ensuring effective protection against discrimination
Mr/Ms. Moderator, ladies and gentlemen, thank you.
By the OSCE definition, the act of a “hate crime” must be a crime under the criminal code of the legal jurisdiction in which it is committed.
But what we see, ladies and gentlemen, is the tendency to label “hurt feelings” and so called “insult” as “hate crimes”. In the rough and tumble politics of free societies, there is no right or guarantee to be “hurt feelings and insult free”.
Too often, it is special interest groups or incumbent politicians who label the remarks of their opposition as “hate speech” and “discrimination” only in an effort to silence them.
The Act for America 5280 Coalition would like to remind the member states that free discussion is an integral part of the political process and must be preserved from any and all restrictions, no matter how well intentioned.
The ACT for America 5280 Coalition also would like to remind member states that no group, especially religious groups that venture onto the political stage, are immune from nor deserve a free pass from criticism or critical examination.
Thank you, Mr/Ms. Moderator and ladies and gentlemen.
For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.
Well done. Hurt feelings? Back in grade school we had something like hurt my feelings and you’ll suffer and die for all the names you called me. We said it but obviously, did not act on it.
Well, times have changed. Now we cannot hurt the Muslims’ widdle feelings, but they can not only hurt our feelings, they can hurt us. I really want to see them all sent back to their countries of origin — let them fix their problems in their own lands before they think they can fix us.
The game has changed.
Have you all read a book called The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail? I am girding my loins to read it.
Keep well, Baron and Dymphna!
God might be the only way to morality for some. Or salvation for others. But the absence of God in the eyes of the law is the only way to ensure that no religious group can hijack the law through public sympathy for themselves. The special place of secularism in the law is the only reason I really respect France. I wouldn’t have expected them to ban the hijab but they did almost without a second thought. That kind of thinking is needed in America. Sympathy for any religion is too easily hijacked by terrorists wackos.
The hijab is only banned in schools, and not in universities. In order to be passed, the law actually had to target all ostentatiously worn religious signs, including kippas and crosses (if they are deemed too big). I can only imagine a schoolboy dragging a two-meter long cross from class to class. Joke aside, that put the veil out of school. But as one could realize after the Charlie massacre, muslim pupils are way beyond the reach of the law, keeping in mind that its true goal was to give school a chance to shape them into loyal French.
The burqa and other full-face covering garments, on the other hand are banned in the public space. However that law is not executed without encountering difficulties. On the rare occasions when policemen have tried to apply it, either mobs would gather and threaten them, or when the ticket is given, it has not paid one way or the other. I remember, when the law was still fresh, one rich muslim guy had paid for two women, which does not only work against the principle of that law, but – I would have to check – is also illegal.
I don’t remember having read an article about bag-clothed (wo?)men being find recently.
I lent my copy of Raspail’s book to a sister who gave it back saying she just couldn’t read it.
As the old saying goes, “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”
But they are culpable because they CHOOSE not to see.