cshen.ca

I had submitted this comic to The Peak a week ago, but John Morrison III decided that a cat with a giant penis was funnier, and Graham Templeton found the idea of “everybody draw Mohammed day” hypocritical. He wrote a scathing critique of the event on the basis that the western world is only now – after the fire and brimstone riots have passed – deciding to support free speech, whereas they should have stood together and republished the Danish cartoons when this freedom was the most fragile and in need of support. I agree that the western media displayed extreme cowardice in leaving the Danish cartoonists alone to face the violence of Muslims with hurt feelings, but I won’t condemn a stand for free speech whatever the circumstance.

The government is trying for the nth time to change Canada’s copyright laws in an effort to please US media overlords, who wish to dictate every detail of how and when Canadians consume media and culture. They want to do this by criminalizing every day activities and imposing hugely disproportionate penalties for these “crimes”.

It is evident, from past bills the government had tried – and failed – to pass, that the goal of this copyright “reform” is to mimic the DMCA of the United States. It is also evident, from numerous examples under the DMCA, that this kind of legislation is a bad idea. One does not have to support file sharing to realize that fines of $1.92 million for allegedly sharing 24 songs, or even $675,000 for 30 songs, can in no way, shape, or form be just, or even sane.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

How does a government eradicate civil liberties? By creating an evil and then pretending to solve it, if only people could give up a little of their freedom. Little by little, one imaginary evil after another, we suddenly find ourselves devoid of the freedoms we once enjoyed, and we have – each and every one of us – become the evil that the government targets.

The strawmen of today are internet criminals: scammers, identity thieves, child pornographers. With the permeance of the internet, they have become the dark, mysterious, scary monsters of our time: a readily available excuse for the government to curtail its population’s freedoms.

Self acclaimed liberals often claim that freedom and equality are the two most important values society can have. Indeed, this is evident in their moral systems, and as a liberal democracy (which is distinguished from the ideology) our society generally reflects those values, or at least the profession of them.

These values are supposed to protect the weak and vulnerable, or the unpopular from the majority, yet in modern western society it is exactly when the most unpopular ideas are expressed that the otherwise champions of freedom suspend these values to silence dissent. This, of course, happens with almost every controversial issue, and both conservatives and liberals (and everyone in between) are guilty of it. However, while they all nit-pick the circumstances under which to champion freedom, conservatives are not being hypocrites while doing so. Conservative ideology often places other values above that of freedom and equality, and it makes sense to sacrifice them in order to maintain higher values. Liberal ideology, however, places freedom and equality above all else, so to suppress them in favour of some other benefit, that is being hypocritical.

From XKCD: http://xkcd.com/488/