Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights

by Ezra Levant

Book Overview

Winner of the Writer's Trust of Canada / Samara's - Best Canadian Political Book of the Last 25 Years Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is a shocking and controversial look at the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771046189
• ISBN13: 9780771046186
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

The Fascism of Good Intentions

To partially borrow a phrase from Jonah Goldberg, if fascism ever came to the Western Democracies, it would come not from brownshirts pounding on your doorstep, but lawyers carrying subpoenas issued by faceless, unelected, and unaccountable bureaucrats. This is exactly the nightmare that Ezra Levine faced in Canada, when he was forced to give account before a government agency for doing something that most people in the west take for granted: speaking his mind. The government agency for which he was hauled before - the Alberta Human Rights Commission - had started out innocently enough, as a place of legal recourse for people who felt that they had been discriminated against in housing and employment, but did not have the means for which to pursue a grievance. But somewhere along the way, its mission became perverted. It took an expansive view of its mandate to pursue "human rights", and began to pursue people based not on their actions, but on what they said or wrote - classifying anything that they deemed as "hate speech" as a human rights violation, and therefore subject to their investigations and sanctions. In other words, they became thought police, with astonishing powers to pursue a target, and whose victims soon found that they had very little legal recourse but to give in to the AHRC's "remedies". This is what happens when government is allowed to run unchecked, when government agencies take it upon themselves to be the arbiter of what its citizens can and cannot do. This book is a wake-up call for how government, even with the best of intentions, can step in and take away people's freedoms in the name of the "greater good", and how little anyone can do to stop them. While Shakedown is primarily about Ezra Levant's three-year struggle against the AHRC, Mr. Levant also takes a considerable amount of time to document other such abuses by similar commissions all across Canada. By doing so, he demonstrates how this mindless pursuit of "human rights" has in fact done the exact opposite. In a larger sense, he is sounding the alarm for how it is that government can take away basic freedoms, and especially how easily a small cadre of extremist radicals can subvert the system and impose their will and values on everyone with relatively little impunity. The thin-skinned and easily offended barbarians are at the helm, and they bristle at the notion that Mr. Levant can have the nerve to counter their arguments with, "Because it is my bloody right to." Although Mr. Levant is conservative, this book should not be construed as "just a typical right wing diatribe against the abuses of the left". It actually transcends notions of Left vs. Right, Liberal vs. Conservative, and Mr. Levant takes considerable pains to point this out. The abuses that Mr. Levant outlines in his book could just as easily have happened from a right-wing junta as it did from a left-wing truth commission. The point is not the political ideologies involved, but the n

Shakedown

Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights Although this book was written about Human Rights' Councils in Canada, it sends a clarion call to citizens of the United States who cherish our Bill of Rights and want to protect it from the Nanny State. If we think that this cannot happen in the United States, we only have to look recent events in U.S. history. Our government is paving the way with special laws for hate crimes. We are already elevating one group (in each case of hate crimes) above others when prosecuting hate crimes. Every crime is already covered by U.S. law - after all a crime is a crime, but to say one crime is worse than others, because the victim belongs to a particular segment of society, is to dilute the value of the law in every instance that is not labeled a hate crime. So watch out - it is already happening in the U.S. This books gives an excellent picture of what will happen if we let the government busybodies have their way.

America - PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU VALUE YOUR FREEDOM

If you want to know what happens when political correctness goes unchecked and an important arm of the judiciary is taken over by agenda-driven whackos, then read this book. If you want to know what can happen in your country if you are not eternally vigilant, then read this book. If you want to know what happens when individual liberty is held hostage to the schemes of outlandish social engineers and devious activists, then read this book. It happened in Canada; it's still happening in Canada. It can happen anywhere. It's all true. You can look it up. This is the story of the hijacking of the Canadian human rights commissions and their downright nasty pursuit of Ezra Levant, whose crime was to publish the so-called Danish cartoons mocking Muslim extremism. He was the editor of a small news magazine; the cartoons were huge news so it seemed appropriate to him to do what he did. Foolish man. As a result, he was dragged before the local HRC and put through the wringer for nearly three years. However, Mr Levant is not a man to go quietly. He fought back magnificently and has launched a nation-wide campaign to bring these feral creatures to heel. And so far, he is winning. SHAKEDOWN is Mr Levant's story, both his own experience in "court" and his subsequent campaign; it is laced with numerous real-life HRC stories. Read about the woman who had the right not to wash her hands even though she was a restaurant worker; the six foot transsexual athlete who had the right to provide counselling in a rape crisis centre (and of the rape victims who were obliged to comply); the Christian pastor who is prohibited from expressing his opinions even though they are sincere and consistent with his religion. These are a just a few of the truly bizarre stories that help make this book compelling. It is well written; Mr Levant is an accomplished wordsmith. Read it; you will laugh and cry at the same time. It's all true. You can look it up. Be very, very careful, American friends. You are not safe in your own homes. From the darkest, most fetid recesses of academia, where it first mutated, the cancer of political correctness has taken control of your universities and much of your media; it is creeping into your workplaces and your homes. But be warned: its real objective is mind control. However, all is not lost - read this book.

Plain scary! Makes Canada look like a 3rd world banana republic

I only thought countries like Iran, Cuba or Saudi Arabia prosecuted people for expressing their opinions. I was wrong. It's scary to think that in a 1st rate country like Canada, a great country, such courts exist. These government sanctioned courts/tribunals make it hard to express your own thoughts and Mr. Levant has embarked on a crusade to expose these Stalinist kangaroo courts and defeat them in the real court of public opinion. I think he has been successful. This is an extremely well done book. Greatly researched, written by a very passionate man who cares deeply about his country and has done so to protect it from these HR courts. Buy this book and let others read it too. Every single Canadian of all stripes must know what's going on and how their tax money is spent. I, for one, am glad that brave men like Mr. Levant have the guts to go through such fights. For their bravery, Canada will be a much better place and a safer place to live. 5/5

A Profile in Courage

This book is a must read for both Canadians and Americans. It is important for Canadians as it clearly describes the ways the federal and provincial HRC's are undermining Canadian civil liberties as established through centuries of common law and enunciated in our Constition and Bill of Rights. HRC's are free to operate outside our normal legal conventions and the most basic of legal safeguards, resulting in a bureaucratic, Kafka-esque shadow court system that largely operates outside of public scrutiny. Americans should read this book as a warning as to what could easily lie in their future, given the dysfunctional Congress and an Executive branch that appears to share much of the Canadian Trudeau-era ideology that created the HRCs in the first place. But most importantly, both Americans and Canadians should read this book to understand when a single individual is willing to stand up against an overwhelming bureaucratic machine, he may, in his own way, triumph for us all.