Alan Borovoy: Ethical Fallacies In "Terror" Debates

By staking out a critical perspective at a safe distance from current fashions in left-wing thinking, Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, can see draconian elements in Canada's anti-terror law that have gone largely unnoticed.

Typical of the rare insight that Borovoy’s view allows is the identification of a glaring contradiction in the law that casts a wide net around any contribution to violent, anti-government activity, at home or abroad.

“This prohibition is formulated in such broad terms that it could now be a crime for Canadians to donate money to an armed indigenous insurrection against the governments of China, Iran or North Korea,” Borovoy writes disapprovingly, in Categorically Incorrect: Ethical Fallacies in Canada's War on Terror. “After all, certain repressive dictatorships are not likely to be removed without some amount of violence.”

Similarly, Canadian authorities are absurdly obliged to turn away asylum seekers who are legitimate freedom fighters from totalitarian regimes.

- - that's from my Chronicles column this week.