Via Kathy Shaidle, this disturbing note from Jack Langer in Human Events

Many Americans can only shake their heads at the nutty excesses of multiculturalism in Canada. Government investigations for insulting people? That kind of thing could never happen here . . . Right? Wrong, probably. Multiculturalism may not be as advanced in America as it is in Canada, but it’s on the same path. The U.S. already has a number of federal multicultural policies, most notably the annual Diversity Visa Lottery. However, as the sorry lesson of Canada demonstrates, the key to pushing multiculturalist laws from the level of the mildly ridiculous into the rarified realm of the monumentally stupid is to advance them first on the local level, where action attracts little public scrutiny. The infrastructure for this sort of action is already in place in many American cities which, though largely unknown to the public, have their own human rights commissions.[The Sensitivity Police: Where's American Multiculturalism Heading? by Jack Langer, July 16, 008 ]

This is true—writing about the Geno's Cheese Steak case in Philadelphia, in which a local agency took two years to decide that it was OK to order cheese steaks in English only, I said

not only does every wide spot in the road have some kind of “Commission On Human Relations” to harass business-owners, but there’s a federal civil rights bureaucracy that does the same thing.

The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations is only one of many. Is there one in your town? Or one for your whole state? Ordinarily you can only get into trouble with these guys as an employer, or by operating a restaurant or renting a room in your house. But if Canadian style hate laws are passed, everyone who engages in free speech will find himself under the thumb of such commissions.