Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant
Kudos to Tim Dunlop and the folk at ScepticLawyer (here and here) for taking up the unfashionable (and unpalatable) cause of defending Mark Steyn’s democratic right to be as ignorant and offense as he wants to be.
I think Mark Steyn is an ignorant, unprofessional wanker, but he should not be on trial for what amounts to thought crimes. The Canadian Human Rights Commission’s actions for ’spreading hatred’ are enough to terrify any (small l) liberal. People who believe in freedom and democracy should be speaking out against this repression of the right to freedom of speech in Canada in the same way as we would in a dictatorship.
To this end, I thought I’d contribute to the cause by linking to some video of another victim of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions thought police: Ezra Levant.
Levant was a magazine editor who published the now infamous Danish Cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammad. For his troubles, he was charged with spreading hatred and I understand from Canadian friends that he has fallen on hard times as a result of the negative publicity and expense associated with defending the action.
Levant is, like Steyn, an offensive individual. However, as he eloquently points out in these clips from his official interrogation by the thought police – it is his democratic right to be offensive.
“I published in the most unreasonable manner…. Whatever offends you, I reserve the right to offend you in whatever way I want…. I am not going to plea bargain over what I did.”
See further:
I doubt Levant’s lawyer has ever had a worse client!
UPDATE: Sorry, I’ve just noted that Ken Parish was onto this too.
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June 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am
[…] via Tree of Knowledge that Ezra Levant isn’t just in the shit via Mark Steyn, but also has an action pending against him from these clowns. Levant published the Danish Muhammad cartoons, and is now in serious financial […]
June 10th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Yep but not being a Canadian it is none of my dam business how they run their society. Lets hope that we allow Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali to be as offensive as he dam well pleases along George Pell.
The question is what do you do about say; Alan Jones; it is easy to argue he inflamed North Cronulla, some argue he was the cause. Should free speech extend to his behavior.
And that is the difficult issue, where to draw the line.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Hi Charles, I’d argue that you can draw a line with a reasonable degree of theoretical certainty between direct exhortations to violence (a la the Rwandan Radio example and arguably Alan Jones) and the expression of views that are offensive, but not directly connected to physical actions.
The first category are generally legally prohibited without the need for specific ‘anti-vilification’ or ‘racial hatred’ legislation.