Catchin' up with Ezra

Last week we posted about one Ezra Levant, the editor of the now-defunct Canadian-based Western Standard who has been brought before a kangaroo court known as the Alberta Human Rights Commission for having the gall to reprint the Danish cartoons that were deemed offensive by Muslims a couple of years ago. He has been releasing segments of his video-taped hearing at his blog and the blogosphere has enthusiastically posted them on their sites. After his tour de force from last week, he follows up here (courtesy Little Green Footballs) with more brilliance.

We believe these segments should be packaged and offered to high schools and universities under the title: “In defense of the liberal Western tradition”.

At the 1:35 mark, he levels the money-shot of this particular segment: “…it is the bedrock of our Western liberal society that unreasonable speech should be permitted… in fact, unreasonable speech is the only reason we’ve had progress in the West – people who offend the order…” Levant then gives the examples of suffragettes, blacks and homosexuals who “offended” and “upset” the order at that time to fight for rights and equality.

We’re glad he brought up homosexuals because we’re not particularly down with the entirety of the gay agenda, however, though we oppose gay marriage, those in favor of gay marriage have every constitutional right to speak in favor of it and do it in a manner that may offend people, even. It amazes us that writing the previous sentence should be so elementary and so obvious as to appear repetitive but apparently there are some Western nations that are rather subjective when it comes to the application of that concept.

Towards the end of this near-6 minute segment, Levant comments that it is against the law for the state to compel upon a convicted murderer to issue an apology for his/her act because it is considered “cruel and unusual punishment” yet star chambers like the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Commission can and have done so with publishers. Levant correctly compares the apology of which he is being extorted to fascism.

Let’s compare this vigorous defense of free speech with a couple of the Republican front-runners like Mike Huckabee who thinks campaign speech should be regulated to where one has to get the opponent’s permission if one is going to mention that opponent’s name in any ads. This is to eliminate any negative campaigning to which Pastor Mike (and by extension, you) might take offense. And this boob actually cites 527s as one of the sources of all that negativity.

The irony here is that the Campaign Finance Reform Act, co-authored by John McCain was supposed to cut back all that nasty negative campaigning by restricting political (free) speech prior to elections which only increased negative campaigning, of course, by allowing non-affiliated 527 groups like MoveOn.org and the SwiftBoaters free rein to go after candidates as long as they didn’t endorse anybody themselves.

So, since CFR has been entirely counterproductive and actually increased "negative" campaigning, Pastor Mike thinks the government now needs to put a muzzle on groups CFR helped create. And round and round it goes.....

That two men who might be President of this country have such a flimsy grasp of free speech but are perfectly willing to use the government, precisely because of their ignorance, to regulate and restrict words that they find “negative” or “offensive” is highly discouraging.

Embrace the hatred of Hate (Anything) Laws.