Free Speech, eh?

One of the glories of democracy is that extremes are usually avoided. When extremism does manage to seep through the cracks, little by little, democracies usually self-correct. It just takes time and patience – sanity generally prevails.

Mark Steyn, who has had his tribulations, writes:

This morning, the (Canadian Human Rights Commission) issued the so-called Moon Report on free-speech issues. Most of us expected it to be a whitewash. Instead, Professor Moon says:

1. The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.

This is a great tribute to what Ezra calls his campaign of “denormalization” of Canada’s Orwellian “human rights” racket. They’re not yet ready to throw in the towel completely, but it’s fluttering limply on the edge of the ring. Canada may be preparing to rejoin the ranks of free nations.

I’m especially grateful to the support I’ve received from Stanley Kurtz and other NR colleagues, and from many readers, who recognize that America’s chances of remaining a beacon of liberty are greatly diminished if the lights go out over the rest of the western world.

Given what he and others have been subjected to – an attempt at bureaucratic suppression of “wrongspeech” – perhaps Mr. Steyn can be forgiven his moment of relief and even an excess of triumphalism: Canada was always a free nation. If Dr. Moon’s recommendations are followed, and bureaucrats forbidden from attempting to peer into mens’ souls to divine their intent, it will be just that little bit more free.

The bests remedy for bad speech is more speech.