Sooey Says

More'nSteyn/Muslims/Censorship/FreedomOfSpeech

CBC commentator Rex Murphy said Maclean's should not have to defend itself for starting debate and stirring thought.

It's not. This isn't about starting debate and stirring thought. It's about Mark Steyn writing and Macleans publishing what is arguably inciteful rhetoric against a specific visible minority that has decided to complain about it to the CHRC.

"Is every touchy, or agenda-driven sensibility now free to call upon the offices of the state and ... embroil them in 'justifying' their right to write and broadcast as they see fit?" he asked on CBC's flagship news program, The National.

If it offends the specific visible minority sufficiently, I guess. And who's touchy and who's got an agenda-driven sensibility here, anyway? I'd say it's Mark Steyn and Macleans, but I'm not surprised Rex Murphy has decided it's "The Muslim Menace".

Steyn said the CIC and law students acting on its behalf aimed to shut down debate by making it more trouble than it's worth for editors to run pieces on controversial topics. But he added, "In using quasi-judicial coercion to squash debate, they make one of the central points of my argument -- that a proportion of Islam is inimical to Western traditions of freedom -- more eloquently than I ever could."

Again, I'd say the opposite. That statements like the above by Mark Steyn make the law students' case more eloquently than otherwise (mostly since they don't make the glaring mistake of blathering on about the case publicly and endlessly). They aren't doing anything Richard Warman (not a Muslim) hasn't done - successfully - several times over. And they're using a Canadian institution that has been in place since 1972. Steyn is saying it's because they're Muslim that the law students are offended. I dunno about you, but I think that's pretty much what they're complaining about to the CHRC.

Personally, I think it's a disgrace/typical of Ken Whyte that Macleans publishes Mark Steyn's "Muslim Menace" stunt journalism. It's like publishing Philip Rushton's theories - over and over and over - as far as I'm concerned.

But, that's why I don't subscribe to Macleans. I don't need or want the CHRC to tell me that if I change my mind, I can only have its version of it. Like most Canadians I'm sick enough of Bush Inc/Harper Co censorship to put up with the CHRC piling it on, too.

But I'm not a specific visible minority feeling targeted by a writer published in a national newsmagazine, either.