When Ezra Levant, publisher of the now defunct Canadian libertarian magazine Western Standard, reprinted the Danish Muhammad cartoons that enraged the world's homicidally insane Muslims a few years ago, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities filed a human rights complaint with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission. Their argument was that the cartoons, despite their context, incited racial hatred toward Muslims. Levant's counter argument went something like this: Canada is a free country, so fuck you. Good news for freedom, then, since the AHRCC has declined to hear the case, effectively killing the complaint. But the sad reality here is that more and more Western nations without true freedom of speech protection have been riddled with attempts to stifle the free expression of ideas in the name of protecting the fragile feelings of thin-skinned idiots. Levant himself issued a statement about why he's none too happy with the ultimately favorable outcome of this case: "[AHRCC Southern Director Pardeep Gundara's] decision is not that I have freedom of speech. His decision is that I have his approval. I'm not interested in his approval. The only test of free speech is if I can write what he disapproves of with impunity. That's what freedom of speech is, to piss off some second-rate bureaucrat like Pardeep Gundara and know that you have the right to do so, because you're in Canada, not Saudi Arabia." Well said. Though I'd replace "because you're in Canada, not Saudi Arabia" with "because you're a human being." More details here.
