On Banning Free Speech

Having read some of the silliness emanating from a local conservative blog regarding that owner's "liberal" use of banning commenters for perceived meanness, or slams against Christianity, the meaning of free speech was on my mind as I surfed the Internet today. I came upon this piece by Glenn Greenwald in which he comments on the "noxicity" of hate speech laws. He writes of the case of Ezra Levant, "... a right-wing Canadian neoconservative who publishes Western Standard, a typical warmongering, pro-Likud journal -- a poor man's Weekly Standard for Canadian neocons."

A little background: In 2006, Levant published the Danish Mohammed cartoons. An Islamic group's imam filed a complaint against Levant. Greenwald writes that rather than dismissing the complaint out-of-hand as it should have been, the Alberta Human Rights Commission decided to investigate. Though the hearing was closed to the public, Levant insisted on recording the proceedings. His wish was granted with the proviso Levant would not publish the video. He did so anyway and below is this video. As Greenwald says, it's “... nothing short of stomach turning: ...”



As repugnant as Levant's views are, free speech means that he should have the right to expose them to the light of day. For those heads on the right nodding sleepily, Greenwald goes on to say:

For those unable to think past the (well-deserved) animosity one has for the specific targets in question here, all one needs to do instead is imagine these proceedings directed at opinions and groups that one likes. If Muslim groups can trigger government investigations due to commentary they find offensive, so, too, can conservative Christian or right-wing Jewish groups, or conservative or neoconservative groups, or any other political faction seeking to restrict and punish speech it dislikes.

Down that ugly path lies people like Newt Gingrich, openly advocating that the First Amendment be narrowed considerably to exclude advocacy of "radical Islam" as a means of combating terrorism. People who favor and seek to exploit Canadian and European hate speech laws are but opposite sides of the same tyrannical coin as Gingrich and his allies who are eager to restrict political expression here.

Government control of speech, however well-meaning its surrender by citizens and regardless of how well-intentioned the government may be, is never the answer, because anyone believing the government will easily give back what it has been given is easily and frighteningly deluded.