[Dallas Morning News] On the Fourth of July, the day we celebrate America’s liberty and independence, it’s worth contemplating how much more free America is than most other nations in the West.
Why? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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Mr. Steyn and Maclean’s, the top-selling Canadian magazine, have faced human rights charges in British Columbia. Their alleged offense? Maclean’s published a Steyn essay critical of Islam, which prompted Muslim activists to file formal charges accusing the writer and the magazine of violating Canada’s hate-speech laws.
Last Friday, the national Human Rights Commission dismissed the charges, but they’re still pending in front of a provincial panel. The victory is less than what it appears. For one thing, defending against the charges cost the magazine hundreds of thousands of dollars. For another, it is frightening to think that a human rights panel has the right to decide what can and cannot be published in a free country.
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[Colorado Springs Gazette] In Canada and in much of the rest of the world, certain opinions - of people who claim the Holocaust never happened, pastors who say homosexuality is a sin, Brigitte Bardot saying Muslims are undermining French culture, for example - may not be expressed at all. In Canada strictures against “hate speech,” which arguably could stir up hate against a particular group, have morphed into an entitlement of activist grievance-mongers who seek to forbid speech and writing that they claim to find offensive. The practical result of this is to muzzle opinions some would rather not hear.
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[Fort Collins Now] Do you want your government to protect your feelings? Here are Canada’s “Human Rights Commissions” which sit in judgment over “allowable” speech.
