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Keith Martin is on good form in this Canadian Press interview, despite the reporter Joan Bryden's desperate embrace of the feeble Kinsella angle.* If Dr Martin is relatively relaxed by the support he's getting from the white "supremacists" at Stormfront, it's because it makes his case: Free speech is a principle, not an a la carte menu. As Ms Bryden puts it:

Martin said he stands by his motion and won't be deterred from promoting it just because it happens to appeal to "some of these crazy, peripheral groups that have extremely bizarre and often offensive viewpoints." 

In fact, its appeal to people with "bizarre and offensive viewpoints" is precisely the point: If you don't believe in free speech for people you find repellent, you don't believe in free speech at all. 

Spinmeister Kinsella, who doesn't seem to comprehend the principle, thinks Ezra and I should be ashamed to have white "supremacists" on our side. Dr Martin shrugs it off - "I'm a brown guy," he says. Which has the right sense of proportion. And, instead of being ashamed by the support of white "supremacists" for free speech rights, Kinsella and co should be ashamed that a sicko like Richard Warman is getting rewarded by the Government of Canada's "Human Rights" racket for a creepy life of pie-inciting stunts and posting vile website messages at least as hateful as anything by the basement losers he's taking to court.

As for the white "supremacists", it would be nice if they reflected that it was the brown guy and the Jew who stood up for their rights, but, even if they don't, it doesn't matter. Freedom is messy and not always pretty. But it's prettier than Section 13 and its attendant abuses. Ezra thinks the snowball is now rolling. We'll see.

*UPDATE: The CP story is in most Canadian papers this weekend, but see this truncated version in The Globe And Mail. This is the only news report Canada's establishment newspaper has carried on the story, and you'd have no idea from it what the hell it's all about.

It is a sad comment on Canadian education that a graduate of Dalhousie Law School can, with apparent sincerity, begin an essay as follows:

Canadians have a right to Freedom of Expression. We have that right because the Trudeau Government negotiated and passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

How sad that a practising Canadian lawyer in 2007 thinks his liberties are the gift of Trudeaupian legislators. One can only marvel at the near Maoist elimination of societal memory required to effect such a belief.

I have to say these London lefties make their Canadian cousins look drearily provincial. Take The Independent's strangely Steyn-fixated Johann Hari. When he runs across a neo-Nazi, instead of reporting him to a human rights commission, or whining that he's infiltrated the Liberal backbench, or shaking him down to pay his mortgage, or recoiling in mock-horror like a summer-stock Lady Bracknell, Mr Hari understands the Nazi boys are just gagging for a bloody good rogering and shags 'em senseless.

It's like Warren's "come hither" fantasies about Kate, except, instead of just drooling about it, he gets on with it. Wouldn't that be great? Over at Big City Lib, gay-sex fantasies about neo-Nazis already seem to be their only major turn on. [Scroll down to 10.50pm comment and 11.17pm comment*.] Don't worry, you wouldn't have to give up Section 13. If you hate yourself in the morning, just file a complaint against yourself at the nearest HRC.

Oh, Mr Hari also seduces fierce young Muslim men he picks up at mosques. When I meet Khurrum Awan in court in BC, remind me to hit on him.

[*or, as I like to think of them, Human Rights complaints-in-waiting] 

Following my item below on Richard (Lucy) Warman declining to "allow" David Icke to speak, David Icke writes:

Hello Mark .. saw your post. You'll have to let me have your secret for knowing it all.
 
The way to protect freedom for everyone, you and me, is to unite in mutual respect - not resort to pathetic and oh so predictable 'yawn', 'yawn' abuse.
 
In your own way you are as stuck in the box as Warman. It's just a different box, that all.
 
Sad. I hoped you were bigger than that and diverse opinions could come together behind the banner of freedom for all. Clearly not.
 
David

Oh, come on, David, you don't need me to let you into my secret for knowing it all. You've famously found the secret for knowing it all - the secret of the universe, the Illuminati and all the rest - and I entirely support your right to let everybody in on it in Britain, Canada and every jurisdiction on the planet. I'm with you all the way - on your right to say whatever you like. Likewise, I'm exercising my right to say that I'm personally skeptical that the Queen is a shape-shifting space lizard. That's all.

Like many people, David Icke has had the misfortune to attract the attention of Lucy Warman. In that dispute, I'm with David. I agree with what Ezra Levant has to say:

Icke comes across as a very charming and well-meaning man who truly believes that he must share his alien theories with the world; it's the street punks in Warman's "anti-racist coalition" who come across as the uncivil ones...

The smartest line in the segment comes from an older lady in line to see Icke who, when challenged with his foolish theories, says "so what. Let him make a fool of himself if that's what he's doing." That's what grown-ups say -- and grown-up societies too. They are tolerant of eccentrics like Icke, and tolerant the motley crew that harasses him.

But Warman and his young "activists" are upset that no-one cares. So they decide to do what one of Warman's wards calls "the ultimate expression of free speech": they're going to physically attack Icke in public, by throwing a pie in his face, to "humiliate" him. Uh, that ain't free speech fellas, that's assault. Warman himself proposes the idea...

Supporters of Canada's "bravest human rights activist" should watch the video clips of this documentary. Perhaps the best defence Lucy Warman could enter for his n**ger c*nt remarks about Senator Cools would be to argue that he's been mentally traumatized by so many years with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. To anyone not marinated in the sludge of PC brainwashing, the only "intolerant" "supremacist" on display here is Warman, whipping up his army of adolescent thugs.

It would be entirely appropriate if the very last Section XIII case before the abolition of this absurd "law" were to be a complaint against Warman for his Senator Cools post.

I'm still waiting for a reply from the Minister of Justice.