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My valiant comrade Ezra Levant and I were on the air in Chicago last night with WGN's legendary Milt Rosenberg, discussing Ezra's book Shakedown, free speech, and the faintheartedness of the multicultural west for a full two hours. Milt was rightly concerned to put our trials in Canada in the broader context, and in tomorrow's Washington Post Jonathan Turley expands on that theme in a piece bluntly titled "The Free World Bars Free Speech":
Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The "Free World," it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.
Among the new blasphemers is legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, who was convicted last June of "inciting religious hatred" for a letter she wrote in 2006 to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that Muslims were ruining France. It was her fourth criminal citation for expressing intolerant views of Muslims and homosexuals. Other Western countries, including Canada and Britain, are also cracking down on religious critics.
Professor Turley is no right-wing nut like yours truly. He's the soul of moderation. But he gets the key point:
History has shown that once governments begin to police speech, they find ever more of it to combat. Countries such as Canada, England and France have prosecuted speakers and journalists for criticizing homosexuals and other groups. It's the ultimate irony: free speech curtailed for the sake of a pluralistic society.
It would be heartening if a few more British, Canadian and European professors felt minded to speak up in defense of a sustained assault on intellectual inquiry. Turley's piece is very much the theme of my new book Lights Out, whose central image is the dimming of liberty in the western world. When my year in Canadian "human rights" hell began, I was asked by many readers if I had a "legal defense fund", and I always replied no, I'm not a charity case, yet - despite the attempts by the Islamists to make it a crime to publish me in Canada. The best way to resist this is by demonstrating to commercial enterprises that they will not lose money by publishing controversial writing on this theme - or that, at any rate, any costs in nuisance lawsuits will be more than made up in profits. So, as I said a year ago, subscribe to Maclean's, who've been very supportive of me (despite the fact I'm by no means a natural fit for the magazine), or buy Lights Out or America Alone, or Ezra's Shakedown, or Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere's The Tyranny Of Nice. All these books contain important ideas, which is why Mohamed Elmasry and his pals are so concerned to stamp them out and why they're worth giving to friends who are not yet aware of what's going on, especially in Canada, Britain and the Continent.
Happily, a lot of folks seem to agree. In The National Post this morning, George Jonas writes:
The publisher can't keep up with demand for Ezra Levant's book Shakedown, which appeared last week with a foreword by Mark Steyn. The slim volume is like an open whaling boat in which Levant sets out to harpoon Canada's Leviathan of a 'human rights' industry.
The great Jonas identifies an important philosophical difference between Ezra, on the one hand, and George and me, on the other. Ezra regards the HRCs as a "beautiful idea" gone bad, whereas some of us think they were a crummy idea from the get-go. But that's an argument for another day: It's appalling that in some of the oldest free societies on earth we're now fighting to reclaim fundamental liberties against an Islamo-PC alliance. But we are, and to do that it helps to have as many allies as possible, including the likes of Professor Turley.
Meanwhile, The National Post also contains a review of Shakedown by Patrick Keeney. And in The Toronto Sun Salim Mansur makes a sharp point:
Imagine if human rights commission-type commissars had prevailed at the beginning of the Renaissance and Reformation. The modern world would have been aborted at its conception.
Oh, and by the way:
Did you hear about the Catholic, the Jew and the Muslim who walked into a theatre in London, Ontario? It's a stellar bill - Kathy Shaidle, Ezra Levant and Salim Mansur, three staunch friends of real human rights taking on Canada's pseudo-"human rights" racket - live this Monday evening. If you're in the neighborhood, make sure you're there. (If you're in the US, London, Ont is a convenient ten-minute drive from Buffalo and five minutes from Detroit. Your mileage may vary but it'll still be worth the trip.)
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