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My Maclean's column on the Marc Lemire decision prompted, among many others, this comment:
I find myself agreeing with Mr. Steyn's standpoint on this issue. The related tenets of free speech and of rule of law are - in my view - important to preserve. (Before the pitchforks come out, I must note that free speech does have its reasonable limits - no one should be yelling "Fire!" in a crowed theatre). However, I find it difficult to align myself with the caustic tone taken to the issue. It does no one any good to muddy a perfectly reasonable debate with polarizing hyperbole (dressing up as Nazis is rarely kinky by the way). It does, however, sell papers (or magazines, or website advertisement). As such, let us all try to refrain from petulant name-calling and focus on the issues at hand.
Oh, bugger off, you useless tosser. And I mean that most non-petulantly. Here's why:
First, dredging out the old fire-in-a-crowded-theatre routine is not, as you suppose, a sign of the sophisticated nuanced thoughtfulness you bring to the debate, but a plonking cliche serving only to advertise in neon that you haven't thought about it at all .
As to not "muddying" a "reasonable" debate with "polarizing hyperbole", why do you think Judge Hadjis caved and issued a ruling in the Lemire case entirely at odds with the one he issued in the Beaumont case? Precisely because Ezra Levant and I and a few others clobbered Canada's "human rights" regime with "polarizing hyperbole". If we hadn't done, Section 13 would still be a goer, and Mr Lemire would have been convicted. It's only because we went Magna Carta on Jennifer Lynch's medieval ass that we succeeded in dragging received opinion, inch by painful inch, away from this racket. Being "reasonable" about an abomination only makes it respectable - as Section 13 was until two years ago. Left to the likes of all the "reasonable" types, Canadian liberty would drift incrementally but remorselessly off the cliff.
[UPDATE: As for kinky Nazis, Kathy Shaidle is your go-to gal.]
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