Mark Steyn and Canadian Freedom of Expression.

In the West, increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion, Canada has been leading the way in the systematic assault on what can and cannot be said. A kangaroo court there that goes by the grandiose name of the Human Rights Tribunal is about to decide that those like Mark Steyn who describe Islam as it is should be fined, gagged and made to apologise. Although the " Tribunal " has not yet ruled on Steyn's"case", it has not in all its sorry history failed to find for plaintiffs. In this case the plaintiffs are Canadian Muslims who object to an excerpt from Steyn's book America Alone that was published in Maclean's magazine. America Alone is an excellent description of the Islamic birth rate time bomb and Islam's petro-dollar funded attack on Western values. He makes the point that while most of the West succumbs to censorship and self loathing, the US with its robust Freedom of Expression Laws stands alone in protecting progress and the civilised future. Lets hear it again. What does progress and civilisation depend on? Freedom of Expression. Its as simple as that.

There are of course even in the Land of the Free some who argue that the US should follow Canada and other Western nations down the path to limited freedom of expression. A wonderful example of these is the legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron. " It is not " he writes in last month's New York Review of Books " clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack". What Waldron is in fact championing is an" atmosphere of mutual respect" where non-Muslims  refrain, in a proper observance of dhimmitude, from saying anything critical of Islam. Waldron should be awarded a prize for circumlocution but lets hope that the Americans don't take him and his mates too seriously. Oh, and here's a helpful idea in these difficult times; given Waldron's views with regard to freedom of expression, I am sure that if he applied for research monies to Gulf fund providers they would listen sympathetically. Research, any kind of research is freedom of expression. Go for it Jeremy!