Free Republic

Lights Out on Libertyby Mark Steyn [clip] Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. [clip] I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Pooh’s sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin...

Free Speech in an an Age of Jihad-The lamps are going out By Mark Steyn It’s an honor to be here, with so many people I greatly admire, including Rachel Ehrenfeld, and my comrade-in-arms from our struggle up north, Ezra Levant. I feel like giving a version of the Churchill speech in Fulton, Missouri, about how a Maple Curtain has descended across the forty-ninth parallel. It’s not quite that bad—yet—but if you do see a couple of guys bust into the Princeton Club in red coats on a dog sled, it’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police snatch team, so just...

Our Constitution is one of our greatest assets in the fight against terrorism. A free-flowing marketplace of ideas, protected by the First Amendment, enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. That free marketplace faces a threat. Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters. These suits intimidate and even silence writers and publishers. Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed....Consequently, English...

The Tony Snow International Appreciation Society [Mark Steyn] I was about to tell my own Tony Snow story when I realized it was the same as so many others - that of meeting the guy when you're an obscure peripheral fellow of no consequence and being amazed that he's familiar with your work and is gracious and affable and collegial and full of generous advice. So I thought instead, as an illustration of the range of his generosity, I'd pen a PS to this Corner post from six months ago about the great Australian wag Tim Blair being stricken by...

On Castrati Thursday’s Show... Humorist Mark Steyn, outsourced from Canada, filled in behind the Golden EIB Microphone while Rush visited the dentist. Mark enjoyed our First Amendment for a day, while up north his book "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" came under assault from the Canadian government for offending Islam. » Canadian Human Rights Commission: The Right to Offend A Muslim living in Canada charged Mark with hate crimes over an excerpt of his book in Maclean's magazine, and filed a complaint before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal! For Details, check out...

Calling all Steyn fans...

Maclean's magazine, Canada's Newsweek, was brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for running an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone. The California websites introduced as evidence were FreeRepublic and Catholic Answers. The claim was that their discussion boards proved that Maclean's inspire hate-speech toward Muslims. The Washington Times reports: "Numerous Canadians and Americans following the hearing denounced the case as absurd and that it is a threat to free speech that a provincial tribunal is asserting jurisdiction over the writings of a best-selling author residing in New Hampshire, based upon an out-of-province complainant offended by the response...

Within the United States, important dialogue about the threat of radical Islam was silenced by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department which issued a memo in May instructing bureaucrats on how to talk about the “war on terror.” The memo called for restrictions on terrorist-defining nomenclature in accordance with recommendations from American Muslims. Thus, definitive and descriptive words such as “jihad,” mujahadeen,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist,” or “holy warrior” were to be avoided, even though Muslims and Muslim media worldwide use this very terminology.

The best part of writing is the writing itself. After that comes the publishing and if the writer survives that, here come the reviews. Book reviews are supposed to be about the book, not the author, but too often reviewers can't help themselves. Some reviews are so mean-spirited it's a wonder that the suicide rate among writers isn't even higher. I'd hate to have been in Martin Amis' slippers when he woke up the morning of Tuesday, April 8, to find, in the New York Times, what Michiko Kakutani said about him in her review of his latest book, "The...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. And so they did. With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they're already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn't pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean's and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing...

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” That sounds like the statement of a victor in a war, dictating terms to the vanquished. And it may well be: free speech is under attack in Canada – the prosecution of Macleans Magazine and author Mark Steyn – and in the United States as well by Islamic governments and groups whose goal is to end free speech when it is aimed at exposing the truth about Islamic terrorism and its roots. Their goal is positively Orwellian. Replace “Big Brother” with the “Organization...

This is fully in accord with Mark Steyn’s precise observation that “so-called hate speech laws” are “not about facts,” but rather, “they’re about feelings.” Yet facts are really all that should concern us; the rocks Mahmoud Alkhazeh threw at the driver he confronted did not hurt more because they were accompanied by stinging words. Hate speech laws are an assault on truth telling, at precisely the moment when so few dare to tell the truth, and it is for that reason all the more urgently needed.

Mark Steyn, the author of “America Alone,” is on trial in Canada for inciting hatred against Muslims in an article adapted from that book. Pakistan just asked the European Union to restrict freedom of expression so as to curb “offenses to Islam.” Finland recently gave a blogger 2 1/2 years in prison for “insulting Islam.” When Dutch police arrested the cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot, Amsterdam’s public prosecutor explained: “We suspect him of insulting people on the basis of their race or belief, and possibly also of inciting hate.” Against Muslims, of course.

[The Canadian Islamic Congress] took [Maclean's Magazine and author Mark Steyn] to "court," but not a real court. These tribunals [of the Canadian Human Rights Commission] have all the rigor of a student government star chamber. There are no rules of evidence and, again, truth is not a defense. Why bother with evidence at all? Hate speech is essentially defined as anything certain "victimized" people find offensive... And what about free speech? Dean Steacy, an investigator for Canada's national commission, explained it nicely: "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." He gets points...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America's mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading "hatred." The...

A note to our readers Tuesday, 10 June 2008 Now that the first show trial is behind us, SteynOnline is going on hiatus for a while. I have to do some far-flung traveling in connection with a forthcoming project that would have been coming forth a whole lot sooner were it not for these thought-police investigations. Thanks to everyone who's swung by these parts to read a column, enter a competition, buy a book or drop a missive to Mark's Mailbox, and in so doing helped make this last year our most successful yet. I'm especially grateful to all those...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. Things are different here. The magazine is on trial. Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things,...

The pen is reputed to be mightier than the sword -- and probably is, over the longer stretches of history. Over the shorter stretches, the sword is definitive; or, as that great Leftist sage, Mao Tse-Tung, expressed it: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." With its monopoly on power, the State is equipped to suppress the truth. And yet the truth will not die, no matter how many people are punished for expressing it. They may die -- or be imprisoned, fined, compelled to publicly recant, or otherwise silenced and humiliated -- but the truth will...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading “hatred.” The...

Controversial author and social commentator Mark Steyn said Friday he wants to lose his case before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in Vancouver. Instead, Steyn wants to take the "hate speech" case to an actual court of law. Steyn said a negative ruling would allow the case to go forward in the legal system -- instead of being heard by what he has called a panel of "pretend judges." The tribunal is wrapping up a case brought by a member of the Canadian Islamic Congress "on behalf of Muslim residents in the province of British Columbia" against Maclean's magazine. They...

Look at his insistence that "you're not going to allow us" — Muslim Canadians — to have access to national media. Who's stopping him? Indeed, through his vexatious complaints against Maclean's, Mr. Awan has garnered for himself, his cause and the CIC more press coverage than any other articling student in the country. Were he truly being denied freedom of the press and of speech, his name and views would have been suppressed. Nor is anyone attempting to stop him from starting his own magazine or newspaper or taking advantage of low-cost Internet alternatives such as blogs and podcasts to...

Two American Web sites - one conservative, the other Catholic - are at the heart of a Canadian prov incial government hearing against Maclean's magazine, Canada's largest national newsweekly. The magazine was brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's best-seller "America Alone" under the title "The Future Belongs to Islam." The first part of the hearing began last Monday and ran until Friday afternoon. The American Web sites introduced by the complainants are FreeRepublic, a popular conservative discussion forum, and Catholic Answers, an evangelism and apologetics site popular among young Catholics. Both...

June 07, 2008 Obama, Political Viagra Now is when you get worried. By Mark Steyn The short version of the Democratic-party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. “I felt this thrill going up my leg,” said MSNBC’s Chris Matthews after one of the senator’s speeches. “I mean, I don’t have that too often.” Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage...

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. "I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. snip.... Every time I hear an Obama speech, I start to giggle. But millions of voters don't. And, if Chris Matthews and the tingly-legged media get their way and drag Obama across the finish line this November, the laugh will be on those of us who think that serious times demand grown-up rhetoric.

HH: I want to begin with Mark Steyn, who has managed to leave the British Columbia courthouse wherein the British Columbia Human Rights tribunal is meeting to try him. He’s in the dock. He’s across the street from the courthouse. Mr. Steyn, welcome, how goes the affairs up there? MS: Well, I’m glad to be able to shake off the fellows from the British Columbia Sheriff’s department. It’s very bizarre to me. They said they’d had, they’d been following me around everywhere in the building I go because they say there are security concerns. And it’s not clear whether it’s...

Merciful heavens, it’s the last day. Time for final arguments… Faisal Joseph for the complainants: We’re here to right a terrible wrong. Case involves a complicated intersection of two important values — free speech and the right to be free from discrimination. Neither trumps the other, in his view. Not all speech is afforded the same protection — speech that is not close to the “core value” of free speech is not as well protected. That would be hate speech. Doesn’t advance truth-seeking, because it silences the target group. Doesn’t advance their self-development, etc. Not offensive speech we’re after, but...

In The Village Voice the other week, the playwright David Mamet recently outed himself as a liberal apostate and revealed that he's begun reading conservative types like Milton Friedman and Paul Johnson. If he's wondering what he's in for a year or two down the line, here's how Newsweek's Jonathan Tepperman began his review this week of another literary leftie who wandered off the reservation: "Toward the end of The Second Plane, Martin Amis's new book on the roots and impact of 9/11, the British novelist describes a fellow writer as 'an oddity: his thoughts and themes are... serious —...

At issue is a cover story National Review’s own Mark Steyn wrote for the Canadian newsweekly Maclean’s, titled “The Future Belongs to Islam.” An excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone, the article highlighted the fact that demographic trends suggest that Muslims may well become a majority in much of Europe and that this obviously represents a threat to Europe as we know it. A few Muslim law students objected to the article and filed multiple complaints with Canada’s national and provincial “human rights” tribunals and presto! Steyn’s opinion and Maclean’s right to print it have now been effectively criminalized....

The charge levelled against Maclean's by the Canadian Islamic Congress is that, in publishing an excerpt from my book, this magazine exposed Muslims to "hatred and contempt." Alas, at the first day of the Great Maclean's Show Trial at the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal, the well of my book excerpt's "hatred and contempt" pretty well ran dry in the first hour. So Faisal Joseph, counsel for the plaintiff Mohamed Elmasry, was forced to bus in a huge pile of miscellaneous generic "hatred and contempt" from all kinds of other sources. And even then much of it seemed less like...

We’re back, and the first item for business is Joseph demanding an apology for yesterday’s “scaredy-pants” outburst, which he says is causing his client “stress.” It seems he is going to call Habib, but first wants to introduce yet another piece of last-minute evidence, from yet another blog post — this one from the California-based “Free Republic” site — which is yet again operated from somewhere in that vast section of the universe that is outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal. McConchie is raising objections, probably futilely.

Day three dawns, and the crowds have thinned. Maybe a dozen spectators today, none of the protestors (pro-Steyn!) of the first day. Media is down to me and Brian Hutchinson of the National Post, whose fine piece on yesterday’s proceedings is definitely worth a read. (Where’s the Globe? Their office is across the street. Couldn’t they spare even one reporter?) Ian Mulgrew also offers a trenchant article in the Vancouver Sun. Further assigned reading, on the whole damn mess: Convenant Zone. First witness today is Faiza Hirji, an expert in “analyzing stereotypes in the media with regard to minorities,” with...

Of late I’ve been having some sport with a fellow called Oscar van den Boogaard. He’s a novelist over in Europe, and, while I’m not the most assiduous reader of Continental fiction, my eye was caught by an interview he gave to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard. Reflecting on Europe’s accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Eutopia he loved, but what could he do? “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.” This seemed such a poignant...

Dear Mark, Can you please republish some of the funniest columns from the late 1990s when Clinton sex jokes were all the rage and you once wrote about Monica’s dress in the witness protection program? Best wishes, Tom Hernandez MARK SAYS: Well, I think we reprised the Monica's dress column a few months back, but in honor of the demise of the Hillary campaign and with it the hopes of a Clinton restoration, how about my grand summation of the Administration? This is the way things seemed in the week it ended seven years ago. And don't forget, the SteynOnline...

Canada's descent into self-mockery opened today with the start of trial of Mark Steyn on allegations of human rights violations by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.

I am posting the first few postings from Andrew Coyne who is live blogging the BC Human Rights show trial....soliciting freeper comment and updates throughout the day. So we are in, and almost ready to go. As trials of the century/year/week go, this one is decidedly down-market: the courtroom would make a good walk-in closet. Maclean’s legal team is out in force, a phalanx of half a dozen suits. The opposing counsel, by contrast, is one suit and two or three badly-dressed juniors. If I didn’t know the stakes, I’d be rooting for them. Actually I am rooting for them,...

...If it's any consolation to Senator Clinton, she's not the only female to find that social progress is strangely accommodating of old-time sexism.... There's a lot of that about. Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India, where the gender ratio has declined to 1,000 boys to 900 girls nationally, and as low as 1,000 boys to 300 girls in some Punjabi cities. In China, the state-enforced "one child" policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun — "bare branches." If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort...

CHRC Spokesman Will Not Say if Christian Teaching on Sexuality is “Hate” Calgary Bishop Henry says "we're into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police.” By Hilary White OTTAWA, May 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A spokesman for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has refused to say whether Christian moral opposition to homosexual activity constitutes a “hate crime”. Pete Vere, a Catholic writer who has been working on the clashes between the Human Rights Commissions and Christians, asked Mark van Dusen, a media spokesman for the CHRC, “If one, because...

‘Someone wins, someone doesn’t win, that’s life,” Nancy Kopp, Maryland’s treasurer, told the Washington Post. “But women don’t want to be totally dissed.” She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. “Healing The Wounds Of Democrats’ Sexism,” as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Senator Clinton’s presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why...

The Conservative government has introduced a motion to Parliament's Justice Committee proposing an investigation into the abusive, corrupt practises of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The motion specifically refers to public "concerns" about the CHRC's "investigative techniques" and their "interpretation and application" of the section 13 thought crimes provision. The resolution, which you can read here in both official languages, was put forward by Rick Dykstra (pictured at left), the Conservative MP from St. Catherines, Ontario, with the knowledge and approval of the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson. Here is an e-mail from Nicholson, sent to a voter just today, in...

Steyn quotes from an article in The Church of England Newspaper: "If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this...." At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departments national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland's aborting of legislation against...

I was a bit stunned to be asked to speak on the Canadian economy. “What happened?” I wondered. “Did the guy who was going to talk about the Belgian economy cancel?” It is a Saturday night, and the Oak Ridge Boys are playing the Hillsdale County Fair. Being from Canada myself, I am, as the President likes to say, one of those immigrants doing the jobs Americans won’t do. And if giving a talk on the Canadian economy on a Saturday night when the Oak Ridge Boys are in town isn’t one of the jobs Americans won’t do, I don’t...

I was watching the Big Oil execs testifying before Congress. That was my first mistake. If memory serves, there was lesbian mud wrestling over on Channel 137, and on the whole that's less rigged. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz knew the routine: "I can't say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not." Had I been in the hapless oil man's expensive shoes, I'd have answered, "Hey, you first. I can't say that there is evidence that you're sleeping with barnyard animals, but I...

I'm starring in one of those movies You know, the one where only the maverick investigator knows something scary's going onMARK STEYN | May 14, 2008 |Many years ago, I proposed a feature to an editor about a new trend — as I recall, it was celebrities wearing cravats. I wanted us to be first with the big "The Cravat Is Back!" weekend pictorial. Anyway, she demanded to know the evidence for this trend. And I cited Ted Danson wearing one to the Emmys and Roger Moore wearing one to go snorkelling in Belize. Or possibly vice versa. "And ....

HH: The two big issues of the day, four justices of the California Supreme Court, by a vote of 4-3, have imposed gay marriage on 30 million Californians, imposed it. It’s a judicial coup. More on that, and then George Bush talks about appeasement to the Israeli Knessett, and all hell breaks loose in the Democratic Party back in the United States. To discuss all this and more, Mark Steyn, Columnist to the World. You can read all of Mark’s material at www.steynonline.com. Mark, I think we should probably start with the President’s Knessett speech. Have you had a chance...

Ten Years Ago All this week at SteynOnline, we've been marking the tenth anniversary of Frank Sinatra's death, beginning with this appreciation, and continuing with Sinatra live, Sinatra the voice, Sinatra on screen, and Sinatra and pianist. Today, we wrap up the series with some reflections on how Frank's passing was marked by the media and by fellow musicians. This piece appeared a couple of weeks after his death in The American Spectator: As Sinatra himself wondered in another context: What now, my love? What now? When Frank finally faced his final curtain, checked into the big casino, split the...

"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me." That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies. President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed...

Almost everywhere I went last week — TV, radio, speeches — I was asked about the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. I don't recall being asked about Israel quite so much on its 50th anniversary, which, as a general rule, is a much bigger deal than the 60th. But these days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming Iranian President Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic fancies don't come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don't fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the...

Israel’s doom would be bad news for Europe. Almost everywhere I went last week — TV, radio, speeches — I was asked about the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. I don’t recall being asked about Israel quite so much on its 50th anniversary, which as a general rule is a much bigger deal than the 60th. But these days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming President Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic fancies don’t come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don’t fancy its prospects...

Almost everywhere I went last week – TV, radio, speeches – I was asked about the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. I don't recall being asked about Israel quite so much on its 50th anniversary, which, as a general rule, is a much bigger deal than the 60th. But these days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming Iranian President Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic fancies don't come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don't fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the...

In October 2006, Maclean’s published an article by Mark Steyn entitled “The Future Belongs To Islam,� an excerpt from his best-selling book, America Alone. Five months later, a delegation of Muslim activists offended by Mr. Steyn’s arguments demanded that we turn over to them for the purposes of a reply the cover of the magazine and five or six pages of its contents. We told them that we had already published an extraordinary number of responses to Mr. Steyn’s article and asked if they were willing to discuss a more reasonable accommodation of their views. They refused. The activists, working...