I wish it to be known that not only am I not a member of the John Birch Society as was stated in the thread below, it has been has been exposed at Protein Wisdom that "Bitch [meaning moi] is a Stalinist." http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=10578#comment-302826

I tried so hard to keep my CPUSA membership a secret....but Glenn is leader of my cell, which explains a lot.

Similarly with Ezra. He will almost certainly be let off the hook for what he did (although he MAY be facing libel charges sometime in the near future). So what if he had to face the "process"? Mr. Levant is himself known for aggressively playing the legal system.

You have no right to stop Mr. Levant from expressing and propounding his political opinions, and he has every right to spout them. Because you have no right to prevent him from declaiming his views, you cannot morally transfer the right to censor Levant to your government.

It matters not at all whether his views are the slimiest imaginable. Free speech protections are unimportant when all that one says is accepted by the majority; by contrast, free speech protections are a crucial counter-majoritarian protection of the individual, each of us, including Mr. Levant.

Regardless of whatever fine points of Canadian law Glenn may have not had precisely pinned down in his post, I have seldom read a post, as well as his comments, with which I more strongly agree.

_In practise_ I don't see evidence that that's contributed to significant differences in the expression of free speech in the two countries.

There is no way to gauge that, since you can't measure the speech that has been chilled and unspoken in light of Canada's laws. And they are an affront to the fundamental right to speak one's political opinions; the harm is inherent.

This is one of the few issues where I believe my nation leads the world in terms of human rights, notwithstanding lapses that we have eventually corrected.

Americans as oppressed more then any other citizens in the Western world. The reason you don't see it is because few of you leave your country and you've all been indoctrinated since birth to believe you're more free then anyone else on the planet.

What utter drivel. I've left the country, and Glenn lives in Brazil with his Brazilian domestic partner. America's drug laws are among the worst on the planet -- Canada and Europe lead us in enlightenment there by many magnitudes.

Nevertheless, an individual ought to be entirely free to spew "hate" about religions and groups, and we in America get that right. The Jesus' General blog could be prosecuted in Canada, if a fundy Xian DA wanted to go after it -- prosecutorial "discretion" is a mighty slim reed on which to defend such laws, since times they DO CHANGE. Thank god(s) that can't happen here in the U.S., tho I'm sure more than a few right-wingers wish it were otherwise and that JG could be shut down.

Islam has aspects to it worthy of profound criticisms -- my best friend in my undergrad years (way before 9/11) was an Iraqi-American female who, like me, ended up an atheist. Many a night we'd suck wine coolers and compare the relative ghastliness of her oppressive upbringing in a Muslim home and mine in an arch-conservative, Roman Catholic family. Islam is no sacred exception to the right to criticize religion -- even among those who go way too far into deranged conspiracy theories about it.

Catholics in 19th century Americas endured violence due to bigotry -- convents were burned, and after the KKK came into full bloom, Catholic priests were nearly as popular Klan targets as Jews and blacks. Yet, I don't want to give Wm Donohue the "hate crime" tools to close down Jesus' General. Do you?

"Last month, Soharwardy complained about postings on the Western Standard website that referred to all Muslims as scum and said they should all be killed."

(http://calgary.ctv.ca and search Levant)

I followed your link and got a bunch of google results. Perused the first one, and didn't find anyone advocating "killing" Muslims. But even if I had, was Levant directing people to go out and kill Muslims? Directing people to kill isn't political speech, and "hate speech" legislation is not required to prosecute the person organizing a murder spree.

What provokes a big yawn is an American know-it-all lecturing about other countries' legal and judicial systems you don't appear to understand. You are interpreting cases from an American perspective based on a few press-reports, which are either biased or extremely weak on details. You are jumping to conclusions.

But what bugs me the most is that you appear to believe that you must act as some kind of savior, having to rescue others from a path downright to tyranny. I have more trust in Canadians and Europeans vigorously monitoring their governments and its laws for any signs of abuses or authoritarianism than I have in Americans.

Yes, because Europe especially has such a laudable history of freedom and respect for human rights. It does not matter who you are, or what your country is -- give the state the power to punish people for their ideas, and you have inherently started down a totalitarian path. No, you may not end up in Hitler or Stalin territory, but you will also not, in the area of speech, be free men and women as we are in the U.S. on that score.

And YES, Canada and Europe are BETTER on some human rights issues than the U.S. Glenn and I both not only know that, but insist on it. He's mentioned his forthcoming study on Europe, and especially Portugal's, more sane and humane drug policies. He (and I) is not parochially pro-American. We are in "America is better" mode only where it is sensible to be.