Time Immortal

Four years ago, when the RCMP raided ’s house to seize privileged evidence that had been leaked to her, the media went on the warpath for weeks, reporting on the subject and toasting O’Neill as a free speech hero. So said the group Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

I agree that an actual raid on O’Neill’s house to seize documents is indeed a big news story, and it does touch upon issues of the free press. But is not a two-year-long government investigation of the political thoughts of a Canadian publisher newsworthy as well?

The small sliver of opinion on the blogosphere that has spoken out against me on this matter has focused, in the main, on my own personality or political stripe — I can count on two fingers the blog posts that actually support human rights commissions. The bulk of the opposition to me is personal. Is that the same thing in the mainstream media — for personal or political reasons, or competitive reasons, they’re declining to cover a story of government censorship? My interrogation is not as dramatic as a raid on O’Neill’s home for documents, but it is just as troubling. More, even — O’Neill’s “crime” was receiving leaked documents. My crime was having illegal thoughts about poltiical and religious subjects.

Perhaps another reason is that the bulk of the media is rather shy about this entire subject, given that the vast majority of them hid under their desks during the initial cartoon kerfuffle. The Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression sure did. When we were taken to the human rights commission, they thought it more important to issue a press release about freedom in Uganda. At least they were better than Amnesty International, which condemned the publication of the cartoons. Like “free speech” advocates who went on vacation, editors and producers who were AWOL — or worse, enforced the cartoon ban in their own media organizations — might not want to remind themselves or their audience of that now.

Another reason might be ongoing fear of human rights complaints against them — the “chill” factor. Best to avoid difficult issues, and focus on happy human interest stories everyone can agree on, including radical Muslim imams.

But the story isn’t about me. It isn’t even about the cartoons or about Islam. It’s about whether or not the government can summon anyone, including a publisher, to an interrogation to answer for their political thoughts.

If I’m fair game today, anyone is fair game tomorrow.

Ezra Levant asks (rightly) just why it is that the story of his struggle with the Alberta Human Rights Commission has not received wider attention in the Canadian media. In the blogosphere and in the American media, the Levant-HRC fracas has been well-documented and has received the attention it deserves — suppression of freedom of expression should be viewed as a serious threat to human liberties in the West, after all.

But in Canada, hardly anyone in the media has said anything about Levant’s case, and Mark Steyn’s case has received only slightly more attention. It is as if the issue of the existence of an organ of the Canadian government which exists solely to trample on the legitimate right of all Canadians to freedom of expression rates a “no, nevermind” from most major media outlets in this nation…which, one would hope, should be the first people to decry even the slightest encroachment on that right.

But I guess the idea of actually standing in opposition to the activist left over an issue such as this just doesn’t fit the narrative.