The First Amendment appreciated

If Rex Murphy made Haroon Siddiqui mad, the CBC's Neil Macdonald will probably make steam come out of his ears. (If anyone could get a video of that and put it on YouTube, I'd really appreciate it.)

Speaking as someone who's lived in the rough-and-tumble American marketplace of ideas for many years now, I prefer the speech-versus-speech approach.

I have read Holocaust denial material here and I remain convinced the Holocaust happened. I've read tracts demonizing homosexuality and don't consider gays a threat to anything. I've read accounts by reporters who laid bare national security secrets and I've watched other reporters interview jurors at the end of a criminal trial — all things that can be suppressed in Canada.

There is no chance whatever that either Mark Steyn's or Mohamed Elmasry's utterances would be censored here.

Here, they'd be left to argue with one another and the public might be better informed for having listened.

The reaction among CBC.ca readers is decidedly mixed, with one guy bemoaning the lack of books opposed to American and Israeli policies:

Big surprise, America is not suppressing an anti-Islamic book, how noble of them as they wage war against Islamic forces in various parts of the world against heavy international and now (finally) domestic criticism. That's not free speech, that's propaganda. Where are the anti-Israel books damning the displacement of Palestinians and annexation of their privately owned land, and US support for decades of Israeli human rights abuses, just to appease powerful Israel lobbyists back home and to have some military leverage in the Middle East? How about a book that starts with a thesis about how that foreign policy position is the main cause of the 9/11 attacks and global Islamic terrorism today?

He's got a point. There really aren't any such books available in America, aside from this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

Damian P.

Posted by damian at June 16, 2008 10:24 AM