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 did not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

I am embarrassed by whats going in Canada. The U.S. tolerates the expression of a lot of despicable views, and it is particularly frustrating to see the large cross section of conservatives who are vocally opposed to hate speech codes but completely silent or on the other side of other important first amendment issues, as it reveals their sympathy for ideas they claim that they reject. However, government regulation of this speech is a slippery slope that leads to all sorts of silly results such as the German ban on the Wolfenstein games and this trial in Canada, which clearly intends to squelch a political view. You can't stop people from being assholes. Censoring this sort of material doesn't make these opinions go away, and it removes the opportunity to confront them directly in open dialog. If these muslims wanted to make a counterpoint to this article they ought to do it through sound advocacy in the pages of Macleans rather than coersion in a court. Reliance on the later leads one to suspect that you can't win at the former.

Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S. - International Herald Tribune