Newpaper editors silenced for publishing Danish cartoons – Fighting the good fight

In Canada and the United States, we expect news items like this from Jurist, to deal with other countries.

This particular editor hailed from Belarus – a nation not well known for its tradition of freedom and democracy.

We don’t, however, need to look that far.

Right here in Canada, lawyer and news magazine publisher Ezra Levant is defending himself against a complaint lodged against him by a radical Calgary imam for doing exactly what his unfortunate Belorussian counterpart did:  he had the temerity to publish the now infamous Danish cartoons in his own publication, the Western Standard.

Ezra, however, is not one to back down.  He has posted video of the Alberta Human Rights Commission‘s initial investigatory interview with him on his website.  What we see is a government inquiry into why he felt he should publish the cartoons, and what he was thinking when he did it.

This is Orwellian.  Does it really matter why he did it?  What he was thinking?

Is Ezra not entitled, in a secular society, to provoke a debate about whether violence and destruction is a reasonable response to the publication of some cartoons offensive to no one but a few religious fundamentalists?  Are we really so afraid of offending them that we are prepared to trade away the basic freedoms upon which our society is based?

That Ezra is not the only writer facing this kind of inquisition in Canada should give us pause.  Mark Steyn is facing a similar inquistion after the Canadian Islamic Conference complained to other human rights commissions over publication of an excerpt from his book that, they feel, insults Islam.

This, however, is a blog about the ethics of lawyering, and in this regard, Ezra deserves singular praise.  Freedom of speech, the right to a hearing before an impartial tribunal, procedural due process – these are all the fundamental values of a free and democratic society.  When the law purports to limit these freedoms in a way that stifles social and political debate, then surely it is the duty of a lawyer to speak out.

Where most lawyers are prepared to engage in this debate only in an abstract way – perhaps at most, only in the course of representing a client – Ezra has placed himself at the centre of the maelstrom.

His vocation, since shortly after graduating from law school, has been as a publisher.  Perhaps that is the legal profession’s loss.