Stamping on Free Speech.

I received the following comment on my ‘Hate Crimes’ post: -

This is much worse than you may really know. To get an idea of how far and ridiculous this has become try Googling this:


free dominion+connie fournier+mark fournier

And "Richard Warman"



I am glad Mark Steyn is getting this attention because he has the support of a large magazine to help him with the costs. Many, many others do not have this luxury and will be ruined as a result.
This evil is about to consume the U.S.. For Australia it is only a matter of time. London and Berlin are already screwed. I hope 2008 is the year we all fight back. 


Good luck friends. 


OK, I find that Richard Warman, ‘Human Rights’ lawyer, 'do gooder' and apparently general busybody, is suing Mark and Connie Fournier for defamation. Some sites indicate that he tends to be selective about which sites with the same information he is insulted by. The Citizen Media Law Project describes the case as follows: -

Richard Warman is a Canadian human rights lawyer based in Ottawa. Formerly with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Warman is best known for initiating human rights complaints against members of white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements for engaging in hate speech on the Internet.

In September and October 2007, Warman sent two letters to Mark Fournier and Connie Wilkins-Fournier, proprietors of the right-wing Canadian forum/website, Freedominion.ca. The letters accused Fournier and Wilkins-Fournier of libel, stated Warman's "intention to commence an action for libel against [them]," and requested a complete retraction. The letters claimed that posts written by the Fourniers and forum participants were libelous in that they accused Warman of engaging in censorship, stifling free speech, and being a "professional complainer," among other things.

A number of websites and bloggers have proclaimed their support for the Fourniers and their condemnation of what they see as Warman's attempts at censorship. Among them are neo-Nazis that Warman has targeted in the past. There is no evidence that the Fourneirs condone the positions espoused by these neo-Nazi supporters, however. In fact, a significant portion of Freedominion.ca's user base appears to be supporters of Israel and Jewish causes.

Following links from the initial Google query leads to the rather bizarre quagmire of Stormfront, David Duke and company, however as much as I personally disagree with these people they have the right to voice their opinions, even if they are silly opinions.

Warman states that judgments consistently agree that there are 'reasonable' limits on free speech. Reasonable to him apparently means any statement he disagrees with is off limits, by force of law. The trouble with 'reasonable' in a definition is that it is subject to individual perception.

I meet plenty of views that I disagree with, some offensive to me but when that happens I argue, not demand the right to have those people holding such views silenced by force of law. What I think is reasonable, will not be to a person who is so narrow minded that he can peer through a keyhole with both eyes, so should such a person demand 'reasonable' be interpreted in such a way to have my opinions banned?

Free speech is free speech, any limitation to it means it no longer exists. As such no country claiming to be free should be forming bodies that are designed to enforce rules that can only be justified in political correctness.

The views of hate and other unlovely groups should be left out where they can be seen and accessed. If their views are disagreeable, they will be disagreed with. If they are ridiculous they will be ridiculed, all the Warmans of the world do is to unite them under a justifiable feeling of victimhood.

We do not need laws to protect us against such views, we have that protection built in. It is called common sense.

Slander and libel laws, are in themselves anti-free speech, a case well argued by Walter Block in his book, 'Defending the Undefendable', in the chapter 'The Slanderer and Libeler' : -

It is easy to be an advocate of free speech when it applies to the rights of those with whom one is in agreement. But the crucial test concerns controversial speech including statements, which we may consider vicious and nasty and which may, in fact, even be vicious and nasty.

Now, there is perhaps nothing more repugnant or vicious than libel. We must, therefore, take particular care to defend the free speech rights of libellers, for if they can be protected, the rights of all others who do not give as much offence will certainly be more secure. But if the rights of free speech of libellers and slanderers are not protected, the rights of others will be less secure.

The reason civil libertarians have not been involved in the protection of the rights of libellers and slanderers is clear libel is ruinous to reputations. …But obviously, protecting a person's reputation is not an absolute value. If it were, if, that is, reputations were really sacrosanct, then we would have to prohibit most categories of denigration, even truthful ones.

Unfavourable literary criticism, satire in movie, play, music or book reviews could not be
allowed. Anything which diminished any individual's or any institution's reputation would have to be forbidden.......

Liberalism as expressed today appears to be a form of mental instability.