I'm With the Wingnuts on this One. And ...

Canadian Cynic agrees with Scott's Diatribes and Dr. Dawg that Mark Steyn's travails at the hands of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal are nothing to care about at all.

Dr. Dawg's reflections are particularly poignant for me:

Surely everybody on the planet must be talking about the Mark Steyn Trial of the Century. And Human Rights Commissions, the Spanish Inquisition redux, coming soon to your own door. (Worse!) This hed just about says it all, doesn't it?

Well, as they say, welcome to the real world, kiddies. No, the Steyn auto-da-fe is not being widely reported, except by the usual suspects. The irons are not being heated, the gallows rope is not being tested, the whips are not soaking in brine, the cold, dank cells are not being outfitted with new batches of mouldy straw.

The thing is, I experienced the same sort of let-down when I traveled to Ottawa to raise awareness of three CANADIAN CITIZENS who were TORTURED in Syria and Egypt, seemingly at the REQUEST of the CANADIAN GOVERNMENT. At the end of it all, despite a large media presence, most people didn't know about it and the CBC's big story was about the woman fired for giving a "timbit" to a customer's baby.

Just because the majority don't know, and [probably?] don't care, doesn't make it unimportant. I'm with the wingnuts in opposing anti-hate legislation. A position shared with Glenn Greenwald:

People like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are some of the most pernicious commentators around. But equally pernicious, at least, are those who advocate laws that would proscribe and punish political expression, and those who exploit those laws to try use the power of the State to impose penalties on those expressing "offensive" or "insulting" or "wrong" political ideas. The mere existence of the "investigation," interrogation, and proceeding itself is a grotesque affront to every basic liberty.

...

Empowering the State to proscribe and punish speech is not only the most dangerous step a society can take -- though it is that -- it's also the most senseless. It never achieves its intended effect of suppressing or eliminating a particular view. If anything, it has the opposite effect, by driving it underground, thus preventing debate and exposure. Worse, it converts its advocates into martyrs -- as one sees from the hero-worship now surrounding people like Levant and Steyn, who now become self-glorifying symbols of individual liberty rather than what they are: hateful purveyors of a bitter, destructive, authoritarian ideology.