No, the wearisome thing is the extent to which writers with whom I am in agreement are suffering from the scrutiny of the law.
I mentioned Susan Ehrenfeld a while back- a lady who cannot publish in or visit the UK after being landed with a GBP250,000 libel order from a British judge. Ehrenfeld was just among the most vocal in a line of victims of Islamic
As I mentioned below, Mark Steyn is now in the line of fire, predictably- through his Canadian publishers Macleans. I've had a read of the muslim lawyers' complaints document and they are predictably lacking in substance and long on generalities- but perhaps the law relating to "Islamophobia" is too.
Stanley Kurtz makes a valid point when he says "the anti-free-speech attacks on Steyn and Maclean's, by Western-trained lawyers, no less, show that Steyn's concerns about poorly assimilated Western values are more than justified."
The only problem with that is that it isn't Steyn's viewpoint- he sees such lawyers as understanding all too well the lessons of their education. I think he's right. Arguing in generalities laced with a vague scent of human rights is about the level of public discourse, and I would say not so far from the standard of legal discourse, today. The whole incitement of religious hatred thing is a vague nonsense open to abuse from day one- and so it is proving.
Originally published on the Talking Hoarsely blog
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