levant and steyn: fighting for their your freedom to be sleazy.

i was reading kady o'malley's coverage of the warman vs. lemire human rights hearings yesterday. pretty dry toast i must say. ( i give o'malley full marks for having the endurance to stick around all day.) it was meant to be a big day for free speech in canada. it sounds to me like the event failed to live up to it's billing.

mark steyn and ezra levant told us it was important, even a matter of life and death. they feign concern for our very right to speak aloud in canada.in reality, they don't care who saying what as long as it's sleazy or even downright hateful and helps to elevate their flimsy soapboxes.

for those of you who aren't familiar with the people levant and steyn champion these days, here's a brief introduction.

1. Marc Lemire - Although he denies it, lemire is considered by many to be a white supremacist.
he currently runs a website called freedom-site. click here to visit lemire's freedom site blog. scroll to the bottom and check out the videos posted.

2. Paul Fromm- fromm keeps company with the likes of david duke. a failed politician, fromm has been booted from the progressive conservative party in ontario and the former reform party.

He angered many people and embarrassed both the federal and Ontario Progressive Conservatives when a profile in the Globe and Mail quoted him as saying that breeding a "supreme race" for intelligence was a good idea, and as calling for Vietnamese refugees to be sent to "desert islands" off the Philippines and Indonesia rather than be accepted into Canada where they would "upset the racial balance". - wikipedia

a quick visit to the wikipedia link will tell you everything you need to know about paul fromm.

3. doug christie- christie is a lawyer who has spent his career defending people like lemire and fromm. he has also worked on behalf of western canadian independence for the last 30 years or so.

a sample of christie's clients:

• Terry Long, former leader of the Aryan Nations in Canada;
• Malcolm Ross of New Brunswick who, like Keegstra, was a teacher fired for anti-Semitic activity;
• three alleged leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in Manitoba;
• Rudy Stanko of the World Church of the Creator;
• Tony McAleer after he was charged with broadcasting hate speech over the phone and online;
• John Ross Taylor of the Western Guard Party and Aryan Nations;
• Imre Finta who was alleged to be a Nazi war criminal and collaborator (see R. v. Finta);
• Doug Collins, a late newspaper columnist brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Commission for antisemitic and racist comments;
• Paul Fromm, head of the far-right "Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform" and "Canadians for Freedom of Expression", and participant in neo-Nazi and racist gatherings, who was fired from his job as a teacher for his political activity;
• Lady Jane Birdwood, a British follower of Oswald Mosley and distributor of hate propaganda;
• Wolfgang Droege of the Heritage Front;
• David Ahenakew, who has acknowledged making antisemitic comments in a 2002 interview with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix - wikipedia
  

the most sickening thing about people like steyn and levant is their willingness to trade their basic humanity for the few cheap baubles that come along with unabashed self-interest and self-promotion.

this isn't about free speech. it's about ego.

as a complete aside, my favourite bit of writing to come from yesterday's snoozefest comes from dr. dawg:

Steyn did not disappoint, by the way. All of my prejudices and preconceptions were borne out. He is an insufferably smug man, his sense of self-importance positively oozing from his frame. He mentioned something about "Kinsella's cameraman": "Not me," I said. (Hey, Warren, I would have come close to winning a consolation prize, though, had cameras been permitted on the floor. Steyn shook hands with Paul Fromm. And he shook hands with Doug Christie.)