The Editors of Maclean's Finally Speak Up

The editors at Maclean's have just published an extremely important editorial entitled "Human rights commissions are undermining the fundamental Charter rights of all Canadians. Protest while you still can." You can read it in full here.

6 months after Mark Steyn's America Alone excerpt was published, a group of Osgoode Hall law students demanded a meeting with Maclean's, which they granted. The students threatened to launch a human rights complaint against the magazine and possibly a criminal action lawsuit as well unless the following demands were met (direct quotes) :

1. The right to respond with an article of equivalent length, by a writer of their choosing and with a cover of their own design. The editors of this magazine would have no opportunity to edit the article except for spelling and punctuation. According to their terms, they would be free to write anything they wanted, however inaccurate or unreasonable or offensive or libelous or criminal or otherwise unsuited for our publication.
   

2. They also wanted a substantial sum of money donated to a charity of their choice.

Maclean's refused, of course. Blackmail & bribes may be common in the countries where some of these students come from, but in Canada it is simply unacceptable. To think that these students will become Canadian lawyers and possibly judges one day scares the living daylights out of me, but that's a separate issue.

Here's the letter I just sent to Maclean's:

Thomas Sowell, the African-American academic & columnist, recently wrote the following: "Among the many wise things said by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was that you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. Yet an incredible number of people make up whatever 'facts' are needed to support whatever they choose to believe."

Bravo to all of you at Maclean's for taking a stand and not caving into the politically correct blackmail that seems de rigueur today. I pray that your actions will be remembered by historians as a significant course correction in our country.