Oh look, a Maclean’s columnist calls me a “sophomoric… absent-minded, AFD defending, climate change denying Carrot Top” for defending free speech.

In my latest National Post column I say calls to make handguns illegal in a city in response to criminals using illegal handguns for illegal murders make no sense.

In my latest National Post column I remind politicians that John Stuart Mill’s classic defence of free speech applies every bit as much to social media as to the spoken, written or broadcast word.

(You can watch the beginning and hear the rest of my testimony on the subject to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on June 4, as well as that of Mark Steyn and Lindsay Shepherd, on ParlVu (my prepared remarks begin at 9:09).

On June 4 I appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to testify on online hate, and urged them not to censor even loathsome opinions because truth will prevail in a contest of ideas. You can watch the beginning of the session and hear the rest including my testimony on ParlVu (my prepared remarks begin at 9:09).

See also my June 5 National Post column adapted from that testimony.

NB this interview was done before the government said it would pay Admiral Norman’s legal bills. But I stand by my claim that the ordeal he went through, including having to fund the case himself while it was in progress and with no reasonable expectation that his bills would be covered, constitutes a powerful deterrent to anyone rocking the boat or, in this case, the supply ship..

“It is certainly one of the things that we can’t not know that no one may deliberately take innocent human life. The more particular doctrine of man as the created image of God seems unknown beyond the bible’s sphere of influence; it is not one of the things we can’t not know. Some intuition of the sacredness of human life is universal nonetheless…”

J. Budziszewski What We Can’t Not Know