FREE SPEECH? FREEDOM TO TELL LIES.

There is a great deal of malicious evil subsumed under the rubric of “free speech.” Because the Americans have a constitution that says anyone can say anything (or at least it appears that way) does not mean it is either legal or moral. In those long ago years when Pierre Trudeau was fighting to “patriate” our constitution (the only one close being the British North America Act) many dissenters said that having a written constitution would not help free speech – it would hamstring it.

It was argued that the common law tradition was a far greater protection against abuse than a rigid constitution.

In the case of Ann Coulter there is no question that she is not entitled, certainly not to be “invited” to express her views. I’m not talking about her Fox-news-biased reporting, even that might be a matter of opinion. But I suggest that she brings a level of uninformed and ignorant opinion to an arena best meant for thoughtful discussion. In short – she doesn’t know what she is talking about. She seems to be able, as almost everyone at Fox News is, to make it up as she goes along. This friends, is not a matter of opinion i.e. my liberal mindset against her ultra-conservative bias. I promise you that David Frum, the Canadian thinker of the Enterprise Institute, and a dedicated conservative, would bring literacy and informed opinion to any forum. Just as William F. Buckley, the arch conservative intellectual came to the table not with wild unsupported ideas, but with his “take” on real affairs.

The one big one that lingers in my memory is one that disqualifies Ann Coulter from any kind of civil debate. I saw her as a guest on “The Fifth Estate.” Lindon McIntyre was interviewing her about her position on Iraq. She chided Canada for not joining the U.S. in the war. She said – and this is almost exactly how the conversation went:
Coulter: Canada came to our aid in Viet Nam.
McIntyre: No we didn’t. We did not go to Viet Nam.
Coulter: Yes you did.
McIntyre (exasperated): We did not.
Coulter: Well, I’ll have to get back to you on that.
If she did, I never heard about it. Coulter does not back down even when she is wrong.

She is a best-selling author. That is more to the disgrace than the credit of the millions of Americans who bought her book. They are the people who also flocked to the bookstores for Sarah Palin’s factually incorrect look at her part in history. It was long on fantasy and short on fact.

I do not, nor have I ever, supported the notion that everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. Unless you know what you are talking about, you’d better shut up until you have more facts. The most glaring and pathetic example of this is how by spending millions in advertising, Big Insurance has managed to sell their brand of skullduggery to the American public. Repeating thing s that are wrong makes them right – if you repeat them often enough. Which is exactly how Josef Goebbels persuaded the German people that Hitler was their savior. He was the master of the big lie.