How Ezra Levant Beat Canada's "Human Rights" Censors

From Reason Magazine, Ezra Levant, "The Internet Saved My Tongue: How I Beat Canada's 'Human Rights' Censors":

Early on the morning of February 13, 2006, nearly 40,000 copies of the Western Standard rolled off the presses in Edmonton, Alberta. Tucked inside that week’s issue of Canada’s only national conservative magazine, on pages 15 and 16, was a story about the international controversy over a Danish newspaper that had printed a dozen satirical cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad. Our article, which was illustrated by eight of the cartoons, would soon trigger a three year government investigation of whether I, as the Western Standard’s publisher, had violated the rights of Canadian Muslims by “discriminating” against their religion.

The investigation vividly illustrated how Canada’s provincial and national human rights commissions (HRCs), created in the 1970s to police discrimination in employment, housing, and the provision of goods and services, have been hijacked as weapons against speech that offends members of minority groups. My eventual victory over this censorious assault suggests that Western governments will find it increasingly difficult in the age of the Internet to continue undermining human rights in the name of defending them.

A phenomenal story, unreal in some respects. Read the whole thing, here.

Speaking about his dealings with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, Levant laments, "the right to not be offended trumps freedom of speech in Alberta."