Freedom of the press is on trial in Canada.

            The trial is before a court with the Orwellian title of the

British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The accused are Maclean's magazine

and author Mark Steyn. The crime: In mocking and biting tones, they wrote

that Islam threatens Western values.

            Had Steyn written that, given the Crusades, colonial atrocities

in Africa and the slave trade, Christianity had been on balance a curse, he

would not be in the dock. In the United States, these charges would have

been tossed out by any federal judge, who would have admonished the

plaintiffs that, here in America, we have a First Amendment.

            The United States, however, is an isolated exception, as Western

nations seek to impose wider restrictions on what has come to be called

"hate speech."

            Questioning the Holocaust is a crime in Canada and Europe, as

British historian David Irving discovered when he was sentenced to prison in

Austria. To say the Armenian massacres of 1915-1924 were an attempt at

genocide is a crime in Turkey.

            In France, animal rights champion Brigitte Bardot has been fined

$23,000 for provoking discrimination and racial hatred by denouncing Muslims

who slaughtered a sheep in a religious ceremony. Bardot had been punished

five previous times for her statements.

            Censorship is making a comeback. Outside the United States, it

is considered an acceptable price to pay for the new diversity Western Man

seems now to value more than the old liberty.

            In 1990, writes Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Chief Justice

of the Canadian Supreme Court Brian Dickson wrote, in upholding the

conviction of one James Keegstra for anti-Semitic slurs:

            "(T)he international commitment to eradicate hate propaganda

and, most importantly, the special role given equality and multiculturalism

in the Canadian Constitution necessitate a departure from the view ... that

the suppression of hate propaganda is incompatible with the guarantee of

free expression."

            There you have it. Canada's commitment to multiculturalism and

the equality of all religions, races and cultures requires the silencing of

those who do not believe all races, creeds and cultures are equal.

            The dogmas of the Diverse Society dictate that the cherished

rights of the Free Society be sacrificed on the altar of social tranquility.

            What has caused this reversal of the advance of freedom?

            Western Man has come to believe there are more important values

than freedom, if men use their freedom in ways our new Lords Temporal find

unacceptable.

            Nor is this anything new. Censorship has always had powerful

patrons and not always benighted backers.

            In the Middle Ages, pious men sought to silence heretics because

they believed the Faith led to Paradise, while its loss led to Hell for all

eternity. The Christian censorship we mock today was born of men's deepest

convictions about the most important thing in life: salvation.

            Devout Muslims believe heretics and apostates should be put to

death. Islam is the most important thing in their lives, and its truths are

valued more than any freedom to mock them.

            And, indeed, most men accept some form of censorship.

            Most of us believe that published or spoken lies that ruin good

names should be punished by libel and slander laws. Most of us believe there

are military secrets that must be protected. Not a few Americans believe

that the moral codes imposed on Hollywood by the Legion of Decency helped

protect society from the toxic pollution that poisons our children. Most of

us support FCC sanctions against filthy language or racist slurs on the

airwaves.

            Nor is government censorship unknown to America.

            President John Adams signed the Sedition Acts, which called for

the incarceration of journalists who wrote insultingly of him. Abraham

Lincoln suppressed newspapers that denounced his war. Woodrow Wilson

imprisoned the Socialist Eugene Debs for denouncing his war.

            A new censorship is now arising. We read of speech codes on

campuses, sensitivity training for freshman, and tribunals before which

students are made to grovel and recant for joking references that offended

some minority or other.

            "The best test of truth," said Justice Holmes, "is the power of

thought to get itself accepted in the marketplace."

            Nonsense. Editor Elijah Lovejoy was lynched in Alton, Ill., in

1837 for advocating abolition — against the view of the marketplace. Truth

is truth, whether the majority agrees or not.

            Yet, one's money ought to be on the new censors, for men who

believe deeply in something, even when wrong, usually triumph over men who

believe in nothing.

            Today, the true believers in Islam and the true believers in

diversity uber alles are making common cause against those who believe in

freedom of speech and the press. As the former have the convictions and

increasingly the power, they may prevail, and not only in Canada and Europe.

            A new orthodoxy is arising. Freedom's finest hour may be behind

us.