[Clutch Munny]

Macleans is a Canadian newsmagazine that's received plenty of governmental protectionism and publicly funded breaks over the years. It's hardly in a position to pose as the strictest defender of freedom from public institutions.

The single most striking thing about the backlash, including from Rex Murphy, the Fraser Institute's most reliable press-release-reader, is its misrepresentation of the students' challenge. Steyn is not the object of the complaint; no hate-speech laws are being invoked; the complaint does not say that Steyn shouldn't write as he pleases, nor that Macleans shouldn't publish it.

The complaint is that material that is hysterical, grossly inaccurate, and calculated to spread alarm about an entire culture of people should be presented with an opposing view as well. The students in question did not even demand to present the opposing view; they proposed a response by a mutually-agreed commentator.

As it turns out, I think that this legal challenge is not a good idea, though naturally it's hard to find too much fault with anything that further decreases the odds of yguy's living in one's country. Anyhow, it's hardly a no-brainer; there are reasonable arguments against simply hoping that a completely unregulated "marketplace of ideas" will reward sober clarification as strongly as it rewards vile demagoguery of the Steyn variety. But the OMFG FREEDUM!1!! brigade seems to be avoiding an accurate characterization of the actual issue with a consistency that strongly suggests deliberate misrepresentation.