Same Name, Different Result

Early in the 20th century, the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to jail people merely for expressing pro-German or pro-Marxist views. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' powerful dissents in Abrams v. United States (1919) and Gitlow v. New York (1925) captured only two votes at the time, but his metaphor is familiar to all:

[T]he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.

If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.

Holmes' view prevailed a few years later, and (with some narrow exceptions) the government cannot punish speech today.

No such liberty exists North of the 49th parallel in Canada. This week, the Supreme Court of British Columbia decided that a public school teacher could be suspended because he wrote a series of letters to the editor (of his local newspaper) saying "homosexuality is not something to be applauded." The B.C. Court found that "Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth," and thus not protected by Canada's Charter of Rights and Liberties (roughly equivalent to our "Bill of Rights").

In other words, "move along; nothing to see; freedom of speech market's closed." Because the suspended teacher is a Christian, I guess the freedom of religion market's shuttered as well. What a difference a border makes.

The author of Canada's Orwellian ruling? Justice Ronald Holmes.