Unhealthy balance sheet (on freedom of speech and Mark Steyn)

The Australian ^ | 18th June 2008 | Janet Albrechtsen

[naturalman1975]

IF we conducted an audit of civil liberties, the result would go something like this. If you are an alleged terrorist detained at Guantanamo Bay, suspected of waging murderous jihad against the West, you can count on a certain class of vocal Westerners defending your right to a fair trial. Fair enough. But if you're a right-wing commentator who publishes views that may offend the feelings of a minority group, don't count on much support for your rights: your right to free speech or your right to a fair trial. Go figure.

Before we nut out that grotesque hypocrisy, it's worth considering whether the US Supreme Court's decision last week is the terrific win it appears to be for terrorism suspects.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that foreign terrorism suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention in US courts.

In balancing the principles of civil liberties and national security, not all judges agreed the rights of Gitmo detainees should prevail.

Justice Antonin Scalia said: "The nation will live to regret what the court has done today."

As The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto noted, for all the wailing about the evils of Gitmo, "perhaps decades from now we will learn that detainees ended up being abused in some far-off place because the Government closed Guantanamo in response to judicial meddling. Even those who support what the court did today may live to regret it."

And as Chief Justice John Roberts concluded, the majority's decision was no win for democracy. Stripping Congress of power, the American people lost "a bit more control over the conduct of this nation's foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges".

[Savage Beast]

But as Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer from Massachusetts, told the Times,

"Free speech matters because it works." Free debate, not censorship, is the key to combating hate speech... The world didn't suffer because too many people read Mein Kampf. Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the US would have been quite a good idea.