In the Weekly Standard newsletter sent out to subscribers last night, Michael Goldfarb writes:
Here at The Weekly Standard, we occasionally have a laugh at the expense of our Northern neighbors. But America’s Conservative movement is not without Canadian allies, especially in Alberta–the oil-rich province that serves as a stronghold for Stephen Harper’s recently elected Conservative government. Alberta is also the home of the Western Standard, a magazine with which we have no affiliation other than a vague ideological kinship. Still, the people at the Western Standard are good friends of the United States, and vociferous advocates of the war on terror.
Unfortunately, our friends now find themselves in a difficult situation. The Western Standard was the only mainstream publication in Canada with the courage to reprint the cartoons–originally published in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten–which sparked riots across the Muslim world. They did this without malice, but, like The Weekly Standard, with the sole intent of providing their readers an opportunity to see the news first-hand and make their own judgment about both the cartoons and the subsequent protests.
Though the Canadian press enjoys the same freedoms and protections as that in America, a radical imam in Calgary thought the Western Standard’s editor, Ezra Levant, should be arrested. According to Levant, “they [the police] calmly explained to him that’s not what police in Canada do.” So this imam took his case to the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The Commission has taken up the case and filed suit against this small, independent magazine. Though Levant is confident that the suit will be dismissed, he has been forced to appeal to his subscribers for financial support above and beyond the cost of their subscriptions.
I’d encourage our readers to check out the Western Standard’s website. I think you will be delighted to see that not all Canadians hold a dim view of this country.
UPDATE: Reader David Bosserman writes:
I’ve sent the following to our friends at the Western Standard, with a copy to Borders, and I encourage your readers to do the same: “Sirs: I am sending you the money I might otherwise have spent at Borders Books, because they are cowards and you are not.”
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