Coulter had a right to be heard

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/03/2010 (5647 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ann Coulter was not run out of Ottawa by the letter from the provost of the university where she was scheduled to speak. Rather, the provocateur’s inglorious exit was staged by her own hand, the hand that wielded that letter as proof she is a victim of a suffocating political correctness that has laid out free speech as its sacrificial lamb.

The hall where she was scheduled to speak became too small for the crowds that threatened to show up, in interest or in protest of Ms. Coulter’s appearance. The darling of America’s right-wing talk TV has made an art of offending people. She infamously has advocated barring Muslims from travelling on planes — let them ride camels, she flippantly sniffed — defending ethnic profiling and has told Canadians they are lucky the United States tolerates sharing the continent with them. She has also likened American Democrats to traitors.

And now she is threatening to take University of Ottawa provost Francois Houle to a human rights tribunal for his letter, which she insists made her a victim of hate speech. Houle’s clumsy effort to appease her protesters — he lectured Ms. Coulter to watch her words so that they do not violate Canada’s hate speech laws, and to temper the hyperbole out of respect and tolerance for others — was not a threat, but it gave her a prop with which to launch yet another diatribe. In doing so, her cachet as an entertainer was polished. The University of Calgary moved her talk, scheduled for Thursday, to a hall with twice the original’s 400 capacity.

Ms. Coulter gets under the skin of people because she is outrageous and well-spoken. Some believe that she wilfully promotes hate against identifiable groups and worry she wins over others with her theory that democracies are imperilled when they allow differences to flourish and ideologies to clash.

Liberal democracies have always had their mettle tested by the Coulters of the world. And the liberal nature of the democratic compact has won out. That is because people are allowed to speak, allowed to think as they might and in the heady, messy brew of ideas the rational prevail and progressive society is made robust.

It is too bad Ms. Coulter was not heard at the U of O, where students go to learn and enlighten themselves. Enlightenment does not dawn upon the masses, it fights for life amid the competing, noisy interests and is grasped by individuals who sort through the distractions and detritus. Apparently, Mr. Houle feared his university’s students were not equal to the task. That, not Ms. Coulter’s sideshow, is worrisome.