On Free Speech and Censorship

Army to Remove Memorial Sign and Crosses From Chapel in Kosovo Camp

Army officials say they are only following regulations, but their plans to remove a memorial to a U.S. chaplain at a camp in Kosovo have shocked and saddened his widow.

Elizabeth Oglesby said she was "a little bit sad" when FOXNews.com told her a sign honoring her late husband, Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Gordon Oglesby, would be removed from the North Chapel at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

The sign, as well as three crosses, are being removed to put the chapel in line with Army regulations, said Lt. Col. William D. Jenkins of the 35th Infantry Division's Kosovo Force 9...

...Army regulations prohibit chapels from being "named for any person, living or dead, or designated by a name or term suggesting any distinctive faith group," Jenkins said.

"This is not a new regulation and exists to protect the free exercise of religion of all soldiers," Jenkins said.

But this post isn't about a U.S. Army chapel or chaplain.

Google has made news in pro-life circles about its refusal to display anti-abortion ads, at least under some circumstances where pro-abortion ads are not subject to the same ruling.

"For many people, Google is the doorway to the Internet," Christian Institute spokesman Mike Judge told the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. "If there is to be a free exchange of ideas then Google cannot give special free speech rights to secular groups whilst censoring religious views."

This post isn't about Google or abortion either.

The Conservative government's Bill C-10 had many in the film industry up in arms in March. The bill would deny tax credits to films produced in Canada that include graphic sex or violence.

Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said she's concerned that the bill could allow the tax system to be used as a "de facto censor of film and video production..."

NDP Leader Jack Layton accused the government of deliberately burying the part of the bill that allows government to withhold funding from films that it considered distasteful.

"It strikes at the heart of free speech for people trying to produce films," Layton said.

As you can imagine, this post isn't about film tax credits either.

This post is about censorship and free speech. The above three news items are not. What they have in common is a misconception about what free speech and censorship are about.

How, pray tell, was any soldier's free exercise of religion threatened or hindered by the crosses or the sign? It wasn't, of course - it's politically correct hypersensitivity to assert otherwise.

For the record, I am sympathetic to the pro-life Christian Institute, and I support challenging Google's decision. But Google's refusal to run its ad is not an attack on freedom of speech. The Christian Institute is free to run its ad in many other formats and places. Google can't take that away from them, and it certainly isn't by way of rejecting the ad.

Similarly, Bill C-10 is not censorship. Censorship is preventing the film from being produced; lack of a tax credit is not truly such a prevention. That the film needs a tax credit to be viable indicates not a lack of government support, but a lack of financial backing, which the government is not preventing them from obtaining.

This brings us full circle to the 4 Osgoode Hall Law students who have been decrying Maclean's censorship as an attack on free speech. The number of times they have been published making these claims should be enough to prove that they are quite free to speak.

Private organizations - Google included - should be allowed to make private decisions on the content and extension of their services. (This is not to say that they should not be challenged on bad decisions.) This is the very stand taken by Maclean's in its HRC case.

But governments are quite another thing. While Bill C-10 is not censorship, the film tax credit business is, in my opinion, not something the government should be in to start with. In this sense, I agree with Matthew Johnston's argument to this effect at the Western Standard blog.