Credit where credit's due

Matthew Good, the rock star who has sparred with our magazine in the past, has written a blog post about our human rights trial. I've criticized Good before -- surely artists should be the most concerned about government censorship -- so it behooves me to credit him now.

As to his dislike for my use of the phrase "separation of mosque and state", it was a deliberate choice of words. "Separation of church and state" is conventional wisdom amongst liberal and ACLU-types. I think it's overstated -- our Constitution is replete with references to the church, actually. But it's a phrase associated with the secular left's over-reaction to things like the Ten Commandments being displayed in court houses. I used that phrase specifically to remind knee-jerk anti-Christians of their professed hostility to religious censorship, in the hopes that they'd be consistent when it comes to Islam. That reminder wouldn't be necessary if we were discussing a human rights complaint filed by a Catholic bishop against, say, a gay magazine. But I think the liberal left needs a reminder of their own professed values when it's a Muslim imam and a conservative magazine.

(I've only seen one liberal try to defend being anti-Christian himself, while condemning the publication of the cartoons as anti-Muslim; it doesn't really work.)

But these are trivial points. I honestly salute Matthew Good for his clear statement on freedom of expression -- perhaps the one subject on which we agree.

P.S. This is one of my favourite Matt Good tunes. It has almost as many views on YouTube as the human rights videos I posted -- so give him a few more clicks!