A visit to the Ottawa Citizen

Yesterday I popped by the office of the Ottawa Citizen, and met for an hour with Andrew Potter of their editorial team. It was just the two of us, but we had a rollicking talk about everything from George Galloway to Jim Keegstra, and everything in between. Here's his quick take on our talk, from his blog. I look forward to his review.

As Potter says, he generally doesn't see the world from my political perspective. But I sense that when it comes to the larger question of free speech, we are in agreement.

As I've noted many times before, especially when discussing free speech allies like EGALE and the Canadian Association of Journalists, true liberals support freedom of speech even for people with whom they disagree on substance. I look forward to his full review of the book; here's an excerpt from his blog entry:

I was never a huge fan of Ezra’s political leanings, and the Western Standard was not really my cup of tea. But printing the Danish cartoons was courageous, and his subsequent fight with the AHRC was deeply principled and very nicely handled.

Frankly, although I'm grateful for the support of ideological friends, it's easy for them to agree with me. In a way, the support of people who don't tend to agree with me is even more valuable, for it shows a philosophical commitment to free speech strong enough to overcome reflexive political differences.