Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage.

But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia.  

Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal.

His crime? Spreading “hatred.”

The evidence? A 5,000-word excerpt of Steyn’s book America Alone that was carried as an article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” in October 2006 by the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, which is also a defendant. The hearings, which were held June 2-6, amount to a star chamber with the rules of evidence constantly changing according to the whims of the three commissioners. A verdict is expected in September.

Steyn and the magazine are also expected to be charged with a hate crime by the national  kangaroo court, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and another such tribunal in Ontario. Not a single defendant has ever prevailed before the national board in its 31 years of existence. To be accused is to be guilty, Soviet style.

(snip) 

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has for a decade prohibited the broadcast of any material critical of homosexuality. Stations that carry Focus on the Family and other American radio programs have been warned that they could lose their licenses unless  segments dealing with homosexuality are edited out. 

Many Americans have a warm, fuzzy view of Canada, and have no idea that a totalitarian nation is taking shape, instigated by gay activists and Muslim pressure groups in the name of “tolerance.”