“Free speech obviously includes the right to express the most severe disrespect for anything at all.”

That’s what Ann Althouse has to say in response to the French government, and I agree. 

A lot of democracies just don’t seem to get the free-speech, free-press thing.  Take Canadians, for example.  Ask one and s/he usually insists that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the right to free expression.  It does, of course, except when it doesn’t.

See, for example, this exchange (registration may be required; scroll down to the title Tongue Tied) in the Letters to the Editor section of the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly:

I read with interest the article by Emily Bazelon ("What Would Zimbabwe Do?") in the November Atlantic. I was, however, taken aback by her comment in the last paragraph, where she refers to laws that "limit free speech in Canada." As a citizen of Canada, I am unaware that my free speech is limited, and I wonder whether Bazelon would care to elaborate. I would not like to continue to voice my opinions so openly if I am contravening legal statutes.

Sharon Coulter Nichol
Fairmont Hot Springs, B.C.

Emily Bazelon replies:

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms treats as "fundamental" the rights to free speech and freedom of the press. But the charter makes these rights subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." In other words, Canadian free-speech rights have a built-in check. In some contexts the country’s courts have interpreted the charter to allow for more suppression of speech than American law permits. In 1990 Canada’s supreme court upheld a law barring hate speech. In 1992 the court adopted a relatively broad definition of obscenity, including material that exploits sex in a "degrading or dehumanizing" manner. And in 2002 a lower court outraged some civil libertarians by finding a man guilty of violating Saskatchewan’s Human Rights Code after he placed an advertisement in a local newspaper. The ad was for a bumper sticker. It cited (without quoting) biblical passages that condemn some homosexual acts and showed two male stick figures holding hands, standing in a circle with a slash through it.

Some people would like this sort of speech suppression in their own countries, but I’m not one.