What rough beast

Today Ann Coulter will speak in Calgary. This debate over free speech is muddied by Coulter's style and politics. She not only represents a partisan political and economic view, she garners attention by lacing her opinions with the sorts of comment that we usually expect to get from edgy comedians, or rock stars. Her speech at the University of Ottawa was cancelled, due to concerns for her safety. Predictably Coulter has turned this into a cry of censorship and intolerance.

Today in the staff room a few of us debated how far one can take freedom of expression, in this case religious, in a secular democracy. In Quebec the debate has been over Naima Atef Amed's right to wear a niqab and receive public service. The Charest government has announced that it will legislate that if you want to receive a public service, you will have to bare your face.

These issues are linked. The questions is: How far does my right to self-expression, of any sort, extend in a liberal democracy? Whether I'm trolling for attention with incendiary and racist comments that I know will be bought (literally and figuratively) by an element in society, or tacitly challenging a societal expectation by expressing an uncommon religious tenet in a public way, what are the limits a society can tolerate, while maintaining a coherent and functional vision of itself?

Canadians tend to be widely-visioned; our sense of the periphery is keen. Still, in both of these cases, many of us said that Coulter and Amed were outside of our field of vision. Are we, like Yeats suggested we would, beginning to find out when "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

The ride in

Temp -20; Wind NW 7ks

The ride home

Temp -7; Wind SSE 10ks