Steyn on what Free Speech is not

Mark Steyn points out that no one is denying Helen Thomas the right to free speech. She's just losing her podium, that's all. Most of us don't have podiums that big, so it's not a big deal. She's still absolutely free to say anything she wants to her family, her friends and those cute little magical fairy people she often sees floating above her flower garden.

Steyn quotes a lot of recent nonsense from a wide range of people who still have podiums, including at least surprising one―Charles Krauthammer―who should know better. So Steyn has to meticulously explain that a right to free speech doesn't guarantee freedom from consequences the way one might explain to a 21-year-old that a right to imbibe alcoholic beverages makes one immune from intoxication.

Here's the meat of the article where Steyn explains from his own personal experience "what the First Amendment prevents."

“Free speech” doesn’t mean speech has no consequences – for in that case why say anything at all? What it means is that the government does not determine those consequences. Had Maclean’s magazine been found guilty at our trial in Vancouver of publishing “Islamophobic” content, the statutory penalty under British Columbia law would have made it illegal for them to publish anything by me on Islam, Europe, demography and related subjects ever again. I would have been the subject, in effect, of a lifetime publication ban in Canada – and that ban, under the relevant section of the BC “human rights” code, is deemed to have the force of a Supreme Court decision. In other words, unlike Hearst or the Nine Speakers Agency, Maclean’s would not be free to choose for itself whether it wished to continue its association with a particular writer. In Canada, that decision is made by the state. That’s what the First Amendment prevents.

These posing privileged journalists need to take a lesson from a man mugged by reality.