Yesterday SA guest blogger Ken McCracken wrote a post about author David Irving getting jail time for holocaust denial. I posted a brief comment in that thread, but I wanted to expand on it a bit today.

I believe that Irving should not have been convicted and that the laws used to convict him are wrong.

In recent weeks the world has been dealing with violence from Muslims over cartoons depicting Islam's Mohamed published in a Danish newspaper. Many Muslims have deemed this cartoons to be "hateful" and "blasphemous." But on the flip side of that, many Jews have also undoubtedly called Irving's holocaust-denial and overall anti-semitism "hateful." So which is more offensive? The Mohamed cartoons or Irving's anit-semitism?

Personally, I find holocaust denial to be much more offensive, but that's just me and I am loathe to define what should be or shouldn't be offensive to any given person or group of people. But the relative offensiveness of each form of expression is beside the point: If we here in the west are going to sand up for free expression (and set an example for the Muslim world) we must be consistent in applying those freedoms. Which means that just as we allow the Mohamed cartoons to be published without legal consequence we must also allow non-sense such as that espoused by Mr. Irving.

Were Irving publishing his writings in America I am sure that he would not have been charged with any sort of crime. Roundly criticized, certainly, but not imprisoned. Here in America we don't just allow expression that we agree with, we also allow that with which we disagree.

Because that's how this free speech thing is supposed to work. And we certainly don't send the right message to the Muslims when we allow expression that offends them, but disallow expression that offends us.