Free speech or libel?

Warren Kinsella observes that, apart from the National Post (and one of its columnists who admires, apparently, Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites), the media largely ignored the "free speech spectacle" monkey business going on in Ottawa right now:

But, apart from the National Post, natch, there seems to be nothing in the Sane People Media© - zero, zippo, zilch - about the big confrontation in Ottawa yesterday at the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

I posted the following comment to Kinsella's blog (I reproduce it here in case it doesn't get posted there):

Yeah, funny how all the other media essentially ignored this sorry display of "free-speechers".

I have said it before, and I'll say it again: there is no such thing as unfettered free speech. There is, and must be, some limit to it, and it comes with a lot of responsibility.

Those who have been writing and blogging in defence of Steyn, Levant et al keep forgetting that libelling or defaming others is not free speech, but just that: libel and defamation (see section 293 and following of the Criminal Code, for example).

I can express my views, for example, by saying: Warren Kinsella is a fool for supporting the Liberal Party (I don't really think that).

That would be fair comment.

But if I wrote, "Warren Kinsella was involved in Adscam and stole money from taxpayers," (Warren did not really do that) it would be libel, and Warren would sue the pants off of me (and rightly so).

The comments posted to the Freedominion site attacking Richard Warman, for instance, fall into this latter category, but those "free-speechers" don't know the difference between free speech in the sense of fair comment on the one hand, and defamation on the other. What a sorry bunch.

No wonder the other media won't touch such monkey business and sing the praises of a neo-nazi and anti-Semite the way one certain National Post columnist did yesterday.

There is a difference, after all, between actual defenders of human rights, such as free speech, and those "free-speechers".

I am mad at the "free-speechers" because they give everyone with a genuine concern for free speech and human rights a bad name.