“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” — there’s one of your all-purpose clichés, good for cleaning up government, fighting corporate shadiness, moderating marital disputes… you name it, the maxim laid down by early-20th century US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis applies. Well, not so much in the case of, you know, literally disinfecting things, as someone with an open wound might soon learn, but metaphorically, it’s pretty near universal.

Nowhere more so in the case of idiotic and dangerous opinions: if some windbag racist or confused teenager articulates (through grunts, hand gestures or crudely typed letters, t-shirt slogans, armbands or otherwise) a lunatic, hateful, stupid idea — Jews are evil, gays are evil, Irish Catholics are lazy drunken devil worshippers, Muslims are terrorists, Asians can’t drive, or whatever — we have a whole range of options.

First, if there appears to be some danger of other people being infected with such stupidity or the speaker seems to have an open mind in his or her confusion, we can make the obvious, rational arguments — based in science and fact and actual, provable history — that dispel the idiocy. Maybe change some minds.

In addition to or instead of that, we the regular thinking people can condemn the lunacy for what it is. We can mock the numbskull who speaks the offensive words. We can socially marginalize them. Make it clear that that it’s hateful ideas that we find worthy of hatred, and that respectful discussion is the only civilized form of communication. We can even express our disrespect by ignoring the trolls, virtual and otherwise, who try to throw verbal bombs into our public conversation.

Oh, the things we can do when we let people speak their mind, regardless of how defective their mind may be. Shine a little light on the dark corners of ignorance, and we’re able to make progress.

Unfortunately, the impulse of many now and throughout history has been the opposite. Left, right, Christian, Muslim, racist, humanist, socialist, fascist, atheist, feminist, sexist — given their way, so many feel that the way to deal with opinions they find offensive is to silence them. Ideological authoritarianism is the resort of the lame-brained and the insecure: if you do not believe your ideas will stand up to debate, you stifle the debate and silence your opponents rather than engaging them.

Sadly, in the past year we’ve seen much of this strain of thought — or lack of thought — in Canada.

We saw Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine drawn in front of Human Rights Commissions for expressing controversial ideas about Muslims. We’ve seen human rights investigators planting racist messages of their own online in order to find grounds to expose nutjob losers as anti-Semites so they too can be dragged before commissions. And now we’re seeing the actual ministry of justice in Saskatchewan pursuing a fool’s errand in the actual criminal courts by retrying disgraced, misguided old fool David Ahenakew — a former first nations leader — on hate speech charges.

First the good news: after Human Rights Commissions cleared Levant, Steyn and Maclean’s (which was no victory at all really, since the time and money spent defending themselves was ample punishment in itself), a study released last week by Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor recommended striking down the sections of Human Rights Commissions that allow bureaucrats to suppress and punish offensive speech outside the criminal justice system. This idea, which EYE WEEKLY is already on the record supporting, is a good one.

But then there’s Ahenakew. Here’s a guy who doesn’t know how to do himself any favours. Yesterday he told the court at his trial that he doesn’t hate Jews, he just hates what they do. Yikes. But still: he’s been tried for his comments to a reporter claiming that Jews were a disease and that Adolf Hitler was just trying to “clean up the world” by inflicting the Holocaust on humanity. Last time, Ahenakew was found guilty of willfully promoting hatred and fined $1,000.

The Supreme Court of Saskatchewan wisely upheld the overturning of that decision, saying that the comments, while “shocking, brutal and hurtful,” didn’t break the law. So now the crown attorney in Saskatchewan is re-trying him on the same charges. Sigh.

It appears, according to a Globe and Mail report, that what is at issue in the retrial is whether Ahenakew’s remarks were meant to be private or public. If he intended his conversation with the reporter to be private, he’s off the hook. If he intended them to be public, he’s guilty. Which is really part of the problem, as I started out saying about 750 words ago.

If the government censors or punishes offensive comments when they’re made publicly, those holding offensive opinions might reasonably stop making those comments publicly. Which means those of us who are right-thinking members of society will lose the ability to respond to bad ideas with good ideas, or with mockery, shaming and condemnation. Instead the bad ideas, which we might reasonably expect the speakers actually believe, will be communicated silently and in whispers and through underground networks. If you can be fined or jailed for publicizing an incorrect “fact” or stupid idea, those “facts” will never be corrected and the stupidity of the idea will never become clear.

And, with no public response — no daylight — reaching those underground networks, the perception will take hold that there are “truths” you cannot speak aloud because the oppressive government wants to police your thoughts. And in some ways, for once, they’ll be half right. Because by forcing people to suppress their honestly held opinions or to keep quiet about the theories they are considering, we will be trying to limit the very thoughts they can think. And as history has shown again and again and again, that doesn’t work in the long term, and it often gets very ugly even when it works in the short term.

I’ve said it before in various ways (as have many others who are greater thinkers than I am), but the principle is simple: free speech guarantees are one of the cornerstones of a functioning democracy and a civilized society. And if you do not support free speech for those you disagree with — with those who offend you to the very depths of your being — then you do not support free speech at all.

Moon gets it. The government of Saskatchewan does not. Let the debate rage on. Please.