Another choice bit from that Jonah interview is his thwack at Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court justice and Big Government eugenicist.

I confess to a particular antipathy to the late Justice Holmes just at the moment because, ever since Canada’s thought police got me in their sights, I receive an e-mail every minute and a half from sensible moderate reasonable bien pensants protesting that, while of course they’re all in favor of freedom of speech, it’s a question of striking a balance, drawing the line and whatnot. At which point they trot out the old favorite that “there’s no right to shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre.” I wonder how many of these liberal Canadians know they’re quoting:

a) an American;

and, better yet,

b) an American judge upholding espionage charges against an anti-war protester.

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic,” wrote Holmes, supporting the indictment of Charles Schenck for distributing leaflets urging draftees not to serve in the First World War. That’s the “fire”: Cindy Sheehan at a weekend protest in Berkeley.

As Colby Cosh pointed out, by that standard thousands of Canadian liberals would have been rounded up for protesting the war in Afghanistan. Cosh also notes that the analogy was already ridiculous by the time Wendell Holmes delivered it. Gas-lit 19th century playhouses were fire-risks; the electrified Winter Garden on the Broadway of 1919 wasn’t.

And, needless to say, today half the folks who think it’s wrong to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre think it’s okay to shout “Allahu Akbar!” on a crowded commuter plane taking off from Minneapolis.