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Freedom of speech is meaningless if it doesn't include the right to publish things that might offend someone. That is an axiom of an open society, repeated so often that it has become a cliché. Yet in these tetchy times, it is honoured most often in the breach.

Consider the case of a newsletter that landed in mailboxes recently in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood known as the Beach. Your Ward News is the kind of fringe literature that has been around forever. Editor-in-chief James Sears is a familiar figure on the margins of the Toronto stage, a chronic attention-seeker who ran for city council in last year's election. Also known as "Dimitri the Lover," he once led workshops on how to seduce women.

Now he leads his own political party, the New Constitution Party of Canada. According to a spread in the newsletter, its young-adult branch, the Sons of Freedom, is tasked with enforcing laws that the "Marxist-infected state" refuses to enforce.

A sample article in his fine publication is called "The Hidden Holocaust of White Slaves." Mr. Sears appears in the newsletter wearing his hair long and holding a small dog in his arms. He instructs potential contributors that articles in Your Ward News "must promote an anti-Marxist, pro-freedom agenda, with special focus on New World Order enslavement plans like 'manmade climate change,' fluoridation, immunization, and the surveillance state." You get the picture.

In a more level-headed age, those who found Your Ward News turning up at their door might simply have tossed it in the trash. Instead, some are demanding that the post office stop delivering it.

Canada Post has declined. It explained that it is responsible for the delivery of the mail, not its content. It got outside lawyers to review the newsletter and found nothing that would make it "non-mailable." The content "is the sole responsibility of the publisher, who is clearly identified in the newsletter," said a statement. "Anyone who has concerns about the content should either contact the publisher or simply dispose of it." Those are far better solutions than seeking to block delivery of the newsletter.

There is another option, too: counter-speech. If someone is expressing hateful views or spreading prejudice, others can always respond by denouncing the speaker or writer and exposing the lies. Write an op-ed. Organize a protest. Boycott advertisers in the offending publication. Just don't ask the post office to refuse it.

In the past, postal services were often agents of censorship. If we make posties into gatekeepers, imagine where it might lead. What if someone objects to a graphic anti-abortion pamphlet that arrives in an envelope? Should the post office reject it? What about a cartoon making fun of gay people who get married, mailed by religious zealots? What about a vicious satirical attack on Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau?

To attempt to block or silence an offending publication is almost always a mistake. For one thing, it draws attention to the attention-seeker. When a Canada Post employee, who is Jewish, objected on religious grounds to delivering an earlier issue of the newsletter, Mr. Sears lashed back in the current issue – and the hate-crimes section of the Toronto police has said it is reviewing a complaint. One illustration shows an outraged postie with side locks spitting out a bagel as he yelled "It's the Holocaust all over again" and another shows big-nosed lawyers named Bernie and Saul.

That provoked more outrage from residents, which will no doubt in turn provoke more outrageousness from Your Ward News. Wouldn't it have been better to consign it to the floor of the bird cage?

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