Civil servants of all shapes and sizes have their various dealings with the public. But rarely in this country are formal bureaucratic proceedings available to a wider public to observe.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube we can at least watch some of the remarkable exchanges between an avowedly conservative Canadian publisher Ezra Levant and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which has hauled him in to account for himself after a prominent Canadian Muslim complained about his publication of the ‘Muhammad cartoons’.

Mr Levant gives a defiant and energetic defence of his right to offend anyone he darn well pleases. See here. And here. This is strong meat. And he ends with a ringing demand that the Commission find him really guilty. 

The activities of the CHRC and its findings are coming under close scrutiny, thanks to Mr Levant’s defiance. Is it really the case as Mr Levant’s blog asserts confidently that one of its members has placed racist/sexist material on various websites as some sort of entrapment exercise, or that rather too many of its investigations have been prompted by one of its own former employees?

Are we free because we are? Or are we free only because the state munificently says we are, with various groupings of bland bureaucrats now and then pronouncing on the ‘limits’ of our freedom? This gripping case is forcing that existential question for Western democracy as developed since Magna Carta right out into the open.