A potentially perilous moment . . . .

What if Maclean's Magazine caves today and decides to accept an offer to "settle" made on behalf of three of the Muslim law students who are not actually parties to the complaints?

One can see that there might be all kinds of pressure on the bottom line, the kind of pressure that prompted most news outlets in North America to avoid printing the Danish cartoons.

The temptation is appeasement. The temptation is respect for the bottom line. The temptation is peace at any price. The temptation is pragmatism that tells the accountants and the publisher that given Commissar Barbara Hall's "verdict" the magazine will lose at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal and lose at the federal HRC.

Mark Steyn is right.

This is a potentially perilous moment. In the first four months of this story, the Canadian Islamic Congress have won no sympathizers and the broader "human rights" establishment have lost almost all the ones they previously had. So this press conference is a critical attempt to reposition themselves, not as Islamist bully boys trying to shut down all debate on the perfectly legitimate topic of Islam and the west, but as "victims" of a powerful Islamophobic media. Presumably they will offer to shut down the case in return for a more modest right of reply without some of the more absurd demands they made last time round. It will sound "moderate" and "compromising" and "reasonable", all the things mainstream Canadian opinion likes. But, if Maclean's were to accede, it would be setting a very dangerous precedent: it would reward the CIC thugs for their bullying. As David Warren said way back when, the process is the punishment. Maclean's doesn't fear a modest fine, which is all the commissars can do. What we fear is a world in which the editorial choices of private publications are destabilized by bullying lobby groups who represent nobody using the "human rights" process to hijack our pages.

You know what my fear is? Maclean's might cave today. And if that happens we won't see Mark Steyn gracing its pages anymore. Not because Maclean's will ask him to leave, but because I have a feeling he would not stick around on principle. And I will have bought a three-year subscription for nothing.