The high point of the publication was the printing of the Danish Cartoons, which was done solely for publicity.

It originated on Usenet, but is still fully applicable to website comment sections. For the ultimate bit of hilariousness….go here and scroll down to number 8 in the first section. First paragraph. And remember that Mr Levant is a libertarian.

Good ridance you homophobic, spoiled shit stains.

The Western Standard promoted the same bitter and unsavoury viewpoints that most small “c” Alberta conservatives neither agree with nor promote.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I certainly am fully capable of formulating my own opinion and acting upon it. My loathing of people like yourself, who inevitably cry “FREE SPEECH, I AM BEING PERSECUTED” with aims that have nothing to do with such, does not come from a sheep atmosphere. That, Mr Levant, is my own judgement. One who made his living from a “ditto-head” base would do wise not to…how do they say….piss in your own pot. I can browse through the online publication of TWS and find the comment section full of this “debate” you talk about, this masterful “oh my goodness, which side am I going to be on” great debate…..and you have the nerve to come here and call us sheep? Tsk tsk.

I am completely aware that if you are unable to sustain your “magazine” it falls down to two things. That your circulation has dropped so low as to make it pointless to even print to put out in churches anymore….or you as a publisher are unable to meet the demands of making deadlines and keeping current. Feel free to talk circles all you’d like though.

Hitler comparisons? Really? You have to be kidding me. Get a better way to make a point, and get thee to a rabbi. There are plenty of other rags that have been celebrated only for finally ending, and the list includes a great number of anti-semetic rags through the years. Is it wrong to celebrate an anti-semetic magazine downfall? If not, why is yours any different? Just because there was a tide of hatred and fear that rushed through the western world does not make it acceptable. It makes you a shrewd businessman, being able to see such a horrible niche and filling it….albeit for a short time.

You, Mr Levant, are a bandwagon jumper. You rode the xenophobia are far as it would take you, and the money ran out. Or else the tide shifted and your base turned. But one of those two things happened. And one of us has already formulated her opinion. So that leaves you. And it’s a damn shame trying to talk circles around yourself.

So good luck, Mr Levant. I’d leave you on the same note you left Mr Good by saying that I’d continue meeting you in some other venue/format, and ignoring your politics, but your ethics disgust me and I find your morals to be disputable. And I haven’t even gotten to your politics. Suffice it to say, we don’t travel in the same circles.

I made the mistake of thinking that you were more than a Laurie David or Sheryl Crow — celebrities with intellectual inferiority complexes, desperate to prove to the world they were more than just pretty faces. I see that your blog is not really about ideas, or debate, but a vanity project — to show that you’re more than just someone strumming a guitar. But it’s fake: anyone who celebrates the closure of a magazine is intellectually closed. You think you’re modern and leftist, but it was the Nazis who celebrated the burning of books seventy years ago. Your cheering of our demise bears a closer resemblance to that nihilism than you know.

Good luck, Matt. I think I’ll go back to listening to your music, and ignoring your politics.

With apologies to Edward R Murrow, good night and good riddance.

Save your ’secularist’ rhetoric. Your entire base is steeped in the Judeo-Christian ethic. Without them you wouldn’t have had a magazine in the first place and the conservative movement in this country would have no base whatsoever.

Regarding the cartoon fiasco, as I said at the time, your publishing of the cartoons was a publicity stunt, not some championing of freedom of expression. You needed the attention and got it. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to sustain the neo-conservative bandwagon jumping drivel that you published.

Your website is replete with borderline racist and degenerative remarks from low minded individuals who routinely display the inability to express themselves in any fashion that is at all productive with regards to civil discourse. Your magazine was no different – it was, as have many things been these last six years, the product of mind-numbing ridiculousness that pandered to those whose xenophobic tendencies provide them comfort because they lack any sort of humanistic fortitude.

As for my ‘celebrating’ the end of your magazine – as far as I’m concerned, trees will be saved. That fact alone is enough to celebrate it.

As for my line of work, which is in a far worse state of affairs than yours, I’ve been able to last in this country going on 14 years. My last record debuted at #1. I must be doing something right. And if I were to fail, I would be man enough to take it like a man rather than blame the industry.

In closing – am I afraid of different points of view? Not at all. Am I afraid of the wagon train of reckless sycophants that magazines such as yours championed because they’re more comfortable being afraid and close-minded than actually examining why they’re afraid in the first place? Absolutely. Because that only leads to one end, and it is one that is counter to the very principles that you so deceptively like to lean on in rebuttals.

Today’s post by you is even more disappointing: you celebrate the silencing of a contrary voice. That’s not liberal in any sense of the word. You can disagree with us; want to rebut us; challenge us; even despise us. But to celebrate our end? Are you really that afraid of different points of view?

I happen to think you serve up nothing but leftist cliches, but I wouldn’t be happy if you were stopped for any reason other than that I had convinced you of your wrongness. Don’t you think you should tolerate ideas other than your own?

God-forbid, if you should ever be silenced (especially by threats of violent censorship, as we were) I hope that I believe strongly enough in freedom, diversity and open-mindedness that I would put aside my policy differences with you to stand up for your right to be wrong.

I completely agree with your comment about TWS being Fox in print (i’ve often made the comparison…albeit in direction only), but with one note. At least Fox has viewers.