First, to Rob Breakenridge:
I suppose there's some political calculation here on Harper's part, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.
Simple, Rob. The Speechy uprising was led by a combination of Neo-Nazis, Mark Steyn, journalists, Ezra Levant, and professional scribblers like Margaret Atwood. Harper took note and decided that, politically speaking, this was a coalition of luzers. If you took a poll that ranked the "respectability" of public figures and certain professions in Canadian society, none of the people on this list would have finished above grave-robbers and fungus.
Meanwhile, Jay Currie is working on plan B:
...20-30 hard right/libertarian candidates running in marginal CPC seats with the sole objective of denying those seats to the CPC.
Whoo hoo! Another political party to fight over votes with the Western Concepters, The Christian Heritage people, The Freedom Party, the Super Duper Freedom Party, the Libertarians, the Libertaranians, and Hellyer's Exo-Politics movement (who feel the government needs to come clean on aliens among us).
Jay's got an idea where this would all lead:
I can live with Iggy as PM.
Yeah, nice thought kid, but wake up, you're battling over a total of 23 votes Canada-wide. You won't be denying nobody nothing.
Chris Selley bemoans the incivility of it all:
Sooner than delight in having reached near-consensus on point one, propose changes, and pursue a rational dialogue on the next two points, certain high-profile members of the Canadian commentariat almost instantly started calling each other Nazis and fascists. It was, in far too many cases, the intellectual equivalent of a foodfight at a middle school cafeteria. Now the combatants are all covered in mustard and whipped cream, and nobody's any further ahead. I hope they had fun, at least.
Yeah but I for one never called anyone a Nazi who wasn't a literal, dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. The fact is, Speechy warriors found it impossible to make any kind of argument against Section 13 without regurgitating filth straight off Canada's premier white supremacist websites. In the case of the "hacked wifi" controversy, Selley's own newspaper was willing to report as truth "information" from an American Neo-Nazi who did time for attempting, with the help of a number of Canadian-based white supremacists, to launch an invasion of Dominica. Ask Jonathon Kay and the NP legal team where that kind of shit landed you guys, Chris.
On yeah, and your side lost the food fight. So Nyahh, nyahh, freaking nyahh!
Kathy Shaidle says she will hate as she pleases, no matter what the law says. Ah well, we all need a hobby.
Mark Steyn appears to still be formulating his response. But here's a tip, Mark. If I see you in a Canadian publication ever again, I've already got my HRC complaint form handy, and a couple QCC forms from Heritage Canada. Tell Kenneth Whyte, if you surface in Macleans one more time, I'm coming for his government stamps.
I'm also taking my campaign against you South, as I try to convince your American publishers that your English accent is totally fake.
Ezra Levant is spinning madly, quite madly, so madly that he has forgotten to ask for donations. That's how you can tell he's upset.
And here's a you-tube clip of me doing a victory dance. Warning! It contains semi-nudity and fatness! But that's what you come here for, isn't it?
10 comments:
I love how Chris Silly asserts that both (all) sides in this were the same. It's exactly that lack of nuance which prevented me from treating the speechy arguments seriously. As a matter of principle, I just never take the side of stupid, angry, dishonest people.
Blazingcatsass in unconsolable. Maybe you should send him/it a basket of mini-muffins.
Jenny Craig...eat your heart out!
Don't bank on it being over. Give Harper a majority, and I think you could expect to see a lot of civil liberties and rights rolled back to the 1950s - starting with GLBT rights.
No kidding. It's not like the bulk of Harpy's supporters are suddenly going to become reasnnable and sensible.
The speechy war really was a manifestation of just how singularly ignorant the Right has become, most specifically its so-called "intelligentisia." In every instance of these cases, I could have written what Steyn and the rest did while quite easily avoiding charges of hate speech.
The only argument left was that expression of hate itself is legitimate (with which I do agree), but they just don't know how to do that. It's easy to hate putrid or nonsensical ideas and hate the named individuals who advance them but wingnut intellectual sloth (very much rooted in xenophobia, chauvinism, bigotry and outright racism...with a few instances of genuine mental health problems...Levant, Shaidle...thrown in for good measure) can't be overcome enough to articulate what it is they hate more carefully, more compellingly and more convincingly.
If Harper's disappointed them, they only have themselves to blame.
Who's afraid of Section 13? Nobody.
The cases against Steyn and Levant collapsed because the left conspired to suppress normal political discourse.
Keeping Section 13 on the books is a pyrrhic victory. The left is welcome to it.
You're graceless in defeat, Paulie.
Um, Steyn and Levant weren't CHRC cases Paul. DO try to keep up.
Section 13 is and always has been used against out-and-out Nazis.
The real question is why Steyn and Levant love Nazis so much they'll pretend they're martyrs. Try as I might, I can't come up with a single explanation that doesn't boil down to them being the absolute scum of the earth. Groups like the ACLU have defended the free speech of Nazis for years without ever pretending they were in any way admirable. This is somehow beyond the ability of Levant.
Disgusting piece of shit that he is.
Whatever you think of Margaret Atwood's views, people will still be reading her books after the rest of us are gone and no one remembers the controversies that we currently think are so important.
And people think it's only Tories who systematically denigrate our country's artists.
"Section 13 is and always has been used against out-and-out Nazis."
Do Christian pastors count?
We certainly know Muslim Imams don't.
"Give Harper a majority, and I think you could expect to see a lot of civil liberties and rights rolled back to the 1950s - starting with GLBT rights."
So... if I understand you right, shoring up free speech rights would be a rolling back of civil liberties? And yet Canada's Civil Liberties Associations want Section 13 abolished. Maybe they're Nazis too...
The simple, yet radical message of classical liberalism is the most ideal and beautiful political message that mankind has ever articulated. It is far more revolutionary and intelligent than anything you guys (and in you guys, I include Stephen Harper) could come up with...
Deep within human nature is the desire for basic liberty. Don't count on this debate being over. Not even in the short term... Just because our idiot of a PM doesn't care about freedom doesn't mean that freedom is dead.
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