tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post4851103645805515485..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Thoughts on Warren Kinsella and Bernie Farber's arguments in last night's Michael Coren show debate on free speech and Section 13truepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-302043503713600622009-01-29T09:47:00.000-08:002009-01-29T09:47:00.000-08:00Press release from the Chinese Canadian Conservati...Press release from the Chinese Canadian Conservative Association: <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>Senior Ignatieff Liberal's "cat meat" comment offends the Chinese community <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>Chinese Canadian Conservative Association calls on Liberal leader to fire Senior Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>Toronto – Alex Yuan, chair of the Chinese Canadian Conservative Association called on Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to distance himself from the comments made by senior Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella. In a recent blog posting Kinsella likened the meat found in Chinese cuisine to cat meat. <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>“Back in the Big Owe for a couple weeks, so what better way to kick things off than with some BBQ cat and rice at the Yang Sheng, hangout of our youth? Yay!” <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>Kinsella repeated the offensive comment in a video posting on his website. <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>“Our community is deeply concerned with Mr. Kinsella's comments. Kinsella repeats the most vulgar and offensive stereotypes by associating the meat served by Chinese restaurants to cat meat. He has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and disrespected the Chinese culture," continued Yuan. <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>“This is not the first instance of such intolerant remarks by Mr. Kinsella therefore we call upon Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to fire Mr. Kinsella as his senior strategist and apologize to the community.” <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>Mr. Kinsella was forced to apologize for another intolerant blog posting in 2007. In the 2007, he wrote a post suggesting that Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod would rather bake cookies than run for office. <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>For more information please contact: <BR/><BR/>Tom Pang, CCCA Director <BR/><BR/>416-447-0446Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-11657612959711416202008-11-20T12:10:00.000-08:002008-11-20T12:10:00.000-08:00that note, allow me to mention that I shall be at ...that note, allow me to mention that I shall be at the liber-ary this evening from 7-9:00 p.m. outside Blenz coffee bar. Please feel to join me and my fellows in words and deeds.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-84815303457429815872008-11-20T10:16:00.000-08:002008-11-20T10:16:00.000-08:00"Liber" is our old term for book.-yes, but as I ha...<I>"Liber" is our old term for book.</I><BR/><BR/>-yes, but as I have been led to understand the etymology it is also refers to "son" with the implication that liberty was something by way of a right of sons. But I've also seen a connection made to the Bacchanalian god "liber", a free spirit if you will.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-72870916021227737622008-11-20T09:55:00.000-08:002008-11-20T09:55:00.000-08:00Happy to see you clarify the point, though I don't...Happy to see you clarify the point, though I don't think we would have thought otherwise.<BR/><BR/>I look at the Kinsella/Farber arguments as one due the penalty of Godwin's Law: that sooner or later an argument will turn to some variation of "You're like Hitler," meaning instant forfeit.<BR/><BR/>The Holocaust was a specific event, not anything other, not similar. People who use the Holocaust to borrow sympathy or authority for their positions are those I termed "Grief Leeches." I don't know Kinsella or Farber but I have little sympathy for their positions here when they make up absurd analogies for the sake of winning sympathy from the sentimentalist who long for a cause to feel self-righteous about from lack of any other meaning in their lives. A racist in the basement is not the beginning of a new Holocaust. To make such a claim is sickening.<BR/><BR/>One risks the scorn that National Lampoon poured argument on this in the mid-seventies when that magazine included the argument that not only would the number of people killed be astronomically higher if applied to America of the time, i.e "a [billion] killed" compared to six million, but that if one compared the proportion to Lichtenstein, the number would come to [dozens]. <BR/><BR/>Trivialization works in many ways, and Kinsella is finding new ones continuously, it seems to me, to prop up a personality defect in public, using the Holocaust to make personal points, if not a good living.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-5950927137232687312008-11-20T09:31:00.000-08:002008-11-20T09:31:00.000-08:00thanks Dag.Just wanted to clarify something:the Ho...thanks Dag.<BR/><BR/>Just wanted to clarify something:<BR/><BR/>the Holocaust was NOT a hoax;<BR/><BR/>what is bogus, is the invocation of that genocide as a justification for censorshipAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-81979253528750433492008-11-20T09:10:00.000-08:002008-11-20T09:10:00.000-08:00Anon., if you have the patience for turgid prose, ...Anon., if you have the patience for turgid prose, closely argued in defense of free speech, you'll find an earlier version of Holmes' dictum in John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in which he writes that it is not a matter of free speech to, in the course of a famine at the local miller's home amidst a gathered and angry crowd, to cry out that the miller is hoarding grain. <BR/><BR/>In that book one finds the word liberal used in its common sense rather than the now meaningless sense of being an arsehole. Liberal then and there meant freedom in speech and thought in the pursuit of the mind to do good in the world for oneself and the world: having liberty.<BR/><BR/>"Liber" is our old term for book. It is easily confused with "livre" or weight or money, b and v often having the same phonetic value. And much of Mill's point as that free thought leads to free markets and free exchange of goods for the common good. Turgid style but worth the time.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-62800122051108176392008-11-20T08:46:00.000-08:002008-11-20T08:46:00.000-08:00the whole `Holocaust' business that is thrown out ...the whole `Holocaust' business that is thrown out by Kinsella and the rest, is a bogeyman, meant to shut down debate with the implication that if you are in favour of free speech, to the extent that no law should interfere with it, short of literally shouting fire in a theatre (when there is no fire), then you must be in favour of Nazism.<BR/><BR/>ps - the `shouting fire in the theatre' trope is continually misrepresented by the pro-censors as an argument in FAVOUR of censorship.<BR/><BR/>In fact, though, it is not figurative at all, but was the principal enunciated by u.s. justice Wendell Holmes in the 1920s, who said that the liberty of speech must be unfettered to the degree that - again literally - only (falsely) shouting fire in a crowded theatre, should be outlawed.<BR/><BR/>(Of course, you are obliged to shout fire in a crowded theatre, when there is a fire...)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-6338931629261292722008-11-19T13:37:00.000-08:002008-11-19T13:37:00.000-08:00I think these people, Kinsella, et al, suffer from...I think these people, Kinsella, et al, suffer from "Holocaust envy." If one wishes to be a big-time player in the saving-the-world business, it needs some great thing to save the world from. If the best one can find is a crank in the basement, then he must be elevated to something worthy of the crusader, i.e. he must be made into a major dragon. And since there is no such beast to slay, make one up.<BR/><BR/>And feel really inferior that there just is no Holocaust in America, not slavery, not Indian wars, not witch burning, nothing at all that comes close to the German campaign to create their Nazi worldview in reality, on Earth. So it becomes a competition to try to find something bad to work against, no matter how silly or absurd it might be. Sarah Palin! George Bush! Racism! Envy of the Holocaust.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-92186045047912640832008-11-19T13:19:00.000-08:002008-11-19T13:19:00.000-08:00A good piece Trupeers, the expert class find these...A good piece Trupeers, the expert class find theselves on a very shaky foundation.Blazingcatfurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05260488914265052543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-50715490863945738612008-11-19T13:14:00.000-08:002008-11-19T13:14:00.000-08:00mike,I didn't say you were ineffective. I didn't d...mike,<BR/><BR/>I didn't say you were ineffective. I didn't discuss your side of the debate because I only saw an edited clip of the debate, and you were not often talking in it.<BR/><BR/>I agree with what you say here. That's the right strategy to have. It is far too easy on tv to fall into the established manners and ways of talking. There is a lot of pressure and control from the format and others involved to lead you do that. And those hidden premises are indeed what we now need to unpack and transcend.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-60417629621921129922008-11-19T13:08:00.000-08:002008-11-19T13:08:00.000-08:00Your blog popped up on my Googles Alerts, read and...Your blog popped up on my Googles Alerts, read and I thought I'd respond.<BR/><BR/>I think you're bang on about my strategy in the debate. But I disagree with you that it was ineffective. <BR/><BR/>My goal in the debate last night was not to "win". That's impossible given we have such a short time on a very large issue. My purpose last night was to move the debate towards it's premises.<BR/><BR/>Otherwise, you fall into the trap of debating premises you don't agree with in the first place. <BR/><BR/>I think people were very unsatisfied with the debate, given how it really only scratched the surface. I think people were unsatisfied that I didn't lash out at Kinsella and Farber as so many were expecting.<BR/><BR/>I went there to attack the assertion that we all accept that "groups have rights, therefore, what are the best ways to protect groups". I think that was probably a little disorientating for the opposing side, because they showed up to debate for the survival of the HRCs in general.Mike Brockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00470275406733737128noreply@blogger.com