Raise the Hammer

Wow! By her own admission, Donna Skelly was handed a hat by someone she had never met before. The hat promoted a group she had never heard of. And yet she had no problem waving the hat and publicly endorsing the group??!!

That is just so irresponsible!

And why is Alex Van Hamme bragging about being the grandson of a WWII combat veteran? So what! Am I supposed to applaud you for doing a good job of choosing your grandparents? What have you, yourself, done to serve your country and community?

The famous poem in praise of our ancestors, contained in Ecclesiasticus 44 begins with:

Let us now sing the praises of famous men, our ancestors in their generations.

But it does not say that their descendants are therefore praiseworthy. In verse 12, we read:

Their descendants stand by the covenants

But that covenant faithfulness is their own doing.

It so happens that my grandfather, and his brothers, also served during WWII. But I do not believe that I should be praised for something that my grandfather did. What I regard as being a tad more important for my own life is when I myself enlisted in the Canadian Forces. That was my own doing.

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2018-05-30 19:17:13

First the disavowal that is required in this climate: I dislike identitarians and hard right wingers. I think identity politics on either end of the horseshoe is dangerous to a stable society. I've never heard of the website you mention and don't plan to visit it, but don't doubt it may be crass and repugnant.

Per recent psychological and political tests, I'm still very much left of center on most social and economic issues. I'm voting for Doug because this identity politics witch-hunt is turning cult like and starting to scare me. You sound like evangelicals in the 80s that considered everything outside their worldview to be of Satan and verboten.

rote statements of disavowal are not good enough

To me this looks like a gradually and incrementally fomenting mindset that will be ready to send conservatives to prisons and gulags at some point down the road. The trajectory of discourse is one where it looks to me like even the "good guys" are on course to turn into despots. Will everyone concerned about increasing polarization and censorship be declared a Nazi and extirpated from society like something out of a Monty Python skit gone too far?

"I wasn't a conservative, but when they came for the conservatives, I spoke up right away, because I know how this quote ends otherwise."

No one on the left is calling for prisons or gulags or anything even remotely like it for being politically incorrect.

Actually, there are plenty of people on the left who are calling for prison for what they deem "hate speech."

Mike on the Mountain is correct. If today we do not support freedom of speech and stand up against these freedom denying bullies, then tomorrow they will cheerfully classify the beliefs of anyone who disagrees with them as "hate speech."

And Ryan is also correct. We should be sensitive to the lived experiences of other people. We should stop and think how it affects others before speaking. In other words, don't be an obnoxious jerk. But if the government starts sending obnoxious jerks to jail, then we are going to need a lot more prisons. To quote Hamlet, "...use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"

Ironically enough, I support the right of freedom of speech for these people to advocate for our right to freedom of speech to be taken away. To quote Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2018-06-04 18:07:47

Donna is solid. I worked out with her, she is salt of the earth.

nothing like the MAGA hats to make a snowflake lose it. Don't you know its iconic for Hillary's historical loss.

What's a snowflake? You are missing a capital, at the start and a question mark at the end. Why do you workout with a dishonest woman?

Yes, I will certainly agree that a hate-monger such as Roseanne Barr should be deplatformed by having her television show cancelled. She has the right to freedom of speech to communicate her loathsome beliefs. And ABC has the right to exercise their freedom of speech by cancelling her show.

Yet Canada has seen the spectacle of people being dragged off to prison for expressing politically unwelcome thought. Usually these people are, quite frankly, disgusting obnoxious jerks. I myself, and a huge number of other Canadians, would never have heard of them if the government had not seen fit to persecute them for their beliefs. Beliefs that they expressed in a peaceful and non-violent manner.

There will always be a lunatic fringe of crackpots who are quite happy to receive millions of dollars of free publicity for their reprehensible beliefs when the government persecutes them. Ironically enough, this persecution only gives credibility to these beliefs.

I will never forget one of my relatives saying of Ernst Zundel, "There must be some truth to what he says, otherwise why would the government be bothering to persecute him?"

Mr. Zundel himself jumped on this bandwagon, calling for the government of Canada to ban the movie, "Schindler's List." He wrote

The movie generates hatred against Germans, and it should be possible to ban it under "hate laws" in Canada, Germany, and other countries.

And, of course, the government of Canada's actions have been hypocritically inconsistent. For example, the government of Canada has banned many books. Yet I would assert that none of the books banned by the government of Canada has done anywhere near as much harm as Adolf Hitler's, "Mein Kampf." A book that is not banned. In fact, it is freely available in the Hamilton Public Library.

Perhaps we should send to jail the librarians at Hamilton Public Library!