Bonam

I agree with what you are saying but I don't really see what can be done about mobs that aren't actively doing anything illegal. Trying to make any kind of law regarding this seems like it would infringe on all kinds of fundamental rights. Expanding hate speech laws to also include calls for boycotts, calls to fire someone, etc, would be a drastic expansion of those laws and could be misused in too many ways to count. From my point of view the problem is with the culture that is giving rise to the social justice movement, rather than with laws that allow the movement to do the kinds of things that it does. It is a flawed and hateful ideology and like other such ideologies you can't really combat it by trying to outlaw it. You can only combat it through education and encouraging critical thinking. But the problem is that the very people who are in charge of education are some of the more likely to subscribe to the ideology to begin with. Like communism and fascism before it, it is quite possible that the movement will have to gain power and demonstrate its excesses incontrovertibly to the human race before the majority of the population realizes its inherent danger, rejects it, and another cultural shift ensues. The only real question is how much blood will be spilled in the name of social justice before it is relegated to the dustbin of history alongside communism and fascism.

I don't know, is it? I didn't follow the "GamerGate" thing at all and have no clue about the facts of that situation.

Despite the vitriol and condescension from certain posters, this is actually a good line of discussion. Certainly, the argument that people are free to react to your free speech however they want (within legal bounds) is valid. That can include speaking out against your free speech themselves, or getting together with their friends to not buy your products any more. Calling for someone to get fired is also not illegal and still a form of free speech, so I don't see how one could really argue that it shouldn't be a permissible course of action. Of course, whether the employer can actually fire the person who made the "offending" statement in question could definitely be subject to various labor laws, and those would then have to become the firewall against people being spuriously dismissed. The problem isn't that people CAN do all of the above, but rather that one of the specific goals of the social justice movement is to try to get people to do the above as much as possible to anyone who makes a statement that they disapprove of (especially if that person happens to be a white male). It's one thing if the actual people at a certain workplace or university are legitimately offended themselves in their actual interactions with someone who made an offensive statement and try to do something about it. It's another when we have "internet police" looking for any departure from absolute conformity to their ideology and ready to unleash mobs of "activists" to do everything within legal bounds possible to make the "offender's" life miserable.

I have not made the claim that anything has been "banned". However, I do think the SJ movement is very intolerant of people who make any statement that is not in complete accord with their ideology, especially if the person making said statement happens to be a white male.

Israel isn't just facing an occasional terrorist act. Rather, it has been facing nearly continual acts of war for almost 70 years. And yes, nations like Canada don't have to face these kinds of issues... because they eradicated 99% of the population that used to live here, using biological weapons, back when doing stuff like that was A-ok.

Ok so your argument is that Israel is held to a higher standard than other nations because it is "civilized". What is the advantage of being "civilized"? We still trade openly with many nations on what must be your "uncivilized" list. Could all the critics of Israel simply move it to their "uncivilized" column and then treat it with the same level of interest (or lack thereof) that they treat other uncivilized nations with? Does Israel just need to do something particularly nasty so it can get the much sought after uncivilized label so that it can be ignored by everyone thereafter?

I think it's manifestly obvious that people give a pass to far worse human rights abuses and far higher death tolls elsewhere in the world while being outraged by everything Israel does. So yes.

Thank you for your contribution.

Under NAFTA, there is already fairly free flow of professional labor between the US and Canada.

Saying it started in 46 as opposed to 67 isn't just a slip up of the date. It is a clear statement that indicates the speaker believes ALL of Israel is on occupied territory and therefore illegitimate, as opposed to the more conventional view of those who criticize Israel that accept the legitimacy of Israel proper but object to its actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

It's not really a matter of rational expectation. Rather, it's a matter of the political culture.

Normal people make inappropriate jokes or comments all the time. This one is honestly pretty tame. That said, such statements can definitely make someone unelectable.

I did read it, but honestly, why bother addressing it other than with a casual dismissal? The points made in it all rest on unfalsifiable assumptions, even if one were to ignore the thinly veiled race/gender hatred that underlies the whole movement that gives rise to articles like this.

There's plenty of point in getting out of bed. That point just doesn't have much to do with spoiling your ballot. Or with politics at all, when it comes to it. If your reason for getting out of bed in the morning is anything politics related, and you're not a politician yourself, you're really doing something wrong...

Great, you'll send a message. Maybe there'll be a little article on page 6 of the paper "Unusual number of voters spoiled their ballots this election". Then everything will go on as usual, with the party that won the most seats running the government.

But one of them would be in control anyway. Getting back to the Canadian situation, there is no provision in our electoral system for invalidating election results or reducing the power of the government if voter turnout is low or if a high percentage of ballots are spoiled. "Legitimacy" is just a meaningless word if it doesn't affect the end result. Look at all the people complaining for years that only 20% (or whatever the heck the number was) of Canadians voted for Harper and yet he has a majority. They've whined for years and yet it has not had any practical result.

If my only choice was between Hitler and Stalin, damn right I'd pick one of the two... the one I thought would be least likely to end up killing me. The worse your options are, the MORE important it is to pick the less bad one, because the consequences are higher. At some point, the choice is less about "accurately representing your views" and more about survival, or translating this analogy back to the less extreme: making sure you get screwed over less.

You don't think the technology to enable persistent surveillance will exist within your lifetime? What, are you 90 years old or something?

Here's another good one for you... white women crying in the presence of their "colored" betters is a microaggression: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-womens-tears-and-the-men-who-love-them-twlm/ Getting emotional? Too damn bad. People of other races shouldn't have to put up with your stupid useless white emotions!

Wait... you're arguing for people to evaluate risks and appropriate responses rationally? You're aware you're on a political forum, right?

Of course it's government policy. The voting majority are people that own homes and benefit from the increase in value of their one significant asset. The fact that it makes homes affordable for future generations is not their concern. If any politician said that housing prices need to come down, the boomers would scream bloody murder since most of them have planned their retirements around using their home equity. The long term damage to the economy and the fact that younger generations are unable to buy in places like Vancouver is all sacrificed to the generation in power. Pretty much ALL government spending is about wealth transfer from all other generations to the boomer generation.

Your argument is that Canadian asset prices have inflated because Canada kept its interest rates low. You illustrate this by comparing the US housing bubble popping while the Canadian one did not. And yet, the USA has kept its interest rates even lower than Canada. And indeed, as one might expect given that the US has lower (basically zero) interest rates, the US stock market has gone up considerably since the recession, reaching all time highs in 2015 that were ~40% higher than the 2008 high. Meanwhile the Canadian stock market only barely managed to re-touch 2008 highs before declining again. Of course, I wouldn't attribute the whole difference to interest rates, but they were likely a contributing factor, since capital has been essentially free in the US for nearly a decade. But housing has done the opposite. Clearly, there's a factor at work besides interest rates here. I think the main difference is the relatively large portion of Canadian real estate that is purchased by foreign investors.

So collective punishment applies to Canadians in your mind then, yes?

Muslims, Christians and Catholics are not races. When it comes to Jews, the matter is more complex (though no one here gives a damn even though I've explained it like 100 times).

What's different about the "last few hundred years" than the years before that? The various tribes/states/nations of humankind have been fighting each other since before recorded history, and it's always been their leaders, "the rich and powerful" as you call them, that have made the decisions leading to these conflicts. The only thing unique about today is that the most powerful tribes/states/nations no longer fight each other, and the annual death toll due to wars as a fraction of the population is the lowest in recent times. The period after WWII is the longest period in recorded human history during which no major powers have directly fought each other, as far as I know.