Super Free Speech Defender Mark Steyns Bans White Supremacist from Tal

[nicky10013]

Nicky, I think we must have grown up on different planets! When I read that article I see Steyn railing against social engineering gone so extreme as to be fascist!

Legislating not just what people say but how they feel! Outlawing not true hate speech but any opinion that differs from some elite bureaucrat's politically correct definition.

Our Human Rights Commissions, which might more properly be defined as Tribunals or Star Chambers, can only be accurately described as Orwellian, straight out of '1984'.

Do they still teach Orwell in liberal schools like those of your generation, Nicky? Somehow I'll bet he has been quietly slipped down the memory hole.

I don't normally agree with a lot of what Rush Limbaugh has said but with this post Nicky you remind me of one of his sayings - "A liberal defines freedom of speech as the freedom to agree!"

If you can't understand how that applies then I guess nothing will!

1984 is read in pretty much every grade 12 english class. Steyn's point is incredibly clear: if we have a limitation on speech, whose limits will it be? There will always be a disagreement so let's have none to begin with.

Conservatives believe in that same freedom to agree as Liberals. Afterall, that's why Steyn is being defended in this thread and the liberals who make similar limits on freedom of speech in action aren't.

Edited November 5, 2010 by nicky10013

[nicky10013]

No, it doesn't say to me what you say it does. Again, he's speaking out against the Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals, the laws that create and guide them, and the way they and other people and organisations similarly guided by political correctness seek to transform society according to their viewpoints. In your second quote, he's rightly angry at the HRCs attempting to eradicate the emotion of hate from the human mind, which is something all-together different to hate speech, as defined by the law.

[+]

So this means absolutely nothing to you

“I cannot see why it is a crime to feel abhorrence and hatred."

It doesn't matter whether he is talking about tribunals or not. He makes it very clear that he's against all laws against freedom of speech just through this sentence. He just feels that the Human Rights Tribunals are an extension of those laws which he sees as totally unjust. To him, Freedom of Speech are the same things. When they're that closely intertwined in this context, you can't seperate them.

[Shady]

If you want to prove me wrong, GET ME A QUOTE WHERE HE SAYS HE'S NOT FOR UNMITIGATED FREEDOM OF SPEECH. It's THAT SIMPLE.

I'm still waiting for proof that you're not a child molester, and rabid anti-semite. It's that simple.

[Evening Star]

Do they still teach Orwell in liberal schools like those of your generation, Nicky? Somehow I'll bet he has been quietly slipped down the memory hole.

Just want to note that Orwell was a dedicated socialist, as much as right-wingers might like to claim him.

[Shady]

Just want to note that Orwell was a dedicated socialist, as much as right-wingers might like to claim him.

Oh, and Evening Star is also a child molester and anti-semite. I'm also waiting for proof of the contrary. So far, I haven't found any.

[Shady]

McCarthyism is fun!

[Evening Star]

Oh, and Evening Star is also a child molester and anti-semite. I'm also waiting for proof of the contrary. So far, I haven't found any.

WTF, Shady? What's that even in reference to? Do you seriously need proof of Orwell's socialism? (I can provide it if you do...)

[nicky10013]

Oh, and Evening Star is also a child molester and anti-semite. I'm also waiting for proof of the contrary. So far, I haven't found any.

Read Homage to Catalonia. Orwell, or Eric Arthur Blair, actually fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the communists and Homage to Catalonia are his own memoirs of him in the POUM (communist militia) from his start in the Lenin Barracks all the way up until he was shot in the neck. His interaction with Soviet factions there were what led to his hatred of Soviet style communism and became one of the reasons he wrote Animal Farm and 1984. He hated the fact that they were polluting an otherwise respectable political doctrine.

Edited November 5, 2010 by nicky10013

[M.Dancer]

Be it resolved that Mark Steyn, a champion of free unmitigated speech stands behind the right to issue death threats...

All in favour...

[nicky10013]

I'm still waiting for proof that you're not a child molester, and rabid anti-semite. It's that simple.

I've never been charged or implicated in any such crimes. I have many Jewish friends and have been on a preodminately Jewish trip to Germany and Poland to visit holocaust sites. A guy who hates jews would surely do something like that.

It's not hard. It's certainly a lot better than just saying, "you're wrong, stop being embarrassing." The only embarrassing thing about this is the level of conversation to which you've stooped by attempting to use this as an analogy.

[Shady]

I've never been charged or implicated in any such crimes.

I'd like to believe that. But so far, I haven't seen any proof.

[nicky10013]

I'd like to believe that. But so far, I haven't seen any proof.

The fact that you could go to the local courthouse and find no proof is evidence in itself that I've committed no crime. Nice try.

[Shady]

The fact that you could go to the local courthouse and find no proof is evidence in itself that I've committed no crime. Nice try.

Just because you haven't been caught committing them, doesn't mean you never have.

[Shady]

See, we can all argue in your retarded, completely illogical way. It's actually quite enjoyable.

[nicky10013]

Be it resolved that Mark Steyn, a champion of free unmitigated speech stands behind the right to issue death threats...

All in favour...

He seems ok with it here. Just a controversial way to win an argument to him.

I’m bored with death threats. And, as far as I’m concerned, if that’s your opening conversational gambit, then any obligation on my part to “cultural sensitivity” and “mutual respect” is over.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/199588/everybody-draws-mohammed-day/mark-steyn

[M.Dancer]

The fact that you could go to the local courthouse and find no proof is evidence in itself that I've committed no crime. Nice try.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Carl Sagan

The confusion is worsened since arguments from ignorance and incredulity are often (wrongly) advanced in debates as proper 'evidence of absence'. A case in point: arguing "There is no evidence that this mysterious remedy does NOT work, therefore it works". Basically, this arguments from ignorance relies on a lack of research to somehow draw conclusions. While this is a powerful method of debate to switch the burden of proof, appealing to ignorance is a fallacy. It is to such impatient, inappropriate conclusions that Carl Sagan referred when he said "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

[nicky10013]

Just because you haven't been caught committing them, doesn't mean you never have.

According to the law, that's exactly what it means. Innocent until proven guilty, you know. I'm not accusing anyone of committing a crime. There's the big difference.

[nicky10013]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Carl Sagan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

In a court of law accusing someone of a crime it is.

[M.Dancer]

He seems ok with it here. Just a controversial way to win an argument to him.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/199588/everybody-draws-mohammed-day/mark-steyn

No he seems bored with them...I suppose you would say being okay and being bored is a question semantics.

Someone at the HRC though might say your ongoing idiotic diatribe consitututes hate and no doubt fosters an environment condusive to the uttering of death threats against him....

[nicky10013]

No he seems bored with them...I suppose you would say being okay and being bored is a question semantics.

Someone at the HRC though might say your ongoing idiotic diatribe consitututes hate and no doubt fosters an environment condusive to the uttering of death threats against him....

No, he's very much OK by it because as he himself points out in the second line, it gives him an excuse to attack them based on where they came from and not their ideology. He makes it very clear that he views it as a debating tactic just by uttering the term "controversial gambit." Besides, if he really did believe that threats constituted a limit on the freedom of speech, he probably would've gone to the police. The only hits google comes back with when you term Mark Steyn and Police are "Thought Police" articles about him arguing about how we're turning into a totalitarian society over freedom of speech.

He argues about inflammatory and inflammatory speech around death threats here but never mentiosn it should be illegal.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/18/the-absurd-trial-of-geert-wilders/

Indeed, he comes across with the same thing here re: Comedy Central and South Park. He never says that the people who implement these things should be punished. If anything it's a lament about how some people aren't allowed to be as inflammatory as others.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tea-245567-comedy-clinton.html

Indeed, when asked about what he thought of death threats against Obama, he replied in this manner.

Mark Steyn: “We’ve had people now, since about three month before the Iraq invasion, we’ve had people marching every week through American cities, with signs saying “Kill Bush” — explicit threats to kill Bush. Pictures of Bush with a bullet, a red blood bullet hole through the center of his forehead. Zombietime, the Web site zombietime has just collected dozens and dozens of these pictures from marches of ordinary Americans demanding the execution of their president, that were going on as I said from early 2003 right up to the end of Bush’s term. None of these guys were ever prosecuted. None of these magazines — people made films, there was an award-winning film made about the assassination of the president. Nicholson Baker wrote a novella about the death of Bush, about killing Bush. And nowhere, Newsweek I don’t recall — not that I ever listen to the Newsweek podcast, I think they had it in those days — but I don’t recall anyone in Newsweek expressing concern about films, novellas, and marches explicitly fantasizing over the death of President Bush, week in week out for five years.”

I think you can sum it up as, "so what?"

Edited November 5, 2010 by nicky10013

[g_bambino]

So this means absolutely nothing to you

No, it doesn't mean absolutely nothing to me.

[nicky10013]

No, it doesn't mean absolutely nothing to me.

You do realize what a double negative is, right? I don't think you gave me the answer you wanted to.

[g_bambino]

You do realize what a double negative is, right? I don't think you gave me the answer you wanted to.

Yes and yes I did.

[c/e]

Edited November 5, 2010 by g_bambino

[nicky10013]

Yes and yes I did.

[c/e]

Fair enough.

[dre]

A University isn't a private organization. Stop conflating the issues. Nobody has a right to speak at someone elses event. Why are you being so obtuse?

Nobody has a "right" to speak at a university either. I would agree its a problem for universities to outright reject speakers based on political ideology, but thats not why Anne Coulter was denied. She was denied because she has no serious political views of any relevance. Shes an author that says wierd stuff for no purpose besides selling books.

There ARE lots of serious conservative political commentators though, and they certainly should be allowed to speak on campuses.