We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day In Justin Trudeau’s Canada, if I mention the Islamist ties of Akbardzhon Dzhalilov, the 22-year-old suspected of carrying out the subway bombing that killed 14 in St. Petersburg, Russia on Monday, am I guilty of Islamophobia?
What if I also mention that Khalid Masood, the man who mowed down scores of pedestrians, killing three, and stabbed a police officer to death outside the British Parliament last week, was a convert to Islam? Am I guilty of a crime against Canada’s new politically correct speech codes?
I admit, what constitutes a Muslim terror attack is not always black-and-white. Was London’s Masood driven by Islamist fervor or by his long, troubled criminal past? Or maybe a bit of both?
– Lorne Gunter
Canada has been heading in this direction for a while now, part of a growing list of nation states denying one of the most most fundamental civil liberties: freedom of expression.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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The idea that there is any question here about what the laws mean and who they are targeted at is naive. These spasms in the direction of establishing various blasphemy laws allow the politicists to float the idea of subjective laws. Government by caprice.
Perhaps in the “Canada” of today individuals no longer need freedom of expression.
Yes but… I’m in favor of government by caprice.
The last sentence in the essay asks “will Canadians be left vulnerable to attack by the dictates of political correctness?” I view that as a rhetorical question. Can there really be any doubt?
“I’m in favor of government by caprice.”
Mmm. Hey, Kaiane Lopez seems to be shaping up as an excellent Mayor of Gibraltar …
I’d rather have government by Fusion; GM products don’t do it for me.
“… I admit, what constitutes a Muslim terror attack is not always black-and-white …”
What constitutes an offence against Canada’s anti-free-speech laws is apparently a good deal less so. And I guess that what constitutes a Muslim terror attack will remain far from clear while Canadians dare not discuss what constitutes a Muslim terror attack.
Less unhappily – though adding to the absurdity – IIUC something like 90% of population of Canada lives close to the US border, with whom they share a language. While the 1st amendment lives, Canada must be the worst country in the world in which to enforce an anti-free-speech law to effect. Erdogan poetry competition anyone?
Lastly, Perry, can I again add my voice to the several who have begged that the frequent ‘Samizdata quote of the day’ posts get a distinguishing item in their titles: a subject-indicating word, the date (e.g. 17apr17), the name (of the person or outlet quoted) a number or whatever. The blog-roll shows the title only – a bunch of ‘Samizdata quote of the day’ titles mean nothing there.
Islam is a belief system. The idea that we can’t judge or criiticise someone’s beliefs is absurd.
The irony is that many of he same people who would openly mock a baptist pastor, are the same people who think criticizing Islam is evidence of bigotry.
Urban Canada suffers from a severe form of America-envy.
They’re obsessed with out-America’ing America. When we become PC, they become uber-PC.
With this new legislation, they’ve taken the lead.
It has been understood since the 1960s (in New York State since the late 1940s) that modern “liberalism” is not compatible with Freedom of Association – as “anti discrimination” laws (that go back to the late 1940s in New York State – and became general in the Western World from the 1960s onwards) crush the right not to associate, logically part of Freedom of Association. The same principle was at work in the “Jim Crow” laws – with the state telling people who they must trade with and on what terms. But people pretend they do not know that “Jim Crow law” and “anti discrimination law” are the two sides of the same corrupt coin.
Now it is increasingly clear that modern “liberalism” (of the Justin T. or Tim Farron sort) is not compatible with Freedom of Speech either.
Already the schools and universities are teaching the young that “Hate Speech” (read – any speech the left do not like) must not be allowed.
And Conservatives?
“Mainstream” ones are dedicated to “providing more resources for education”.
So that their own children can be brought up to hate them, and help destroy them.
Woodrow Wilson (more than a century ago – when he was at Princeton) said that his aim was to make the students as “unlike their fathers as possible” – and Richard Ely and the other Progressive academics held (and hold) the same view. First it was a small elite of evil in a sea of decent society – but step-by-step that society (the general population) have been (partly) corrupted in their thinking.
If “practical people” still have not noticed (after more than a century)that the “education system” is more-and-more about brainwashing the young to serve the cause of evil (I am deliberately using blunt language – but it is accurate), then it is hard to care about these “practical people”.
If a man walks off a cliff (an obvious cliff – and ignoring many shouted warnings),it is very hard to feel sympathy for that man.
For “man” read Western Civilisation – and its death wish.
Was Thomas Mair driven by his demented ideology or his troubled past?
Many of the people who are so quick to admonish those who jump to quick conclusions were just as quick to do the same themselves about his alleged crime.
People notice double standards.
I thought, after Mark Steyn’s trial, that Canada was marching in the Right direction. It seems to have gone backward, leftward, and progressively worse!
In fairness, Canada could also simply be trying to keep up with Liverpoolians, where the police are investigating a Kelvin Mackenzie column as a racial hate-crime.
Because those who defend the use of words never go any further than their own words. The other side does whatever it has to in orderto win. Which is why they are winning.
I don’t recall when I first saw the phrase “Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian country”, but it was a while ago. The present situation looks more like a natural evolution of Canadian culture than an import from elsewhere, although I’m sure it’s encouraged by the PC phenomenon.
In the US, the same ‘evolution’ gave us Donald Trump in reaction. Whether enough Canadians retain the cussedness to rebuke their Betters’ piousness is an open question.
“Was London’s Masood driven by Islamist fervor or by his long, troubled criminal past?”
Islam is attractive to criminals because it sanctifies preying upon other humans.
(I realize that this observation makes me a criminal in a growing number of Western nations.)
The whole point of infringed free speech being bad has nothing to do with being right, or wrong, about one’s assertions or conclusions. It has to do with the very concept of rights vs being chattel property of the state. Rights are moral principles defining and sanctioning an individual’s freedom of action in a social context. It’s a social contract about force initiated upon citizens being wrong. (The key word here is “initiated”). The proper role of government is to secure individual rights, which it can’t do if it’s also sanctioning the initiation of force upon it’s citizenry and arbitrarily delimiting his or her persoanl freedoms.