This is annoying:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ppened/574867/
Quote:
The Munk debates hold a special place in Canadian public life. For more than a decade, they have brought the learned, the preeminent, and the notorious to Toronto’s 2,800-seat symphony hall to test controversial ideas before a highly informed audience. Never before, though, had they ignited the fierce controversy that exploded around the scheduled debate between Bannon and me.
Over the next hours, I took calls from television and radio bookers: Would I come on their air to defend the debate?
I declined, again and again. I’d written an answer, and I wanted to deliver it once—at the debate itself. Some did not want to hear that answer or any other. They decided to shut down the debate by force and threat. They tried to block the entrance to the debate venue, then harassed attendees as they sought to enter. One police officer was punched in the face. Fear that protesters would slip into the event obliged the organizers to search every bag and wand every entrant—delaying the start time by 45 minutes. Even with that delay, many ticket-holders were unable to take their seats. One protester nevertheless managed noisily to disrupt Bannon’s opening statement, before being drowned out by audience applause and removed by police.
Forceful interruption of public events is almost always wrong. If I see you reading a book I dislike, I have no right to grab it from you. In a free society, there can be no equivalent of the Saudi religious police, monitoring public behavior and discourse and interrupting things of which they disapprove.
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Irrespective of your opinion of David Frum's views (or Steve Bannon's, for that matter), Frum's bang-on here. Even if I disagree with
both speakers, I have no right to prevent you from listening to a discussion between them (especially one you paid money to go see), and similarly you haven't the right to stop me either.
Listening and trying to understand viewpoints that conflict with our own serves many purposes; amongst them, understanding what you're opposing (if you should still oppose those viewpoints after hearing them explained), and using those contrasting ideas to critique your own held beliefs on the subject(s). In short: critical thought, civil discourse, thinking outside your own point of view... these are all useful exercises, and I find it illiberal in the extreme to behave in such a manner so as to prevent people from listening to a debate.