Shooting at mosque in Quebec City; several dead

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah, so basically, he's like a holocaust denier. In other words, a pitiable moron. I'm also against laws that prohibit denying the holocaust for precisely the same reason. What is there to hide here? Just keep telling the truth. Like I say, I want these people to keep telling us who they are. Trying to shut them up isn't going to change who they are or suddenly give them the impression that they're wrong.

Yep, because there's no historical precedent for conspiracy theories implicating certain religious sects leading to dire consequences or anything.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Kouvalis, Leitch, anyone, is either right or wrong to hold the views they hold - in this case, wrong. That's all that's necessary. Stop with the secular blasphemy codes and oppose the bad ideas these people are espousing. Trying to stop them from espousing them in the first place by making words verboten just drives these elements underground, behind closed doors, or behind the curtain at the voting booth. Sure, then you don't have to think about them, which might be comforting, but that's worse. They haven't gone away.

Exactly. We have hate speech legislation in this country - already some of the broadest in the democratic world. We should be very wary of broadening it further and driving anyone who has populist or nativist opinions underground, where they join enclaves of people who are even worse. We already have a problem in this country of being so sensitive about debating immigration openly that it's alienating large numbers of other decent citizens from public discourse.

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

At one point, Levant isn't just giving these idiots a platform to speak on and reveal themselves...people like him are actively shaping them into "who they are." How you want to tackle that, I have no idea.

By shining light on the ideas and challenging them in open discourse. Just as we should be shining light on the ideas that fuel Islamic radicalism and challenging them in open discourse.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

By shining light on the ideas and challenging them in open discourse. Just as we should be shining light on the ideas that fuel Islamic radicalism and challenging them in open discourse.

Are you just not observing the world around you? This "open, rational discourse" idealism is getting absolutely pummeled by disinformation and the active discrediting of facts, the media, and intellectuals. I'm not saying it should be abandoned, but it does need to be buttressed by various alternatives.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Absolutely, but they're being pummeled from all angles. We need to promote a culture where facts matter, not ideology, and where people recognize their own propensity for motivated reasoning and how the brain works. That is, where people care more about being right than winning. No one appears to want that world at the moment and that's what's leading to this de-stabilization and subordination of facts in favour of comforting alternative realities that accord with pre-conceived beliefs.

I would be open to at least hearing suggestions as to how to stop people from publicly, intentionally and authoritatively asserting false information as fact, though.

[PepsiFree]

"Let them speak so we can then convince both them and all others they are wrong" is the ultimate liberal academic fantasy. It relies solely on the idea that rationality and fair play will overcome, which is naive.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

It does, in the long run. It works slowly, unevenly and inconsistently, and yet so, so much better than anything else we've tried.

Look, we have 200 years of this liberal academic fantasy being enacted in the western world, and compared to the fifty thousand previous, we've done pretty well with it. It's not good enough, but it's far more naive to think that these are problems that can be easily solved by having some group of people decide what political beliefs and allegiances are morally righteous and extingushing all who would object to that dogma. In that regard, suggesting that people look at the real world or consider the lessons of history in suggesting that liberalism doesn't work is hilariously ironic. There's plenty of historical precedent for that sort of behaviour too. It is, without exception, bloody business.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Are you just not observing the world around you? This "open, rational discourse" idealism is getting absolutely pummeled by disinformation and the active discrediting of facts, the media, and intellectuals. I'm not saying it should be abandoned, but it does need to be buttressed by various alternatives.

Reason is getting it in the neck from both sides of the political spectrum. Post-modernist academics, anti-science hippies, and student activists aren't exactly cool-headed champions of reason and empiricism. They're just as prone to dogmatic thinking, us vs them tribalism, and all sorts of cognitive biases as their counterparts on the right.

We live in a digital era when there is no central authority to control speech. That means extremists are free to spout their nonsense and fuel one another's fear and anxiety. But the alternative - a state so powerful that it can control and suppress speech it does not like - is worse.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

"Let them speak so we can then convince both them and all others they are wrong" is the ultimate liberal academic fantasy. It relies solely on the idea that rationality and fair play will overcome, which is naive.

So what's the alternative - use coercion and raw power to suppress unpopular opinions? And who gets to decide what those unpopular opinions are?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Absolutely, but they're being pummeled from all angles. We need to promote a culture where facts matter, not ideology, and where people recognize their own propensity for motivated reasoning and how the brain works. That is, where people care more about being right than winning. No one appears to want that world at the moment and that's what's leading to this de-stabilization and subordination of facts in favour of comforting alternative realities that accord with pre-conceived beliefs.

I would be open to at least hearing suggestions as to how to stop people from publicly, intentionally and authoritatively asserting false information as fact, though.

Let's be honest, at least in the U.S., the right got at least a 30 year headstart (probably closer to 50 if you buy into Hofstadter) on appealing to the lowest common denominator by sowing distrust towards various institutions and it's been only in the last 15-20 years or so that the left realized that the stakes were too high and they couldn't win by taking the well-reasoned high ground.

I'm not really sure how you get that toothpaste back in the tube because it means one side ceding more ground to the other. The left is already on the precipice and the right knows it.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Are you just not observing the world around you? This "open, rational discourse" idealism is getting absolutely pummeled by disinformation and the active discrediting of facts, the media, and intellectuals. I'm not saying it should be abandoned, but it does need to be buttressed by various alternatives.

Yeah, mainstream views should be debated and discussed rationally. But at a certain point you're just dealing with people that are so far out that it's just a waste of time and effort.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that limits on free speech be tightened up. But some views simply aren't worth debating rationally because the people who hold them don't arrive at their views by thinking rationally. A campaign manager who calls someone a #### on Twitter or a media figure who floats conspiracy theories to make money off of a tragedy deserve no more rational debate than someone who thinks the moon landing was faked.

Obviously you can't stop this kind of stuff, but absolutely any mainstream political or media figure should be judged based on their associations with these kinds of people and views. There should be no place in a major Canadian political party for people spouting this kind of crap and any party that tacitly supports it through inaction should suffer for it.

[calgaryblood]

Donald Trump just got elected by saying crazy racist, sexist things and we should LISTEN to what these bigots say so we can change their minds? What a joke. Bigots and scumbags like Ezra the goof Levant aren't going to change their minds because we listen to them and engage them. It just empowers them.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

So what's the alternative - use coercion and raw power to suppress unpopular opinions? And who gets to decide what those unpopular opinions are?

You state this as if liberalism hasn't been doing this all over the globe for the better part of two centuries now. Liberalism has been as much an exercise in hypocrisy as it has been reasoned discourse. Liberals have been perfectly happy to enforce their ideology with guns and guillotines as often as they have been with pen and paper.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

^ Okay, leaving aside whether or not that's revisionist history... is your answer to Cliff's question "yes", then?

Originally Posted by rubecube

Let's be honest, at least in the U.S., the right got at least a 30 year headstart (probably closer to 50 if you buy into Hofstadter) on appealing to the lowest common denominator by sowing distrust towards various institutions and it's been only in the last 15-20 years or so that the left realized that the stakes were too high and they couldn't win by taking the well-reasoned high ground.

It's only in the last ten, if that, that the left has decided to abandon the well-reasoned high ground, and even that has been gradually. And that was all it took for things to fall apart. Up until that point we were winning. The right's appeals to the lowest common denominator was a failing strategy, and was getting more and more doomed over time as that lowest common denominator shrank in influence. It wasn't until the left effectively won the culture war that it began to behave in the same manner as the previous regime of backwards religious puritanical idiocy, insisting on the same devotion to different sacred dogma.

We were doing so well. Why adopt the stance of the guys we've been wiping the floor with for two decades?

I'm not really sure how you get that toothpaste back in the tube because it means one side ceding more ground to the other. The left is already on the precipice and the right knows it.

I agree, the train's well off the tracks on the right and the never-trumpers are too late to put it back on them. Meanwhile, the left's teetering on one set of wheels and approaching a sharp curve. I'm not sure you can put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is depressing. But what can a person do but try to tell people why we believe what we believe and hope they agree, and act accordingly (politically speaking)?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

We were doing so well. Why adopt the stance of the guys we've been wiping the floor with for two decades?

Were we doing that well? We made some gains in LGBTQ and women's rights, although can we say those were as much ideological as they were legislative? Meanwhile we've lost major ground in regards to worker's rights, the labour movement, economic inequality, etc. Mind you those are more leftist principles that are casualties of neoliberalism than they are liberal principles.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Were we doing that well? We made some gains in LGBTQ and women's rights, although can we say those were as much ideological as they were legislative? Meanwhile we've lost major ground in regards to worker's rights, the labour movement, economic inequality, etc. Mind you those are more leftist principles that are casualties of neoliberalism than they are liberal principles.

Yeah, we were. LGBTW, women's rights, these were the things we were mostly focused on - especially gay rights, and establishing the fact that gays aren't second class citizens; it's no small victory for my sanity that I no longer have to go through a dictionary to explain to right-wingers why the phrase "being gay just isn't natural" makes no goddamn sense (hey, turns out semantics actually mattered on that one) and why keeping religion out of politics is a good principle, practically speaking, for running a functioning state.

I swear, I keep seeing various people talking about how Trump is trying to take the country back to the 1950's. He's not. If he were to implement everything he's trying to do, plus the LGBTQ stuff that Pence would like to see enacted but which apparently won't be, we'd basically be in the mid 1990's. I'm not sure how much the present generation (by which I mena people who became politically active since 2010) understands what progress was made in the latter half of the last century.

Every time this comes up I gather that the main issue is that this process of change doesn't work quickly enough and that people are suffering now, in some cases dying. I'm not insensitive to that, but I have no better means to offer, and I'm quite certain that every "quicker fix" you could propose is going to end in catastrophe because they always, always do.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah, we were. LGBTW, women's rights, these were the things we were mostly focused on - especially gay rights, and establishing the fact that gays aren't second class citizens; it's no small victory for my sanity that I no longer have to go through a dictionary to explain to right-wingers why the phrase "being gay just isn't natural" makes no goddamn sense (hey, turns out semantics actually mattered on that one) and why keeping religion out of politics is a good principle, practically speaking, for running a functioning state.

Ever try to have this conversation with people in rural Tennessee? Because I have, several times, and we're nowhere near as far along on this as people think we are because those voices tend to get drowned out by urbanites.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

No - though I have multiple times with Texans - but the point is that you have to go to places like rural Tennessee for your dose of brazen homophobic intolerance rather than, yknow, the average person on the street. The, ahem, good people of rural Tennessee will come around in time. "Time" may be generations, but every alternative essentially reduces to killing them all off, so that's that.

[northcrunk]

Looks like the shooter isn't being charged with Terrorism at this moment but that doesn't rule it out in the future once police finish going through his PC. 11 charges against him. 6 counts first degree murder and 5 counts attempted murder. The one thing that stands out in this case is the shooter is not dead so we can go through the judicial system to find out what his actual motives are.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Sorry if this has been covered already, but why only 5 counts of attempted murder? I would have thought every person that was injured would have been counted as attempted murder?

[calgaryblood]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Sorry if this has been covered already, but why only 5 counts of attempted murder? I would have thought every person that was injured would have been counted as attempted murder?

Only 5 other people were shot is probably the reasoning behind it.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I'd be speculating (because shooting at someone is attempted murder in my books regardless of whether you, yknow, hit them or not) but they may feel that they have enough to put the guy away until the end of time as it is and don't feel the need to charge him with everything. Like I say, just a possibility.