On the moral world of the Volokh Conspiracy: what are the most important events of the last year or so?
Without question, our failure to find the WMDs in Iraq; the widespread abuses of Abu Ghraib; the continuing violence in Iraq and the failure of the United States to provide law and order, not to mention essentials like electricity to the Iraqi people.
Yet if you read blogs by thoughtful conservatives - like the Volokh Conspiracy - you'll find scant mentions of these things. If they are talked about at all, its only in a brief by-the-way manner.
Indeed, the Volokh conspiracy has devoted time to criticizing Democrats for giving Al Sharpton a speaking spot at the convention; criticizing the Democratic party for being too harsh on its anti-abortion members; criticizing John Kerry for helping to hurt veterans by publicly testifying against the Vietnam war; incredibly, criticizing Kerry for wanting to confirm judges which share his political beliefs; implying that North Korea and Iran want Kerry to win; criticizing Kerry for picking Edwards for VP due to Edwards' lack of experience (of course, Bush himself had plenty of experience when he ran for office); finally, criticizing Kerry for - I kid you not - singing along to Puff the Magic Dragon.
Not to suggest that anyone in the conspiracy is in any way obligated to write about WMDs or Abu Ghraib. But when Eugene Volokh says he doesn't feel like writing about the torture scandals and then spends his time coming up with ridiculous scenarios where the right of enemy combatants to sue brings about the destruction of the United States - what does this say about him?
I'm not the first to write about this - Daniel Davies over at Crooked Timber has speculated that multiple universes are the culprit here: many of the conservative inhabit Uqbar, a world eerily similar to our own, but not quite the same one.
The tendency is not limited to conservatives: consider the petitions circulating in Canada against hiring American companies. To some extent, this is just plain old protectionism, but the argument made, and taken seriously by many as far as I can tell, is that the Patriot Act allows the US government to subpoena data relating to Canadian clients of these companies and therefore American companies are a privacy risk.
This is, of course, rather ridiculous. True, the Patriot Act allows the Justice department to obtain this data more easily. But the subpoena power of the Patriot Act has never been used. And if the US government wanted data possessed by a company under US jurisdiction, it could easily obtain it even if the Patriot Act had not existed - by issuing a subpoena with the help of a judge - just like any other government could easily obtain the data. I don't condone the Patriot Act - I think Republicans are simply evil for championing it - but the actual practical effect of it has been close to negligible.
Canadian courts, on the other hand, have ruled that printing bible verses critical of homosexuality in a newspaper ad can be hate speech; Canadian officials have investigated a UBC professor for hate speech after she claimed Americans were "bloodthirsty, vengeful and calling for blood"; have shut down websites that were critical of homosexuality; and more recently, refused to renew the license of a popular radio station because they disliked the content.
These are real, tangible assaults on free speech and liberty. Only in a strange, twisted moral universe are they less worthy of attack than a never-used provision of the Patriot act.
posted by alex @ 10:49 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
this post is interesting. it starts out saying conservatives are delusional and ends saying canadians are delusional. it really goes full circle! or so youd think, cos youve seen too many michael moore films to realize that canada isnt solely comprised of bleeding heart liberals. using 'canadian' as the opposite of 'conservative' was the most american thing youve ever done!
calling 'americans' bloodthirsty is hateful. if she said the administration, fine. theres a difference. this isnt something one says as a professor. ubc has a bunch of american students - its just insulting. we dont say the same things about other countries with grudges and disregard for international treaties. professors can analyze policy and statements all they want, and it isnt unfair to expect something better than petty rudeness as a conclusion.
re: homosexuality and choi - fine. the crtc did go too far on the latter count. the problem with the churches/other anti-gay groups and homosexuality is that they insist on saying there is something fundamentally wrong with homosexuals. while that is an opinion, it is hateful. they couldnt publish the same kind of things about another group and get away with it, either. perhaps it is an infringement on their free speech, but a society that wants to engender any kind of equality cannot endorse opinions that violate the dignity of the individual. it isnt an affront to christianity as any anti-gay group would get the same treatment.
also, the reluctance to turn canadian data over to american companies isnt a purely pinko phenomenon. vivelecanada (who circulated the anti-lockheed petition) has david orchard, who has run for the leadership of the old conservative party of canada many times. many of canadas pre-mulroney conservatives are anti-free trade and the liberals have actually been free trade's chief proponents this side of the border.
as for the practical effects of the patriot act, its only been two years. i dont see anything ridiculous in canadians wanting to keep data one degree of separation further from the american government. though the patriot act is cited as the bad guy in both petitions, the underlying principle - that american companies pose a threat to canadian privacy - is still real.
-a
"These are real, tangible assaults on free speech and liberty. Only in a strange, twisted moral universe are they less worthy of attack than a never-used provision of the Patriot act."
yes, your dramatic conclusion really does close your post nicely, but lets look at something:
opposition to the choi shutdown is grassroots and supported by many prominent canadians
opposition to the american companies handling canadian data is grassroots and supported by many prominent canadians
opposition to labelling anti-gay/american comments as hate speech is grassroots and supported by many prominent canadians
there are likely as many people in canada writing the bc government/participating in vivelecanada's endeavour than there are who sympathize with choi and the right of anti-gay groups to say whatever they want.
you cant make it seem like all canadians are obsessed with the patriot act while ignoring the other shit just cos i have exhibited vestiges of latent protectionism while not getting too worked up over the right of people to bash gays.
the canadian response to all these things is just as fervent.
-a
well, as you are no doubt aware, i think everyone besides me is delusional :)
i want to say two things right away: 1. i did not use 'canadian' as the counterpart to 'conservative.' nowhere did i make broad general statements about canadians. the point i made was that those canadians who focus a lot more energy on the patriot act stuff than on CHOI live in a strange moral universe.
"as for the practical effects of the patriot act, its only been two years. i dont see anything ridiculous... "youre missing the point. you know something? i actually agree with the volokh people about al sharpton and i share their distate for the anti-vietnam rhetoric of john kerry. thats not the point though. the point is that for any normal rational person the iraqi wmd flop should play a much bigger role than sharpton or 'how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in vietnam?' similarly its not irrational for canadians to worry about the patriot act - but devoting so much energy to it when all it does is make something easier that could have been done in other ways - especially with a multitude of tangible assaults on liberty at Canada - is purely illogical and based a taste for anti-american rhetoric.
"you cant make it seem like all canadians are obsessed with the patriot act while ignoring the other shit just cos i have exhibited vestiges of latent protectionism while not getting too worked up over the right of people to bash gays. " i said this in my previous post but i'll say it again since you put it in such terms: i'm not talking about canadians. i'm talking about people like you.
no offense.
a certain ultra-conservative ex girlfriend of mine used to think that separation of church and state was a bad idea because keeping religion out of government is the same, she said, as endorsing atheism.
why? i would ask.
because by not saying anything about religion, she would say, you are actually making a statement. she argued that by allowing homosexuality to be legal, the government was endorsing it.
uh, no.
when something is permitted by law that does not mean that its endorsed by the government.
apparently she is not the only one who thinks this way: "a society that wants to engender any kind of equality cannot ENDORSE opinions that violate the dignity of the individual."
"a society that wants to engender any kind of equality cannot ENDORSE opinions that violate the dignity of the individual." even if you change ENDORSE to ALLOW, its still not true.
i, for one, have never felt that the ability for extremists to legally say nasty things about my ethnicity makes me any less equal. why would it make me less equal? that would be downright bizzare.
sasha...
"people like you" !!!!!!! there are no "people like" me. ok. :)
the rest of everything you say is all picking at semantics. id be more interested in fighting back if i didnt spend the last three hours writing an exam on rhetorical devices.
reasons i care about pharmacare being turned over to the americans:
1. i live in bc
2. thats my personal info
reasons im not worked up over choi:
1. ive never listened to them in my life.
2. fillion picks on ethnic students and the mentally ill. i dont think they should be shut down, but im certainly not averse to someone slapping him on the wrist for that.
3. theyre filing an appeal anyway
if youd rather be pissed off over choi, fine, but dont act like its boosting your moral rectitude and ability to discern degrees of injustice.
first of all, my previous comments were not picking at semantics. lets go through them together.
in my first two comments, i wrote that i am talking about those who circulate the petitions, not all canadians. given that you wrote a whole post on your blog attacking me for allegedly making a claim about canadians, i think this was a rather important point.
in the last two, i argued thats its not OK to police anti-homosexual speech.
if it really is OK to ban speech that says there is something wrong with homosexuals, i have no case
if its not OK, then its an assult on liberty, and i'm right that there are misplaced priorities
how is this semantics?
secondly: your reply goes to the heart of the matter. my point was that you should be more concerned about crackdown on homosexuality/hate crime laws/choi shutdown than you are about patriot act related petitions. you reply by giving concrete reasons why you should be more concerned about the patriot stuff.
basically, you say that its your personal info and you've never even listened to fillion, which is why you don't care all that much.
all right. lets say the worst thing happens: dubya demands your personal info right away. it is brought to the oval office where he sits, leafing through it for hours.
i can see how it would be a little disconcerting.
but frankly, its a fake issue. apart from leafing through it, theres nothing else dubya could do with it thats harmful to you.
compare that with the implications of the examples i brought: calling americans bloodthirsty is borderline illegal? what other criticisms might this be applied to? radio stations can be shut down because the government dislikes their content? i know you don't listen to fillion, but it could equally well be applied to any radio station in vancouver. maintaining that homosexuality is wrong can get you in trouble with the law? theres lots of traiditionally christian beliefs that fall under this rubric. why not outlaw the bible while you are at it? it contains some rather nasty anti-homosexual rhetoric after all.
don't reply to this by saying, as you have before, that fillion is bad, that sunera thobani was rude to the american ubc students, and that christians who maintain that homosexuality is bad make some gay people feel uncomfortable. all these things are true, but they are also irrelevant. speech that is "bad" is no more worthy of being banned than speech that is "good" - whenever you establish an agency to distinguish between "good" speech and "bad" speech, you are in the censorship business.
i'll concede that there is nobody else quite like you :)
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