Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Does this guy (I mean Windschuttle) realize ...
Windschuttle, beloved as he is by the Summer Symposium crowd, realises very little. He's just another bigoted hack getting by on bad scholarship courtesy of people who want to believe what he says.
I should note that he's a recanted Marxist. They're the ones you really want to watch out for ;-)
PS: My best insider story from Summer Symposium concerns various delegates dancing around a campfire singing, in all seriousness, 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Second best: when Chris Finlayson patiently explained the Treaty settlement process in terms of classic conservative values. Did not compute for a lot of people, I gather.
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Dear old Peter Cresswell declares himself the victim, on the basis that people are noticing that Breivik used exactly the same rhetoric as various other prominent wingnuts.
I commented, but I suppose any more would just be trolling. But seriously, that’s Olympic-standard disingenuousness going on there.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Whenever the issue of pseudonymity comes up, I remind myself that I am privileged to be able to use my real name online.
And as antsy as I can get about the way people use and abuse the word "privilege", that is absolutely an accurate and profound usage.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to James Green,
geek alert – FWIW it’s worth, the title “Lord” is always concatenated with the surname, so he is Robert, Lord Winston [of XX], never Lord Robert or Lord Robert Winston. In contrast, “Sir” and “Dame” attach to the forename, so it is always Sir Ed or Dame Susan, never Sir Hillary or Dame Devoy. Actually, I guess to be really geeky, I’d need to understand the reason for this.
I was wondering about this, but most people seem to called him "Lord Robert Winston". Where, then, does the "Professor" part go? I know it's full and correct to refer to "Professor Sir Peter Gluckman".
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to B Jones,
Antifeminism and anti-Islam have a lot of fellow travellers, under the broader heading of general conservatism. NZConservative and the NZCPR forum do a fair bit of both.
Muriel Newman at NZCPR has long been fond of the PC-is-a-Marxist-plot trope:
The central problem with political correctness is that even those, who - out of a true sense of right and wrong - strenuously oppose it, are not at all clear what it actually is. This is probably PC's greatest defence. Reduced to its essentials P.C is the polar counter-force to all those values, traditions, and institutions of the Western world that arose out of (true) Christianity. Therefore it is obvious why, in its modern form, it first appeared in Marxist/atheist Bolshevik Russia.
Political correctness is the inevitable result of applied secular humanism. It is the awful offspring of an unholy coupling of atheistic, or humanistic socialism, pseudo liberalism - and recently feminism and such things as "indigenous activism". The overall aim is to "deconstruct" the entire value system of Western Christendom on the grounds that it is "monoculturally Christian", "European", "patriarchal", 'Imperialistic" etc, and replace it with its own "Brave New World". This candidly stated intention is laughable or absurd only to the most superficial of observers. It must be taken with all seriousness, because it is demonstrably occurring before our very eyes!! Having virtually destroyed the spiritual foundations of old fashioned consideration for others and plain good manners, it now seeks to impose behavioural rules upon society on pain of consequences that become daily more obvious.
We used to pay her wages, you know.
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I am minded to recall that I was once -- for some reason -- browsing the forums at Trade Me, and was surprised to see one denizen warn another that I was an "extreme Marxist" and should not be listened to.
Frankly, calling me a Marxist is an insult to ... well, Giovanni for a start.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to nzlemming,
I do believe that free speech is a right, but it’s balanced by an obligation on the holder to use it responsibly. That’s the part that most claimants of their right seem to miss.
The more common belief is that they ought to be able to exercise their free speech without consequences -- including the consequence of a forthright response.
Generally held by old white guys who act shocked if they're called on their bullshit, as we saw in the case of Alasdair Thompson.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to JackElder,
I just got a letter saying “congratulations, you’re a citizen now”, which struck me as a fundamentally more British way of doing things.
Indeed. There's no need for any unnecessary fuss and flag-waving, is there?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to B Jones,
Goodness knows what the difference between keyboard pajamahedeen and people who take it into the real world is. I still don’t know where the Urewera crowd sit on that spectrum.
Certainly not all at the same point.
But a couple of them worried me: it's hard to dismiss an attempt to buy a grenade launcher. It'll be a worthwhile discussion when evidence finally gets before a court.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Yamis,
That reminds me of high school where there were typing classes. They were optional, but all us boys thought the classes were really for girls.
Typing classes would have been a lot more use to me than bloody woodwork ever was. OTOH, being rubbish at something was probably salutary, little smartarse that I probably was.