Unfortunately, the mere saying of it would get the post deleted.
What sort of "behaviour" is that? What have I done?In the case of your responses my posts, to which I was specifically referring, you have gone out of your way to misrepresent quite a number of things I have said, and then mocked / denigrated what I said, and myself, based on your misrepresentations of what I said.
In the case of the thread in general, you have behaved as if no one's concerns but your own are worth being expressed or considered, and no one but yourself has the intelligence / integrity to express any opinion worthy of bandwidth or consideration.
I have not seen ANYONE else in this thread behave in this way in conversation with you. No one has caricatured your words or opinions, no one has associated you or what you have said with unsavoury ideas or groups, no one has purported to be so vastly more qualified than you to address the issues at hand here that everything you say can be dismissed with a snort ... after it's been misrepresented.
Am I mistaken or is this not a "discussion" forum where people can engage in debate about current events?You do seem to be mistaken about something -- but it appears to be about what "discussion" consists of.
I fully understand that some issues prompt strong emotions and serious intellectual objection. I have never regarded this as being grounds for ridiculing or denigrating other people who have indicated that they are in fact interested in discussing the issues.
Let me be very clear: I do not see this as an issue of censorship.Good, because obviously at this point it isn't. Now, if an injunction were obtained, perhaps based on the Quebec Charter provisions I cited, it would indeed be an issue of censorship -- individuals would have succeeded in bringing the state apparatus into action to inhibit the free circulation of and that is why I inserted that element of the discussion. Private responses to things *can* become or prompt public responses, and that is one way in which it could happen in this particular instance.
There was actually a reason why I brought up the Quebec Charter, and this was it: to point out an implication of the private opinions, and also explain (the social / political choices within a culture) why such responses are possible. *Not*, I'm sure I actually have to point out, why
I believe such responses are proper, since I did not in fact express any opinion about that issue at all. I prefer that the facts I draw on in forming an opinion be known and understood and considered before anybody starts flinging opinions around.
Now the thing is ...
However, it does seem to be an issue of censoriousness... how exactly is the behaviour you object to any different from the behaviour you have exhibited? --
ignorant citizens vocally condemning a product of free expression of which they have no first-hand knowledge, based merely on hearsay, misguided principles, and goaded on by interest groupsThere is actually no objective standard by which your own behaviour could be excluded from that description. Make no mistake: a "long-time professional artist" is just as much a member of an "interest group" as anyone else is. Artists may have pure and high-minded reasons for objecting to interference in their free expression; they also have a pecuniary interest in not being interfered with. You are really not a paragon of virtue here, nor a source of unbiased opinion, nor an impartial arbiter of the virtue or merits of anyone else's opinion.
If you think that your point of view equips you to bring something to the discussion that others may not have considered, or considered adequately, then by all means offer it up. There should be no problem in doing so without misrepresenting what someone else is saying, or insulting him/her for saying it.
There also should be no problem in seeing and acknowledging the legitimacy of other people's concerns. It simply is not illegitimate to be concerned about the exploitation of individuals' misery for profit. Frankly, only psychopaths aren't.
If someone refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of someone else's concerns when those concerns really are the stuff of humanity, one can only suspect that s/he is afraid that his/her own position is so weak that it cannot stand against such concerns. "Agreeing to disagree" can in some instances be tacit admission of not having a leg to stand on; so, obviously, is the disingenuous discourse in which the nature of the disagreement is so misrepresented that the interlocutor becomes a straw concoction, full of evil intent and stupidity, when there is simply no basis for ascribing either characteristic.
And there really should also be no problem in recognizing nuance and fine distinction and grey areas, and acknowledging that different people will draw lines in different places because of the varying emphasis they place on various factors. "Agreeing to disagree" really *is* the solution to many problems in a society -- simply, not everyone is going to agree with where someone else draws a line, and the societal function is to come up with the best "agreement to disagree" solution.
All of that can be discussed. If you think that someone's freedom of expression interest should outweigh someone else's psychological or physical security interest, you're at liberty to say WHY, with all the facts and arguments you can muster for that purpose.
But carrying on about how the interest that one privileges just trumps the interest that someone else privileges, or achieving the same end by mischaracterizing the interest that one claims is trumped or the person who asserts that interest -- in an effort not to persuade, but to get one's own way -- just isn't democratic discourse; it's demagoguery. And it's inimical to democracy ... and all the things, like liberty, that we associate with it.
Essentially, shouting someone else down in the cause of free expression just isn't really clever.
Characterizing people
whose goodwill and honesty and intelligence you simply have no reason to doubt as "ignorant citizens vocally condemning a product of free expression of which they have no first-hand knowledge, based merely on hearsay, misguided principles, and goaded on by interest groups" just isn't consistent with democratic principles.
Uh sure, but what's the point? <of acknowledging the potential difference ...>
Well, if what and all you want is to get your own way: none.
If what you want is to engage in a discussion in which either or both parties might learn something, in terms of either facts or ways of looking at them, that might influence their thinking, then it's really just a good idea to aknowledge that they
just might have reasons for the things they say. You don't even have to acknowledge that the reasons are good ones. You just have to acknowledge that not everyone who disagrees with you is necessarily ignorant, judgmental and misguided and the willing dupe of some evil force.
Just one last illustrative point:
You then reveal your "expectations": since it has a TV sitcom star in the lead role, it therefore is probably not one of these "respectable films with artistic/social merit"... a questionable proposition, as I demonstrated above by referring to films of merit starring TV actors.You actually didn't demonstrate anything. You produced exceptions to a general rule, which I did not state as a rule that did not admit of exceptions. I stated what my
expectation would be. What I see *you* doing is claiming that the star of a thing called "That 70s Show", which I have never thought worthy of a minute of my time, who is now starring in a movie that
no one has claimed to have any particular social or artistic merit or even to be of any special entertainment value, is the precise equivalent of George Clooney, who was the star of a reasonably well-regarded drama and then starred in some films that were at the very least eminently clever and entertaining.
You have again simply twisted what I said. I did not say that no TV star has ever appeared in a "worthwhile" movie. I stated my expectations in respect of the movie
Karla, based both on what I have read about it (you know -- INFORMED OPINION, like what you say you have been trying to hand out and others should listen to) and what I know about the talent employed in it.
You do know what straw-person arguments are, right?
And I have to assume that you have noticed that I have expressed no opinion about whether, for instance, an injunction should be granted to prevent the screening of this movie, or a corporate sponsor should be pressured to accept/reject the decision to screen it/not screen it, or much of anything else.
I just don't bother doing that unless I have some confidence that the basis I present for my opinion is not going to be misrepresented by someone who has an interest in discrediting me and my opinions. And given the eagerness with which you have set about attempting to discredit people who disagree with you in this thread
without the least actual basis for doing that -- e.g. by characterizing them as ignorant and dim-witted and uncritical, and yourself as informed and virtuous -- I haven't yet seen much point.
Any time you want to take a shot at it, I'll be listening.
You could start by acknowledging the simple fact that the dignity of the individual *is* a value that Canadian society is founded on -- that's the principle behind the courts' rejection of denying same-sex couples access to the institution of marriage. And that individuals' interest in psychological security *is* recognized and protected in our society -- that's how the provision of the Charter guaranteeing "security of the person" has been interpreted; and that the state has a duty to prevent grave interferences in that security -- as is done in Canada through legislation prohibiting incitements of hatred of members of vulnerable groups, for instance.
*You* may be of the opinion that certain manifestations of these values, and certain mechanisms for promoting them and protecting the people they are meant to protect (like that last one I cited), are not desirable or legitimate. And you're free to argue those points.
But the thing is, loonytarianism just really is not the guiding principle of Canadian society. The notion that no one's liberty should be interfered with in someone else's interest just isn't the one that we apply. We do consider the public interest, and the interests of other individuals, when deciding what restrictions on individual choices and actions are legitimate and justified. You can argue against that too, of course, as a matter of principle. But as a matter of how things are decided in Canada, this is what trumps:
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
You may be of the view that any interference in free expression is not justified in a free and democratic society -- or perhaps that even if that standard is met, it is a bad standard.
However, I'm quite sure that you yourself draw a line somewhere. I expect that you would agree that laws against perjury are justified, and that laws against advertising snake oil to cure cancer are justified, and perhaps that laws against counselling the commission of murder are justified. Perhaps you draw an immovable line between "artistic expression" and those sorts of expressions. Perhaps you have good arguments to make, and facts to offer, to support that position. Perhaps you can even tell where to draw the line. Like ... maybe you can distinguish between torturing an animal to death for the sheer pleasure of it and torturing an animal to death for the sake of art.
I don't expect you or anyone else to be able to "prove" that your
opinions are "right". That's a nonsense. I simply expect you not to
pretend to have proved that someone else's are "wrong", by caricaturing the opinions, and denigrating the people who hold them when there really just isn't any basis for doing that.
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