Stephen Roney's Blog, page 161
January 31, 2022
More from the House of Commons
House of Commons Today
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Jordan Peterson Weighs In
RIP Michael Lee Aday
A fond farewell to Meat Loaf. This live performance from Dutch TV gives some idea of his greatness. It was his ability to project the emotion; he put everything into it. He was a talented actor, and they say he had to keep a tank of oxygen backstage because he used up so much energy in a set.
Another casualty of COVID.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.January 30, 2022
More from Ottawa and across Canada
The mainstream media keep insisting Ottawa is now full of swastikas and Confederate flags, but never show any pictures of them. Meantime, folks supporting the convoy never show any. And the chant "freedom" you keep hearing would seem to be the opposite of a Nazi or a pro-slavery sentiment.
It seems you just cannot trust most people in authority any longer. This still comes as a shock. Something has gone seriously wrong.
Wait--I think I've finally found the Nazi. CTV is featuring a clip of a guy carrying a sign saying "Herr Trudeau--needle Nazi."
That may explain it.
A Voice for the Truckers
You can kind of see her point of view, surely...
India Gets Its Own Back
... against Justin Trudeau.
Just one reflection of how disastrously Trudeau's government has managed Canada's foreign affairs, and diminished Canada's respect throughout the world.
In other news, a recent poll in China found Canada was the one country most hated by the Chinese.
Canada.
The Canadian Convoy Song
Joni Mitchell and Neil Young Fight against Freedom of Speech
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Sadly, Joni Mitchell has now joined Neil Young in pulling her music off Spotify in protest against their hosting of Joe Rogan’s podcast. Specifically, this is because Rogan has expressed doubts about the safety of vaccines, and has had on his show a prominent doctor, Robert Malone, who questioned government vaccine policy.
Both Mitchell and Young accuse Spotify of spreading “misinformation” about COVID, and thereby causing deaths.
A left-leaning friend has also since announced on Facebook that he is terminating his subscription to Spotify, and is urging everyone else he knows to do the same.
They all seem bizarrely certain that Malone and Rogan are spreading falsehoods.
An obvious question: how do they know? Obviously, they are not medical doctors. Malone is an expert. How do they know that one expert is right, and the other one wrong?
Especially, how do they know without hearing both sides? For the logic of their demand to censor is that they and everyone else should not even listen to Rogan or Malone. How does only know without listening that someone will say or has said something false? How do you know before you listen that what someone is going to say will be the truth?
They might argue that most doctors disagree with Malone. But science does not work by popular vote. When Einstein published his Theory of Relativity, most physicists would have said he was wrong—and did at the time. By Young’s or Mitchell’s metric, Einstein’s paper—any groundbreaking scientific paper—would not have been published in the first place. Or the publication boycotted. Their position is profoundly anti-science.
And even if science did work by popular vote, neither Young nor Mitchell nor we know what that vote would be. There is no mechanism in place to take a poll of relevant scientists, or even to determine who counts as a relevant scientist. A petition was floated signed by 270 people claiming the relevant expertise; but such a petition has no evidentiary value, as any scientist could explain, since the survey sample was self-selected.
Science, and human progress, works by a free and open exchange of ideas, allowing for free and open debate, after which, everyone has the right to decide for themselves, barring some pressing social need to infringe that freedom. Mitchell, Young, and my friend are short-circuiting that necessary process. They are claiming the right to decide what is right and wrong not only for themselves, but for others. That is a profoundly egotistic and totalitarian impulse.
I am inclined to give creative artists wide leeway on politics. For some reason, the sort of mind that is good at the arts is rarely competent in political matters. Artists are naifs, and easily swayed emotionally by the last person they have talked to. This is what Keats called "negative capability." Similarly, Plato or Lao-Tzu are greatly insightful on individual spiritual matters, but their political thinking is horrifying. I am sad that Mitchell and Young are so badly tarnishing their legacy and reputation, and quite likely wrecking their income in retirement.
And, of course, some people may be influenced by them.
More generally, we are desperately ill-served that all high school students are not taught John Stuart Mill’s explanation of the need for freedom of speech.
“To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.”
A free society cannot exist with censorship.“To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.”
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Terry Fox Disrespected!
The banner on this interview is a fine example of fake news. “Terry Fox statue disrespected.” This is supposedly evidence that the anti-mandate protest in Ottawa is dangerous and out of control.
The “disrespect” as the videos show, is having draped the Fox statue with a Canadian flag.
If CTV or the Ottawa mayor consider the Canadian flag a mark of disrespect, what does this say of their attitude towards the Canadian flag?
Are we belittling our war dead by draping their coffins with the flag? Are we disrespecting our public buildings by flying it?
Is it that they are disrespecting a statue by clothing it? This is a traditional sign of respect for the subject of a statue world-wide. Many statues of Mary in Latin countries are given a new dress on important feast days. Statues of Csitigarbha (Jizo) in Japan are given mittens and wool hats that devotees weave themselves.
What right, then, does the mayor of Ottawa have to declare the practice disrespectful?
And how much did CTV or Ottawa’s mayor have to say about the recent pulling down or spray-painting of statues of Sir John A. Macdonald or Queen Victoria? Or the renaming of the Langevin Block? Isn’t their concern now the height of hypocrisy?
Hizzoner is also critical of the protesters as “disruptive” for entering local businesses without masks, and beyond their mandated covid capacity.
But this is demanding they observe the very restrictions they are protesting against. The whole point of civil disobedience is that you disobey. It is like allowing that Rosa Parks had a right to protest segregation, but she was being disruptive by refusing to yield her seat on the bus. Or that Gandhi had the right to his salt march, but only if he paid the salt tax. Yes, they may be breaking the law and be subject to arrest; but the mayor is missing or ignoring the point of the exercise.
Sadly, the mayor of Ottawa is not running for reelection. This deprives Ottawa’s citizens of the opportunity to vote him out of office.
But at least they can stop watching CTV.'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
