A serious question for Sam Stone on Factual Errors

Are there American conservatives who frequent left-leaning Canadian message boards/forums to harangue the locals about the Trudeau government?

Apparently Trudeau thinks some of his troubles stem from U.S. MAGAite influence, though the bitching I see on social media all seems to come from pissed-off and off-center Canadians.*

*including Her Majesty Queen Romana Didulo, who admittedly is out there a bit further than most.

Funny you mention this. In a lot of newspaper comment sites, there are frequent comments from folks who appear to be Americans doing just this. Often it’s in an article that has nothing whatsoever to do with federal politics. It could be about a cat stuck up a tree, and I’ll open the comments just to see how many posts it takes before someone blames Trudeau. The over/under is … 5

I think North Americans follow media links all over the place, and read Canadian sites just like Canadians read American sites. But America matters far more to Canadians than Canada means to Americans, so we are forced to pay attention. Economically, we are tied to American decisions, especially around trade and borders. As the old saying goes, when America sneezes Canada catches a cold.

Canadians are inundated with American media, and our online experiences is dominated by Americans. And there is no real Canadian social media equivalent of Twitter, Facebook, etc. There really are very few borders in the online world.

Obsessive interest in U.S. affairs by some Canadian scolds has a lot more to do with boredom and (for those left of Sam on the political spectrum) resentment over insufficient worship of CanaUtopia.

I feel for you in your angst that Canada is just a helpless vassal of the U.S. :cry:

American decisions especially around trade and borders?
Why didn’t you say that in the first place? I mean I can totally see the significant role that Hunter Biden’s laptop and his dick pics play in those issues!

Really? You are going to snark over a totally non-controversial statement that the US affects Canada more than Canada affects thr US?

Imsaid nothing about Canada being a ‘helpless Vassal’. I said Canadians pay more attention to America because what happens in America affects us.

I’m a proud American but I’ll admit that my country would be better off if there was a bit more influence from Canada.

(I mean my country could learn a few things from its northern neighbor.)

Canada certainly has its own issues (and crazies), but overall I’d say Canada’s values align more closely with my own than America’s do. I sometimes daydream about “defecting.”

Anyway, I agree.

This is just the o.p. poisoning the well so when the facts pile up against his premise and people illustrate what a would-be despot Milei actually is, he can claim that it is just because the confederacy of Internet dunces are against him and deliberately dragging the thread down just as he predicted it would.

Stranger

I don’t have ‘premise’. I thought the speech was i,portant for various reasons, and I thought people would appreciate seeing a,different perspective.

Last week I was at a flower show, and I brought in a dog turd in a coffee cup. I thought that people would appreciate a different perspective of beauty.

Boy, was I wrong. Those people sure did not like that and called me names. A lot of group-think going on with those people.

Horticulturalists are a hive mind, don’t you know? What did you expect, look at what pollinates their plants.

But hey, I just realized Sam talking about one of his favorite subjects, libertarianism, and speeches reminded me of Ayn Rand’s 60-page speech delivered through the voice of the character John Galt in the novel Atlas Shrugged which I recently shamed him for not living up to the ideals of, which made me realize, I don’t think I’ve ever asked him this actual, honest to god serious question.

So, sincere question @Sam_Stone: you consider yourself a libertarian or at least agree with its tenets as I understand things, correct? And my apologies if I’ve misunderstood your feelings on the matter. But if so, and hey, even if not so, how do you square being a libertarian with Ayn Rand’s open disgust for libertarians?

In a 1981 interview, Rand described libertarians as “a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people” who “plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose”.

I actually understand both points of view. Ayn Rand disliked Libertrians because her vision of mankind was that people should be free, but to be free they needed to cultivate certain values and habits. In short, freedom can’t work without virtuous people. Or at least, in return for freedom people have a responsibility to behave properly.

I would argue that if freedom requires everyone to be an ubermensch, we, might as well just give up. And it doesn’t. Evolution and emergence creates the incentives that keep people doing things that benefit society.

Libertrians would simply say, “freedom means you don’t get to tell me how I should behave.” In the context of the time she was writing that, there were a lot of libertarians in the ‘counterculture’, and the accusation against them was that they were just conservatives who wanted to do drugs and have a lot of sex. That repulsed Rand. There was also some truth to it.

In the same way, Rand thought “National Review” was the most dangerous magazine in America, because the magazine attempted to tie the right to religion, and Rand was a militant atheist, She was also an intolerant, nasty woman who used her philosophy to bizarrely justify her own obnoxious behaviour. She didn’t get along with anyone, and reserved most of her hatred for the people on her side of the ideological divide who still would not accept Objectivism.

My own view is more informed by information theory and complexity theory. Hayek would be closest to a major influence. And he was no Libertarian, and he was not a conservative. He believed in a social safety net, as do I. But he understood the folly of central planning and industrial policy, and understood that complex systems need to be made up of free agents operating in a rules based system. Such systems cannot be predicted, planned, or controlled. Trying to do it results in unintended consequences and often the opposite of what you wanted.

I would argue that constitutions set the basic rules, and within that set of rules people should be left to their own choices, allowed to keep their own property subject to taxation required to keep the government operating, etc.

This is also why free speech must be absolute. You can’t have truly independent actors if central authorities are modifying or limiting the information they are allowed to see. And I would never trust those authorities to not tip the playing field in their preferred direction, which adds a giant common mode failure mode to otherwise antifragile systems.

In my world, if you want progress you have to convince the people to do it voluntarily. Forcing major change in an evolved complex system is always a bad idea. It has to happen organically, at its own rate. Forcing change or forcing the rate to increase is a shock to the system, and that’s bad. That’s when you get unintended consequences.

This must be exhausting.

So, no protection from libel or slander. Shouting fire in a crowded theater is perfectly fine no matter how many are trampled as a result?

No thanks. I rather prefer the concept that your rights end where mine begin.

Speech needs to be free. Consequences from speech, not necessarily. Laws against slander and libel are totally fine. Also, laws against speech inciting imminent violence, auch as, “Everyone jump that guy and beat him!” But there should be no such thing as a ‘hate speech’ exception to free speech:

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a passionate defender of free speech, Don’t take “Freedom of Thought” literally. He includes in that the freedom to communicate those thoughts to others.

I think I know why Sam is suddenly so deeply invested in Argentinian politics;

And the followup, which I’ll spoiler-tag because it’s NSFW unless you’re the Most Special Boy to whom the rules that us mere mortals live by do not apply.

Who has advocated for a “hate speech” exception to free speech?

Not to join the pile-on here, but I do find it curious that you, a right-wing nutbar, refuse to say a single word in defense of the right-wing nutbar currently running your province because this is “the pit”, yet you have no problem writing an extensive dissertation in defense of libertarianism and free speech absolutism here in the exact same thread, in the pit.

Might this be because it’s easier to defend lunatic ideologies in the idealized abstract, as right-wing nutbars are wont to do, than it is to defend the real-world consequences of their idiocy? Or are you just more invested in American (and now, Argentinian) politics than in your own home province?

Sorry, but this is a bit of hot button with me because this lunatic and her “Alberta sovereignty” aspirations directly threaten my own rights as a citizen of Canada. The interests that you have in Hunter Biden’s laptop or Argentinian politics are less clear.

To be fair, laws against hate speech are not only “advocated” but are the law of the land in Canada, where Sam resides (and also in many other civilized countries). They are rarely used here, and only in extreme situations, as intended, and I agree with them and with how they’ve been applied.

Of particular note is this:

The Supreme Court of Canada has rejected constitutional challenges to the hate propaganda offences in the Criminal Code, and has also rejected challenges to the hate publication provisions in human rights legislation. The Court has ruled that while the provisions restrict freedom of expression, the restrictions are justifiable under section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.