Why do the Republicans bother with this crude pantomime? Why not just hang a sign around their necks saying "we want the world to burn"?
Judith is so looking forward to it. She wrote:
Well this promises to be quite interesting, it will be a treat to be in the same room with Ted Cruz and Mark Steyn.
Interesting - no. Not unless you are researching climate disinformers and defamers in the USA. There'll be nothing but "uncertain", "IPCC", "models", "delay", "defame", "deny", "send the world to hell...as soon as possible".
A treat? I can't imagine even a hard-core science denier thinking it a treat to be in the same room as that bunch of lying creeps. Excuse me, but I feel nauseous.
PS - Going by the HW blog stats, the readership of Mark Steyn's blog is at least an order of magnitude greater than Anthony Watts' / Eric Worrall's WUWT blog. His readers are about the same low intellectual calibre however. The other oddity is that the "free speech" advocate doesn't allow any free speech on his blog. That must be immensely frustrating for his keyboard-bashing defamation-prone denialati fans.
Added by Sou - 3 December 2014
Sou, we differ, though maybe not so universally as you seem to imagine. I want to hear your views, I want to assay your arguments. I am open to discourse, enriched by it. I'm not supporting lying to the general public, if that proves to have been the case. But I do not support suppression of opinions simply because they are uncomfortable, irritating and confounding. Not even if they are potentially defamatory, because the converse is too dreadful and Orwellian to contemplate.
ReplyDeleteI have twice (thrice?) been invited to leave this forum because correspondents have made unwarranted assumptions about my motivations and beliefs. That's very ugly, Sou. That's witch burning.
@Paul Martin
ReplyDeleteIrrational? No. Let me deconstruct for you.
Trump is a typical example of an authoritarian who likes to reduce all ethics and issues to absolute values that can be shouted as meaningless slogans. "Freedom of speech" is one such slogan that trumps all nuance of any problem with people saying what they like, without thought for any consequences or hurt or harm.
The second feature of such people is they only like to apply these principles for themselves when it suits them. As soon as there is a perceived "other" then the rules do not apply any more. Hence Donald Trump's shutting down of the internet to stop free speech. And your denial to the HotWhopper blog writer here to not indulge in exercising her freedom: " rather than smearing everyone who thinks otherwise"
But then authoritarian types are not known for consistency of thought.
Well, Paul, you said you didn't like the article in which I wrote about Mark Steyn, who defamed Professor Mann, implying that you are in favour of someone who wilfully and persistently smears a person's reputation by telling lies about them. You wrongly think that "free speech" gives a newspaper columnist the right to falsely accuse a professional of fraud and falsely link him with a pedophile.
ReplyDeleteYou did support lying to the general public, because you argued against my article, which was calling out people for lying to the general public.
If now you are saying you don't support defamation and you don't support lying to the general public, that's an about face on your part.
You come here like others before you all gung ho, then complain when you are called to account for your opinions. You claim to want free speech but protest long and loudly implying that it's only you (and the lying deniers mentioned in my article) who are allowed (your version) of free speech. And when other people exercise their right of free speech in reply, you call it "witch burning".
All I can say is that you have a very muddled mixed up notion of "free speech". (I reckon you'd feel more comfortable at somewhere like HotCopper)
I could have been more succinct, and summed up Paul's comments as Phil Plait summed up Ted Cruz's circus - "it's Orwellian".
ReplyDelete+1.
ReplyDelete"Steyn's primary argument is about free speech..."
ReplyDeleteIs that meant to be a comedy post? One of the guys supporting Lamar Smith's campaign to silence climate scientists (those whose views are inconvenient to the fossil fuel industry) is now supposed to be an advocate of free speech? Oh my, talk about denial.
test - because I cannot see some posts
ReplyDeleteNow I can see three copies of my post. But they will disappear again if it does what it did before.
ReplyDeleteSorry ...