Canadian Provost warns Ann Coulter about the dangers of "free speech"

Maybe there was enough pressure from the student body that the provost felt it would be irresponsible to not convey their opinion up front. Plus, it's more ethical to warn her up front about the slightly different limits of free speech rather than to "trick" her into saying something stupid (as if that were necessary) that might have legal repercussions.

Love this quote:

"They just can't debate Ann Coulter, so they are trying to shut her up."

Well, no. You can't debate Ann Coulter because it would be like debating a Dadaist on why the sugarsnorklefickle 70,300.00 burglefish$ camera.

This may be the best thing ever said on CHUD.

Thanks for the sig Dave, my cheeks still hurt.

I'm getting so fed up of every other country in the world being expected to tolerate loudmouth assholes popping in for a visit just because they're American. I get it - our privacy and FOS laws, and Canada's, aren't as free as America's. We haven't collapsed as countries because of it, and as an added bonus we don't money sloshing around our political system under the guise of exercising those rights. We're not oppressive regimes, American pundits!

If she doesn't like it she can stay home. At least she doesn't run the risk of being kidnaped and sent away for a year to be tortured. That's a trick freedom-loving America pulls, not us.

And my standing offer (Ezra Levant can go fuck himself) still stands. Asking someone to behave themselves and not act like a Republican is hardly fascist. He's just sad because he's her only fan.

Yeah, that's why she's there. Because of the narrow range of allowed thought. The right is a bunch of whining ninnies.

ETA: To clarify, I refer to Ezra Levant, Canadian and fellow alumnus. He is the ninny to whom I refer. And although he's a ninny, I believe "that's gross" would in fact make a fine introduction for Ann Coulter. He certainly hasn't lost his panache with the English language.

It's funny, I saw it in the paper this morning that she was in town, and now I'm trying to score a ticket. Would love to see her walk into that trap regarding our hate speech laws.

Hang on a sec, that's not what's going to happen to her in Canada either, they just have these wacky laws about specific forms of hate speech being prosecutable. Sorry if that seems socialist or nazi or whatever but it seems pretty reasonable to me.

Location doesn't matter.

I guess at least she's being warned that she's going into a lesser free speech zone.[/QUOTE]

It must be terrible for conservatives that there are places where inciting violence is not allowed. Not that she's likely to say anything out of line. It's about as easy to get busted for a hate-speech crime as it is to get charged with slander.

Gosh, I sure wished I lived in the United Free Speech Zone of America, where I can't buy a Cuban cigar and a trivial amount of marijuana could land me in jail for ten years. I envy your freedom, especially that enjoyed by the 10% of your population you've imprisoned.

Someone should run up on stage, bend her over and fuck her up the ass and yell "Might makes right!"....right-wingers love that kinda stuff

When your amazing awesome free speech laws result in people like Glenn Beck becoming legitimate public figureheads I think you've kind of conceded the moral high-ground.

Your oppressive government made you say that. We understand. We'll be building an underground railroad just as soon as our Federal Grant comes through.

Keep hope alive, eh?!

Bring Mountain Dew I miss it so much

Dude, have you tried Diet Mountain Dew? You have no idea what you are missing. All the Dew taste with even more caffiene and no sugar. It's like the soft drink was created by Jesus himself.

For a country that prides itself on how well it does free speech and nurturing polyphony in public debate your actual political system is peculiarly skewed.

I sweraring illegal in Mountain Dew?

man what

You're under arrest.

By the way, I'm kinda torn about our hate speech laws, but Ann Coulter is not the example to turn to. And no, she's not going to be arrested. How often do people get arrested for hate speech up here?

Weird, isn't it? I'm tempted to say it's an issue distinct from our freedom of speech that our discourse tends toward the simplistic, dualistic, and dunderheaded, but I don't know. Without regulated speech, some people head right for the extremes and others eat it right up.

Here's a thought - the problem isn't the freedom of speech, but the combination of freedom of speech with an equal emphasis on the importance of unregulated private industry. As it says in the article Capitan linked, freedom of speech is hypothetically an important means of guaranteeing that minority voices aren't persecuted. Unfortunately, certain minority voices (say, extremist conservatives like Coulter and Beck) have bigger bucks than others.

We need one more pretty sizable wrinkle thrown in here - the combination of free speech, an emphasis on unregulated private industry, and a miserable, miserable public education system that's cranking out citizens who never really make it beyond the most elementary understanding of civics, literacy, and rhetoric.

I saw all of these things tied up in a beautiful little knot in one of my classes last week, when a handful of my students passionately defended (read: it got surprisingly loud) Google's right to not censor or make a statement on hate speech that turns up in their search results. When I demonstrated that Google's policy on such matters are utterly inconsistent, they flipped out. They wanted to argue inconsistency, not ethics, and from a sadly misunderstood "American" perspective only. It was alarming and entirely expected.

Pardon me if I come off like a douche. But I think that America's views on free speech would have been drastically different if either of these two tings were different. First the US haven't really suffered at all at the hands of extremists. This tends to shed a different light on what is and what isn't actual political debate. Second, if the political establishment hadn't been so successful in uprooting and marginalizing the entire left half of the political spectrum. The assurance that the political system in the US can't really change in a radical way makes you more forgiving towards more extreme speech. In countries with a more open political system there is always the possibility of major and quite possibly catastrophic change if the extremes of the spectrum are allowed to go unchecked.

Yeah, this. I tried to explain logical fallacies and how they pertain to the healthcare debate to a guy I know (he's a closet Teabagger, sadly, so I've limited contact with him since the whole HCR debacle began) and he looked at me like I had just wrapped my head in someone else's skin and started screaming "More Than A Feeling" at the top of my lungs.

In short: I think we're screwed, y'all.

Note to all college students within the sound of my voice - Professors and instructors can't really look at the students in their classes spewing nonsense and say, "You sound as if you've been dropped on your head at some point. Shut up." It's counterproductive. As such, if you are sitting in a classroom in which someone is shooting off his/her mouth, please speak up. If you start the fight, us instructor types can just sit back and let you say what everyone else in the room is thinking. It's debate. It's a teachable moment. Knock yourselves out.

But this is what usually happens: Three sections of this class, three, and I had one student in one section who made the goddamn leap and said, "Well, if we can't expect these big corporations to act ethically, then we need to work to behave ethically and educate our people in our own communities" while everyone else was busy fuming about the rights of corporations.

You could practically see the little cartoon hearts forming around my head.

Fun anecdote: I got screamed at by a fellow student for doing this exact same thing. The teacher had to ask him to leave the class because he just lost his shit and started insulting me just because I dared to imply that the life of an undocumented day laborer might not be all peaches and cream like he thought it was, and he got irritated that I was "picking on him" because I was arguing with his increasingly stupid answers.

Apparently the guy thought that standing on a streetcorner all day with no health insurance/benefits/job security waiting for a one-in-1000 job opportunity that could be feast/famine/fucked was living high on the hog.

I assure you that teacher still talks about you. Over drinks. Many, many drinks.

To bring it back around, an analogy -

Jake : Moron in his class :: The Canadian Government : Ann Coulter.

This fucking dorkus got so pissed off that he waited 30 minutes for the class to end, walked up to me outside the classroom, and started yelling at me AGAIN. I grabbed him by his backpack straps, steered him over to the wall, and calmly told him something to the effect of "back off and grow a spine or else you're never going to make it anywhere in life", and then the teacher came outside to ask if everything was okay. I should have just nodded at her and kissed him just to piss him off even more.

The last criminal case on free speech, that I know of, happened fairly recently here - a girl in elementary school was covered in racist tattoos by her parents. It was sort of controversial, to some, that she was placed in care away from her family, but I think it can be argued that such abuse is endangering the child. Same with something Ann Coulter might say, regarding possible endangerment. She has the opportunity to speak in Canada, but some of what she says don't contribute to the public discourse at all. Sometimes the rhetoric may turn the switch on a nutcase. And while none of this can be known definitively - Universities across both nations already censor, or don't include, unwanted viewpoints. I think it's fairly hypocritical to not accept that we all do this - I know there are a couple racist groups, especially in Alberta, who would love to be heard on a school podium. Or racist groups elsewhere.

As an example: you don't interview a klansman on the news about Rodney King. You can talk all about how "no opinion is morally right" and "dissenting voices have a right to be heard, despite how we may or may not agree with them", but this is intellectual insanity. Some 'arguments' are better argued than others, and to let everything in is to deteriorate this fact. And then commentators will be stuck spending their entire careers criticizing these biased persons, who will never be convinced otherwise, because it's as if they are in the same room. See: Bill Maher.

I was appalled by how many dumbass "friends" on Facebook posted status updates yesterday that not only misunderstood the passed health care reform bill (for or against, they all gave it WAY too much credit), but were arguing for the rights of corporations and cried for no government competitiveness with business. I don't get it.

The government isn't competing with business, it's regulating business. Everyone can agree that the ultimate goal of any business is to make a profit. Without government regulation, what's going to stop them from turning a profit while denying individual rights?

Why are so many individuals arguing in favor for corporate rights? Do people think of themselves as corporations now? Do they all assume they're going to be CEO's some day?

And I guess I know why when I urgently posted status updates, asking "friends" to write letters to congress about the SCOTUS' decision to allow corporations to donate limitless amounts of money in an election, nobody responded.

In short; people are stupid.

Yes. This and also some Randroid bullshit about the free market.

While in the same breath they'd complain about the corporate bailout (which they should). Does not compute.

I guess we all can agree that freedom of speech as a concept is among the most important human rights. We of all people here in Germany did learn one or two things about it in 45 by our liberators.

But the problem is that this concept does not live up to it´s importance when happening in a vacuum. The importance is negated if the right is not used. And herein I do see a problem judging by the political culture in the states. It is not enough to uphold this concept by screaming loudly. If inane or dangerous ideas are not confronted on an intellectual level and lead to a debate about the issue at hand, the concept itself is empty shell.

Given what I have seen in th last year regarding all the falsehood and outright lies that got spewed on major networks without fact check and without counter points to balance the view there is no pay off. And here education and the media come into play as well, because they should equip you with your weapons of choice for public discurse instead of being lead on a ring in the nose by talking points and us vs. them mentality.

They have a fucked up idea of virtue. That the businessman worked hard and deserves what he's earned. That anyone can be the businessman if they try hard enough. And what's absurd is that even students who are pursuing a professional career (read: not about to turn into capitalists) will back up the capitalists relentlessly, because they at least hope to be hired, so they feel worthy of the capitalist.

EDIT: I guess, I haven't quite worked out that last bit.

Heh. The constant drum in business school is that it's not what you know, it's who you know. The hard work is metaphorically sucking cock.

Coulter tells Ont. Muslim student to 'take a camel'

http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/loca...hub=OttawaHome

We know that by "Muslim" the conservatives actually mean "Arab", but she didn't literally say something criminal, I think. What an ugly person, though. So apparently some friends of mine shouldn't have a right to fly on an airplane. Why would they bother inviting her? Argh...VERY PC, despite her blather against a PC mindset, and not to mention her victim mentality - that she believes she experienced a hate crime. But this is nothing new.

Couldn't agree more. However, the "people" should also have the right to pummel the hate-speaker into a quivering pile of purple jello if they see fit (without fear of reprisal).

One can only hope Rick Mercer was there.

Less often than people are arrested for slander. People not in the know confuse hate speech with not being nice.

I can see the headlines on Fox now "Gay socialist Canadian mocks proud American"

A-hem...Queer-bec, you have to get it right, Troy.

Coulter shouldn't even make the news anymore. She's already set the bar at "fucking insane & bigoted" ... so anything less is boring. She should either have a sex tape or die ironically somehow to get back in the papers.

Also, her columns have contracted in terms of circulation and her books sell less copy with every release.

What instance? As far as I know she hasn't been charged with anything, or even accused.

They're doing her a favour, warning her she could get into some trouble if she lets her vile nature get the better of her mouth (or more appropriately for a life form such as her, mouth-parts). Most people don't need such warnings, but most people don't go on national news and wish death on the staff of the New York Times or suggest liberals should be gunned down in the street.

I don't need to justify it. I was pointing out the hypocrisy of the whole thing. There are plenty of things I can do you cannot, so talk of how oppressive Canada is does not wash.


Dunno. Laws, maybe.