Covenent Zone has an excellent summary of the Vancouver event during which Official Jews posed and answered the query, "Are we (meaning we Jews) too thin-skinned." As expected (by me, anyway) the conclusion was, "Nuh uh!"
The part that I found so disturbing--aside from the typical O.J. cluelessness about the boomerang effect of policing and punishing peoples' thoughts (the effect being that once you throw the sucker out there, it's inevitably coming back to hit you in the tuches)--is the revelation that the O.J.s can't wait for parliamentarians to come up with a hard and fast definition of "antisemitism." I doubt these politicians have either the knowledge or the insight to craft one, and their defition, if imprecise, has the potential to do more harm than good. By that I mean we could end up with something as poorly conceived as Section 13, whose fuzzy language--and the thinking behind it--has ending up doing incalculable damage to our body politic. (h/t BCF)
5 comments:
I must say that I in fact LIKE the idea of a definition being out there as long as it doesn't have the force of law. That way you can point to it when havign a debate in teh marketplace of ideas. My own submission to CPCCA was based on that point.
Guess we'l have to agree to disagree on that one, MM. I have little faith that parliamentarians will be able to arrive at a definition that's likely to satisfy the O.J.s and those Jews who detest the concept and reality of state censorship.
You're probably right--it may be impossible to craft. Btw did you read the CJC submissions? The MP's are very aware of the criticism and the free speech issue. based on the questions they asked and comments they made.
http://www.cjc.ca/canadian-parliamentary-coalition-to-combat-antisemitism/
No, I didn't read them. I did, however, watch that other parliamentary committee, the one that's looking into Sec. 13, try to get their collective noggins around the "nuances" of the free speech stuff. Can't say that I was blown away by their command of the issue.
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