Thursday, June 19, 2008
Um ... Vic? Let me explain the word "disgrace."
The Conservative Party of Canada's Vic Toews thinks former Supreme Court justice and current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour is a "disgrace."
No, Vic.
A sitting MP of Canada's self-proclaimed Christian morals and values party currently involved in an ugly divorce because he was fucking someone else and fathered her child? That's a "disgrace."
I'm so glad we could clear this up, Vic.
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34 comments:
It is a good habit to look for hypocrisy in others. Hypocrites, such as this heteronormative meanie you mention here, are predisposed other flaws of character and make up. You are correct in bringing this to the attention of your readers.
As progressives, however, we celebrate adultery as something that is not bad. Did not the divine Pierre Elliot Trudeau not decriminalize adultery? And, given the rumors about other members of Mister T's family, they practiced adultery too, in rebellion against oppressive post-Crusader Christian morality.
So, while the Vic unit is a hypocrite for supporting a party that does not support adultery, he is perfectly acceptable in our socialist paradise that celebrates adultery.
Our progressive state, through its unelected judiciary, correctly biased bureaucracy, and progressive NGO's on the government payroll, also embraces sodomy, buggery, and other 'sins' denounced by the evil Christians. It is time that equality of opportunity be administered, observed, and tinkered with, with more social spending, more social spending programs, and more jobs for taxspenders.
Shorter Fenris Badwulf: Trudeau did it, too. And, more importantly, he did it first. So there. Neener neener neener.
*yawn*
Exactly, lulu.
While the act of adultery is embraced by progressives, it is not by these heteronormatives. And for a heteronormative to commit adultery is hypocrisy. But is a progressive shags your spouse, that is ok. Perhaps the cause for a party or a poem.
Your blood pressure, fenris. You know what the doctor said.
Pipe down, Fenris, or you'll get the hose again.
Vic Toews: Fucking hypocrite. Literally.
Fenris? I don't know any "progressives" (your word, not mine) who celebrate adultery with either parties or poems. Perhaps you could provide supporting links?
However, if your issue is with "progressives" who take great pleasure in pointing out the unending hypocrisy of the "family values" conservatives who get caught in wide stances while acting as regular customers of gay, meth-dealing hookers while wearing not one but two wetsuits ... Well then, I can certainly understand your distress. No, really.
As progressives, however, we celebrate adultery
We? Feel free to use that word when you're celebrating adultery Fenris, but no-one is swallowing the lie that you're a 'progressive'.
Wow. Is he really advocating that we clog our courts and fill our prisons at taxpayer expense those who commit adultery and have consensual sex?
Those funny conservatives. One minute wining about how high taxes are and the next finding new ways to spend our money...
Fenris is playing the court jester. But he's wielding the satire a little too bluntly.
I honestly don't know why liberals/progressives/lefties are being saddled with the reputation of approving any and all instances of sexual libertinism.
I'm so fucking sick of it. I'm the biggest prude I know; nevertheless, I'm not going to spend all my time being an obnoxious moral scold about other people's behaviour, especially people I don't know and over whom I have no authority anyway. Part of growing up is making choices, facing the consequences, and gaining some wisdom.
In this case, it's Toews hypocrisy and the fact that his Commandments-shredding activity resulted in the birth of child that is objectionable...to his wife, most of all. The fact that he had the nerve to smear Louise Arbour in the House is just another indication of how deeply flawed and failed this man is.
Um ... folks? I read Fenris' comment as off-the-wall satire. Was I wrong?
I have no problem with open relationships. Never have had. But I don't publicly support a party/church/blogroll that is dead-set against them.
Hypocrisy, Fenris, that's what we're talking about here. Not a clash of values, but holding conflicting values simultaneously when it suits one's political purpose.
I hope it's satire...
It's entirely possible that Fenris is being satirical. Having said that, there's far too many "family values" conservatives who do feel that "progressives" are free-love-pushing, gay-abortion-forcing, dirty fucking hippies.
Which just reinforces my deeply-held belief that the majority of them are clueless, mouthbreathing hypocrites.
Let me reiterate:
1) Hypocrisy is not a valued trait in people, especially so with leaders.
2) Adultery is a not a valued trait in conservatives.
as such, the Cynic is correct in drawing attention to the hypocrisy of others.
However, to claim that adultery is a character flaw is not consistent with progressive (Bolshevik? Trotyskyite? Maoist? Streicherite?) positions. After all, Trudeau decriminalized it, blah blah blah.
Clear as mud, eh?
(Truly, lulu is correct. Many clueless mouthbreathing hypocrites see progressives as free-love-pushing, gay abortion forcing, dirty fucking hippies. And you may conjecture what opinions the mouthbreathers are developing over our daily fare of Youth Violence, and the weekly demands for more funding for programs that address Youth Violence)
Decriminalizing something that is seen as a character flaw is a perfectly progressive position. It's not like adultery doesn't have legal consequences (child support, divorce settlements, alimony), it's just that the consequences aren't criminal, and are attached to an act only if it actually has detrimental effects on others. Similar to how calls for marijuana decriminalization don't mean you can get high and crash into a pedestrian.
However, to claim that adultery is a character flaw is not consistent with progressive (Bolshevik? Trotyskyite? Maoist? Streicherite?) positions.
All progressives aren't Marxist holdovers from the 60's who maintain there's some sort of nobility in not "having a problem with open relationships" and who seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that these types of fluid commitments are precisely what has led to a sizable demographic of "conservatives" embracing authoritarianism to create structure for their lives that their parents were too self-centred to establish for them as children.
Fenris makes a good point, as his post aptly demonstrates the problem with black&white thinking.
Believing a behaviour should be legal isn't tantamount to approval of said behaviour -- it only means we realize and accept the fact that some behaviours are no business of the state.
OTOH, when a sanctimonious, "family values"-expounding jerk like Vic Toews gets caught with his pants down (ew), his hypocrisy should be ridiculed with great gusto.
So, Ti-Guy, the answer to a tendency towards authoritarianism would have been to counter it with more authoritarianism at the start?
Makes sense to me.
Jealousy is one the the dumbest emotions ever to be schooled into adults. I take it you went through the Catholic system?
So, Ti-Guy, the answer to a tendency towards authoritarianism would have been to counter it with more authoritarianism at the start?
There's a difference between authoritarianism and structure, but I wouldn't expect dessicated 60's holdovers to understand that, especially at the onset of dotage.
Jealousy is one the the dumbest emotions ever to be schooled into adults.
Do you actually think jealousy is schooled into people? Oh wait...I remember now; that's the rationalisation that permitted the misogynist male hippies to convince...well, women, most of all...that "free love" was evolved and that jealousy was a socially-imposed construct, rather than a basic human emotion that signals that something is wrong and needs changing.
I take it you went through the Catholic system?
Back to that, I see. Oh, well...
and that jealousy was a socially-imposed construct, rather than a basic human emotion that signals that something is wrong and needs changing.
Ah, that old moral intuition--the "yuck factor." Margaret Somerville would be proud.
Now, now...don't be peevish...
Anyway, next time you're looking for awful Catholics to compare me to, please venture further afield than the Irish...
Have we had this conversation before? I'm getting a distinct sense of déjà vue, as we anglophones say.
In any case, those tell-tale basic human emotions that "signal that something is wrong and needs changing" have been used to excuse every social ill I can think of--homophobia,for one.
PS: Who brought the Irish into it?
"Clear as mud, eh?"
are you free speecher, fenris? if so, let's see how you sophistry holds up wrt to section 13 and your beloved neo-nazis. you know; if you decriminalize hate speech, it must mean that you are a hate-spewing bigot, too....
KEvron
those tell-tale basic human emotions that "signal that something is wrong and needs changing" have been used to excuse every social ill I can think of--homophobia,for one.
Are you deliberately imposing an interpretation on what I've said to cast me as some sort of imperious moral scold marinating in Catholic dogma (just because I think dessicated hippie 'open relationship' crapola is dysfunctional...to which the trail of tears, broken hearts, betrayal, bitterness, loneliness and angry children I've seen over and over again attest) or are you insensate?
If people are dishonest with themselves and interpret their bigotry and hate as a signal that other people have to change, I can't help that.
It's the mark of the authoritarian to dismiss people's emotions as wrong. I don't fault the bigots for being bigots; I fault them for not growing.
Emotion is neither right nor wrong.
The capacity for emotion is human: but how we name emotions and shape them is social. I don't buy into the essentialist view of emotion: Envy, Jealousy, Joy, etc.
A lot went wrong in the 'sixties, but a lot of that was due to immaturity, one's ideology outstripping one's socialization. The worst part was the continuance of the double standard.
But yes, you are indeed sounding very much like a moral scold. Anything non-harmful between consenting adults is OK by me--including open relationships.
And you still haven't explained what any of this has to do with the Irish.
"I think dessicated hippie 'open relationship' crapola is dysfunctional"
sexual repression also manifests its own dysfunctions, and is practiced more widely.
KEvron
I don't buy into the essentialist view of emotion: Envy, Jealousy, Joy, etc.
What does this even mean?
I think Fenris is just trying to make it all about him.
It means 1) there are no universal emotions floating around in Plato's space; 2) emotions are not discrete things; 3) the capacity for what we call "emotion" is plastic, and shaped by the social 4) they are not, therefore, reliable guides as to what is "right" and "wrong."
So what are reliable guides to what is right or wrong? Someone else's claim that his or her judgements are based, not on emotion at all, but on pure reason or unassailable science?
An emotion, whether it's rational or not, is very real and should be taken as a signal for something, not rationalised into meaninglessness or mischaracterised as communicating something it isn't.
So what are reliable guides to what is right or wrong?
That's a good question, and one that you aren't the first to ask.
I can't answer it. But I suspect that "gut-feel" isn't very helpful in that task. As noted, our emotions are shaped from birth. There are people who shiver in disgust about homosexuality. There are people in an older generation who felt the same way about "race-mixing."
Of course emotion is real. But it behooves us to probe a little deeper. And that would have been good advice, by the way, to the 'sixties folks who thought conscious ideology would be sufficient to remake ourselves.
Open relationships aren't political. They probably don't work for most. But that's no reason to conjure up the ghosts of "free love" and its excesses, either.
I take it you aren't answering about the Irish matter because you found out that Somerville is Australian by birth?
No, it was because non-Catholic anglophones get a lot of their impressions of Catholicism from Irish Catholics, who have rather...er...complicated...issues with regard to sex.
I know Somerville is Australian...but I suspect her Catholicism is of the Irish tradition. I could be wrong...
Is this a homosexual blog, or a dirty muslim blog.
It has to be one or the other.
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