It’s a damn shame. There were people in Ottawa and no doubt elsewhere who deplore positions espoused by Ms. Coulter. I happen to be one of them but I am not one who wants to curtail her right to free speech. It seems to me that we need to foster a society that isn’t afraid of words…that makes intelligent judgements about what words mean and what are the intentions of those who utter them. This is precisely the reason that we develop laws to prosecute people who incite and who promote hatred and acts of prejudicial violence against others. It struck me as wrong-headed that students and others congratulated themselves for preventing Ms. Coulter’s speaking engagement in Ottawa. I applaud their anger and resistance to the incendiary and racist remarks of the unfortunate creature but I think she should have been allowed to speak and if there was cause or reason in her speech to believe it contravened our laws, she should have been charged. As events unfolded she gained a lot of publicity, found reason to bash Ottawa as backward and reinforced the already rabid prejudices of her followers. And…that’s a damn shame.
This isn’t a sermon. We live in polarized times. On almost any issue the lines are etched in black and white and the emotional investment on both sides of any argument carries the baggage of dozens of other issues addressed and unaddressed. Very often our leaders are sponsors of polarization rather than reconcialiation. Reasoned debate is getting harder to find as political parties resort to attack ads and obfuscation to avoid explaining policy or positions. Ordinary people have more technology and more sophisticated media at their disposal now than they’ve ever had but trying to research any given issue is time consuming and confusing as the internet and network media contain the distortions and bias of pro and con camps and reflect ideologies that are often suspect. It’s difficult to know what information to trust and the fall back is to pick a side. As a consequence more people are becoming disenfranchized and isolated…not only here in Canada but around the world in the so-called democratic industrialized nations. In elections over recent years voter turn out has dropped like a rock…and the poll end results show splits that are close to fifty-fifty. Results show that people are almost evenly divided platform by platform. It seems to me that this indicates a deep fault-line of dissatisfacton and intransigence. On even inconsequential issues there seems to be too much at stake….while at the same time paradoxically, people increasingly feel that their opinion has no value. The frustration of consistent failure to get their point across builds itself into the next issue to arise. These are the new failures of democracy and Ann Coulter is only one small face of it…and she should be an insignificant part of it. Instead she has become yet another match to light the fuses of all those frustrated and angry people. And that’s a damn shame.
Tags: Despatches
Chagal4's Blog 
Leave a comment