Hey Rabblers and Babblers: Lookie What I Found

Who doesn't love a good pile-on? I'm not sure I have the answer to that question. But I'll tell you who does love a good pile-on: Rabble.ca.

In the days since Tom Flanagan's outrageous comments on child pornography, many Rabble commentators have taken it upon themselves to gloat about it. Flanagan has since explained his comments -- an explanation that I find satisfactory only to degrees -- something that the pile-on artists at Rabble will certainly ignore.

You would almost think that on the subject of child pornography Rabble.ca was pure as the driven snow. If you actually believed this, you might have been stunned to stumble upon this on their "Babble" forum, as I did:

It's hard to say what's more stunning about this: the paranoid idea that legislating against child pornography is a means of indirectly targeting the LGBT community, or the tacit suggestion in these comments that it's a-OK for the LGBT community to depict children sexually, even if that were something especially prevalent within that community. Personally, I severely doubt that it is.

Certainly, it could be argued that Rabble isn't responsible for everything posted on its forums. Personally, I wouldn't accept that argument -- it's well-known that Rabble moderators can be downright stormtrooper-ish when expunging anyone who doesn't slavishly share their personal views.

So is Rabble soft on child pornography? Soft on producers? Based on the comments above, it may seem that it depends on who they think is producing it.

The Two Faces of L'Affair Tom Flanagan

Did you hear? University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan said something abominable.

He really did.

It's been enough to sever his ties with the Conservative Party of Canada, the Wildrose Alliance Party, and the CBC. It's also been enough to put him on leave from the University of Calgary.

In a sense, it's all justifiable. But there's also more to it than those braying most loudly about it -- the left -- are saying.

First off, here's what they're unquestionably right about: what Flanagan said was truly awful. More than anything, it was truly idiotic. Looking at child pornography is not really a victimless crime. Possession of it is prohibited for an and obvious excellent reason. For most people, this goes without saying, mostly because the reasons are so utterly and perfectly self-evident.

Flanagan is entitled to his opinion, and there is even an argument for it, even if that argument is incorrect. Yet it's an argument that could, from time to time, be heard from a libertarian. The argument, as Flanagan presents it, is that the act of looking at child pornography does not itself harm anyone. So as such, it does no good to punish someone for the mere possession of child pornography.

Right? Right?

Wrong.

To make this argument is to overlook the fact that the consumption of child pornography is reflective of the demand for child pornography. Flanagan is certainly enough of an economist to know that demand drives supply.Ergo, the consumption of child pornography directly encourages the sexual abuse of children by creating the demand for it. Separating the harm done by the producers from the appetites of the consumers is where Flanagan's argument meets its ultimate moral failure.

So is the Canadian left -- who despise Flanagan as they despise few others -- at liberty to condemn him? Certainly, they are. Are they in any position to?

Actually, no.

As it turns out, Flanagan's argument in opposition to the punishment is not that different than the one that the left frequently applies to drug users: that the use of drugs shouldn't be punished. The use of drugs harms no one aside from the user. This is the portion of the argument that they share with libertarians. But the left takes it one step further: that the user is themselves also a victim, and so should be largely excused from any criminal sanction.

But is a drug user any more insulated from the harm associated with the production of their product than is the user of child pornography? At least in terms of hard drug users, they can't. People are often killed by the cartels that produce hard drugs. They aren't above using slave labour. Those locals who they cannot buy off with a few baubles live under a state of constant intimidation.

So if the child pornography user is not insulated from the harm their product does, nor should hard drug users. Yet we provide safe injection sites for drug addicts in the name of "harm reduction." We certainly don't provide pedophiles with access to previously-existing child pornography in the name of preventing the continuing harm of children. Nor should we.

So is the left justified in the sheer bombast of their outrage over Flanagan's remarks? I don't think so. When you look at what Tom Flanagan has to say about child pornography -- as wrong as it is -- it isn't all that different than what the left says about drugs.

Of course, they gain no rhetorical advantage whatsoever from that. So of course they'll never admit it.

When Demagoguery Backfires, We Call It Karma

If you, as I, follow #CdnPoli, you may have noticed something missing recently: it seems that Tobold Rollo (aka Blinky McFlopsweat, aka Troll-bold, aka @SettlerColonial) has folded his social media tent. At least for now.

The #CdnPoli Twitterverse, as well as the #IdleNoMore and #INM Twitterverses, have been wrought with messages lamenting the departure of Blinky from Twitter. Apparently, it's all a great shame.

Unless, of course, you consider why he's apparently chosen to make this decision:

"Last night my observations about land defence were ridiculed or countered with accusations of unchecked privileged [sic], arrogance, and malicious intent. This suggests to me that social media itself is insulating a serious problem. If calling for protection of the land is now cause for derision and accusation, I’m skeptical about the the possibility of affecting lasting change through social media. That said, I apologize if anyone was offended by these observations."

Judging from how Troll-bold chose to conduct himself on Twitter in particular, who could have ever imagined that anyone could accuse him of arrogance or malicious intent? Particularly after he pathetically stooped to the level of digging up a seven-year-old unflattering photograph of myself for the purpose of malicious ridicule, the latter complaint particularly inspired me to chuckle at his butt-hurt.

But then there's the grand irony of it all. See, Troll-bold is an adherent of post-colonial theory. Post-colonial theory is a critical theory, deeply rooted in the Marxist Frankfurt school. As one of its defensive tactics, post-colonial theory appropriated the notion of "white privilege theory." (White privilege theory was developed as a racial conspiracy theory by communists, and was later effectively disproven by communists.) Post-colonial theorists now use the notion of "privilege" to discredit those with whom they disagree on the basis of race, class, and even gender.

This has been one of Troll-bold's favourite tactics. And whereas once he gleefully used the accusation of privilege against opponents of #IdleNoMore, he is now apparently entirely stunned when it was, in turn, used against him. Apparently so stunned that it's prompted him to entirely abandon social media as his favoured medium of trolliing -- er, I mean "satire."

The remarkable thing about it is that it's nothing more and nothing less than his own tactics being used against him, apparently by the very same people he meant to use it in support of. He set the standard, apparently never bothering to stop and consider that he, as a white male PhD student -- who has apparently been able to afford a permanent career as a full-time student while raising a young family -- precisely fits the bill of someone he himself would describe as "privileged."

He was setting himself up for it the entire time. Then, someone perfectly positioned for it -- someone who did not fit the bill of someone Troll-bold would consider "privileged" -- saw fit to come along and knock him down.

Couldn't have happened to a more suitable candidate.

Now, in the wake of this, Troll-bold is off somewhere licking his wounds. And you may wonder: will he take it upon himself to reconsider the toxic ideas he's promoted, realizing just how easily they can be used against him as against those who disagree with him?

Well, Troll-bold's not as nearly bright as billed (mostly by himself). So I fully suspect that the answer to this question will be "no." Nor is this the end of him. Someone with an ego as large and unjustifiable as Troll-bold can never bring themselves to deprive themselves of attention for very long. He'll be back, and it'll be just as big a trainwreck as it was before.

And it couldn't happen to a more suitable candidate.

Settling the Score With Madeline Smith

Sometimes life throws you remarkable little curve balls. Things that show you that you're either more or less important than you thought you were.

The one thrown my way yesterday by one Madeline Smith, Managing Editor of the University of Alberta Gateway -- the publication with which I plied by journalistic trade for four years -- was certainly one of the former.

In the midst of a pitiful meltdown by Tolbold Rollo (aka Blinky McFlopsweat, aka Troll-bold, aka @SettlerColonial), Ms Smith made the decision to interject herself. Unfortunately, she couldn't resist the urge to say something that was trumped-up at most, and made-up at least. Via her Twitter account:

What Smith says is entirely false. I can't pretend to have never had any disagreements with a Gateway opinion editor, but I can describe the most significant of them -- the ones which, to my eye, Smith seems to be referring -- as such:

In one case an editor informed me that my work wouldn't be printed unless I burned a day of my summer work schedule to travel all the way from Lloydminster, SK to Edmonton, AB to have a new headshot taken by Gateway photographers. When my offer to have a new headshot taken by a local photographer -- saving me the time and expense, including in foregone wages, of traveling to Edmonton -- was rebuffed, I told him to go pound sand.

I've never considered this to have been a legitimate issue, merely an excuse for that particular editor -- who will go unnamed -- to push out a writer that he didn't like. In light of my rebuked efforts to compromise with him, I feel this conclusion to be entirely justified.

In the latter case an editor -- who had described "perogies, not prorogue" signs as comic genius and wanted to print more articles about, of all things, bacon -- informed me that debate would not be tolerated in Gateway opinion meetings, as the younglings didn't appreciate their opinions being challenged. This was something of a new policy at Gateway opinion, and as I consider the combination of a bully pulpit with a shrinking violet to be specifically toxic, I also told her to go pound sand.

Banned twice? That's certainly not an even-handed description of the events in question. But I suppose that must be the fun thing about having a dispute with someone when you hold all the power -- afterward, you can tell it however you want it, regardless of however it really was.

In my subjective opinion, this kind of behaviour is the hallmark of a shitty person. I doubt that very many people would disagree. But Smith isn't just a shitty person. It turns out that she is, in my opinion, also a shitty journalist.

I'm not usually in the business of dredging up the past work of people who I don't know or have never even heard of. But as Smith decided to blindside me by blatantly making things up about my history, I felt it entirely fair to take a look at some of her past work. See what ostensibly got her elevated to the lofty office of the Gateway's Managing Editor.

 The results were not particularly impressive. To whit, consider this opinion article from the November 2, 2009 issue of the Gateway in which she recounts an incidence of what she considers to be "pub racism" but really just makes it clear that she has a hate-on for pub bouncers:

"Recently, I made a trip downtown to a certain retro dance club with a few friends for a night of drinking and good old-fashioned debauchery. Like any university students after a long midterm week of sleepless nights, we were all ready to order a round (or three) of tequila shots and altogether forget about the pressures of the world of academia as we retire to a place you can stand for one night only.

Unfortunately for us, we were about to encounter one of the most notoriously loathed demons of city nightlife: the dance club bouncer. These lecherous beasts aren’t found at every bar, but meeting one usually leaves you feeling violated in one way or another. In this case, a member of our group was held up and harassed by one of these creatures, who refused to let her into the bar because he claimed her ID wasn’t legitimate. Despite the fact that she held perfectly valid Alberta government identification (bearing her photo, signature, and proof that she was indeed over the age of 18), he continued to insist that she couldn’t be allowed into the club. The problem? My friend’s ID is an Aboriginal status card.

The bouncer informed us that status cards weren’t accepted based on some mysterious bar policy, having experienced 'problems' with them in the past. He claimed the government office that issues the cards is full of corruption, and as a result, the IDs are usually counterfeit. Having provided this ID at various bars, restaurants, and liquor stores numerous times without any mention of this so-called policy before, she was at a bit of a loss, and frankly, so were we. What was this guy talking about?"

Indeed. What was this guy talking about? It turns out that a little something called "research" could have told her all about it.

As it turns out, the concern over counterfeit Aboriginal status cards was far from anything simply invented by the bouncer in question. At the time that Smith was producing this tripe, the federal government was already undertaking a pilot program to create new, more secure, Aboriginal status cards because the old ones were prone to being faked. Had Smith bothered to do any research whatsoever, she would have learned that this had been considered an issue all the way back in 2000.

Certainly, nine years had passed between 2000 and 2009. The problem could have been solved in the interim, right? Hold your horses. It turns out that as recent to Smith's tirade as March 2009 Metis ID cards were also being eyeballed as easy to counterfeit.

Certainly, this could be an easy mistake to make -- if the opinion article you're writing is completely unresearched. As this one clearly was. No matter what anyone may choose to say about my work with the Gateway, "unresearched" is not one of them. (Although I did once have that accusation lobbed at me, by an individual ironically complaining about an article researched via the very same source that obnoxious individual recommended. Hilarity frequently abounds.)

And that pilot project the federal government was undertaking? It's about to roll out newer, more secure aboriginal ID cards. As per the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada website:

To be exceedingly fair to Smith -- far more fair than she chose to be to me -- this particular website page was published on February 7, 2013. That being said, it's a mere reiteration of information that was already available when she wrote that article. Here's a little more reiteration of that publicly-available information:

So the bouncer was right -- and Smith was wrong. A little bit of the requisite research necessary to be a journalist would have told her as much. Of course, the information derived from doing that research might have denied her that golden opportunity to get her butthurt on, so perhaps it's entirely unsurprising that she seemingly chose not to do any.

Will Smith find it in herself to go track down that bouncer and apologize to him? I severely doubt it. See, Smith still hasn't apologized to me. Gateway editor-in-chief Ryan Bromsgrove -- whose work I hold in high esteem -- was put in the unenviable position of having to do it for her. Smith herself, apparently after a discussion with the Gateway board of directors, did see fit to delete the slanderous tweets that precipitated this investigation of her clearly-lacking journalistic rigour.

That being said. I've heard nothing about any disciplinary action being taken against Smith. Unquestionably there should be some, and in any organization worthy of describing itself as "professional" -- as the Gateway Student Journalism Society does -- there certainly would be. Knowing the steady decline of the Gateway organization as I do, I fully expect that none was taken. Which is why I've had to take on the task of disciplining Madeline Smith myself.

I sincerely hope that the Gateway does take this as an opportunity to educate their paid staff on standards of professionalism. Then again, considering that this is a publication that was forced to pare back its publishing schedule from twice-a-week to once-a-week, seeming without so much as a moment of introspection into how the publication's declining quality has impacted its declining popularity, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Oh, Thomas Mulcair. What Would Tommy Douglas Think?

Consider this a tale of two Tommys.

One Tommy was a government Minister in Quebec. The other Tommy was the Premier of Saskatchewan. One Tommy is the current leader of the federal NDP. The other Tommy is a former leader of the federal NDP. In fact, he was the first NDP leader. One Tommy seems to have a mad-on for evangelical Christians. The other was an evangelical Christian. In fact, he was a baptist minister.

Of course we're talking about Thomas Mulcair and Tommy Douglas.

Tommy Douglas passed away in 1986. Thomas Mulcair stepped in it in 2013.

See, Mulcair is upset that Christian Crossroads Communications -- the same company that produces 100 Huntley Street -- recently received a CIDA grant of approximately $500,000 to drill and repair water wells in Uganda. He's very angry about it because CCC considers homosexuality to be sinful -- an opinion that, for the record, I disagree with -- and on those grounds he thinks that CCC should not receive the grant.

Mulcair declared that evangelical Christians "go against" Canadian values.

So what does that say about Douglas, the man who NDP campaigning propelled to the summit of the CBC's "greatest Canadian" poll?

Mulcair might not like the answer. First off, Douglas was not only a Baptist -- which is an evangelical denomination of Christianity -- but he was in fact a Baptist minister. And Baptists are hardly known for their tolerance of homosexuality.

Then, of course, there's Douglas himself. Now, he didn't believe that homosexuality is sinful, as the folks at CCC do. Rather, he believed homosexuality is a mental illness.

So now, nearly two years after Mark Bonokoski first asked the question, we must ask it again: is Tommy Douglas still the Greatest Canadian? Or, perhaps we must ask this question differently: does Thomas Mulcair, of all people, still think that Tommy Douglas is still the Greatest Canadian?

Keep in mind that Douglas' position -- that homosexuals should be treated with sympathy -- isn't all that different from CCC's. They condemn anyone who uses violence against homosexuals.

Which, sadly, isn't as Mulcair has it. "We don't understand how the Conservatives can ... subsidize a group in Uganda whose views are identical to those of the Ugandan government," he declared. But considering that  the government of Uganda is -- and should remain -- under fire for their infamous "kill the gays" bill, and CCC opposes the use of violence against homosexuals, we can already see that isn't the case.

Unfortunately for Thomas Mulcair, this is more egg on the face of an opposition leader whose face is already looking very eggy indeed.

Idle No More: No Peace, No Justice

Around the world, the rallying cry of radicals -- genuinely righteous and merely self-righteous alike -- has often been thus: "no justice, no peace." Meaning that until they right an injustice -- actual, perceived, or even invented -- they will not stop fighting.

But what happens when their fighting disrupts efforts to right ongoing injustices, and solve ongoing problems? Then we clearly have the opposite: without peace, we cannot attain justice. It has come to pass that this is what it has come to with Idle No More.

Yesterday, Idle No More protesters attempted to barge into a meeting in Saskatoon between the federal government and local First Nations Chiefs. The bizarre insistence of the protesters was that the Chiefs weren't actually being consulted on  The bill includes a plan to create regional aboriginal school boards, and gathering individual band schools into those boards. The bill would give First Nations bands the same control over their schools as non-aboriginal communities already have. The bill has already proven controversial, but the government and First Nations are working on it. Or at least they're attempting to.

Apparently Idle No More won't allow that to happen.

This isn't the first time Idle No More has set out to disrupt meetings between First Nations Chiefs and the federal government. When AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo met with the Prime Minister, Idle No More darling and fake hunger striker Chief Theresa Spence -- under whom the proverbial home ice was already thinning at the time -- texted a demoralizing message to his Blackberry. The punchline was that Chief Spence herself had demanded such a meeting as a condition of ending her fake hunger strike. She did not end her hunger strike, which was fair enough I suppose as she never really began a hunger strike in the first place. Of course she didn't stop telling people she was hunger-striking when she really wasn't, so perhaps it wasn't fair enough after all.

Moving on.

It's at times like this that it's worth remembering that Idle No More is as much a conflict between aboriginal radicals and the federal government as it is a conflict between aboriginal protesters and their elected leaders. Remember that even in the wake of a crushing defeat at the hands of Atleo, Idle No More "braintrust" Pam Palmater declared that her movement -- a movement that has very much harnessed Idle No More as a means of advancing their agenda -- wouldn't rest until it has had its way.

It's become increasingly clear that Idle No More is now doing Palmater's heavy lifting, working very, very hard to undermine the elected leaders of First Nations bands in Canada. Working very, very hard to ensure there can be no peace between First Nations and the federal government. And without that peace, the problems that must be solved for there to be lasting justice cannot be solved.

Which, it seems, is precisely how Idle No More prefers it.

When You Peel Back the Layers of Junk, They Show You What They're All About

Ah, Tobold Rollo. Always on the run.

Oh, he puts on a brave face for his followers. But as it turns out, a recent blogpost I wrote dissecting a blogpost that he wrote -- and using the language of his chosen field, no less -- stung him far more than he would like to let on. He did try to make it seem as if this wasn't so. He actually dismissed the post as "researched on Wikipedia..." a patently false claim, as the sources for the post were linked with in it. For the record, it was the Standford University Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Which is hardly Wikipedia. (Nice try, Blinky.)

But it turns out that he was rather disturbed by the meticulous dismantling of his bad faith arguments that he actually went so far as to update his blogpost. It seems he may have had some additional points that he thought may have made up for the errors in his blogpost, errors that not even the greenest poli sci 100 student would ever make. (It's nearly day one stuff, after all.)

How much more did he have to say? Well, let me put it to you this way: not much more than he had to say in the first place. Which, as you may recall, wasn't very much at all. But I'd like to draw your attention, in particular, to his new concluding line::

"(My apologies if you were hoping for an academic critique, but the Calgary School’s errors aren’t a matter of scholarship – they are ideological.)"

 So there you have it. There, in one sentence, everything that Tobold Rollo's "scholarship" seems to be about: ideology. And ideology alone.

Apparently Rollo admits that he takes no issue whatsoever in the facts that Tom Flanagan and Barry Cooper cite. He has no problem with their analytical rigour. Rollo's single and sole objection is that Flanagan and Cooper do not share his ideology.

Suddenly, it all makes sense: the conceptual shakiness of his online offerings. The scant references to anything even remotely resembling a source or even a fact. And the spectacularly wanton resorting to logical fallacies of every sort imaginable to sweep any criticism -- that blasted criticism! -- away.

Because to Tobold Rollo it seems that this isn't about conceptual soundness. It isn't about facts or sources. It certainly isn't about good-faith debating tactics. It's all about ideology, and ideology alone. There's nothing else. Rollo has drawn a line in the sand of academia: on one side, he and those who share his ideology, or at least ideologies that he is willing to give some sort of approval, however, begrudging. On the other side is everyone else.

From a scholastic standpoint, that's a serious problem. For one thing, it actually precludes defending a position with facts or logic. Ideas promoted by those adhering to one particular ideology are automatically granted merit, regardless of whether or not they withstand academic muster. Ideas promoted by those adhering to another particular ideology are immediately discarded, regardless of whether or not they withstand scrutiny. That makes for an extremely toxic scholarly environment, but as it turns out that isn't even the most striking thing about this stance.

There are various theories about what ideologies are, how they are formed, and whether or not those who hold such ideologies are aware that they hold them. I won't go into them at length here because quite frankly it can get quite boring. But I will mention this important concept: many theorists have held that virtually everything about the way people are socialized within any particular society is ideological. The argument holds that one way or another, everyone adheres to some sort of ideology regardless of whether they recognize it or not. In one way or another, that ideology guides virtually every decision that a person makes.

Now clearly, awareness of his personal ideology is not an issue for Rollo. He's fully aware of it, and it seems he allows it to guide how he judges and responds to work by other scholars. Considering this, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that, for Tobold Rollo, the conclusion is always foregone. The result of a study or research project always decided in advance. And that no conflicting piece of evidence will be allowed to change his mind so long as it leads him in the "wrong" ideological direction.

Suddenly it all makes sense. How Rollo could entirely skim over the most obvious shortcomings in Barry Cooper's original column -- and make no mistake about it, I feel there are logical and conceptual shortcomings in Professor Cooper's article -- and instead resort to the bad-faith tactics of which he appears to be so fond.

I peeled back the layers, revealed his offerings to be utterly hollow, and in response Tobold Rollo simply came out and revealed what he's all about. And in Tobold Rollo's case, there's nothing there but ideology.

I won't pretend to be more Catholic than the Pope here. I'm no less ideological than most people. But I do take the time to challenge my ideological assumptions on a regular basis, and in doing so I at least strive to give you more than mere ideology. Troll-bold doesn't, and he makes that perfectly clear.