Barrel Strength

Duggan’s Dew was talking to me yesterday about the significance of the recent changes at CBC’s website, which had featured the ravings of Heather Mallick about Sara Palin and Republican sexual inadequacies.

The CBC ombudsman  determined that the CBC’s political website had not exposed the range of political views available, and that it had erred seriously in publishing Mallick’s piece.

This morning, Jonathan Kay  remarked on how good a week it was for the blogosphere, as various nutjob 9/11 deniers have been forced out of the Canadian election campaign.

Kay writes: “The episode points the way to the future of the developing relationship between bloggers and the MSM. Yes, there will be competition, as the various media jostle for the available eyeballs out there. But there will also be synergy — with bloggers doing the sifting and stirring the outrage, while the broadcast and print journalists perform the equally important job of forcing the issue during scrums, interviews and press conferences.”

 All true, all good, but something more important is happening in Canada.

As to some Liberal candidate booted for saying the Jews got out of the twin towers in Manhattan before the 9/11 attacks, Duggan’s Dew said: “She will probably never understand what hit her. She will probably go to her grave wondering how her lefty world view was suddenly turned against her.”

Duggan’s Dew hit the nail on the head: “They are going to have to accept that their views are just opinions, not the truth. They are going to have to accept that there is actual debate about these things, and that their views do not define what is real and what is socially acceptable.”

If there is one change devoutly to be wished for in polite circles, it would be for a considerable expansion of the nature and range of opinions and beliefs which educated people are allowed to have and still be invited back. Most of the control of thought works by the majority determining that some ideas, notions or facts are undiscussable:
abortion, global warming, the evils of George Bush, the failure of the Iraqi war, the nature of Islam, the nature and level of immigration to this country. You could add the nature of quantum physics for the successful defence of materialism, atheism, Hitchens and Dawkins, but educated opinion has not yet congealed into militant intolerance of belief….yet.

Yes, I know – politics and religion are best avoided if you want a successful dinner party. Surely, however, Canadians have taken this inclination to politeness and social solidarity way too far. People of considerable education are so sheltered from disagreement that they are shocked, shocked, to find that there is and can be actual disagreement. After all, if the Liberal soul is “ineffably superior” to the Conservative, as I was once told in my own house by a particularly obnoxious Liberal dinner guest, there is nothing for them to learn, only rules of social discourse to be enforced.

The great thing which is occurring in Canada is the slow, slow opening of the climate of opinion. The great Liberal ship of state is turning over, its propellers spinning in the air, its crew clinging to the rudder and the hull, while calculating the leap into the ocean. Personally I am sending no lifeboats to rescue the survivors, since they have people for that, and I shall refrain from machine-gunning them as they flail in the water. Forces of history far larger than I are taking care of the problem.