Free Speech in France Decided on a Case-by-case Basis

Apparently a restaurant owner in France has successfully sued a blogger/critic for hurting his business.

I would have thought that blogging under one’s own name and from a site with a reputation to maintain, non-anonymously, would guard against some of the worst tendencies of the Internet, but in this case the blogger’s choice to use her real name and make it possible to find her is in effect being punished.  Not for the first time, I wonder whether tort law inadvertently creates some pretty perverse incentives.

Talking about Politics and Religion

They say you shouldn’t talk about politics and religion, but I had occasion to go to two Thanksgiving dinners last week, and at both I was fortunate to have the opportunity to talk about politics and religion, if not with the whole party, then at least with a couple of the people there.  It went, as far as I am aware, very well:  Neither they nor I became unpleasant or unkind at any point; no one raised his voice or started interrupting or talking over anyone.  They were, in fact, perfectly enjoyable conversations, even though (if it doesn’t go without saying) we disagreed on the substantive underlying issues (I was talking with an atheist, a liberal, a Muslim, etc., about health care, etc.).

‘The Politicized Life’

Via Jim Geraghty, Sonny Bunch at the Washington Free Beacon reflects on culture and politics.

Look, here are the facts of life, my conservative friends: We don’t do the politicized life particularly well. . . .

The left, however, does the politicized life exceptionally well. They mount campaigns to pressure corporations to get what they want. They organize boycotts. They direct their complaints to gatekeepers who share their views and can influence policy. They blacklist artists with whom they disagree and pressure corporations to do the same. . . .

How to Argue: ‘Play the ball, not the man’

I encourage you to share your thoughts or arguments in the comment section under each blog entry.

As St. Eutychus says, “Play the ball. Not the man.”  (I think a lot of the rest of his comment policy is good advice, too.)  Seriously, I think you should stick to talking about substantive ideas, even if only for totally selfish reasons—if you start insulting people and taking everything personally, it makes you look bad, and makes your arguments sound less reasonable.

RIGHT:

Mr. A:  I don’t think pre-emptive war is ever justified.  How would we like it if Iraq invaded our country?

“Occupy Wall Street” Protesters Couldn’t Be More Different from Tea Party Movement, or from Rest of Country

First, insert here all the usual caveats about polls.  Always take them with a grain of salt, etc.

That said, according to “probably . . . the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion,” 31% of OWS protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda.”  

Democrats: Happy Labor Day, Son-of-a-bitches

Teamsters’ Union president Jimmy Hoffa opened for an Obama speech yesterday (video at bottom of story).  Hoffa said, among other things,

We’ve got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: the war on workers.  And you see it everywhere:  It is the Tea Party.  And you know there’s only one way to beat and win that war.  The one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.  And you know what?  They’ve got a war, they’ve got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner—it’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America!  We’re going to win that war! 

News Media Still Liberal, Liberals Still Uncivil

Jonah Goldberg in the Corner reviews the double standard in the liberal media’s treatment of Congressman Giffords’s shooting and the recent debt-ceiling fight.  (In the former, war- and death-themed metaphors were deemed per se inappropriate and conservatives were accused of debasing the national debate with their supposed incivility; in the latter, members of the liberal media and liberal politicians disparaged conservatives by calling them “terrorists”, etc.)  The Media Research Center discusses further and provides links to a few examples of the latter.

Hat tip to the Foxhole.

Rick Santorum

(Warning: This entry talks about some pretty gross stuff.  If you don’t want to be exposed to it, you may be better off just skipping this whole entry.)

A number of people are currently running to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.  One of them is former senator Rick Santorum.

Santorum is a fiscal conservative and a foreign-policy conservative, but what’s really “politically incorrect” nowadays is that he’s also a social conservative.  He is strongly against homosexuality, for example. 

Just Another Example of Casual Liberal Hatred

We’ve talked plenty before about incivility from liberals (who, ironically, often seem to think that conservatives have the monopoly on incivility), but I thought I’d pass on this example anyway.

I was glancing over a few of today’s featured blog entries on the Wordpress main page, and ran into this: in a conversational blog about the blogger’s life, an offhand reference to the fun and satisfaction of “smacking the stupid out of Sarah Palin”. 

Internet Anonymity

Does Internet anonymity bring out our dark side?

On the radio this morning I heard Lisa Hendey talk about participating in Internet discussions, such as in the comments section on blogs.

She suggested that people seem to feel more free to be a jerk when they know (or think) they have the cover of Internet anonymity. 

Postscript on Civility

Two months ago, someone shot a lot of people at an event in Tucson, Arizona, including Congressman Gabrielle Giffords.  Six of those people died; many others were injured.  Liberals argued that conservatives (e.g., radio-talk-show hosts) participate in the great national debate a little bit too boisterously, and that eruptions of such violence are a natural result of that debate (i.e., a natural result of what I think Mark Steyn has called the rough and tumble of a free society).  Liberals talked about the need for “civility” in the national discourse, ambiguously attempting to deligitimize debate.