I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
Wait…I thought Nazis were the bad guys?
October 23, 2008
Confessions of a Jewish professor:
This past spring, I was asked to defend the leadership of Hasbara Fellowships at a York University discipline hearing. Hasbara is an activist Jewish student organization that decided, in the face of relentless anti-Israel events at York, to fight bad speech not with Censorship, but with more and better speech. Instead of asking for a ban on anti-Israel activities, they counter with strong pro-Israel events — often with a dose of in-your-face chutzpah. Fighting bad speech with good speech has turned out to be the right way to go, and I’m happy to say that we’ve had some legal success with the strategy.
The complaints filed against Hasbara allege that the very image of the blue-and-white Israeli flag appearing on the group’s pamphlets is hateful and must be banned. The complaints filed against Maclean’s allege that the very discussion of radical Islam contained in that publication is hateful and must be banned. That anyone can take either complaint seriously shows how dangerous the suppression of speech in the name of anti-hate can be. It turns out, if we read our history correctly, that the Holocaust began not only with words, but with book burning. Once we go down the road of censorship for the sake of promoting tolerance, we may soon be standing at the heights of intolerance.
See, this is where I get confused. State organs like the CHRC ostensibly exist, or so we are told, to preserve Canada against the tide of racial hatred that modern-day neo-Nazi groups are just waiting to unleash on an unsuspecting population. Certain bloggers have even gone to great lengths to prove this to be the case, taking pictures on their cell phones of swastikas drawn on bathroom stalls and presenting these as evidence of a simmering tide of Naziism and Racism lingering just beneath the thin veneer of “multicultural” Canada.
Okay, let’s take that as read.
But if these state organs, as well as college and university faculties and disciplinary boards, are committed to stamping out racial intolerance and supremacist attitudes, of which Naziism most certainly is, why are they hearing complaints which allege that the flag of Israel is, itself, hateful imagery? Isn’t that…you know…catering to the Nazi sentiments, rather than fighting against them.
Oh, but the people complaining are Muslim. Surely that makes all the difference!
You see why I get confused, good Reader?
Update: Welcome, Steynians!
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