As for censorship in the media, no freedom is absolute. Take freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not imply that I can run into a crowded movie theatre and yell "Fire!"
This is a completely inappropriate analogy that should never have been made in the first place. It comes from the U.S. Supreme Court case
Schenck v. United States. The facts of this case were that Schenck distributed pamphlets asserting that the Selective Service Act (or the Conscription Act, as it was then known) violated the Thirteenth Amendment, and that based on this principle, young men should refuse to be drafted. He was convicted of breaking the Espianoge (how the f*ck do you spell this word!) Act by the very rationale you just used. His case was used as a precedent to jail all sorts of anti-war protestors, radicals, and government critics in general.
Now, to my origional point, which was that the comparison is invalid and inappropriate. Schenck's, or any protestor's actions/speech, did not amount to shouting fire in a crowded theatre and causing a panic. It amounted to writing an op-ed in a newspaper that a given building wasn't up to fire code standards. That doctrine has historically, and recently, been used not to prevent a general breakdown of order, but to limit free speech.
The same goes for censorship in the media. You have to have some boundaries. If you go by the Japanese model that everything is ok, then you end up with Kiss Players.
Yes, you have some boundaries, but the boundaries as they currently exist are unreasonably restrictive. I can't comment on Canada's regulations, but the FCC's regulations on content can certainly be loosened without any substantial harm coming to society or individuals.
So which government comes out on top again?
Only a complete idiot would argue that Iran guarantees more rights for its citizens than does the United States. There is no debate there, and I would say that we have moved past that debate and are now, once again, comparing the policies of the United States to a universal standard of "rightness."
Yes, "all men are created equal" was an idea long before the USA. I never said Americans invented the idea. I just said they were the first to take that philosophy and make it a fundamental truth.
If the Americans "made it a fundemental truth" then it wasn't true before the United States came into being, and was therefore a false doctrine. If it was true, then your statement doesn't make any sense. Yes, this is a meaningless semantic argument, but I've got to fill space somehow. Now for a proper argument.
What you seem to be saying is that the United States was the first country to codify that principle in law. However, that is not the case. The only legal classifications that the United States finds suspect, and that the government must provide a compelling reason for the courts to uphold, relate to race, religion, and national origin. Sex is somewhat less suspect than those three. Legal classifications based on any other factors (age, income, sexual orientation, for example) are perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the American legal system. As strongly as the doctrine of equal creation may have been enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, it is very difficult to argue that the United States court system follows that doctrine in practice.
What I don't agree with is using those wrongs and mistakes to blindly dismiss the good the US has actually done.
Perfectly true. Being the guiding light of the bourgeoisie is no small achievement.
No, we don't require newcomers to Canada to "become Canadian" and to adopt to our culture. We should though.
I'm not against immigration in the slightest, I just believe that if you're coming to Canada you should learn the culture and history and adapt. You want to move to Canada because Canada can provide a better life for you and your family? By all means come on over.
Don't expect Canada to change who she is to accommodate you though, you should change to accommodate what it means to be a Canadian.
Maybe if we followed this model for a few years we would actually be aware of what it means to be ourselves.
See, this is one of the major problems with modern nationalism. Historically, cultures have syncretized to a great extent, borrowing the best aspects from other cultures and sharing their best attributes in return. It was such syncretism that produced Christianity (Judaism and Greek philosophy), the Latin American cultures (Spanish and Indian), the American political system (Iroquois example and Enlightenment philosophy), and modern Russia (Mongol autocracy and Western technology). Many early cultures recognized that there was no inherant value in custom simply because it was custom, rather, it had to be measured against what met the needs of the people the best. The ones that didn't realize this and act on it ended up dominated by the ones that did. The primary example of this is North Africa and the Middle East (sub-saharan Africa is excluded due to limited contact with other cultures prior to the onset of imperialism).
However, by attaching a value to culture (after all, shared culture is one of the defining characteristics of a nation) modern nationalism attemps to halt syncretism and to compartmentalize the human cultures into rigid blocs. Not only is this frankly a silly concept, but it is corrosive and produces nativist reaction. Furthermore, at least from my point of view, the decline of the "nation" can only be a good thing. As people share cultures, they will find how much they really have in common, and some institution will have to take the place of the nation. I personally hope that institution is the class, but that's just my bias talking.
Interesting....this could go either way....you have something to tell me? Be open about it.
It was meant as a compliment...
