[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

However, the fact that an adult may be influenced by an ideology we find vile isn't a good reason to strip them of autonomy - because doing so leads to worse problems.

yes, exactly.

Quebec has renewed talks with professionnal orders (psychologists and psychiatrists) about the subject, make sure there are valid guidelines, but ultimately, if someone sees a priest to seek counsel on his sexual orientation, what can we do?  Deprive people of their freedom of religion?  Even an atheist like me would frown at this.

Kids are a different matter.  But even there, we must thread carefully.

[viper37]

They are actively working towards harming the LGBTQ+ community. Preemptive strikes is all we got.

Maybe you are right.  If we let this persecution go, we risk having more alphabet letters scrambles into a meaningless void of no sense.

Doing something because activists wants us to do it is the worst possible scenario.

[Malthus]

However, the fact that an adult may be influenced by an ideology we find vile isn't a good reason to strip them of autonomy - because doing so leads to worse problems.

yes, exactly.

Quebec has renewed talks with professionnal orders (psychologists and psychiatrists) about the subject, make sure there are valid guidelines, but ultimately, if someone sees a priest to seek counsel on his sexual orientation, what can we do?  Deprive people of their freedom of religion?  Even an atheist like me would frown at this.

Kids are a different matter.  But even there, we must thread carefully.

Heh, sometimes it seems to me that being a small-l liberal these days means being forced to stand up all the time for the rights of people you have nothing in common with or whose ideology you actively dislike. 

People who identify as "progressives" or (many modern) conservatives, of course, don't seem to have to do that; they just see people they dislike as an enemy, and depriving them of rights is no loss, because they are bad and wrong (and they would do the same to 'us' if they had the chance).

[Valmy]

They are actively working towards harming the LGBTQ+ community. Preemptive strikes is all we got.

This isn't about the LGBTQ+ community, it is about the Jehova's Witness and Mormons and those communities.

Besides I think there are other ways to help LGBTQ+ people in insular cultish communities.

[crazy canuck]

On second thought, you are correct, you are both being willfully blind 

Look I am just not in the business of persecuting people because of their religion or identity or ideology if they are not harming anybody else. Even with the best of intentions that tends to go poorly.

And if that was true of this situation I would be with you.  But there is active harm being done.  So I am not.

[crazy canuck]

They are actively working towards harming the LGBTQ+ community. Preemptive strikes is all we got.

This isn't about the LGBTQ+ community, it is about the Jehova's Witness and Mormons and those communities.

Besides I think there are other ways to help LGBTQ+ people in insular cultish communities.

If someone had a religious belief that everyone with a left foot needs to have that left foot amputated, would you think that consent to have that left foot amputated justified the operation.

Now I recognize that the "therapy" is ineffective and so the analogy has the weakness that nobody is going to be changed - unless of course they find the whole thing so traumatic that permanent damage is caused by the "therapy.  Therein lies the damage being done.

[crazy canuck]

Heh, sometimes it seems to me that being a small-l liberal these days means being forced to stand up all the time for the rights of people you have nothing in common with or whose ideology you actively dislike. 

Your view that everything is fine so long as personal choice, no matter how coerced, is fine sounds more libertarian than liberal.

[Malthus]

Heh, sometimes it seems to me that being a small-l liberal these days means being forced to stand up all the time for the rights of people you have nothing in common with or whose ideology you actively dislike. 

Your view that everything is fine so long as personal choice, no matter how coerced, is fine sounds more libertarian than liberal.

I would oppose the provision of fraudulent alleged therapies because they are fraudulent and so any harms done by them are done for no reason. I'm not sure if that accords with strict libertarianism.

However, I don't agree that we are in a position to judge that 'being a member of a religious group" = "decisions members of that group make about themselves are, legally, not valid decisions because they are in fact coerced and therefore not exercices of free will".

Where exactly do we go with that? Do we extend that to every decision these people make about themselves? Appoint legal guardians for them, consisting of right-thinking folks?

   

[crazy canuck]

Heh, sometimes it seems to me that being a small-l liberal these days means being forced to stand up all the time for the rights of people you have nothing in common with or whose ideology you actively dislike. 

Your view that everything is fine so long as personal choice, no matter how coerced, is fine sounds more libertarian than liberal.

I would oppose the provision of fraudulent alleged therapies because they are fraudulent and so any harms done by them are done for no reason. I'm not sure if that accords with strict libertarianism.

However, I don't agree that we are in a position to judge that 'being a member of a religious group" = "decisions members of that group make about themselves are, legally, not valid decisions because they are in fact coerced and therefore not exercices of free will".

Where exactly do we go with that? Do we extend that to every decision these people make about themselves? Appoint legal guardians for them, consisting of right-thinking folks?

So lets do a thought experiment.  What if the therapy was effective on a small amount of the population and so could not be considered a fraud.  I assume you would have no objection to it despite the active harm it does to those for whom it is not effective and perhaps to those for whom it is.

[Oexmelin]

However, the fact that an adult may be influenced by an ideology we find vile isn't a good reason to strip them of autonomy - because doing so leads to worse problems.

Could you elaborate on these worse problems? I know the theoretical objections. I get the sense that a dividing line here is between a theoretical slippery slope argument (which has merit), and actual harm (which has existence).

For "stripping them of autonomy" is far from any straightforward, self-evident definition. Our autonomy (whatever the difficult definition we could come up with) is severely curtailed by any number of different forces. Some of them, we find perfectly legitimate: the debt cycle, for instance, or poverty. Others, we find intolerable. And others still, are matters of considerable, vigorous debate: abortion, the market for organs, etc.

It strikes me that a lot of the dividing lines between acceptable and unacceptable, dangerous and safe, have relied upon understandings of liberty, freedom, and power that have developed in times when domestic authority was deemed desirble, corporate authority was laughable, state authority was both more arbitrary, but a lot less powerful than today, and especially, at a time when political voice was not really such a major concern, and couldn't, for a variety of reason, be a centerpiece of liberalism. 

It may very well be that the distribution between what is acceptable, and what is not, what is debatable, and what ought to be axiomatic could be, upon examination, exactly the same as it is now. But I am worried that liberalism, which has yielded, and continues to yield, tremendous benefits, leaves unexamined the articulation of a bunch of its principles to the transformations of our times. 

[viper37]

People who identify as "progressives" or (many modern) conservatives, of course, don't seem to have to do that; they just see people they dislike as an enemy, and depriving them of rights is no loss, because they are bad and wrong (and they would do the same to 'us' if they had the chance).

I'd love to jail all leftists, abolish religion alltogether, but since I'm a fan of history, I kinda remember what happenned in countries who tried that, so I'll pass

[viper37]

If someone had a religious belief that everyone with a left foot needs to have that left foot amputated, would you think that consent to have that left foot amputated justified the operation.

better analogy yet:  if someone had a sincerly held religious belief that a penis must circonsized, do you think that consent of the parents justified the operation?

[viper37]

Could you elaborate on these worse problems? I know the theoretical objections. I get the sense that a dividing line here is between a theoretical slippery slope argument (which has merit), and actual harm (which has existence).

I believe I gave answers to that: transgender issues.  On both sides of the divide.  What is harmful, and what is not?  Is it more harmful to let a 8 year old boy dress as a girl or is more harmful to remind him of biological facts?  Could he have been coerced one way or another by his parents beliefs, by social representation of the issues?

Lots of conservatives would say the normalization of the issue and parental misguidances pushes boys and girls to want to change their sex at a very young age.  It isn't dissimilar to the argument CC and you are making about gay conversion therapy.

I believe there are lots of ways to adress the issue before going for the nukular strike, the Quebec way seems to be doing some good.

[viper37]

Canada's most controversial mayors

Half of them are from Toronto in the last 20 years

[saskganesh]

Two!

Anyhow,  a piece from Rick Salutin on the NDP's apparent demise, looking at the past three decades:

https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9500642-ndp-or-endp-is-it-over-for-this-radical-canadian-party-/