Hear, hear.

For far too long articulate voices from the left have been drowned out by the noisy clamour of far-left extremists, who prefer cheap stunts like lobbing footwear and chaining themselves to things over rational argument. Presumably 'coz they lack the intellect to forumulate a sound argument. Sadly, all of us lefties get tarred with the same brush as mouth-frothing zealots like Peter Gray, and so I encourage all fellow moderate lefties to speak out in condemnation of the behaviour of the far-left.

Yes, Riz, isn't it weird that the arena in which one can express one's views most fully, Left AND Right, is the one provided by OLO, which is supposed to have a slight Right-wing tilt ?

As another fellow-Leftie, I am appalled at how alternative sites treat differences of opinion, either by freezing out those who do not follow a group line, ostracizing them, ignoring and not responding to their posts, or downright abuse and threats to either drive them away or silence them. Either way, there is very little discussion, debate, conflict of ideas, at other sites which claim to be Left. So thank god for OLO.

If I was king, I would PAY people to put outrageous ideas on-line, in order to encourage more passionate and hard-thinking responses. 'Crooked Timber' is a beauty.

I'm starting to think that free speech isn't just a nice thing to have, but that it's like a piece of machinery that we have to continually test, or a muscle that we have to keep using, otherwise it fades away, and we have to renew what it means every so often, to re-define it, to understand how vital it is for a healthy, questioning society, including the right to offend, to embarrass, to bite people on the arse.

Instead, we get idiots who replace argument and debate with faux passion and pseudo-violent acts. What next ? Throwing tea-bags at Tony Abbott ? Kicking Christopher Pyne's dog ? Finding new insulting names for politicians ? i.e. anything but thinking through arguments ?

Joe

I was about to post but I feel Farid, Riz and Loudmouth beat me to it.

You will notice that many people in the world (left and right) simply lack the intellectual capacity (as you already pointed).
However, when an intelligent discussion or negotiation occurs in their presence, the confusing words and concepts expressed fly over their heads as they are only capable of understanding basic generalizations about the world.
To them, they only see a bunch of people talking nonsense- their only form of "development" is an attention-seeking physical action or loud slogan to hit the TV screen adn turn the heads of other attention-defecit persons like themselves (in other words, they can only talk in a language that they themselves could understand).

Some people also feel that they have defined all of the bad things in the world as the entities they don't like ("fascism" being the most popular warcry) which they use to justify acts of fascism of their own.

Take those two things and you have a shoe-thrower.

kh, why do some media agencies give so much airplay to these events? You don't have to you know, methinks though the ABC was thrilled with the incident.

At the cricket for instance, attention seekers, streakers, are ignored and they do not transmit images.(Free to air TV)

At the Howard shoe throwing incident, just before it in fact, some "media personality" from the ABC, is alleged to have tweeted "someone throw a shoe at Howard", and someone did. So their like minded fellows in the audience were presumably tuned in to LWT, Left Wing Tweets, or the ABC tweet address (?) is that what you call it?

Surely the intellectual capacity of the ABC in promoting this event, encouraging such an action then hyperventilating with excitement when it happened, is a reflection of their own self obsession with left and right? (good and bad, in their own minds, I assume)

"Some people also feel that they have defined all of the bad things in the world as the entities they don't like ("fascism" being the most popular warcry) which they use to justify acts of fascism of their own.

Take those two things and you have a shoe-thrower"

Agreed .. some entities invest more time in exploiting the differences, than others .. thankfully the ABC are "objective .. oh.

The ABC intellectual? Hah they have little more intellectual ability than all those pseudo journalists who steadfastly refuse to examine the lies, deceipt and policy dumping of the lying Gillard, Swan and the dying labor party.

That John Howard who was dumped by Australian voters over three years ago and is still an issue with lefties and especially the ABC shows the reality of their continued irrelevance. As it does with you blokes who continue to discuss him.

Shoe throwing was imported from the middle-east, that lefties in Australia have followed that particular example well ... probably just endorses the fact they prefer to live in yesteryear, with all the idealogically religion wedded mid-easterners, than today.

Why do these idiots reside at the fringes of left wing politics?