Grim,
thank you for that link, it is a perfect example of the nastyness of leftist indoctrination furthering disharmony & furthering the Nazi mentality of the left.

Didn't Jesus himself bully the moneychangers?
Didn't he vilify the Pharisees?
Freedom requires protest, protest requires harsh words, assembly, strikes?

Father forgive them for they know not what they do,

Father forgive them for they know not what they do,
Yebiga,
I'd be interesting to hear Jesus's opinion on the lefties new. I doubt he'd ask the old man to forgive them again. Stupidity does have its limits.

The author referred to Bolt as a "thoroughly decent man." Without knowing of a person's innermost thoughts and all of his actions we cannot know if a person is "thoroughly decent." Even then it is a subjective judgment. However, it is irrelevant as free speech would not exist if it were limited to those deemed decent. I think neither Bolt nor his detractors have anything to apologise for. Free speech is bound to upset somebody.

1. David f – fair point re the presumption of “thoroughly decent”, but we give people the presumption of decency unless there is reason to doubt it. I have known Andrew Bolt as an acquaintance for many years and nothing he has said or written gives reason to doubt his good will and decency. He is an intelligent humanist in the classical / renaissance tradition, and he has the one virtue without which no other virtue can survive: courage. I stick to my assessment of him.

2. Jon J – the shorthand of “family activist” is inadequate, I agree, but it distinguishes those who put priority on the family – mother-father-child – as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” (Universal declaration of human rights article 16) versus those who put priority on the assertion of individual sexuality. As ethicist Prof Margaret Somerville puts it, “gay marriage forces us to choose between giving priority to children’s rights or to homosexual adults’ claims”. We have to discriminate between these irreconcilable claims. As I put it in that Courier Mail article (as per link):
“Yes, it is discrimination to prohibit the marriage of two men, but it is just and necessary discrimination, because the only alternative is the far worse act of discrimination against children, brought artificially into the world by such men, forced to live their whole life without a mother”.
That, to me, is the heart of the matter. You are free to caricature it in the manner typical of adult-centred proponents of homosexual “marriage-equality”. I will argue that the child’s birth-right to both a mother and father – wherever possible – should have priority.

There is no onus on the offended to actually prove if and why they are offended. This in itself seems a dangerous precedent. Why are some people offended by the remarks of someone like Bolt and others whom he is supposed to have insulted not affected at all? Surely if his remarks are offensive then it should affect everyone of aboriginal descent. This must raise questions about what exactly offence is. It is now being defined as what a ‘reasonable person’ would find offensive. It may well be that reasonable people could be wrong. Witches used to be burned at the stake because it was deemed reasonable.

A definitive answer is needed in order to remove the subjectivity which is open to major abuse. You cannot get inside someone’s head or body to determine exactly if they are feeling discomfort or pain – their claim to be offended would never stand up in court as evidence in any other circumstance that is legislated for. Anyone with a vindictive attitude could claim to be offended and a great deal of emotional manipulation can accompany such a claim. This emotional manipulation is what changes a ‘reasonable person’ into a person who sides with the victim for anything but reason. The professor on Q&A was so full of bitterness and resentment and I could not help but remember the dignity and reasonableness of Nelson Mandela who never sought to achieve his aims by emotional manipulation.

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