Red Tory, in the traditional sense?

I said "broadly", much in the way you would say that the Harper ministry is "broadly" conservative—meaning "not really, but in a way sufficient to serve as a marginally accurate short-hand method of referring to something that is inherently different from what the aforementioned short-hand expression actually means".

Sorry, I thought you wouldn't mind because you told us how old you are yesterday.

I don't think age has much to do with anything. Please continue with your push for progress and the future, and don't mind me.

I've said many times that in this time period, and in this society I'm 64.

Wait, do we have you on loan from another society in another period? Because that would explain so much.

Ha! You do have to admit Emily is gifted with putdowns.

And at my age one sees the same crap coming around the merry-go-round so many times that it beggars the mind that so-called historians who write the history the way their mentors want it, get taken. I think most of them, where there is a vein to be struck, use Hansard as source material and think they have it nailed down. People who read history (and I admit it was a minor) should know better. What you really want is what Joe said to Bill out of the corner of his mouth as they stood at the pissoir.

I'm sorry to hear that you are one of the few to suffer this problem. But there is medication now. You should try it.

Thanks for the correction. Sorry for overestimating your age.

I'd have assumed that Sir Francis was older too, so I think he's on to something when he points out that he has an old soul.

Well Sir Francis seems to be half my age and here I thought he was in his dotage. They are giving out klnighthoods at a young age now. Is he a rock star?

Age is nothing but a number… that denotes roughly how close we are to death.

That sounds like the Marxist interpretation of age.

TGIF?

Ah, yes. Opiate is truly the religion of the masses.

My doctor has advised me to refrain from indulging in alcohol, it seems my health is bad for my lifestyle.

Fortunately, I've always had my priorities straight. I know that doctor's orders are to be diligently neglected.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

Groucho Marxist interpretation of age

If life were easy, everyone would do it.

Thanks for that cheery observation.

Agreed. It was so much easier when everyone typed in mono

See how much easier that was!

…so continue on enjoying yourself with talk of unwashed darkies…

Missing Steyn that much, are we?

Talking about unwashed darkies is not my cup of tea. Talking of how risible it is for others to talk of unwashed darkies is often, sadly, unavoidable.

The fact that you really think you're in a position to use a word like "blowhard" non-reflexively lifts my genuine respect for your child-like innocence to a whole new level.

And I sincerely look forward to your next comment, which will, I am sure, bear all the hallmarks of your usual respectful, restrained, non-partisan, and meditative approach to substantive issues.

Why don't you use the n-word while you're at it?

Oh, I think I've given your infinite capacity for cheap faux-outrage enough resistance training for today. I'm sure there are other commenters who are, even as I write, committing the unpardonable gaucherie of negating your comic-book world view and are thus sorely in need of the supercilious "populist" lecturing to which you routinely treat people who trigger your virulent inferiority complex. If appeals to self-pity were legitimate persuasive strategies, your debating skills would be redoubtable. Merely being pitiful is, unfortunately, a sign of the amateur.

Why don't you use the n-word while you're at it?

"The n-word"! What simpering Oprah-ish tosh. Is this "Word of the Day" time in Miss Jones' kindergarten class? The word to which you refer, you mincing prude, is something which, as a bi-racial kid growing up in the Montreal of the '70s, I was called on a daily basis. If you have the guts to invoke it, at least have the guts to spell it out properly.

…your irrelevant reference to your childhood in Montreal.

It wasn't irrelevant in the least. I wanted to give the man permission to release himself from his self-imposed political correctness and become the marauding free-speech berserker he thinks he is. He bailed; his loss.

Is that precious tidbit supposed to insinuate you've got moral authority to use pejorative terms?

Everyone has the moral authority to use pejorative terms. Do you disagree? Are you an elitist?

Must one pass some exam or be inducted into some obscure order of nobility in order to use pejorative terms? What certification or set of noble titles gives CPC MPs the right to denigrate Opposition members? When and where did the ceremony of ennoblement take place that gave you the moral authority to toss around pejoratives like "blowhard", among the countless other epithets of denigration with which you salt your invective-laden comments? Faux-outrage seems to be such a habit with you that it endures even after you admit your total insincerity. Would you say this is common among CPC partisans, or is a merely personal tick?

Now, to give you an unearned answer to the question that you might have asked had you genuinely cared about the discussion you unproductively interrupted—a question you might have phrased, “Do you think it wise or fair to use a harsh expression like “unwashed darkies” as a short-hand to describe Mark Steyn’s contemptuous and contemptible view of non-Caucasians?”—I shall say, “Yes, it is both wise and fair; Steyn sees such people as vermin”.

Just a thought.

An understandably over-generous assessment.

…nobody should use such a term.

I vehemently disagree. I think anyone who wishes to profess, to his disgrace, the inherent intellectual and moral inferiority of a entire culture and who sees the very fact of their reproduction as a demographic threat should use a term that exemplifies precisely the full ugliness of what he means. Perhaps you're simply more tolerant of coy, self-serving euphemism than I.

Anyone has the authority. But it's not necessarily moral, so no, you might not have the moral authority.

You appear to be somewhat confused on that point. Let's try again: exactly how do you think one acquires the "moral authority" to use an ugly expression to communicate an ugly idea? And, if you concede to Steyn the moral authority to express ugly ideas, why will you not concede to me the authority to use ugly expressions to communicate those ideas? Do you consider the second authority to be subject to a more stringent standard of policing than the first?

…the morality of the vast majority of humans coincides with mine…

On that point, we can agree. What I’ve seen from you so far, on both moral and intellectual planes, matches precisely what I’ve seen and what I expect from the vast mass of people.

Maclean's[sic] happens to agree with me…

Naturally. Your conformity to the ethical standards of mainstream media and your gift for parroting the received opinions of the herd are admirable. Bravo, and kudos for occasionally enlivening that banality with adorably awkward attempts to use the abstractions of syntactic deductive consequence as if they were adequate vehicles of reasoned argumentation. Though my participation in this thread is at an end, I look forward to watching the torch of your shining moral authority brighten the next thread you shall see fit to grace.

"Talking about unwashed darkies is not my cup of tea. Talking of how risible it is for others to talk of unwashed darkies is often, sadly, unavoidable. "

That's a nice explanation and all but the fact remains that you are the only one here who read Luther King Jr's name and then thought of/wrote about the breeding habits of unwashed darkies. The rest of us, to varying degrees, kept on topic.

Unless you are clairvoyant, your thoughts give us insight into your psyche, not Steyn's.

" …. projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings." Wiki

"I really can't think of anything I need to add."

Why am I not surprised.

"You presume to know …. "

Proof is in pudding, no?

I am Steyn fan and after reading Bells hackneyed analogy I wrote about civil rights. You, on the other hand, told us about how you get your jollies writing about unwashed darkies.

You live in one of the most tolerant, progressive countries on earth but you are apologist for police brutality in order to, supposedly, to fight back the hordes of rampaging Steyn fans.

What country do you live?

And what do you think of Orientals?

" … but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." cs lewis

Liberals can be racists, and they can also use the race card. Nobody else is allowed to do either.

If you are a racist, the best thing you can do is call yourself a liberal or progressive, at which point your racism will go ignored. If you are not a racist, you will likely be accused of racism on a regular basis, until you declare yourself a liberal or progressive.

Congratulations. You know about a couple of racists.

As for using logic, you can't be serious with this ridiculous example :-). You've engaged in a couple of logical non-sequiturs right there. Try harder.

No. You've indulged in a logical non-sequitur.

"If you are not a racist, you will… be accused of racism" DOES NOT imply that "everyone who is accused of racism is not a racist".

The statement you wrote is the converse of the statement I wrote.

* statement: if p then q
* converse: if q then p
* inverse: if not p then not q
* contrapositive: if not q then not p

If a statement is true, then that means the contrapositive is also true. However, it says nothing about whether the converse is true. You have engaged in what is known as "converse error".

The truth of the inverse and converse of a statement are logically unrelated to the truth of the initial statement. Consider the true mathematical statement, "if a figure is a square, then it is a rectangle," which has false converse and inverse statements.

More detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_conseq…

You can take me literally, but you cannot indulge in logical fallacies when doing so (at least, I won't allow you to get away with them).

If so, you’re correct; I was a tad sloppy

No, you were wrong, not sloppy. Anyway, I'll give you credit for admitting it, many would not.

Anyway this is getting funny. I need to "school" you some more (your words, not mine).

The contrapositive would be "If you are not likely to be accused of racism, then you are a racist.". You might think that this somehow proves my original statement absurd. But it doesn't. Because a logical statement of the form "if p then q" is considered true regardless of whether the condition p is ever true. The condition p might be impossible. Regardless, "p implies q" is true.

There is a truth table at this link: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/mat-im…
and see here: "Whenever the antecedent is false, the whole conditional is true (rows 3 and 4). "

Anyway, I can argue that is exactly what has happened in this case. The condition "if you are not likely to be accused of racism" is essentially never true (keep in mind the original statement was prefaced with the additional condition that you are not a liberal/progressive, so that is an underlying condition here). So the contrapositive "If you are not likely to be accused of racism, then you are a racist." is true for this reason. The antedecent is false. It is false because all non-liberals are likely to be accused of racism.

The author at the link above gives the example ""If the moon is made of green cheese, then life exists on other planets." which is a true statement. By the same token, "If you are not likely to be accused of racism, then you are a racist." is a true statement applied to non-liberals. One is true because the moon is not made of green cheese. The other is true because all non-liberals are likely to be accused of racism.

So you could sum it all up with this:

If you are not a liberal or progressive, regardless of whether you are a racist or not, you will be accused of being a racist. This is true.

It confirmed my suspicion that you are allowing an undergraduate fascination with the arid mechanics of formal logic, novel as they must be to you, to overwhelm your grasp of the fundamental fact that logic operates only with reference to the universe of meaning that contains it and makes it relevant.

Now there's a load of BS. We're having a basic conversation about the logical mistakes you've made and you want to bring the 'universe of meaning' into it. What garbage.

As for the word 'prefaced', I don't care what literal interpretation you've decided to choose (while ignoring the one I chose), it's quite obvious to any sentient human being that I was talking about non-liberals. If you wish to dispute that, then (a) it doesn't really matter with regards to the logic and (b) I won't bother to argue such a ridiculous statement. In fact, you've uttered a few ridiculous whoppers, and I try to be nice when I refute them, but there is a limit, and I'm not gonna bother proving to you that 2 plus 2 = 4. I have my limits.

I'm pointing out to you that 2 plus 2 does not equal 3 and you wish to use some kind of gigantic smokescreen (much like the way a politician talks incessantly without saying anything) to argue otherwise. The quote you've used from that page regarding one of the downsides of truth-functionality is not relevant in this case, because the antecedent and consequent are clearly relevant in this case (whether you are a racist and whether you are accused of racism are obviously relevant to each other).

I suspect that, as you mature, you shall develop a respect for content and relevance.

Oh Lordy, you are one ridiculous BS artist.

Now that was a treat of verbose spankology…

Let's summarize.

I argued "p implies q". You stated that my statement implied the converse, "q implies p". I pointed out that's a logical fallacy, that the truth of the converse is unrelated. Just to be thorough, I provided a link for background. I pointed out that the contrapositive "not q implies not p" is related to the original statement, they are both equivalent, logically speaking. You then mistakenly interpreted the truth value of the contrapositive incorrectly, which is not uncommon for people unfamiliar with basic formal logic. Conditional statements with false antecedents are always true, regardless of what the consequent says. I provided another link as background.

This has nothing to do with relevance, universal meaning, maturity, or any other BS you can invent. It's basic logic. Surprisingly, you have little familiarity with basic logic, while at the same time pretending to have grand familiarity with more advanced formal logic, which is based upon the tenets of basic logic. Meanwhile, you utter a bunch of irrelevant mumbo-jumbo for no apparent reason.

It's as simple as that.

Now, I understand that you disagree with the truth value of my original conditional statement. But the arguments you've used are clearly and obviously flawed.

Emily, Sir Francis,Olaf, Crit – thank you all for an entertaining Friday night. Had a glass (or two) of wine and LOL. Keep up the good work, and TGIF. See you next Friday, or earlier. Macleans is lucky to have you guys commenting on these blogs – it adds interesting, educational (and, lets be honest, often opinionated) commentary; but it ADDS nonetheless.

We'll be here all week.

Don't forget to try the Risotto!