If You Can’t Argue with Your Friends, Who Can You Argue With?
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After some relative quiet in the comments of this blog, we’ve got ourselves some good ol’ fashioned internet-style arguin’!
Last week, we had my high school friend, who prefers to go by “Ignatz” in the comments, go on about his dislike for Accordion City Mayor David Miller and his appointment of a mere 29-year-old slip of a lad, Adam Giambrone, to be the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission. The article and comments are here.
This week, it’s my friend David P. Janes arguing with me about National Reviews columnist Jonah Goldberg’s wager offered to Juan Cole made back on February 7, 2005, that “Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it.” The article and the comments are here.
Feel free to read and even join in on either side of either debate. Just keep in mind is that this blog is my online living room, and I expect that in return for my following the rules of hospitality, you’ll follow the rules of comity.
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View Comments
“Comity” is a word I first encountered when I saw a U.S. politician use it on television. I had to look it up.
Why don’t we use it much in Canada? Maybe because we’re more likely to practise it naturally. “Playing hardball” doesn’t get admiration here the way it does in the USA.
Of course we pay a price for our civility: we put up with things that Americans will fight against. (Well, except when it’s a “war”, like on Commies, or drugs, or terrorism.) As Robert A. Heinlein put it, “You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.”