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1. This blog post is far from the first to do this, but I object to the use of the term 'lawmakers'. For one thing, the term is an unnecessary simplification, a
by cjs_ac 3y ago
1. This blog post is far from the first to do this, but I object to the use of the term 'lawmakers'. For one thing, the term is an unnecessary simplification, and refusal to use the proper titles for members of legislative bodies (in this case, Teachtaí Dála and Seanadóirí) only exacerbates our cultural solipsism. For another, the nature of these 'lawmakers' is crucial to understanding their motivations and intentions: a 'lawmaker' can be any of the following:
* A person elected to represent a constituency that has an equal share of a population, e.g., a Member of Parliament, Deputy or Member of the House of Keys;
* A person elected to represent a constituency that has an unequal share of a population, e.g., a US or Australian Senator, or a US congressperson;
* A person elected to partially represent a multi-member constituency, e.g., a Teachta Dála;
* A person elected to a legislative body on the basis of proportional representation albeit with no specific constituency, e.g., a list MP in New Zealand;
* A person appointed to a legislative body on the basis of merit (e.g., a Canadian Senator or some life peers in the House of Lords);
* A person appointed to a legislative body ex officio, e.g., the Lords Spiritual;
* A person appointed to a legislative body on the basis of ancestry (e.g., the seventy-two representative hereditary peers in the House of Lords or the now-defunct Fijian Council of Chiefs);
* A lobbyist or employee of a non-government business or organisation writing 'ready-to-enact' bills;
* A non-political monarch, viceroy or other head of state who provides Royal Assent (or otherwise signs bills into law), e.g., the King of the United Kingdom, the Governor-General of Australia, or the President of Fiji;
* A political monarch or head of state, e.g., the King of Saudi Arabia; or
* A person appointed to political office, e.g., the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia or a US cabinet secretary.
2. Irish Parliamentarians are elected by the people of Ireland to solve problems for the people of Ireland. Every right granted limits other rights, and so governments must balance these competing rights for the benefit of their people. The article makes no mention of the actual situation in Ireland, of examples of problematic discourse in Ireland, or examples of problematic suppression of discourse in Ireland. This is, again, cultural solipsism.
- jimlongton 3y ago2. The majority of the public do not want these laws. There is a lingering distrust of such things due to the decades long heavy hand of the church on Irish life. There is also no epidemic of 'hate speech' or any such extreme situation warranting them. Individual instances of opposition to immigration for example (which is causing serious issues with hotel and student accommodation at the moment) are so rare that the make national headlines for days or weeks. These laws are a solution in search of a problem. Unfortunately these "lawmakers" are rushing to sacrifice the rights of citizens for a quick PR win.
- cjs_ac 3y agoI suspected that this was the case; your six sentences provide a much better case against the bill than the twelve paragraphs in the article.