Michael O’Leary aka Padraig Colman, courtesy of The Nation, 4 August 2013, where the title is “Freedom of Expression“
A number of fallacies are common in the blogosphere. A lot of people cannot cope with, or even understand, disagreement. Americans bloggers are fond of citing the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If someone disagrees with them, they complain that they are being silenced. Genuine disagreement is often described as “whining”. On Colombo Telegraph and Groundviews, there have been demands for me to be silenced. Inoka Karu called on GV to root out the “rabble-rousers”. “Dear moderators: I am repeatedly appealed to you to control hellion characters such ‘off the cuff’, Padraig Colman and J Fernando.”
More disturbing was a call for suppression of free speech from someone who presents himself as a libertarian and a principled writer. Emil van der Poorten commented: “In the interests of the sanity of the rest of us, Sanjana and Uvindu would be well advised to leave the O’Learys/Colmans out of the columns of the publications they have responsibility for.” Surely such a man could not be asking for a fellow writer’s work to be banned! When CT decided to ban Dr Vickramabahu, van der Poorten took a principled stand: “I have serious concerns about something that smacks of censorship and throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.” Continue reading
