Comments on: In Which The Volokh Conspiracy’s Commitment to Civic Freedom of Association and Expression Takes an Interesting Turn

By: conall

conall — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:15:03 +0000

minart vote – populism run riot. what’s needed is reflective policy, as per citizens’ juries

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:23:01 +0000

“also that his own experience of being molested hadn’t done any lasting damage”

Dawkins was molested?

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:02:12 +0000

Aulus – it’s not so much a “minor distinction”, it’s me saying that I think Kopel is wrong on the particular issue. If the people of Geneva cared enough about the police chief’s actions a few years ago, they could have voted his boss out of office over the issue.

Based on what Cyrus at #42 says, it looks more like this was a vote saying “make the immigrants assimilate, dammit”, possibly combined with town-planning NIMBYism run amok on a national scale.

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:50:26 +0000

When worlds collide – Emily Hourican is a friend of mine who I’ve lost touch with in the last few years. I hadn’t realised her role in all of this …

By: Francis D

Francis D — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:41:31 +0000

From Dawkins’ 2002 interview with Emily Hourican

And Dawkins states in The God Delusion that that was something he said in the heat of the moment and implies that he regrets making a blanket absolute statement. He does also say that according to some of the victims (one of which he quotes) the psychological abuse was the worse of the two. But also that his comment was a heat of the moment thing and that he’s not that hard line.

By: sam

sam — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:18:16 +0000

Frankly, I was surprised that Kopel didn’t get some stuff in the post about the 2d Amendment, Heller, etc.

By: Not Swiss

Not Swiss — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:10:15 +0000

I live in Switzerland, but this is the first I’ve heard of this Geneva police thing.

By: Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:38:03 +0000

Looking again, I see it’s not quite right to say Kopel doesn’t give a source: he quotes himself, from an earlier article he wrote, where he refers to an unspecified local Swiss TV station. And he says (pretty undeniably): “In the United States, such a revelation would set off a frenzy of newspapers advancing the story with further investigation about a gigantic local police scandal, but the Geneva papers did little with the story.” Kopel’s interpretation of this difference is that “Local [i.e., Swiss] investigative reporting appears weak.” There are, perhaps, other possible perspectives….

By: Cyrus Hall

Cyrus Hall — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:54:29 +0000

All this talk of the Swiss having no way to fight back against their unaccountable leaders is laughable. There have been a number of popular initiatives in recent years, also sponsored by the SVP, to restrict and hinder immigration. The most recent was something like four or six months ago. None have passed. If the Swiss wanted to chastise their leaders on immigration policy, this was a most strange way to do so. This was about islamophobia, and fear mongering, not holding leaders responsable.

Here is an extra fun fact for people: the SVP has the largest share of the Swiss parliament currently. They are the leading party.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:17:26 +0000

what the hell is Kopel referring to My dear Aulus, one doesn't refer to something now; one simply refers.

By: mds

mds — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:50:04 +0000

In the same way, the Swiss majority felt they had no real recourse against their political class’ policies about something

It’s Switzerland, which is just about the least likely country for a majority of voters to have no real recourse against the political class.

By: Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:58:58 +0000

Also, can we get back to Seeds’ question at 12: what the hell is Kopel referring to when he talks about Switzerland making backroom deals with Iran? He doesn’t link or refer to any source, and I haven’t seen anything like this claim elsewhere (even on right-wing blogs, though I don’t visit them that often); but I also haven’t yet seen any responses of “no, here’s what really happened.” But I have trouble believing that either (a) this absolutely happened, and no one but Kopel noticed and he’s only mentioning it now, or (b) he completely made it up out of whole cloth, without even a shred of truth to base it on. So what’s the answer?

By: Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:53:09 +0000

36 and 37: but surely there has now been enough time and discussion for “deferring to anyone with knowledge of Swiss politics,” yes? Kopel was claiming that the Swiss people felt (and no, he doesn’t say he’s with them, but he is basically offering this as a defense of their actions)[1] that this vote was the only possible response to the government’s backroom deals with Tehran; and that the peaceful freedom-loving non-Iranian Muslim immigrant population of Switzerland just happened to be caught in the crossfire (Anthony at 37 treats this as a minor distinction, but it seems to me to be Kopel’s main point). This is supported by not so much as, say, a quote from a Swiss person saying something like “well, my vote may have had something to do with Iran.” Other people who do know what they’re talking about (here and at VC, for example) have since observed that actually, the people supporting the measure had used advertising that made it pretty clear that what they wanted was to kick muslims and non-whites (with no particular mention of Iran) out of Switzerland. It seems to me that driving Albanians out of your country is actually quite different from protesting backroom deals with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, Kopel was correct that the Swiss wanted to make some sort of point about Muslims. Well observed indeed!

[1] This strikes me, actually, as basically worse than frankly agreeing with the referendum. He doesn’t say he disagrees with it—and on the Volokh blog, that’s a pretty striking omission—he just makes up bizarre excuses for those who voted for it. I mean, are we really expected to pretend that this was an unbiased, neutral analysis? Come on.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:36:05 +0000

Henry – a garbage can is not a very good tool for clubbing someone – it’s not very heavy and it’s rather unwieldy. But if you have a strong desire to club someone, and the only plausible tool you have is a garbage can, you will use it. In the same way, the Swiss majority felt they had no real recourse against their political class’ policies about something (probably immigration rather than kowtowing to Tehran, though), until a small group managed to put the minaret ban on the ballot.

By: CK

CK — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:04:48 +0000

Henry @34

Yes – I agree the claims about a conspiracy between elite Swiss and Islamonazis stuff is pretty far out there, as does connecting that to the motivations of the Swiss electorate.

But it doesn’t strike me as a silly point to make to say that those voting for the ban might have done so because they think it is one of the best available ways of signalling their opposition to what they (perhaps irrationally) think of as troubling aspects of Islam – although I ‘ll defer to anyone with any knowledge of Swiss politics over this one! And that seems to me both the most natural and most charitable reading of what Kopke says in that paragraph.