Debate is pseudo-intellectual mudwrestling

Re Calls to cancel Steve Bannon’s Toronto debate intensify after Pittsburgh massacre, Oct. 30

It is hard to fathom what on Earth the organizers of the Munk Debate were thinking. A contest between spin doctors with entirely selfserving agendas is just a terrible idea.

Rather than focus on whether they should cancel the event, I want to highlight the irresponsibility of inviting two purveyors of lies and misinformation to debate a meaningless proposition. Whatever one thinks about pressing for cancellation, it does no disservice to freedom of expression to call the organizers to account for the initial decision to host Steve Bannon and David Frum.

Bannon’s career as a hate-monger and rightwing propagandist is beyond dispute. How does one debate someone with such a perverse relationship with the truth. His intelligence is directed exclusively at distorting facts to gain and hold power. His attachment to the coattails of the worst president in U.S. history is no reason to treat him seriously; rather, it proves he is incapable of meaningful debate about the important issues of our time.

Frum is little better. He, too, is well practiced in the art of political deception, helping mislead the American public into supporting an illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Now he wants us to believe he values truth and the rule of law, but it is suspicious that this comes only once the liars in power started lying about his friends and his commitments.

Debate informs only when undertaken in good faith by thoughtful people. No confrontation between these two could have any intellectual integrity; worse still, the meaningless resolution proposed positively invites demagoguery.

This event is little more than pseudo-intellectual mudwrestling. In giving another megaphone to a hate-monger, the Munk Debate debases its own coin. Denise Reaume, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto There you have it. Unscrupulous exploitation of an unrelated tragic event to muzzle a debate. Typical Liberal tactic.

This backfires if David Frum can’t challenge Bannon. Or maybe it’s deliberate, for fear Frum isn’t smart enough and could lose to “populist” sentiment? Kope Inokai, Toronto