Back in March 2013 we noted that after attacking yet another fellow Free Dominion posted and precipitating yet another flame war, Edward Kennedy had been banned from Free Dominion. We had speculated that the ban may very well be temporary; our speculation was soon confirmed by Ms. Fournier:

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Kennedy didn't return immediately and initially when he did he posted sporadically, however for the last few months he has been posting on Free Dominion at the same pace he had been before he was banned for a single day.

Edward Kennedy continues to be a member in good standing at Free Dominion.

So, Connie, how's that working out for you now?

JB Stone - RIP Creatures of the Right Is 'Civil War' civil?... But we digress.

One thing we noted was that Kennedy, upon his return, had become even more fixated on lil' ole us. Here he wonders what we ended up getting in our Christmas stockings (and continuing to promote the "ARC is violent" canard):

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During his hiatus from Free Dominion, he claims to have spent the time investigating us:

[Image] FYI, he is referring to Paul FROMM and Marc LEMIRE Wow. We lead much more interesting lives than even we were aware of.

In fact Kennedy regularly peppers his posts with reference to arc/ara (or if he inclined to use capitalization, ARC/ARA) which, we presume, means us. Regarding his most recent missives, ARC certainly didn't fail to be mentioned at least once here as well:

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We again hasten to point out, (a) we are not affiliated with the ARA and (b) we are not violent nor do we sanction violence. Still, some of our readers might wonder what Kennedy is talking about here regarding "past communications."

Trust us when we guarantee our readers that it is again much ado about nothing, but since Mr. Kennedy says he plans on publishing said, "communications" we might as well take the initiative.

The same day we posted the blog entry regarding Kennedy being banned (as it turned out temporarily) by a Free Dominion moderator, Kennedy responded to us directly:

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Prior to this email Kennedy had not, to our knowledge, made any effort to communicate with us. Nor did we make any effort to communicate with him. However he does suggest here, as he had in numerous posts on Free Dominion, that we had committed libel by posting on our blog screen shots of what he posted on Free Dominion. Of course this begs the question as to how we could libel him by taking direct screen shots from Free Dominion and publishing them here? Kennedy proposes that the libel is as a result of not providing the proper context for the words and ideas he has posted. To that claim we respond with a question of our own.

In what way will the "proper context" make posts such as these acceptable to the majority of mainstream progressives, centerists, and conservatives in Canada?

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Do we have to mention that these are but a small fraction of posts that we could have used? No amount of context will make most reasonable people think that, for using just one of the above examples, destroying the UN building and killing all those within is a reasonable position to take.

We didn't actually notice his email for some time. When we did, and in spite of advice that we ignore him, we couldn't help but respond.

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This is the bulk of the message, though we did omit a small portion discussing an individual we had learned had left the racist movement and who is now a productive member of society (we ask Kennedy not to continue to invoke this individual in his diatribes against us as we're sure the person in question would like to not be reminded of past involvement in the racist movement). The ARC member who replied to Kennedy also made a bit of a typo and had intended to write, "[n]ever, in all my years online, have I seen a person who appears to fantasize about killing people as much as you do." But other than the brief omission this first message is the most detailed and in depth of the two messages we ultimately sent to Kennedy.

As we did not receive a reply (and considering just how pugnacious Kennedy can be this surprised us) we had hoped that perhaps he had a Road to Damascus moment and decided that maybe he might need to chill a bit, so we sent one further message:

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His response did not instill a great deal of confidence that he had seen the light:

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That's it. The entirety of Kennedy's correspondence with us, the brief mention of the reformed racist and a request for Kennedy to desist from commenting on that individual which we excluded notwithstanding. We're not sure what nefarious plot's Kennedy was able to glean from all of this, but then we can't claim to be mind readers.

But during the past two weeks, we think we might have figured out why Kennedy has decided to pay more attention to us.

In addition to accusing us of being violent (again, we aren't), he has also accused us of not taking action against injustice. His criticism of us sort of take to tone of the "straw man" fallacy with a touch of "have you stopped beating your wife" thrown in for flavor:

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We might point out that, as we are indeed anonymous, Kennedy really can't determine what our meat world activism involves. Certainly some of the examples Kennedy uses as examples of injustice, even tyranny, above and in other posts we can agree with (for example, we DO agree that attacking an African-American woman because she married a white man is wrong and should be spoken out against just as attacking anyone based on their ethnicity or who they chose to be in a relationship; I suspect our view on this is shared by other progressives). And given his bluster we have to assume that he must walk the walk in addition to talking the talk. To do otherwise might be hypocritical.

But then we read these two threads, in which Free Dominion user GreyBowel asks Kennedy a rather probing question:
Where is the church? Damned and hellbound.  Criminality, Cowardliness, and Intolerance of the Pro Aborts In the end, and despite his bluster, Kennedy doesn't appear to walk the walk, at least regarding the injustices that really need to be addressed. Instead, he appears content with assaulting a political party canvasser (and even that doesn't pass the smell test), castigating local civil servants and bylaw officers, railing against regulatory agencies... and pitting himself against groups like ours.

As GreyBowel notes, Kennedy seems to go after individuals and organizations that don't actually offer him an actual physical threat. Despite trying to build us up as some dangerous cabal of criminal thugs, Kennedy knows full well none of our members would harm him in any way. But by "bravely" attacking us online, he can present himself as the hero he wants people to believe him to be knowing full well he can never actually live up to the image he has created for himself.... but nor will he have to.

But then he might not be so self aware, in which case....