What kind of lawyer does not listen to dissenting or alternative opinion? Weren’t they trained to present sound and robust arguments in a logical manner? Well, it seems former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay is one such lawyer who does not like to listen to arguments and understand points of view that run counter to his.
Indeed, Hilbay has made a name for himself on social media as a habitual blocker of anyone who even hints of some semblance of disagreement to what he evidently believes are the sacred views he upholds. The trouble with that is Hilbay is a self-described liberal. And last we recall, “liberals” are supposed to be “inclusive” and open to “diversity” in both points of view and ways of life.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
In a post on Facebook, Hilbay said…
Empower people, not government; enable citizens, not politicians; strengthen institutions, not leaders; distribute, dont concentrate, power.
Well, social media has done exactly that in the 21st Century. Unlike in the old days when Yellowtardism virtually monopolised the discourse thanks to those days being the days when only Big Media possessed the capability to broadcast and publish to a mass audience unchallenged, ordinary people today have access to mass communication platforms that are giving Big Media and their partners-in-propaganda a run for their money.
For such a young guy, Hilbay behaves like the old farts who still believe they are entitled to a monopoly on the discourse based merely on who they are. This is, after all, the same guy who proposes that an “information police” be organised to serve as some kind of authority on what is “fake” or authentic information.
As the old cliché question goes, however, who guards the Guardians?
Hilbay, for example, was embroiled in controversy back in 2016 when a Commission on Audit (COA) report revealed that he received almost 5 million pesos in “excess allowances” before stepping down from his post…
State auditors said the honoraria and allowances that Calida, Hilbay and other state lawyers received exceeded 50 percent of their annual basic salary, which is a violation of the COA Circular 85-25-E.
Calida succeeded Hilbay on June 30, 2016.
The report said Calida and Hilbay’s basic salary for 2016 amounted to P702,516 each, and that their allowances should only be P351,258 each.
Calida and Hilbay received P1.48 million and P5.1 million in honoraria and allowances in 2016, respectively, the COA said.
Florin Hilbay has come to be known by this increasingly familiar sight.
Imagine then if such an “information police” as Hilbay proposes existed to evaluate this kind of report. Will it pass the authenticity test? Or will it be labelled as “fake”? Politicians and government officials, after all, go by the motto “What are we in Power for?”. So facts tend not to get in the way of political agendas in the Philippines. Indeed, given Hilbay’s predisposition to blocking “undesirable” information, it does not give many too much comfort to see a proposal to control information proposed by him seeing the light of day.
A red flag for self-appointed “thought leaders” is consistent inconsistency. Inconsistency is a symptom of such people who regard personal loyalties (and not first principles) as the key foundation of their advocacies. Hilbay, however, is a lawyer so one would expect a bit more of a person trained in Philosophy — a discipline where conclusions are mere derivatives of intellectual exploration on a landscape of competing ideas. As a serial blocker of dissent, Hilbay cannot be considered as someone who arrives at his conclusions systematically. Rather, he is likely to be more of an extremist — someone who latches on to a set of beliefs and cherry-picks information and points of view to enforce rather than validate those beliefs.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Hilbay and his ilk Leonen and Sereno all suffer from having once been FULL TIME professors at the UP College of Law, where they believe in the teaching of law in the “Grand Manner.” As law school professors, they are accustomed to lording it over their charges, few would dissent in their classrooms and in their exams. A student who wishes to pass their exams would almost always just regurgitate what was discussed in class, hence these former professors are unaccustomed to seeing dissent. They further insulate themselves from accountability in their writings under the guise of “academic freedom”, which is why these same professors constantly get away with criticising government when they were not thenones in power. Unfortunately for them, neither of these three appear to have adjusted from life in the academe, which is why their old habits regarding dissent remain. In the academe, they can easily block “dissent” with the expedient measure of giving a failing grade, which no one will question (academic freedom!), so blocking dissent by blocking followers on social media is second nature.
Control-freak teachers. Thus it could be true in this case, how one behaves in school can predict how you behave outside of it… and it applies to teachers rather than students.
If Hilbay refused to discourse with us bloggers; maybe he look down upon us, who are not Lawyers, as not worthy to discourse with his level of intellect. I found people like that, who have “superiority complex”. They have the credentials, so they assume , they know more than us.
The idiocy of this thinking, goes further, by controlling the information, that comes to us. Hibay wants to control our minds also; to fit make us, his “robots”. Incapable of thinking and reasoning. This is the same as the way YellowTards controledl the media .
Hilbay’s mindset is obsolete. He thinks , that the Information Technology has not yet reached the Philippines. He tries to control the social media, by blocking people. He is afraid of people, who would argue with him in the open. Maybe, he is afraid that the disinformation, he have given to people will come out. And people, will discover, he is not smart, after all, as he had projected himself to be !
lol he has a dlck face. i hope you read this you fabgot
If Florin Hilbay gonna be a smartass, first he has to be smart. Otherwise he’s just an ass.