The Freedom Files

Temple Cleans Up

2010-08-30T11:49:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Back in May, I watched the HBO telepic Temple Grandin. If you read my review, you remember that I was totally blown away by both the movie and the performance of Claire Danes:

Danes, on the other hand, who in some ways had an easier time because she is playing a real person, crawled inside of Temple Grandin and almost literally became her. She played the role straight, without the usual maudlin characteristics typical of the "dysfunction of the week" movie that inhabit the boob tube. She played the role not as a caricature or an impression, but as Temple. So accurate was her portrayal, Temple herself, who had made herself infinitely available to Danes during production, said watching the film was "like going in sort of a weird time machine...I whispered to Claire...'Can you believe that's really you?'"

Within minutes, I had forgotten that I was watching a girl I've been crushing on since the mid-90's, and quite simply just believed I was watching Temple. Now, I probably watched this differently than most people will. I watched it as the parent of an Autistic child - I felt every failure, every schoolyard taunt, and every exhilarating victory in that same vicarious way I am sure her mother experienced them. Without the perfect portrayal of Claire Danes, this would not have been possible.

To be clear, the film wasn't preachy or over-sentimental, and that is perhaps why the payoffs packed such an emotional wallop. I found myself tearing up and choking back sobs a half a dozen times while watching it, and no other movie or television show that features the struggles of the Autistic has ever done that to me. I didn't feel that I was being dragged through an emotional minefield, with every shot set up to illicit some tear-jerking response. The film was honest and stark in its portrayal, and effectively put me in Temple's head. When she flinched away from the sound of a squeaky marker, when she stood terrified in front of a guillotine-like sliding door, I stood with her.

The difference between this movie and other movies is the same as the difference between Temple's book and other books on Autism - those other books and movies were outsider's views of Autism, while this movie and the book it is based on are insider views. It helped me get inside the head of an Autistic person, helped me understand.

The director, Mick Jackson, did a remarkable job bringing Temple's brain to the screen, showing how she doesn't think linearly, but associatively. When she sees her favorite horse, her mind rapidly flips through a rolodex of every single horse of that kind she has ever seen, in full color moving pictures. When she sees a faulty gate, she doesn't see it as a whole, but as a sum of its parts, every detail apparent to her, every angle, every lever and hinge. She can see instantly how it could be improved, building 3D models in her head, manipulating and testing them to a degree even the most sophisticated CAD program could not duplicate. When she builds her invention, she already knows it will work because it has already gone through extensive trials - in her mind.

I told everyone I know to watch this movie, and I firmly believed that it deserved to sweep the Emmy's, especially for Claire Danes, Julia Ormand, David Strathairn, and Catherine O'Hara.

Well, I was not disappointed. Last night, the film won seven Emmy Awards, including Director Mick Jackson, Best TV Movie, and acting honors for Danes, Ormand, and Straithairn.

Here are some clips:

Excuse Me, Officer, I Speak Jive...

2010-08-24T10:15:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! I swear, this story could be from The Onion. It seems that the squares over at the DEA are trying to find "ebonics translators" so they can understand what is going down in a drug deal. The Associated Press reports:

The search for translators covers a wide swath of the Southeast, including offices in Atlanta, Washington, New Orleans, Miami and the Caribbean, said Sanders. He said he's uncertain why other regions aren't hiring Ebonics translators, but said there are ongoing investigations in the Southeast that need dedicated Ebonics translators.

Linguists said Ebonics can be trickier than it seems, partly because the vocabulary evolves so quickly.
"A lot of times people think you're just dealing with a few slang words, and that you can finesse your way around it," said John Rickford, a Stanford University linguistics professor. "And it's not — it's a big vocabulary. You'll have some significant differences" from English.

Critics worry that the DEA's actions could set a precedent.

"Hiring translators for languages that are of questionable merit to begin with is just going in the wrong direction," said Aloysius Hogan, the government relations director of English First, a national lobbying group that promotes the use of English.

"I'm not aware of Ebonics training schools or tests. I don't know how they'd establish that someone speaks Ebonics," he said. "I support the concept of pursuing drug dealers if they're using code words, but this is definitely going in the wrong direction."

I don't even know where to begin with this. First of all, is it really that hard to understand black people, yo? And what is this nonsense about the wrong direction? It's not like they are proposing a Constitutional Amendment to make Ebonics the National Language. They are just begging for help because they are hopeless geeks, like Patrick Dempsey in Can't Buy Me Love, except with guns and power.

It reminds me of that classic Newsradio episode where Bill McNeil is pimping Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor, and Catherine gets tired of hearing him trying to jive it up, so she gives him a bunch of fake ebonics with which to make a fool of himself on the air.

I think it'd be awesome if that happened to the DEA. Can you see an undercover cop talking to some drug kingpin and saying, "Yo, yo, yo, this Rocky Balboa burns straight through hijizzy and makes my brain go kerfluffle. How many chicken wings and greens for enough weight to get my blizzy-wizzy in the hizzy?"

All Relations Among Humans CAN Be Reduced to Market Relations

2010-07-29T11:55:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Today, I was reading an excellent blog post over at Really, Libertarians? called A Liberaltarian Reader? Why everything is posed as a question, I do not know (This is a really awesome blog?), but aside from the upwardly-inflected sentence finishers in the titles, there was some real meat to this post.

The author springboards from a discussion that has been circulating around the libertarian corner of the blogosphere over where exactly libertarians fit in the anachronistic left-right spectrum. Should we form political alliances with the right, or the left? Personally, I think it is fine to make temporary alliances based on shared policy goals, but we do not "fit" exclusively with either.

I agree with the author and Brian Doherty that libertarians' best efforts should be toward educating people about libertarianism and "creating more libertarians."

To this end, the author compiled a fantastic list of essays and publications that can be given to liberals to study that will perhaps one day turn them into "liberaltarians." There are some obviously great works with which I was already familiar, like Radley Balko's excellent Overkill policy paper about the rise of paramilitary weapons and tactics in domestic law enforcement, or Hayek's masterful essay, "Why I am Not a Conservative."

Some, I had not heard of before, so I decided to dig in and start reading. Of course, I first went with the one that jumped out at me the most - an essay from Cato Institute Senior Fellow Tom G. Palmer called "20 Myths About Markets." (PDF)

Tom G Palmer

The essay is broken down into four parts:

Ethical Criticisms
Economic Criticisms
Hybrid Ethical-Economic Criticisms
Overly Enthusiastic Defenses

I found the entire essay very compelling. It is definitely worth the read. He destroys popular economic myths left and right, like Rambo assaulting a Viet Cong POW camp. In fact, there was only one point that I had a problem with, in the section on "Overly Enthusiastic Defenses."

Now, I don't want to be accused of being The Apostle just for finding my only criticism in the OED section, but it is what it is and I am what I am. Here's what he wrote:

19. All Relations Among Humans Can Be Reduced to Market Relations

All actions are taken because the actors are maximizing their own utility. Even helping other people is getting a benefit for yourself, or you wouldn’t do it. Friendship and love represent exchanges of services for mutual benefit, no less than exchanges involving sacks of potatoes. Moreover, all forms of human interaction can be understood in terms of markets, including politics, in which votes are exchanged for promises of benefits, and even crime, in which criminals and victims exchange, in the well known example, “your money or your life.”

Attempting to reduce all actions to a single motivation falsifies human experience. Parents don’t think about the benefits to themselves when they sacrifice for their children or rush to their rescue when they’re in danger. When people pray for salvation or spiritual enlightenment, their motivations are not quite the same as when they are shopping for clothes. What they do have in common is that their actions are purposeful, that they are undertaken to achieve their purposes. But it does not follow logically from that that the purposes they are striving to achieve are all reducible to commensurable units of the same substance. Our purposes and motivations may be varied; when we go to the market to buy a hammer, when we enter an art museum, and when we cradle a newborn baby, we are realizing very different purposes, not all of which are well expressed in terms of buying and selling in markets.

It is true that intellectual constructs and tools can be used to understand and illuminate a variety of different kinds of interaction. The concepts of economics, for example, which are used to understand exchanges on markets, can also be used to understand political science and even religion. Political choices may have calculable costs and benefits, just like business choices; political parties or mafia cartels may be compared to firms in the market. But it does not follow from such applications of concepts that the two choice situations are morally or legally equivalent. A criminal who offers you a choice between keeping your money and keeping your life is not relevantly like an entrepreneur who offers you a choice between keeping your money and using it to buy a commodity, for the simple reason that the criminal forces you to choose between two things to both of which you have a moral and legal entitlement, whereas the entrepreneur offers you a choice between two things, to one of which he has an entitlement and to one of which you have an entitlement. In both cases you make a choice and act purposively, but in the former case the criminal has forced you to choose, whereas in the latter case the entrepreneur has offered you a choice; the former lessens your entitlements and the latter offers to increase them, by offering you something you don’t have but may value more for something you do have but may value less. Not all human relationships are reducible to the same terms as markets; at the very least, those that involve involuntary “exchanges” are radically different, because they represent losses of opportunity and value, rather than opportunities to gain value.

I think Mr Palmer is confusing a single motivation and equivalency with self-interest. It's not always about benefits, per se, but about values. Those values may be many and varied, but the act of choosing a course that supports those values is not.

I agree that a father who steps in front of a bullet is not simply making a free-market choice. If he steps in front of the bullet he dies. If not, his daughter does. These choices do indeed "represent losses of opportunity and value, rather than opportunities to gain value," but they are still choices, still instructive, and therefore still within the realm of economic study. As Ludwig von Mises said, economics, at its core, is simply the study of human choice.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett spoke on the idea of humans being choice machines, and he was correct when he said that "a choice machine looks at the world and sees options, and it says, 'If I did this, what would happen? If I did that, what would happen? If I did this other thing, what would happen?' It builds up an anticipation of what the likely outcome of one action or another would be, and then chooses on the basis of how much that outcome is valued or disvalued."

In other words, based on the information we have gained through education and experience, we go through our lives making countless choices that we determine will maximize our happiness. That is not to say we are always right about what action will maximize our happiness or that the information we base those choices on will always be correct, but the fact remains we will make our best educated guess as to what course of action will be in our own best-interest, according to our own values.

A father that doesn't give a shit about his daughter will simply not step in front of that bullet. So, the reason that the father might sacrifice himself to save his child is a compelling question with interesting implications that can carry over into other areas of economic study. The simple answer is that in his own hierarchy of values, he places higher import on her well-being than his own. While the choice may not be "fair" or a mutually-beneficial exchange, it is still informed by the instant economic cost-benefit analysis that occurs in his head as he makes the split-second decision to sacrifice himself.

Likewise, the robber who says "Your money or your life" is also presenting an economic choice to his victim. It may not be a great choice, and it certainly fails the sniff test for a mutually-beneficial exchange on the free market - after all, in a free market, both actors can simply walk away from the exchange in the exact condition they entered. But again, the choice is still there. The victim must analyze whether the robber is bluffing or not, whether he can take the robber in a fight, whether his pride will be hurt more by simply handing over the cash or trying and failing to protect himself, and whether what he has in his wallet is worth the risk of trying to defend it in the first place.

In fact, the act of making the demand "your money or your life" is a choice based on the robber's own hierarchy of values. Is the lure of quick money worth the risk of being arrested by the police or shot by the victim worth it? Is it in his best-interest to just get a real job and give up the life of crime? Studying this economic choice can be useful to law enforcement, who can craft policies in such a way that make the cost of crime prohibitively high versus the benefits reaped from the robbery. John Lott has been studying this phenomenon for some time when it comes to "More guns, less crime."

So, it's one thing to say that all exchanges are not free. I would agree with that. It's another thing entirely to say that artificially-constrained choices are divorced from economic thought and cost-benefit analysis. Dealing with the government isn't much different than dealing with a robber - in both instances, you can't just walk away from the deal. You must weigh the benefit of resisting with the cost of retribution. But that does not mean that an economic choice is not made.

It seems to me in this instance that Mr Palmer has fallen victim to his own elucidated Myth #5. He said, "Both political choice and market choice are 'imperfect' in all the ways specified above, so choice should be made on the basis of a comparison of real – not “perfect” – market processes and political processes." These choices are imperfect, indeed, but to say they are removed from the economic realm because they are "imperfect" is missing the forest for the trees.

A Nice Bit of Consistency from Glenn Beck

2010-07-20T21:56:00.004-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! You know, I have a love/hate relationship with that overwrought, hand-wringing crybaby Glenn Beck. I like him because he has more libertarians on his show than probably any other host. I like him because he loves history and takes on American Idols like that asshat Woodrow Wilson. I like him because unlike Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, he's actually funny.

What I don't like about him is that he calls himself a libertarian sometimes, and is giving his listeners the wrong idea about what a libertarian is. Like Ron Paul, I am also weary of his penchant for falling prey to conspiracy theories. He is a "National Greatness" conservative who weeps over Jesus and America like it is some kind of tent revival. And "National Greatness" is just one step away from "Nationalism," which has driven more tyranny and oppression than any other secular idea.

Mostly, though, I think he's an alright guy, and gets a bad rap from most people. I think he tries to be as fair-minded as he can, and I have a good example of that. Do you remember the Freedom File I wrote back in April entitled The Rise of Citizen Journalism (or NAZIs Show Up in the Strangest Places)?

In it, I talked about Adam Sharp, a rising star in citizen journalism, who confronted with a camera politicians and public figures, holding their feet to the fire and asking them to explain their positions and how they jive with the Constitution. He also had taken it upon himself to go to Tea Party rallies and call out racists, ridiculing them into leaving. I posted a video of one such occurance.

Well, it looks like Center for American Progress saw the same video, and instead of lauding the Tea Party for following the racist mouth-breather around ridiculing him, simply edited out all of that and just presented that man's racist rants as proof the Tea Party is the modern American incarnation of National Front.

And Beck called them out:

Good stuff. Now, you might be saying, "Yeah, of course he's gonna stand up for white conservatives when they are being railroaded. What I'd like to see is him defending a black liberal with the same gusto."

Okay:

Hat tip to JohnDenny.

Letters to a Young Libertarian...

2010-07-18T20:27:00.003-05:00

Richard --

When you hear about the new health reform law these days, too much talk is focused on the political.

What I've found is that most Americans just want to know how this new law helps their families stay healthy -- and how it reduces their costs.

The first thing I tell people who ask about the Affordable Care Act is that, for moms like me, it makes our lives easier. It gives families control over their own care. And it gives us the comfort of knowing that our insurance will be there when we need it most -- especially if we get sick. Then I tell them that it gets better, but there's a lot to know. To help, this administration has set up HealthCare.gov, where folks can see customized information about how care will improve for their families.

So much of what makes this law great is its emphasis on preventive care -- right now, too many people aren't getting the check-ups or the screenings they need to stay healthy. Twelve percent of kids haven't seen a doctor in the past year. And 59 million adults -- and 11 million children -- depend on an insurance plan that does not cover basic immunizations.

Health reform is changing that. Under this new law, all new private plans will provide basic preventive services -- things like childhood immunizations and checkups, mammograms, colonoscopies, cervical screenings, and treatment for high blood pressure -- absolutely free of charge. No copay. No deductible. No co-insurance needed.

And, on HealthCare.gov, you can not only learn what preventive steps will help keep your family healthy, but also what insurance coverage options are available based on your needs.

A focus on prevention will help us to combat diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure -- chronic illnesses that right now lead to seven of ten deaths in the United States and 75 percent of our national health care costs.

And it will help us tackle an issue that is dear to my heart -- childhood obesity. As some of you know one of my top priorities as First Lady is the Let's Move! campaign, where we have made it our goal to put a stop to the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation, so children who are born today grow up at a healthy weight.

Each of us needs to take responsibility for our own health and the health of our families, and the new health reform law can help. That's why I'm writing today -- to make sure you and Americans across the country know how their health plans are getting better day by day under reform.

Please visit HealthCare.gov and find out more about your care:

Thank you,

Michelle Obama

_____________________________________________

Michelle -

Where did you get my email address? From your husband? Cause he's been spamming me for months, now, with unsolicited faux-conspiratorial tripe like this.

I would think the President and First Lady of the United States of America would have better things to do with their time than operate a spambot.

Come to think of it, was it your husband who sent me the email about his Nigerian uncle, who wanted to put some money in my checking account to move it out of the country?

I'm just wondering - is "health care" code for "discount Viagra?"

If so, I may be interested.

Thank you,

Richard Davis

Arthur Takes on Asperger's Syndrome

2010-06-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

Young Libertarian Fights to Save Autistic Friend From School Administrator

2010-06-24T15:55:00.000-05:00

Hello, Freedomphiles! As the father of a child with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of Autism, one of my greatest fears is that he will grow up and live a solitary life, devoid of the benefits of a close group of friends with whom to share his life's journey.

You see, Aspies have trouble making friends, especially with neuro-typical people. Their bluntness and honesty can be unsettling, and their inability to read social cues makes them sometimes awkward and off-putting. They go through life, hearing only a quarter of the conversation, because they only hear the words - they don't interpret tone of voice, body posture, facial expressions - things you and I do automatically and without thought.

It's a lot like spending your life conversing with people through email, but without the handy emoticons to convey the meanings which aren't always apparent in the written word.

I fear that because of this, my son won't know what it is like to have a posse that he can share his feelings with, who will accept him for who he is and have his back when he really needs it.

I only hope that my son is lucky enough to have friends like the ones who rallied around and supported Joshua White (pictured above) in his time of need.

I've spent the last few days talking with a young man by the name of Harrison Brush. He is a fellow student of Joshua's at Page Middle School in Gloucester, Virginia. He told me the story of a quirky kid, who wears a shirt and tie every day to school and cares deeply about other people. "Josh is a cool kid who will really shine if we help him reach his full potential," Harrison, a young libertarian, said. "He hopes someday to be an electromechanical engineer."

Brush first met Joshua at the beginning of school. He and his friends had some down time and were gathered together doing some homework, when they heard someone beatboxing the Mario Brother's theme song with perfect pitch and rhythm. "We all looked up to see what's going on, and he got embarrassed and stopped. Realizing how we made him feel, we started encouraging him to show us how to do it, and before the end of the class he's got us all doing it."

Brush and his friends immediately took a shine to the boy, and absorbed him into their group. Harrison, a true libertarian, refused to speculate on why his friends wanted to bring Josh into the fold. "I don't know why they decided to take him under their wings, but I know why I did. Josh is caring, he loves to play around. If someone looks sad he'll be right there asking them what's wrong and trying to cheer them up."

I can only hope that my son meets someone like Harrison Brush and his friends. And what happened on the second to last day of school only solidifies that assessment.

Brush and company were surprised and delighted to see Joshua come into school that day sporting a cookie-monster blue (the same color as my current mohawk, by the way) buzz cut. At the very beginning of their first class together, World Geography, a para-educator entered the room and approached Josh, saying, "I don't think you can do that. Come with me."

She took him across the hall to Assistant Principal Angela Byrd-Wright's office, where Harrison and his friends could watch the confrontation out their classroom window. Of course, no one knew what she was actually saying, but they knew how an Aspie would react to a dressing-down. They could see his "looks of dismay" as she confronted him, so when Harrison saw Josh's eyes dart to them, he gave his friend a supportive "thumbs up."

When he returned to the classroom, the Assistant Principal was with him. He was being sent home until he bleached the blue out of his hair. The students, in typical damn-the-man middle school angst, began a "slow clap" for the unsettled student.

When Josh was gone, Byrd-Wright chastised the students, saying that they were "encouraging bad behavior" and that she was "ashamed of them."

Fair enough. That's school. But it didn't end there. The students were upset, thinking that Josh's rights had been violated, and they had a point. According to the ACLU, the same thing happened at Norview Middle School, also in Virginia, in 2002. A student named Jesse Doyle showed up for school with blue hair and was told he was suspended until he changed the color. The ACLU sent a letter informing them that hair color was a Constitutionally-protected right, and the school capitulated.

In 1999, they represented another Virginia student named Kent McNew, who also colored his hair blue. In the end, the courts demanded he be reinstated and ordered the School District to pay $25,000 in ACLU legal fees.

In both of these instances, the case law that was used to bind the school's was Massie v. Henry, a 1972 case heard by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, whereby the court ruled that students had a "right to wear their hair as they wish as an aspect of the right to be secure in one's person guaranteed by the due process clause."

Kent Willis, Executive Director of the Virginia ACLU commented, "Schools often claim that students with colored or outlandish hair disrupt the educational environment. In the end, though, we usually find that the only real disturbances are caused by school officials themselves, when they conspicuously and irrationally punish students for doing nothing more than quietly exercising a constitutional right."

It would seem prudent after multiple lost lawsuits, that the state of Virginia would have issued some sort of guidelines to its schools about what they can and cannot do. Perhaps they did, and it was simply ignored. The rest of Harrison's story appears to illustrate that school officials seemed more interested in using the law as a bludgeon to suppress the free speech of the students, rather than a guideline for their own behavior.

Stories of what happened to Josh circulated the school over the next two periods, and many students were making tentative plans to engage in various types of protest - from t-shirts to coloring their own hair. By the time lunch arrived, the news had made it back to the administration.

At the end of the eighth-grader's lunch, Assistant Principal Byrd-Wright and a Student Resource Officer (SRO) entered the cafeteria and closed the doors as silence fell on the room. "Have the eighth-graders left the lunch room?" was heard through the SRO's radio before she replied, "No, we've got a captive audience."

The Assistant Principal then began speaking to the students about the incident. These are the key points she made, according to Harrison:

If we protest her decision in any way we will be suspended, continuing into our first year of high school
If we dye or cut our hair we will be suspended, continuing into our first year of high school
She WILL throw the book at us (10 days suspension)
We will be sent before the judge (She never says under what charges)
They are not afraid to press charges against us
She explicitly says that we can be charged up to $2,500 for "pranking"
Explicitly names pages 8 and 31 in our code of conduct.
She knows exactly who is planning to protest

Here is what the code of conduct (PDF) says about pranking:

Damaging or destroying school property is prohibited. The Code of Virginia SS8.01-43 allows school boards to initiate action to recover from parents up to $2,500 for damages for the willful or malicious destruction of school property by their child. Damaging or destroying the property of students or employees (including pranks) is also strictly prohibited. This includes graffiti.

And here is what the Code of Virginia cited by the code of conduct reads:

The Commonwealth, acting through the officers having charge of the public property involved, or the governing body of a county, city, town, or other political subdivision, or a school board may institute an action and recover from the parents or either of them of any minor living with such parents or either of them for damages suffered by reason of the willful or malicious destruction of, or damage to, public property by such minor. No more than $2,500 may be recovered from such parents or either of them as a result of any incident or occurrence on which such action is based.

Those statutes and rules deal with vandalism of school property, and unless the school believes they own Joshua, which I believe was banned by the 13th Amendment, they don't apply to people wearing protest shirts and blue hair.

Harrison went home and posted the story to a libertarian website, which is how I found him, complete with the Assistant Principal's email address. After administrators discovered the post, Harrison says eighth-grade language arts teacher Theresa Freyberger informed the students that sharing her email was a federal offense. I fail to see how this is the case, considering Byrd-Right's email address is published on the school's public website.

I have spoken with the school's principal, David Daniel, about the incident and the follow-up, and he presents a different story than the one Harrison related.

According to Daniel, Byrd-Wright told him that they were not in class, but that a huge commotion had erupted in the hallway over Josh's blue hair. Further, Josh was sent home not as a punishment, but out of fear that he was going to be bullied over the hair. He also stated that the $2500 fine was mentioned in relation to protests that would include food fights and walkouts:

"Any actions taken were based on our concern of him being a target for bullying and the disruption that surrounded him that morning," said Daniel. "In previous years we have had students with Mohawks, multi-colored hair, and alternative clothing. These students too, were not suspended. Additionally though, there was no question of bullying and there was no disruption caused by their appearance. As I explained to Harrison, the student in this case (this year) did nothing wrong. I have no problem with the color of his hair, before or after the dye. My concern rests with the students who were being excessive in the hallway and with the students who may have 'put him up' to doing this."

As for Freyberger claiming that giving Byrd-Wright's email address out being a federal offense, she claimed to Daniels in an email that she was talking to her students about "cyber bullying, setting someone up on the Internet for hate mail and how this could be a federal offense. My students and I also discussed their Facebook pages and how they should not use names or identifying info, 2nd period got into and had questions about hacking and identity theft, and so on. I also talked about treating people properly, how students try to fit in, things they will do (in light of the recent student suicides but did not mention suicide). You know, what I thought was one of those teachable moments."

The thing with all that, though, is that Daniels was not at school that day, and is relying on the words of his support staff. So, we can't be sure how accurate that information is. For what it is worth, it may have had a different outcome if he had been there that day, because Harrison described him to me as "a great principal...who is just trying to look out for his students." He further stated that, "Unfortunantly, Mr Daniel is misinformed, presumably by Angela Byrd-Wright."

Harrison stands by his story that there was no commotion in the hall, no specification about vandalism, and no bullying. "There was no commotion about his hair, we were inside the classroom waiting for our world geography teacher to start the movie for the ice cream party. Nobody talked about vandalizing the school. She said the $2,500 fines would be for anyone who's name was associated with any protest. I believe this just shows how out of tune the Page staff is with the rest of the school. He voluntarily dyed his hair, he didn't even tell us he was going to do it. He just showed up and his hair was blue. If he was bullied into it why would the whole 8th grade show support for him?" It's a fair question.

It's difficult in this situation to separate the wheat from the chaff, but working with the undisputed information, we can know that Josh dyed his hair blue and was sent home until he removed the color. Was it to prevent him from being bullied, which is admittedly a real concern with an Autistic kid? Perhaps. But I fail to see why he should be punished in a way that is unconstitutional for the actions that others might take in reaction.

I also find it worrisome that a teacher would warn students about publishing public information based on the Megan Meier case, which was local to me here in Missouri. It is the equivalent of saying that if I had given Megan Meier's MySpace address, which is public information, to Lori Drew, who then harassed her into committing suicide, I would be responsible. No, of course not, unless I was an accomplice in the harassment. (And there are constitutional issues with that whole story as well, that I won't get into now.)

I suspect that Daniel's support staff is massaging the truth to make themselves look better after handling this situation so badly. I'm sure that Harrison is telling his side of the story in a way that makes he and his friends look the best, as well. That's human nature. But all of that is in the margin, and there are serious concerns about the way it was handled in the parts of the story that no one disputes.

I think it might be a good idea for Daniel to sit down with his staff and Byrd-White particularly, to go over what the best ways are to deal with situations like this in the future, as well as what the school's rights and responsibilities are to the students, and in the school's function as State actors, what they can and cannot do constitutionally.

For what it is worth, Harrison did show up in protest, wearing a very clever shirt (at left). He was not suspended. He was not fined $2500. In fact, he admitted that Daniel "said it was a clever play on words, and we wouldn't have a problem if it didn't cause a class disruption."

I am sure that Daniel is a good principal, and that Harrison is a great kid. After all, right or wrong, he would not have stood up so firmly for Josh if he weren't something special. Our young libertarian concluded, "If anyone bullied Josh, I can personally guarantee you they wouldn't do it twice."

Of that, I have no doubt whatsoever.

The Rise of Citizen Journalism Episode II: The Empire Strikes Back

2010-06-14T11:40:00.001-05:00

Whoomp! Hope and Change! Whoomp! Hope and Change!

2010-06-07T19:07:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Gawker.com posts the odd conspiracy theory that perhaps Barack Obama was in the craptastic Tag Team novelty rap video Whoomp! (There it is!):

This is not the observation of just one random Internet weirdo. Other Internet weirdos have come to the same conclusion, including posters on the hip hop message board Tha Corner, the message board SomethingAwful and the Tea Party website Tennessee Sons of Liberty. The latter wrote: "This is an observation. This is not meant to be derogatory or inflammatory." Yeah, just randomly noticing that Obama was in this RAP video. But so what? As far as musical infractions go, Obama committed a much graver one by listing Sheryl Crow as one of his favorite acts.

Of course, its all bullshit, but it's funny bullshit. I don't see why Gawker needed to make any insinuations about the motives of the poster. Yeah, it happened to be a rap video, but so what? What are the chances that an Obama doppelganger was going to show up in any video? The likeness is uncanny:

But here's where you find the discrepancies:

Obama doesn't have pierced ears.
The guy in the video doesn't have the mole.
Why would a rap group from Atlanta have an unknown community organizer from Chicago in their video?
Secret Muslims hate rap.

Okay, that last one is a joke, but Obama did call Kanye West a jackass. In fairness to the president, while wildly talented, Kanye is a jackass.

This is Probably Unusual for a Pundit, But...

2010-05-31T19:59:00.003-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Today, I got this link from the Association of Libertarian Feminists concerning the practice of "nicking," which is the ritualistic cutting of the genitals of young girls, among the Sudanese and Somali populations in Australia. All forms of genital mutilation have been outlawed in the country since the 1990's, but they are considering allowing the practice again because it is so tied to the cultural and religious beliefs of those who practice it, they are just doing it at home, with disastrous results.

Nicking is a less drastic form of genital cutting, meant to meet the spiritual needs of those who practice it without allowing a full-on mutilation. The World Health Organization has three classifications for these procedures. Type I is the partial or total removal of the clitoris and prepuce (clitoral hood), Type II is type I, but they also remove the labia minora. and sometimes the labia majora. Type III is the most drastic, encompassing all of Type I and II, but they narrow the vaginal orifice and "seal" it. These are increasingly disturbing procedures, and knowing about those makes the nicking seem less terrible.

"If a nick could meet the cultural needs of a particular woman, then it might save her from going through what can really be drastic surgery." says Gino Pecoraro of the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians. "But we need to make sure we do not legitimise the ritualistic maiming of children."

Now, on a personal level, I find all the practices, even the more innocuous nicking, abhorrent. But I can't shake the notion that nicking is no worse than another cultural and spiritual practice that is completely accepted and even encouraged throughout the world - male circumcision. I find it distasteful, as well. But I haven't seen the WHO out trying to stop that. In fact, quite the opposite.

At the same time, I think the argument that they must do this to prevent backyard genital mutilations falls short in the same way that the argument that abortion should be legal to prevent back alley abortions does. I mean, we don't legalize armed robbery because unprofessional armed robbers are more likely to shoot their victims, do we?

That's not to say that I am against legal abortion, per se, but the argument itself is pretty weak.

What this all hinges upon is where we draw the line as a society between respecting religious differences and protecting children, and whether we use State violence to enforce it. That is a problem for which there is no easy libertarian answer.

This is really no different than the issues faced by parents in faiths such as Jehova's Witnesses, who don't believe in lifesaving blood transfusions, among other things. When do we allow the State to step in and violate the religious freedom of these people? Do we let them pray at the bedside while their children slowly die? Do they have a right to determine the best course of treatment for their sick child, or do we need to step in as advocates for the young, who cannot speak for themselves? If we begin making these decisions for them, where does it end?

If you believe that everlasting life in Heaven is reliant upon following a course of action most of us think is cruel and ignorant, and that some pain in a bitterly short life pales in comparison to losing the gift of infinite grace, should that be your decision to make? Who are we to force our own values on you?

Is the price of freedom allowing other's to mutilate their children and allow them to die when there are proven lifesaving therapies available? Or is it a situation where, as one libertarian feminist commenter said, "There is no compromise with evil?" I honestly don't know. It is a question I've struggled with since becoming a libertarian.

What say you?

The Vaccination-Autism Connection

2010-05-24T12:28:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Before my son, Connor, was born, my wife and I had dinner with some friends. They were those kind of libertarians that totally walk the walk. They were the kind that did everything they could to live "off the grid," who would have notes sent home from school because their kids criticized Abraham Lincoln. To be sure, they were some cool people. They embodied that whole anti-establishment blaze your own trail sort of ethos that I totally dig. In short, they were so punk rock.

After dinner, we sat drinking coffee while the kids played, and the subject turned to the safety of childhood vaccinations. You see, their boys, who were probably around five and eight at the time, had never had any vaccinations. They explained that there was a mountain of evidence that childhood vaccinations caused a whole host of medical issues for kids, including Autism.

Now, if there's one thing to know about me, its that I am a very skeptical person. I don't receive information uncritically. I am as likely to debunk an argument that supports my position as I am one that refutes it. My allegiance is to objective truth, and bad information is bad information, regardless of whether it might help me in the short-term.

At the time, though, I was a pretty young libertarian, and these people were like rock stars to me. I admit that I accepted their words as truth, without question or critical analysis. I didn't hit the internet. I didn't check the library. I just filed that little tidbit away, and when it was time for Connor to get vaccinated, we stalled. We figured, hey, if these kids at age two get Autism right after the MMR (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) vaccine, we'd just wait it out, let his body develop more before hitting it with all these chemicals.

Imagine our surprise when Connor began showing signs of Autism before he had even begun his vaccination schedule.

The origin of the idea that the MMR vaccine causes Autism is a British gastroenterologist named Andrew Wakefield, who studied twelve kids with Autism and published his results in 1998. He claimed to have found the measles virus in the bowels of these children, and suggested that the vaccine therefore created an inflammation that stunted their neurological development.

The news got out, and desperate parents, needing someone to blame for their children's condition, blamed the vaccine. Worse, many fearful parents, like myself, didn't get their kids vaccinated at all, and vaccination rates began dropping. The most prominent anti-vaccine activist is probably Jenny McCarthy - the beautiful and hilarious actress who first came to public attention as co-host of the MTV game show Singled Out.

She and then paramour Jim Carrey penned a piece for CNN, where they asserted:

We believe autism is an environmental illness. Vaccines are not the only environmental trigger, but we do think they play a major role. If we are going to solve this problem and finally start to reverse the rate of autism, we need to consider changing the vaccine schedule, reducing the number of shots given and removing certain ingredients that could be toxic to some children.

Misguided as she is, I cannot say anything bad about her. She was dealt a harsh blow, and she dedicated herself to improving her son's condition. She should be applauded for her indefatigable advocation of her son's interest. Hollywood is a place of massive self-centeredness, and Ms McCarthy bucked that trend in dedicating herself to helping her son.

Still, it must be said that she is wrong, and her push to reduce vaccinations could have a devastating effect on public health. For example, an unvaccinated kid in California brought the measles home from Switzerland and exposed 839 people. One baby was in the hospital for three days with a fever of 106 degrees. Fortunately, no one died. Fortunately, it wasn't Polio that was imported from Switzerland.

In 2004, ten of the thirteen scientists associated with Wakefield's study published the following statement:

We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient. However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper, according to precedent...

...The main thrust of this paper was the first description of an unexpected intestinal lesion in the children reported. Further evidence has been forthcoming in studies from the Royal Free Centre for Paediatric Gastroenterology and other groups to support and extend these findings. While much uncertainty remains about the nature of these changes, we believe it important that such work continues, as autistic children can potentially be helped by recognition and treatment of gastrointestinal problems."

Further, it was later revealed that Wakefield had recieved £400,000 from lawyers looking to sue for damages based on negative reactions to the MMR vaccine, and was working on an alternative vaccine that if adopted, would have made him a very rich man. What's more, it looks like he may have also falsified the results of the study, as well:

In only one case were there symptoms that arose after the injection; in many of the other cases symptoms started before the children had been vaccinated (in fact, there have been allegations for some time that neurological issues occurred in the children before they had actually been vaccinated, casting doubt on Wakefield’s work). Also, hospital pathologists reported that the bowels of many of the children were normal, but Wakefield reported them as having inflammatory disease in his journal paper.

Refutation of the methods of one study do not make a refutation of the results, though. So, let's look at the data. Or, more precisely, since we are not scientists, let's look at those that looked at the data. The Cochrane Library analyzed the 31 best studies of the MMR and concluded (PDF) that there is "no credible link between the MMR vaccine and any long-term disability, including Crohn’s disease and autism." The CDC came to the same conclusion.

In January of this year, the UK's General Medical Council stated that Wakefield acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly," The Lancet retracted the study, and today, the council banned Wakefield from practicing medicine in the UK, finding him guilty of "serious professional misconduct."

Hopefully, this will finally put to rest the idea that vaccines cause Autism, but I suspect that distraught and desperate parents will still see the coincidental timing of the presentation of Autism symptoms at the same time as the MMR shot as more meaningful than it is.

When it comes to our kids, we tend to think with our hearts instead of our rational minds, but it is precisely then that it is most important to avoid this trap. I disengaged my critical thinking abilities because of political puppy love, and I am fortunate that it didn't lead to disastrous results for my family. It was only later, when I started researching Autism, that I discovered what could have been a fatal error for my son. As it turned out, thankfully, he simply became a useful control group for the theory.

If you are debating whether to vaccinate your kids, please follow all the links in this blog and do your own research. Don't make your decision on baseless and amorphous fears while ignoring the real and concrete consequences you could face.

If your child is Autistic, follow this same rule when deciding what treatments and therapies you will use. There are a lot of alternative therapies out there, including gluten-free diets and vitamin regimens, some of which have had success in practice for some people. If you are going to try one of these, make sure you try one of these. Be a scientist. Record behaviors and problems before, during, and after implementation. If it works, keep it. If not, move on to something else. But you have to isolate the therapy so that you know whether it works or not. Don't just throw a whole bunch of poo at the wall in the hopes that something will work because if something does, you won't know what it is, and multiple therapies can react in unpredictable ways as they interact.

I've said before that you are your child's best advocate, but to be fufill that role, you must be rational, objective, and informed.

Different, But Not Less...

2010-05-19T14:00:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! As the father of an autistic son, I have read dozens of books and watched all the movies that portray people with Autism. When I first heard the words "Autism" and "Aspergers," it was a uniquely terrifying and humbling experience. I didn't really know what either was, to be sure, and my only experience with Autism was watching Rain Man. I looked at my kid and could not envision him saying, "Ten minutes to Wapner." In fact, for some time, I resisted the label "autistic," preferring to convince myself that my son's Asperger's Syndrome was a completely different animal altogether.

I've never been comfortable in a state of ignorance - especially in a case like this that is so personal. So, I did what many parents of the newly-diagnosed did: I hit the internet and the local public library. I tried to soak up as much information as I possibly could about the condition and learn strategies for coping and thriving. It's always been a feature of my makeup that when I want to learn something, I just throw myself into it, reading and watching everything I can get my hands on - to the unfortunate exclusion of other areas of my life. (They say that often the parents of autistic children exhibit some of the symptoms themselves, if not enough for a diagnosis themselves. This may be one of those - what my wife and I call "Aspie traits." This is how I have learned most of what I know, from political philosophy to punk rock to economics to the Zephyr Skate Team.)

After reading a stack of books on Autism and Asperger's, I started to get burnt out. I realized after awhile that even though they had different authors, I was essentially reading the same book over and over. I wasn't learning anything new, and I certainly wasn't learning what I so desperately wanted to learn - how to understand my son.

He was - and still is - a mystery to me. He is a wonderful, generous, freakishly smart kid, but he just doesn't understand his own feelings. If he doesn't understand them, how can he possibly explain them to me? So, I adjusted, changing my focus from self-help and scientific books to personal narratives, like John Elder Robison's Look Me in the Eye, ten year-old Kenneth Hall's Asperger Syndrome, the Universe and Everything, and even the book Diagnosing Jefferson, that pores over personal accounts of the eccentricities and behaviors of my favorite founder to convincingly argue he was Autistic. In fact, I am reading one right now, The Best Kind of Different, by Curt Schilling's wife, Shonda.

But it wasn't until I read Thinking in Pictures by Dr Temple Grandin that I really felt I was getting somewhere. Here, finally, were the words of a pioneer in the fields of Autism and animal husbandry - someone who had engaged in extensive self-examination and authored a book that attempts and succeeds at illustrating how the mind of an autistic works. It was in her story that I found some measure of understanding, and more importantly, hope.

Here were the words of a truly extraordinary woman, born in an age when there was no real understanding of Autism, when most autistic children were institutionalized and only a handful of people in the world had even heard of Asperger's Syndrome. Here was a woman that didn't even speak her first word until she was four years old, who went on to earn a doctorate and revolutionize the way that the beef industry handles cattle to be more efficient and humane. Right now, over half of all slaughterhouses in North America were designed by Dr Grandin.

So, it was with great anticipation last night that my wife and I sat down to watch HBO's new biopic, Temple Grandin, starring the amazing Claire Danes (at right, pictured with Temple, now age 62) in the title role.

My one-word review is, "Wow." I was completely blown away by this story, which was more of a straight-up biography than the book, and by the performances of Claire Danes and Julia Ormand, who plays Temple's mother, Eustacia.

I've seen a lot of movies on Autism and Asperger's, from the excellent Mozart and the Whale to the sweet but schmaltzy Adam, which, coincidentally, stars Danes' husband, Hugh Dancy. But like Grandin's book, this film takes it to a whole other level.

The whole film is anchored by Danes' incredible performance. With Dancy's role in Adam, I saw probably more of my son in his portrayal, but the character of Adam was merely a collection of symptoms, with no real individual person in there (this may have been more a problem with the script than the character).

Danes, on the other hand, who in some ways had an easier time because she is playing a real person, crawled inside of Temple Grandin and almost literally became her. She played the role straight, without the usual maudlin characteristics typical of the "dysfunction of the week" movie that inhabit the boob tube. She played the role not as a caricature or an impression, but as Temple. So accurate was her portrayal, Temple herself, who had made herself infinitely available to Danes during production, said watching the film was "like going in sort of a weird time machine...I whispered to Claire...'Can you believe that's really you?'"

Within minutes, I had forgotten that I was watching a girl I've been crushing on since the mid-90's, and quite simply just believed I was watching Temple. Now, I probably watched this differently than most people will. I watched it as the parent of an Autistic child - I felt every failure, every schoolyard taunt, and every exhilarating victory in that same vicarious way I am sure her mother experienced them. Without the perfect portrayal of Claire Danes, this would not have been possible.

To be clear, the film wasn't preachy or over-sentimental, and that is perhaps why the payoffs packed such an emotional wallop. I found myself tearing up and choking back sobs a half a dozen times while watching it, and no other movie or television show that features the struggles of the Autistic has ever done that to me. I didn't feel that I was being dragged through an emotional minefield, with every shot set up to illicit some tear-jerking response. The film was honest and stark in its portrayal, and effectively put me in Temple's head. When she flinched away from the sound of a squeaky marker, when she stood terrified in front of a guillotine-like sliding door, I stood with her.

The difference between this movie and other movies is the same as the difference between Temple's book and other books on Autism - those other books and movies were outsider's views of Autism, while this movie and the book it is based on are insider views. It helped me get inside the head of an Autistic person, helped me understand.

The director, Mick Jackson, did a remarkable job bringing Temple's brain to the screen, showing how she doesn't think linearly, but associatively. When she sees her favorite horse, her mind rapidly flips through a rolodex of every single horse of that kind she has ever seen, in full color moving pictures. When she sees a faulty gate, she doesn't see it as a whole, but as a sum of its parts, every detail apparent to her, every angle, every lever and hinge. She can see instantly how it could be improved, building 3D models in her head, manipulating and testing them to a degree even the most sophisticated CAD program could not duplicate. When she builds her invention, she already knows it will work because it has already gone through extensive trials - in her mind.

In watching the film, it seems that Temple Grandin was very fortunate. She was fortunate to have a mother who would not give up on her; fortunate to have an aunt (the wonderful Catherine O'Hara in another great performance) that introduced her to working with livestock and gave her the freedom to develop her own methods of coping, even when she found it odd or distasteful; fortunate that she had a science teacher, Dr Carlock (David Strathairn), who recognized her unique way of thinking and nurtured her peculiar genius; fortunate that there was always at least one person who recognized what she had to offer and championed her cause. She was fortunate because she approached life with a single-minded determination that made failure only an option for others.

That is what I hope for with my own son. I pray that he has a teacher like Dr Carlock that will help us identify Connor's particular talents and nurture them. I pray that I can instill in Connor the same kind of determination that made Dr Grandin the amazing person she is. I pray that I can be half the parent Eustacia was.

And what a parent. Back when Temple was diagnosed, people thought Autism was created by cold, distant "refrigerator mothers." Eustacia loved her daughter beyond reason, and I can only imagine what it must have been like to be told her daughter's condition was her fault. Instead of sinking into a malaise of self-pity, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She taught Temple to speak, to read, to navigate the complexity of social give-and-take.

Ormond played this role with perfect pitch. As much as this film gave me an insight into what it was like to be Temple, I immediately identified with Eustacia. I haven't had it nearly as hard as she did, but I am all too familiar with the judgmental comments and glances of people. I am familiar with the daily struggle to help my child understand the world. I am familiar with the feeling that no matter how hard I try, I'm not doing enough.

When Eustacia takes Temple to the boarding school where she is to blossom, during the interview, she gets defensive and eventually walks out. Dr Carlock follows her out and tells her that while she is acting like someone defending everything they've done wrong, she has actually done everything right. The look in Ormond's eyes when she hears this relates the surprise, relief, and appreciation she must have felt when finally being told she's doing a good job. It was the first of several times I wiped the wetness from my eyes.

Eustacia struggled with quiet dignity, a Harvard graduate in a world that expects little of her, raising a child everyone thought should be institutionalized, watching her daughter build a "squeeze machine" that gave her a comforting hug when she couldn't even embrace her own mother. I know from reading Temple's book that her mother was never even sure her daughter loved her at all (she does), and though it wasn't ever mentioned in the film, I felt it in Ormand's amazing performance.

In the final scene, Temple and her mother go to an Autism convention in the early 80's, and listening to a doctor prattle on, illustrating how little they understood about Autism at the time, she finally stands up and contradicts the doctor, who is saying they have to discourage the therapeutic spinning (one of Connor's go-to therapies).

She says that spinning, rolling, rocking and hugging are calming for Autistics in her loud, rapid way of speaking, and someone asks her if she has Autistic kids. She tells them she has none, that she is autistic herself. The entire crowd turns from the doctor and rushes to her, wondering how it is that this woman can be the way she is, when they are struggling in darkness to help their own children.

She begins to tell them that it was her mother, who never gave up on her, who persevered in the face of every obstacle and naysayer, who pushed her relentlessly to do things no one thought she could do. Her mother sat quietly next to her, holding back the tears as she finally felt what she hadn't grasped before - her daughter does understand, does appreciate what she has done for her. Her daughter loves her, just in her own way.

And cue the waterworks. Even writing about it, I have the same gut response I did then, tearing up as my fingers pound the keyboard. This woman fought so hard to give her daughter a chance in this world, to be taken seriously and respected in a world short on second-glances, defiantly telling people that her daughter was "different, but not less."

Honestly, though, upon reflection, I think that this mother and daughter were not simply "different, but not less." I think the more appropriate way to put it would be "different, but extraordinary."

HBO Films: Temple Grandin Trailer

HBO | MySpace Video

Flash-bangs, Videos, and Violence

2010-05-18T09:50:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Yesterday, I shared the story of Aiyana Jones, the seven year-old girl who was burned with a flash-bang grenade and then shot in the neck by members of a SWAT team in Detroit as they conducted a raid on her duplex in search of a murder suspect.

There were two stories of how this happened. One account said that her grandmother struggled with an officer, and his gun went off. The other indicated that the officer simply bumped into the grandmother, with the same result.

I didn't spend too much time on this distinction, because to me, it was immaterial. I didn't think that the officer was a murderer. I had no doubt it was an accident, and my main problem with the situation was systemic. As I said yesterday:

Originally, [SWAT teams] were supposed to be used only for things like the tower shooting, or hostage situations - scenarios where there were innocent civilians in imminent danger. Now, it seems, they'll use them to serve a bench warrant for a speeding ticket.

There is absolutely no reason that this poor little girl should have died. The suspect wasn't even in her half of the duplex. The next time you read about a SWAT raid - botched or not - ask yourself this question: Could this have been done peacefully, or was a full-on military assault necessary?

Chances are, you will find more times than not, there was a peaceful alternative that would not put people like little Aiyana in the middle of a war.

This could have been avoided altogether. They could have staked out the duplex and waited for visual confirmation that he was there. They could have waited until morning, when most of the innocent residents of the duplex were off to work or school. They could have waited until the suspect left and tackled him on his front lawn. It is important to remember that it was the SWAT team's actions that turned a quiet, peaceful night into a war zone, not the actions of the alleged murderer.

Think about this. The officers knew he was in the duplex somewhere - they just didn't know which side. So, they got a warrant for the entire building. When they entered both sides of the duplex, they knew that at least one of those apartments contained innocent people. But they still entered both homes in full-on assault mode, throwing flash-bang grenades into each.

Flash-bangs are not harmless tools to "distract" violent criminals, as the officers' quotes in the early reports stated. Flash-bangs are violent weapons, creating a 136 decibel shockwave that blinds, deafens, and confuses its victims, and the ensuing confusion and chaos often leads to the deaths of civilians and cops alike. In fact, in one such story, the flash bang set off a Tarantinoesque melee between the cops and the cops, in which the suspect was shot in the neck.

If you doubt my description of the weapon, don't take my word for it. In 1998, one accidentally went off in the SUV of three FBI agents. One described the sensation as feeling like "someone just whacked me in the back with a baseball bat as hard as they could." Another described the long-term effects: "I don't sleep. I have tremendous headaches. I have the doctors claim severe hearing loss, but for all practical purposes, I'm deaf in my left ear."

And SWAT officers in Detroit had no problem throwing one of these into an apartment they knew contained innocent people in no immediate danger from anyone, some probably children. This is an assault all on its own, and certainly government-approved police brutality.

In the ensuing storm of confusion, it is no wonder that an innocent life was lost. It's no wonder that a frightened and disoriented grandmother either bumped into or fought against the invaders.

But did she?

New information on the raid came out today. As I said yesterday, this situation is unique in that there was a film crew for the A&E documentary show The First 48 on hand, recording the entire incident. Geoffrey Fieger, the Jones family attorney in this matter, has seen the footage. He says, “Aiyana Jones was shot from outside on the porch. The videotape shows clearly the officer throwing through the window a stun grenade-type explosive and then within milliseconds of throwing that, firing a shot from outside the home."

A&E is not yet releasing the footage to the press or the police in this matter, but his statement is pretty damning. I mean, this is a high-profile attorney - he defended Jack Kevorkian. He surely knows he has nothing to gain by lying about the footage, as sooner or later, we will all get a chance to see it. “There is no question about what happened because it’s in the videotape,” he asserted. “It’s not an accident. It’s not a mistake. There was no altercation.”

Oak Park attorney Karri Mitchell says the cops "were excited; they were on TV...They didn't have to throw a grenade through the front window when they knew there were children in there...There was nothing but innocent people in the home where they put this flash grenade."

She went on to offer the caveat: "We're not indicating the officer's actions were intentional. We know it was an accident, but the method that they used in executing the search warrant was flawed. The family understands that the officer is not a monster. He didn't intentionally shoot a 7-year-old girl."

My instincts tell me that this is probably true, but what possible reason did he have for firing through the window immediately after setting off the flash-bang? I think little Aiyana's father summed it up best, saying, “They killed my baby, and I want someone to tell the truth."

Me, too.

Yet Another "Isolated Incident."

2010-05-17T12:36:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomfiles! Radley Balko reports on another "isolated incident" of a SWAT raid gone awry. Just as in the story I posted on the 5th, a SWAT team was used in an instance where no one was in immedeate danger and peaceful options were available.

This time, it wasn't a drug raid - they were looking for a murder suspect. This time, they didn't kill the dogs. They killed seven-year-old Aiyana Jones (above), by first burning her with a flash-bang grenade and then shooting her in the neck.

Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones saw the whole thing: "They blew my granddaughter's brains out. They killed her right before my eyes. I watched the light go out of her eyes. I seen it."

At least they were looking for a murderer this time, but still - no one was in immediate danger - at least not until SWAT arrived. They knew the suspect was in the apartment building somewhere, and they had gotten a warrant for the whole duplex. Neighbors warned the officers that there were children present, pointing out the toys strewn on the lawn.

No matter, apparently, because instead of staking the place out, waiting for the suspect to leave, and arresting him peacefully on the street, they went straight for the paramilitary raid, as is often the case these days.

It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds, as there was an entire production unit there with them from the A&E show, The First 48. This footage will be priceless in getting America to realize that SWAT teams are being overused and misused in this country.

SWAT teams were originally created because of Charles Whitman, who went on a rampage at the University of Texas at Austin, climbing the tower with a rifle and killing fourteen people. It took officers, untrained in that kind of situation, entirely too long to take out Whitman, and it was determined that a unit, versed in special weapons and tactics, was necessary to prevent future tragedies of that scale.

Originally, they were supposed to be used only for things like the tower shooting, or hostage situations - scenarios where there were innocent civilians in imminent danger. Now, it seems, they'll use them to serve a bench warrant for a speeding ticket.

There is absolutely no reason that this poor little girl should have died. The suspect wasn't even in her half of the duplex. The next time you read about a SWAT raid - botched or not - ask yourself this question: Could this have been done peacefully, or was a full-on military assault necessary?

Chances are, you will find more times than not, there was a peaceful alternative that would not put people like little Aiyana in the middle of a war.

If you'd like to see just how often these "isolated incidents" occur, check out The Cato Institute's Interactive Map of botched paramilitary police raids.

Connor's Big Pirate Adventure

2010-05-10T02:22:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Sam Bellamy was a pirate. A generous and merciful captain, he was called "Black Sam" because instead of the powdered wigs that were all the rage in the early 18th Century, he just simply tied his onyx-black hair back in a simple ponytail. Because of his good nature, he was called "The Prince of Pirates," and his men called themselves "Robin Hood's Men."

In "The Golden Age of Piracy," pirates were stateless quasi-libertarians, rebelling against what they saw as the unfair class system that forced the poor and unconnected to live and toil at the whims of the aristocracy. Sailors were treated harshly by the companies that employed them - overworked and underpaid, treated much like chattel.

But on board their ships, all were equal. Captains only held ultimate authority in battles, and everything else was voted on by the crew, who all had equivalent suffrage, regardless of age, race, or gender. On Bellamy's ship, the Whydah Galley, there were blacks, Indians, and even one child - John King, a runaway of nine to eleven years who impressed Bellamy enough to be made a permanent member of the crew. None were put above any other.

Bellamy was in love with a beautiful Cape Cod girl named Maria Hallett, but her parents were loathe to give her to an lowly, impoverished sailor. So, he set off from New England to make his fortune salvaging shipwrecks on the sea.

Unsuccessful, Bellamy "went on account" as a pirate under Captain Benjamin Hornigold and Captain Edward "Blackbeard" Teach (at right). He was well-regarded by the crew for his kindness and generosity, and soon, irritated at Hornigold's unwillingness to raid British ships, the crew deposed their captain and voted Bellamy his replacement. Hornigold retired from piracy, and Blackbeard went his own way, leaving Black Sam as the sole captain of the Mary Anne.

The crew of the Mary Anne thrived under his command, and they captured The Sultana. He named his friend Paul Williams (not Little Enos from Smokey and the Bandit) captain of the Mary Anne and took the Sultana as his flagship.

His greatest accomplishment, though, was in the capture of his greatest flagship, The Whydah Galley, an impressive, 300 ton slave ship from Britain, filled to the brim with five tons of gold, treasure, and pieces of eight.

True to his nature, Bellamy neither killed nor stranded the Whydah's captain, Lawrence Prince, instead generously giving him the Sultana in exchange. Now a wealthy man, he set sail for New England to claim his prize - Maria Hallett.

Tragically, Bellamy never made it to his lady love, as The Whydah Galley and The Mary Anne were caught in a brutal storm off the coast of Cape Cod, where they capsized and sank, leaving only nine survivors. A good captain till the end, Bellamy went down with his ship. Young John King died in the wreck, as well. Legend has it Hallett watched the ship sink from shore, and was devastated to find her love had perished.

Life was not good for the nine survivors, either, as six were executed for piracy, the damnable irony being that they had actually been pardoned by King George, but the news would not reach Boston until three weeks after their deaths. Of the three remaining survivors, two were acquitted due to puritan minister Cotton Mather convincing the courts they were pressed against their will into service, and the Indian, sixteen-year old John Julian, was sold into slavery.

Blackbeard threatened to burn Boston to the ground if they executed the men, and was only thwarted in his attempt by the last minute arrival of a British warship. Instead, he took his rage out on the ships of New England, not capturing them but viciously attacking them and letting them burn at sea.

Soon, the Golden Age of Piracy would come to an end.

I know all of this because of my six-year old son, Connor. He has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of Autism marked by impaired social and physical development, as well as very narrow and intense interests. One of those interests, since he was two-years old, has been pirates, particulary Black Sam Bellamy and The Whydah. He loves them, and therefore has given me an almost master's degree level education on them.

All this went through my mind as I travelled down Highway 40 in Saint Louis, on my way to my job loading radioactive medical supplies onto planes at a small airport in Illinois. It was there that I saw the all-too familiar logo from his favorite book on Bellamy, the salvage of The Whydah, and the only real pirate treasure ever found printed onto a billboard high in the sky.

I frantically stumbled for my cell phone and turned down whatever punk rock or talk radio that had been blaring throughout the cabin of my Honda Civic. I called my wife and said excitedly, "You are not going to believe this. I just saw a billboard that said there is an exhibit at the Science Center called Real Pirates, and the font looks exactly like it does on Connor's book. It even has the skull and crossed-swords, with the crack right above the skull's left eye. You don't think this is about The Whydah, do you?"

She immediately whipped out her laptop and did a Google search. "Oh my God, Rick - it is."

"We're going," I said, recalling the words of Jules Winnfield. "That's all there is to it - we're fucking going."

This was big, and I knew it. They had everything - cannons and muskets, a scale replica of The Whydah big enough to walk around in, the great bell from the deck, real treasure from the salvage. They even had the shoe, silk stocking, and fibula of John King. This was going to take Connor's obsession out of the mind and plop it right in front of him to touch, taste, and smell. He was quite simply going to piss himself.

This was very important to us, because we feel that when you have an Aspie child, working hard to strengthen them in areas where they are deficient is only half the battle. The other half - the more neglected half by teachers, therapists, and parents - is encouraging those areas where their disorder has given them strength.

Because of Aspie kid's unique focus and narrow interests, they are able to collect and organize a mind-boggling amount of information about the subjects that interest them, in incredible detail.

This is what has helped Temple Grandin to revolutionize the meat-processing industry and make the practice of slaughter infinitely more humane than it would have been without her. This is what made Thomas Jefferson able to aggregate and elucidate the philosophy of The Enlightenment into a cohesive plan for self-governance. This is what gave Einstein his great focus to immerse himself in the mysteries of the universe, filtering them through the science of physics to form the Theory of Relativity.

It is our greatest job as parents of Aspie children to discover their particular talents and create an environment where they are free and encouraged to explore them, to cultivate the skills to find ways to apply them practically and enrich the world and themselves.

So, we quickly decided to keep all of this a secret from Connor. We wanted to simply pick him up from school on my next payday and take him on a surprise adventure.

The day couldn't come quickly enough for us. Every time he mentioned Bellamy or the Whydah - hell, every time we were in the same room with him - we just wanted to blurt it out and tell him everything.

Somehow, we managed to keep it a secret until the day before the big adventure. We wanted him to be in school, excitedly waiting for the day to end, so he could see what this big surprise was. It was also convenient because, like many Aspie kids, he has problems with the potty, particularly the part about telling us he has to poop before he drops a deuce in his pants, and that week he hadn't had a single accident.

So, the night before the big day, as I was snuggling with him and reading to him about pirates, I said, as means of reinforcement, "You know, Buddy, you've been great this week. You haven't had a single accident, and Mom and I are really proud of you. So, tomorrow, when we pick you up from the bus stop, we're going to go on an adventure. And I know you are going to love it."

He begged me to tell him what it was. He pleaded. He put his hands in front of his mouth like he was praying and gave me his best imploring look. He even bordered on being really upset, at which point I almost gave in. But I held firm, and the next day, we got in the car to go meet him at the bus stop.

We recently moved, and where we live now is on another bus route from school. But Connor had great affection for his amazing bus driver, Sue Anne, who he calls Chicago because that's where she's from. We knew that trying to take her away from him would have caused him a lot of distress, so I worked out a place and time to meet her everyday. For her part, she was very gracious about this.

As I sat in the parking lot, anxiously awaiting his return, the big yellow bus pulled in and stopped next to my car. I ran up and jumped in the doors, saying like a ringmaster, "Are you ready?!?" He grinned ear to ear and ran out of the bus, throwing himself excitedly into the backseat.

He was definitely ready.

Our first stop was our favorite sandwich shop, Jersey Mike's. If you haven't tried it, go now. It's delicious. While we were there, we were behind a police officer. Connor looked at his belt and said, "That's a pistol. It's a long-range weapon. And that's a baton. It's a close-combat weapon."

The cop turned and gave us a bemused look. "He loves cops," my wife said. "His aunt and uncle are cops." The officer smiled benevolently and winked at Connor.

After our bellies were full, we were back on the road, headed for the Science Center. The closer we got, the more excited I became. I couldn't wait to see his face light up with the realization of what he was about to see.

As we neared our destination, Connor saw the sign. "Real pirates!" he squealed with delight. "Sam Bellamy and the Whydah Galley?"

"Maybe," my wife replied. "Is that something you'd like to see?"

"Yeah, and the Whydah Galley bell? That's like the Liberty Bell. They're both broken."

"Yes, they are," I confirmed as we parked.

We got out and ran up to the front of the building. That's where he saw the planetarium and its huge dome stretching up into the sky. It was if I could feel a tremor in the force as something about it started freaking him out. "I don't want to go up there."

No, no, no, I thought desperately, not now. Please not now. "Don't worry, Buddy," I tried to reassure him, "We're not going up there. That's just where they project images of the stars. We're going to see the Whydah exhibit."

"I changed my mind," he said, fear creeping into his voice. "I don't wanna go."

"Don't you want to see the Whydah bell?" I asked encouragingly.

"No, that's okay." he responded, his body tensing in preparation for a little therapeutic spinning.

I had to make this stop before it became a full-blown meltdown. I didn't want his fear to keep him from this experience.

"How about if I go in and take some pictures?" my wife suggested, moving toward the door with her cell phone out. "Then you can see its no big deal."

"No, no, no, don't go, Mom," he pleaded, clutching at me like a life preserver as we sat on the bench outside the Science Center.

This was no good. When he gets like this, you can't really reason with him. Normally, I just avoid situations like this when he gets the fear, but this was too important. He would love this, if he'd just screw up the courage to cross the threshold.

My wife leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Just pick him up and carry him in."

It was the moment of truth. This could go one of two ways - I would pick him up and march right through the doors and he would freak out for sure, either completely or just until he realized nothing was going to hurt him. It was a gamble, but I thought it was worth the risk.

I scooped him into my arms and started moving toward the door, saying in low, calm tones, "It's okay, Buddy. You're going to be fine. There is nothing to be afraid of in there."

He wrapped around my torso like a boa constrictor, screaming, "I don't wanna go! Turn around! Please, Daddy, turn around! I wanna go home!" It was breaking my heart, at least until he added, "I wanna go back to the county!" Then, I had to turn my head so he didn't see me holding in the laughter.

An uptight, judgmental bitch gave my wife a dirty look over his "tantrum," and she gave it right back, saying snidely, "He's autistic." The woman sheepishly turned away, embarrassed. Moments like that are oddly satisfying, because as the parent of an autistic child, you get a lot of dirty looks from people who think your child is just a spoiled brat.

I rushed him across the bridge that spanned Highway 40, and we stopped on the other side by some hands-on displays of structural experiments, road construction, and trains. This was right in his wheelhouse, and we hoped it could bridge the gap between his fear and the pirate exhibit.

It was good for me, too, cause the kid is a monster, weighing in at over 70 pounds, and my back was really angry with me.

We let him play for awhile, hoping that refocusing him would make him forget his original terror. He took special interest in a display that showed how different construction techniques would help a skyscraper survive an earthquake because ever since the Haiti earthquake, he's been fascinated with natural disasters.

After a few minutes, we suggested moving further in to the Science Center, and while he was afraid, we were able to lead him by the hand without him freezing up. I went to get tickets, while my wife tried to find something to occupy him.

It was ten till two, but I got tickets for the 2:30 show, thinking I'd need time to coax him in. But when I found my wife, she had him mostly convinced to go. So, I went up to the girl at the door and explained the situation, asking if we could go in early.

She smiled and said, "Hang on a second. Let me stop them from starting the movie." She called in on her two-way and they held it for us, and then she said, "Just let me know when you are ready."

It seems for every judgmental douchebag out there, there is also someone awesome like this girl, willing to go the extra mile to help when needed. I can't say enough good things about the staff at the Saint Louis Science Center.

We practically dragged him into the darkened theater, but once he was there and saw The Whydah on screen, he settled in nicely. We learned quickly that we had been saying the name of the ship wrong. We had been saying "Wyyyda," when it was really called the "Whih-duh."

The disembodied voice of the narrator began, speaking of "Black Sam," and Connor cracked up the whole theater by asking in that unregulated volume typical of an Aspie: "Why is he called Black Sam, when his skin-tone is white?"

When the movie finished, the screen raised, reavealing a dark hallway to the exhibits. This was problematic for Connor, because long, shadowy hallways give him the wiggins. But he was very brave and went with us to see the exhibits.

He got to touch real pirate treasure, saw John King's leg bone, went (with some trepidation) onto the scale model of The Whydah, saw real flintlock pistols and muskets from the ship, and he even got to hoist the Jolly Roger.

In the end, it was a great day. As with any day with an Autistic child, there were challenges, but there are challenges with any kid. And the payoff for patience and perseverance is great.

Send in the Puppy Killers

2010-05-06T09:35:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! If you are a dog-lover, maybe Missouri isn't the place for you. Yesterday, I posted the disturbing video of a SWAT team who broke into a house and killed the family dog over a weed pipe and some shake, and today I find this article in The Riverfront Times, concerning a woman and her dog in a Saint Louis suburb:

Billie Alvarez was on her back patio eating breakfast the morning of Friday, April 16, when a man dressed in all black jumped out from behind a tree. Her dog, Jade, a two-year-old terrier mix, woke up from a nap and sauntered over to the man.

"Her tail was wagging and she was smiling at him," recounts Alvarez, who says the man soon identified himself as a cop with the north St. Louis County suburb of Bellefontaine Neighbors. He said he was investigating a report of a vicious dog on the loose.

"I tried to tell him that Jade had never bit a soul and that she wasn't violent, but he didn't give me a chance," says Alvarez. "He drew his gun, and said, 'I have to shoot her. I have to shoot her.'"

Within seconds Alvarez says the officer squeezed the trigger dispensing a round from his department issued .40 caliber Glock right between Jade's eyes. The bullet exited though the canine's neck.

"I couldn't believe it," continues Alvarez, who says she attempted to grab Jade moments before the shooting but fell to the ground when her newly reconstructed knees buckled. "I had knee replacement surgery in January. I was lying on the ground wailing, and he just shot her. Just like that. My seven-year-old daughter was home sick that day and came running out to see her dog dying in the backyard. That dog was her baby -- and mine."

Alvarez admits that Jade looked similar to a pit bull, but said the dog was not such breed. "She was trained as a service animal," she says.

The officer claims that he was responding to a call from her neighbor that her dogs were roaming the streets, and that the dog was trying to attack him when he shot it. Chief Robert Pruitt commented: "The dogs need to be in a fenced yard or on a leash, and that wasn't the case here. Our officer says the dog was charging at him, she says something different. The point is, we have dog ordinances to protect both parties."

Something doesn't smell right about this, though. First of all, the complaint wasn't that the dogs were violent or dangerous - just loose. Alvarez says she has an invisible fence (actual fences are banned in her neighborhood), but that it was broken. If that is true, I find it hard to believe the dogs were roaming the neighborhood. The point of invisible fences aren't to torture the family pet when it slips outside the boundary, but to condition it to stay within the yard. The dogs would be conditioned to the point where they wouldn't even test it anymore, broken or not.

Second, what was the cop doing skulking around in her backyard, anyway? Did he have a warrant? If he was following up on a call that the dog was doing something dangerous in the back yard, he would have probable cause to enter, but this was a nuisance complaint by one nosy neighbor. Why didn't he knock on the front door and ask questions? Even if the dog did attack him, it was his fault for trespassing on her property without justification.

The police department has not issued a statement on the incident, and it has been over a week. That alone is pretty telling.

UPDATE: An alert reader who calls himself Raoul Duke gave me this link to another story of impropriety by the Bellefontaine Police Department, where a man claims to have had a taser forced into his mouth and then driven to Illinois and stranded.

I'm So Angry, I'm Shaking

2010-05-05T09:51:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! If you've been following this blog for very long, you know that I am on a crusade to stop the use of paramilitary SWAT teams to serve simple warrants. These no-knock raids use surprise and fear to shock and awe the suspect into total compliance, but the tactics often do just the opposite.

Imagine you are lying in bed, and suddenly a flash-bang grenade explodes in your room, the flash of light and 136 decibel shockwave blinding and deafening you as a group of urban soldiers swarm you with automatic weapons, screaming instructions into your useless ears. You have a split-second to assess the situation and respond, all while the invaders have done everything possible to ensure you are not thinking clearly. Is this a home invasion or is it a police action? Hope you choose the right one.

In these situations, if the police make a mistake, you could end up dead, like 92 year-old Kathryn Johnston, 17 year-old Daniel Castillo, who was shot in the face while sitting up, unarmed in his bed, or Tarika Wilson, the mother of six who was shot dead by police while holding her baby. But don't worry, the baby only lost a finger.

In most of these cases, police are given the benefit of the doubt because it was a charged situation where split-second decisions had to be made. But the police know what is happening when they kick in the door and shoot the family pets, shoving guns in peoples faces and screaming at them. The people inside the home don't have the benefit of foresight and must make these decisions with little to no information. But when they mistakenly kill a police officer in self-defense, like Cory Maye and Ryan Frederick, rarely are they given the benefit of the doubt.

Radley Balko, author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America and the real leader of this charge against these no-knock SWAT raids, has seen it all: "There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes."

Well, today, on his Facebook page, Radley shared a video of one of these raids just down Highway 70 from me in the college town of Columbia, MO, where both the family pets were shot in front of the children, and then the father, Jonathan Whitworth, was arrested for having a pipe, a grinder, and misdemeanor amount of marijuana, as well as for child endangerment. But who was endangering the kid more - the guy who liked to smoke a bowl after work, or the government goons that kicked in his door and pointed automatic weapons at his family?

So, I clicked on the play button, and as I watched the video, my heart started racing, my hands started sweating, and I was grinding my teeth. Before, this had all been academic, confined to the idea of what was wrong with all this. But when I actually saw it going down, it became all too real. Everyone needs to watch this, whether you agree with me or not, to see what is becoming of law enforcement in America:

I think Radley put it best, so I'll finish with his Facebook closer: "So, this is your goddamned drug war, America."

We'd Stand Beside You if We Weren't So Scared

2010-04-27T18:45:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! If you haven't been in coma, you know that South Park has been in the midst of some controversy lately. In fact, unless your coma started before August 13, 1997, it is probably no suprise to you that libertarian muckrakers Matt and Trey are in the shit again. The latest brouhaha started over Muhammad:

In their 200th episode, Muhammad returned, this time wearing a bear suit so his image wouldn't appear on film. And this time, they pinged the Muslim world.

You see, there's this website called Revolutionmuslim.com, which has a history of supporting jihad against the west and thinking Bin Laden is like, dreamy or something. On Sunday, they posted thinly-veiled threats against the creators of South Park and Comedy Central.

Comedy Central got so freaked out that in the second half of the two-parter, they put a black bar over the image of Muhammad, bleeped out all inferences to him, and even bleeped out the "I think we've learned something" speech, even though it did not reference Muhammad at all.

What's more, if you had tried to catch the episode on South Park's website, you'd have found it wasn't there, instead replaced by an apology (at right) from Matt and Trey.

Well, Comedy Central's board of directors may be a bunch of pussies hiding out in the library until the bullies go home, but good old Matt Groening has shown his support for the boys from Colorado.

If you watched The Simpsons this past Sunday, you might have noticed what Bart was writing on the chalkboard in the opening credits:

Good on you, Groening! And this is exactly why South Park and the Simpsons are the greatest cartoon series in the history of the world - they are fearless, not shy about offending anyone. And because of that, they are some of the best social and political satire around today.

Hat tip to the Reason Hit n' Run blog. And click here to watch South Park's love letter to The Simpsons.

Blowback for Me, but Not for Thee

2010-04-26T10:55:00.003-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! You may have heard by now that on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Bill Clinton, who was president at the time of this nation's biggest incidence of domestic terrorism, penned an op-ed in The New York Times, part memoir and part examination of what he believes to be home-grown extremism on the rise today:

Finally, we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them. On that April 19, the second anniversary of the assault of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, deeply alienated and disconnected Americans decided murder was a blow for liberty...

...Fifteen years ago, the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.

The problem with this line of thinking is that there are plenty of reasonable people - myself included - who think that "the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them." That's a line of thinking that would be very familiar to the founders of this country.

What a statement like that does is take dissent and wrap it in an aura of terror and extremism. It seeks to marginalize the voices of those who think government is the problem, not the solution, and lump them in with violent extremists who want to murder for freedom.

And this has happened before. Does the name McCarthy ring a bell? Reason's Jesse Walker calls this phenomenon the “paranoid center,” whereby the moderates in America have been incited to be fearful of anything two ticks to the left or right of their own opinion, resulting in a situation whereby the “list of dangerous forces that need to be marginalized inevitably expands to include peaceful, legitimate critics."

I think this attitude is at the heart of the campaign to marginalize the Tea Party protesters, libertarians, and Ron Paul supporters. If you recall, here in my home state, the Missouri Information Analysis Center advised police to look more closely at those latter two when suspicious of possible domestic terrorism.

Just a couple of days before his op-ed, Clinton gave his rhetorical strategy a test run in front of the friendly Democratic Leadership Council, saying that "right-wing, radio talk-show hosts" worked people up into a "white heat" just before the OKC bombing.

Limbaugh shot back: "They have given up our military secrets in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet they sit here, Clinton and Obama, and try to blame me and us on the radio for something that has not happened, while setting the stage for it to happen."

He further asserted that it wasn't Right Wing Radio, but Clinton, Reno, and the ATF that motivated McVeigh to kill those people: “Don’t forget that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred two years to the day after the Waco invasion.”

A good point, Mr Limbaugh, and one with which I agree. Waco was a terrible injustice, a total clusterfuck by the federal government, and a violation of posse comitatus. Those deaths can be lain directly at the feet of the Clinton Administration.

Now, the deaths at OKC can really only be blamed on McVeigh, as killing innocent people is never the answer to tyranny. But one must always examine the reasons why someone would do something so heinous. As Radley Balko wrote, he doesn't feel the least bit of responsibility "for acts of anti-government violence, past or future, even when they’re committed in the name of one or more ideas I might otherwise endorse. Because fundamentally and categorically, I repudiate the use of force and violence to impose my beliefs, political philosophy, or policy preferences on other people. Until you can say the same thing, Mr. Former President (and we both know you can’t), you can spare me your goddamned lecture."

But what mystifies me, really, about Limbaugh's response, was that he now seems to be open to the idea of blowback, whereby the actions of the government breeds growing discontent that leads to violence, when he talks about McVeigh and Clinton, yet criticized Ron Paul for saying the same thing in the 2008 Primary debates:

Blowback for me, but not for thee? It seems the only difference between the two statements is one regarded an act of domestic terror, while the other was of an international stripe.

Of course, with OKC, he gets to nail his old nemesis, Slick Willy, while with Ron Paul, he would have to confront the moronic and simple-minded canard of the right that "they hate us because we are free."

Is Hit Girl a Libertarian Hero?

2010-04-22T12:09:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Over at Big Hollywood, Leigh Scott reviews the new movie Kick-Ass, based on the comic of the same name, calling it "the quintessential Libertarian film." I haven't actually seen the movie yet, but I'm a pundit - I'll talk about it anyway.

Seriously, I really want to see this movie. It looks, well, kickass, and I absolutely love Christopher Mintz-Plasse. If you haven't seen Role Models, it is probably the funniest movie to come out in the last several years.

But back to me analyzing a movie I haven't seen. I'm not really interested in analyzing whether the movie is libertarian or not - I'm more interested in analyzing Scott's argument as to whether it is libertarian.

I think the entire article is based on a couple of false premises, including the author's definition of libertarianism:

A very conservative, religious friend once asked me to explain my views. He was stumped that we agreed on almost everything. But, when a lot of the social issues came up, I kinda shuffled my feet and looked to the ground. I summarized it this way: He and I could spend all day Saturday agreeing about taxes, the role of government, and foreign policy, yet, on Sunday, he would be in church and I would be nursing a hangover.

Libertarians are the party boys and girls of the conservative movement.

That is a terrible summary of libertarianism, and his conservative friend likely left the conversation more confused about libertarianism than when the conversation began. It's the same mindset that makes people think libertarians are "Republicans who like pot." Sure, we believe that you should be able to smoke a pound of weed and go laugh till your face hurts at Kick-Ass, but that is not because we are "party boys and girls." It is because we believe that the consensual, non-coercive activities of others are, quite simply, none of our fucking business.

Some of us spend Saturday night getting loaded and having kinky sex. But some of us like to be dull, too, and spend Saturday night preparing for Sunday morning's somber lectures on right and wrong.

It's not the choice itself that concerns us, but the right to make the choice.

The other false premise is really key to the entire article. He completely misrepresents Ebert's criticism of the film so that he can use it as a jumping-off point for a greater libertarian rant that is not entirely incorrect. But when the foundation of your argument is based on an untruth, the structure cannot survive.

I'll give him some lattitude, though, because I know as well as anyone that we bloggers spend a lot of time looking for articles and events that we can use as springboards to talk about bigger issues. That said, if this were the Olympics, the judges would take points for an awkward mount.

Here's Scott's take:

Ebert and critics on the left are a different story. Why would he be so offended by the “Hit Girl” character? After all, this is a man who recently gave a glowing review to Roman Polanksi’s latest film. Roman Polanski, of course, sexually forced himself on girl not much older than actress Chloe Moretz. Sure, Ebert will say that you have to separate the film from the filmmaker, but wouldn’t the same logic excuse an actress simply playing a part to make a larger thematic point?

Further digging reveals that Ebert gave two stars to the unwatchable film “Hounddog.” In that film a similarly aged Dakota Fanning is raped on screen. There is no outrage at that from him. Nor is there any protest to the underage Fanning acting quite adult in the recent “Ruanways” film, which he gave three stars.

What Ebert is really offended about is the fact that the underage “Hit Girl” isn’t a victim. It’s okay to have young actresses brutalized sexually or engaged in salacious situations involving drugs and sex as long as they maintain the leftist party line that women are helpless victims. The movie “Precious” depicts a young girl who is brutalized by her family and must turn to the state for help. Awesome! Four stars. “Hit Girl” doesn’t take sh!t from anybody, avenges her family, drives a hot rod, and has $3 million in cash in a suitcase. She doesn’t need anyone or anything. My, my how offensive!

But all we have to do is read Ebert's review to see what actually offended him:

This isn't comic violence. These men, and many others in the film, are really stone-cold dead. And the 11-year-old apparently experiences no emotions about this. Many children that age would be, I dunno, affected somehow, don't you think, after killing eight or 12 men who were trying to kill her?

So, strangely, Ebert's criticism is an artistic criticism, not political. He is saying that, essentially, this movie walks two incongruous lines, trying to be both a stylized comic book movie and a movie with real, stark violence. When Fanning was raped in Hounddog, it was real, with far-reaching consequences for the character. Not so with Hit Girl.

But unlike Hounddog, Kick-Ass is a comic book movie with superheroes, that also features disturbingly realistic violence. Therefore, his criticism hinges on his belief that an 11-year-old girl cannot be seen making hyper-real choices in a gritty, authentic world and walk away as if nothing happened.

Real art, it is presumed, shields neither the protagonist nor the audience from the consequences of choice, which, incidentally, sounds kind of libertarian.

A valid point, but I disagree. How much time did John McClain spend guilt-ridden over dispatching dozens of human beings in the Die Hard franchise, and how much time did the reviewer spend fretting over it? I think Ebert is really just squeamish that this is a young girl doing these things, which really puts him more in line with what Scott says is the conservative criticism of the film, which is essentially a moralistic argument that these aren't the images we should be looking for in entertainment - bloodthirsty children violently slaughtering criminals, set to a chorus of startling profanity.

Really, it's high art vs low art. High art challenges our perceptions and makes us think and contemplate ourselves and the world around us. Low art, with its deep lineage of oral tradition, works to reinforce our perceptions and give us what we want. Low art is popular art. High art is valued by critics and intellectuals.

I think both have their merits, but I will confess to picking Judd Apatow over Spike Lee nine times out of ten.

I think Scott actually inadvertently hits on this theme with one paragraph in the review:

Perhaps even more offensive to Ebert is the film’s lack of moral ambiguity. Good guys are good. Bad guys are bad. Period. End of discussion. The heroes do not realize that they are becoming like their enemy at some point in the film. They do not buy into some notion of a “cycle of violence” between cops and criminals. They dispose their righteous justice, then rightfully go back to their normal lives.

This is exactly what I am on about. Moral ambiguity, and more specifically, the examination between the lines of right and wrong is what makes for great high art. In WWII, Hitler thought he was the hero of the piece, and its fascinating to try and glean why. It can also give us insight into ourselves and our own motivations when we realize that evil rarely considers itself so.

Low art doesn't do this. So, I wonder why Scott links low art to libertarians and high art to liberals. Obviously, it was unintentional, but that doesn't change the fact that he did.

I am hard-pressed to think of the libertarian idea that asserts the world is simple, black and white, and that the good guys are always good and the bad guys always bad. In fact, libertarians often cite the "cycle of violence" between criminals and police - as well as the innocent bystanders who lose their lives and liberty - when talking about the horrors of America's War on Drugs.

But Scott seems to want to put libertarians in a box, say we have a narrow view of right and wrong, that we are proudly blind to the moral ambiguities that surround us.

It's libertarians vs liberals, low art vs high art. But even that can be abiguous, because there are those who elevate low art to high art, like Quentin Tarantino. Inglorious Basterds did that by directly engaging our revenge-lust as NAZI's are scalped, maimed, and shot so many times in the face, their expression resembles ground chuck more than fear, and then flipped it on its head by showing us NAZI's engaging in the exact same behavior during the screening of the Audie Murphy-like film within a film, Nation's Pride.

It's another movie with very real violence that still seems to absolve its characters of the fallout - real or psychic - of their actions. Like Kick-Ass, it treads the line between real violence and cartoon consequences. But unlike Kick-Ass, it plays at having a greater point, so Ebert gave it four stars.

But does Kick-Ass not have a point? I don't know if it was intended to have one, but this is where Scott makes his most compelling argument:

In the leftist paradigm, being a victim is the pinnacle of human achievement. Each special interest group battles society and each other to prove who is more oppressed, who has less civil rights, and who deserves more of our pity. “Kick-Ass” is about people who refuse to be victims. It is about average people who rise up and take whatever means necessary to restore the balance between good and evil. They do not go to the police or rely on the government to help. They do not revel in their underdog status. They perceive true injustice and take steps to stop it.

(...)

The individual is king in “Kick-Ass.” Each character makes their own decisions and lives by the consequences of their actions. They do not wait for others to help them. They help themselves. They react to the empirical, undeniable, reality of right and wrong. They do not act selfishly, for they understand that in helping themselves, they help those around them.

At one point, in a hilarious riff on the main theme of the “Spider-man” films, Kick-Ass states that “with no power, comes no responsibility.” Isn’t that the central tenant of modern leftist thought? Why should they help others when the government does that? Why should they donate to charity when they patriotically pay their taxes? Why should they risk themselves when someone is in trouble because the police or military do that. Of course, “Kick-Ass” doesn’t reinforce this notion. It goes against it. Every human being is responsible for making the world a better place. The best way to do that is by making yourself the best you can be. You can’t turn a blind eye to evil and injustice, wallowing in your status as a victim, you must be proactive to defeat injustice and evil in a personal, direct, and often risky way.

If this is indeed how the heroes of Kick-Ass are portrayed, then it does indeed seem to have a libertarian undercurrent. But I'd be willing to bet that Scott began his political life as a Republican, as he seems to have a keen eye for the ethos of the left, while being blind to that on the right.

It's the political paradigm that being a victim is the pinnacle of human achievement, not the leftist paradigm. The right has victims, too, they're just different victims - Christians, white people, business. If I have to hear about the liberal assault on Christmas one more time, I'm going to burn Bill O'Reilly in effigy.

While he makes some good points, Scott's argument is founded on his misconceptions that only the left has the victim card in their deck, and that Roger Ebert only likes movies that play it. The reason the article still works, to a degree, is that he's right on about libertarians regarding the victim card and personal responsibility.

If you want to see what I think is the most libertarian movie I've ever seen, check out Serenity.

The Rise of Citizen Journalism (Or NAZIs Show Up in the Strangest Places)

2010-04-21T10:27:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! On tax day, I published a piece about the Tea Party, and the propaganda war in which they were engaged with their detractors. There was a website called Crash the Tea Party! that was encouraging people to infiltrate the Tea Party protests with racist signs and NAZI gear to try and make the general public think that's what the protests were about.

It seemed that they were counting on Poe's Law to confuse the unwashed masses into thinking if they can be radical about government spending, they could be radical about anything. They wanted to send an army of Poe's into the rallies to obfuscate the truth.

Now, I actually thought this might be effective. It was my opinion that without a person to rally behind, the public and the media would simply believe that any asshole with a sign represented the beliefs and values of the average Tea Party protester. When it was primarily a Paulian movement (It's still about half Paulite), if someone said something outrageous, all they had to do was point to Paul - "Have you ever heard him say something like that?" The Tea Party doesn't really have that ability, and I thought it might be their undoing.

But neither I nor Crash the Tea Party! counted on the power of the citizen journalist. If there is one thing the whole Dubya Air National Guard controversy taught me, it is that the mainstream media is bloated and lazy, and that it was going to be bloggers and activists that carried the torch of truth into the 21st Century.

You see, Dan Rather accepted at face value the memos given to him that would indicate George W Bush had used connections to avoid military service. As it turned out, they were complete forgeries, and within only a matter of hours, the blogosphere had thoroughly debunked them. Now, Dan Rather is slumming it on cable.

It is possible that citizen journalists can again step forward and shine a light of truth on these situations as they unfold. The power of YouTube, combined with the easy availability of video equipment and the massive organizational power of social networking sites has created the perfect storm that may just yet make the mainstream media obsolete.

Here in Saint Louis, I am becoming a fan of conservative blogger Adam Sharp and his guerrilla-style of citizen journalism. He first caught my attention when he ambushed Illinois Congressman Phil Hare about ObamaCare. Hare, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to talk to the general public without the insulation of his handlers, and we got a rare honest moment out of a public official. Watch for the "Jackpot, brother!" moment:

So, this guy was not going to let these infiltrators ruin his movement. Before the Tax Day rallies, Sharp posted instructions on what a Tea Partier should do if they come across one of those Poes:

1) If you spot someone with a sign that is not offensive but is at odds with Tea Party principles, DO NOT be rude or confrontational. BE NICE. Welcome them to the event and encourage them to listen to the speakers and learn more about us.

2) If you see someone with a racist or offensive sign or who is saying racist or offensive things. Immediately ask them to leave. If they do not leave, mock them. Literally make fun of them, ridicule them, laugh at them..loud. Have those around you join in. Ridicule is a powerful weapon. DO NOT TOUCH THEM OR USE PROFANITY.

3) If someone is being violent toward you, defend yourself to the best of your ability(of course) and call or find a police officer as quickly as possible.

4) Have a video camera ready at all times. Just in case someone does start trouble we need the proof. Hopefully there will be no violence BUT If any violence occurs the media will blame the TEA Party immediately. We need video to show the world the truth.

Sure enough, Sharp encountered a Poe at the tax day rally here in Saint Louis, and he followed his own advice:

My favorite moment is his response when the douchebag says he's a "separatist." Sharp is...er...sharp.

As it turns out, the founder of the Crash the Tea Party! website, a man named Jason Levin, is under investigation now because the site encouraged followers to collect social security numbers and other private information to take his final solution to the Tea Party problem to the next level with identity theft and fraud. "The more data we can mine from the Tea Partiers, the more mayhem we can cause with it!!!!" Levin had said.

For their part, the Tea Party is trying to take the high road in all of this, and released a statement, urging the school district not to fire him. They say an apology will suffice: "We don't want to see Jason Levin fired, we want to see him helped. We want to reach out to him and we want to use his actions to create a teachable moment."

That's great of them and everything, but the real teachable moment may have been that in the information age, lies may have developed a short shelf-life.

Another Death Threat Over a Cartoon

2010-04-20T02:09:00.002-05:00

Hello, Freedomphiles! You know, South Park is one of my favorite shows, not just because of its consistently libertarian themes or its laser-like precision in cutting through the bullshit to the truth of things, but because it's damned funny.

If you are a fan, you know that they just recently celebrated their 200th episode, and they decided to do it in style by bringing together all their most controvercial episodes from their archives all in one two-part show. (If you haven't seen it, it mostly surrounds Tom Cruise suing the entire town of South Park because the boys caught him packing fudge. Seriously.)

But this time, the controversy isn't over Tom Cruise or Scientology. This time, the story goes back a ways. Right around the time of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, where the Danish newspaper printed a cartoon featuring Muhammad, and the whole world went crazy, Matt and Trey were embroiled in their own controversy over artistic freedom.

The South Park guys wanted to do an episode about the Danish controversy, but Comedy Central, being giant pussies, told them that they couldn't run an image of Muhammad: "In light of recent world events," they whimpered, "we feel we made the right decision."

So, Matt and Trey did what they do. Even if it was their own network, they were going to cut through the bullshit and call it like they saw it.

They made up an entire episode about this happening to the show Family Guy, except in their version, the Fox executive came to his senses and allowed the image of Muhammad to be shown. As it reached that point in the Family Guy episode, the screen went black, except for the words, "In this shot, Mohammed hands a football helmet to Family Guy. Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network."

The greatest irony of all was that they had been showing Muhammad all season long in the opening theme, but no one seemed to notice. Matt and Trey weren't having problems with Muslims - they were having problems with weak-knees at Comedy Central.

In their 200th episode, Muhammad returned, this time wearing a bear suit so his image wouldn't appear on film. And this time, they pinged the Muslim world.

You see, there's this website called Revolutionmuslim.com, which has a history of supporting jihad against the west and thinking Bin Laden is like, dreamy or something. On Sunday, they posted thinly-veiled threats against the creators of South Park and Comedy Central.

As CNN reports:

The posting on Revolutionmuslim.com says: “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Theo van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by an Islamic extremist in 2004 after making a short documentary on violence against women in some Islamic societies. The posting on Revolutionmuslim.com features a graphic photograph of Van Gogh with his throat cut and a dagger in his chest.

The entry on Revolutionmuslim.com goes on to advise readers:

“You can contact them [the makers of South Park], or pay Comedy Central or their own company a visit at these addresses …” before listing Comedy Central’s New York address, and the Los Angeles, California, address of Parker and Sloane’s production company.

But get this. The website, and the author of the post, Abu Talhah al Amrikee, are in New York. This isn't some radical in the mountains of Afghanistan. This is someone living and enjoying the freedom and prosperity available in this country.

So, I have this to say to Abu Talhah al Amrikee - This is America, Jack. If I want to draw a picture of Muhammad fucking a goat while blowing the goat herder, I can do that, without fear of getting my head chopped off. If I said Muhammad was a necrophiliac pedophile with a penchant for anal beads, you're allowed to get mad at me. You're allowed to criticize me. But you are not allowed to harm me.

But that's the great thing about not being batshit crazy zealots - we can relax and get to know people, realizing we're not that different, after all. It's a really freeing thing, living in the 21st Century, Abu. You should try it.

I may be wrong when I say that Muhammad was the face in the bukkake video I downloaded last night. I'm definitely being offensive. But that is my right, and if someone threatens me or harms me for doing it, they aren't glorifying God - they're just being irrational morons with no sense of perspective.

So, this is my point. Watching you react to something like this in the way that you do is like watching a Cro Magnon man lumbering along, hooting and hollering in the middle of Central Park.

You're an anachronism.

Proofreading is a Lost Art

2010-04-19T11:14:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Penguin Group Australia has had to destroy and reprint 7000 copies of their cookbook, Pasta Bible, after discovering a disconcerting misprint.

Nestled in the list of ingredients for the dish spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was the direction to include "salt and freshly ground black people" to the dish.

"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind, and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," said head of publishing Bob Sessions.

I think the age of automatic spell-checks has ruined the art of proofreading. I can't tell you how many times I've read a book in the last few years and found something that, because of spell-check, completely slipped past the proofreader.

But what do I know? Maybe black people are tasty. I'd certainly like to take a bite out of Beyonce.

For some topical fun, check out Dave Weinbaum's list of poorly proofread headlines.

Breast Cancer Awareness T-Shirts Offensive?

2010-04-19T10:41:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! When I was in eighth grade at St Claire's Catholic school in South Florida, I once got in big trouble and was forced to turn my t-shirt inside out because it was "offensive" and "counter to Catholic dogma - er, doctrine." It was a shirt, which, on the back, read, "To Serve and Protect."

Unfortunately, the front did not have a picture of Officer Friendly, but of Trojan condoms. Oops. I guess I was always a shit disturber.

I have just run across a similar story, but the kids in this one were not trying to stick it to the man - they were trying to stand up for the woman.

Last Wednesday, around two dozen students at Mona Shores High School in Michigan decided to rally around the mother of one of their classmates, who was going through breast cancer surgery that day.

So, they went online and bought a bunch of Breast Cancer Awareness t-shirts and wore them to school that day in a show of solidarity. They hadn't been there long, though, when they were asked to to see the principal about their actions.

"There were a number of girls who were talked to by a counselor and the principal," said Superintendent Larry L Babbit. "They were asked to turn the shirts inside out because some thought the slogan on the shirts were in poor taste or offensive."

The offensive slogan? "Save the ta-tas," which is a breast cancer awareness organization that raises money for the Concern Foundation. Hardly pushing the envelope, there. Still, the administration defended their actions.

"The cause of breast cancer isn't the issue," explained Babbit, "But just because something is dedicated to a particular cause, it doesn't give you a license to say whatever."

Sure, maybe a t-shirt saying "End tit cancer now" or "Jugs are forever" might have been a bit over the line, but the term "ta-tas" is such an innocuous reference, I think they really should have overlooked it, especially considering the comfort the show of support likely brought to the girl and her family.

Lorree Graves, parent of one of the students, was sad that her child's good deed did not go unpunished: "They felt really bad because they thought they were doing something good. I think, at the school, they should be proud these girls are part of the school."

Student Cameron Mosier Jr, summed it up nicely: "The school is way too sensitive nowadays,"

I think the whole world is, Cameron.

Joss Whedon to Direct The Avengers!

2010-04-15T03:23:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomfiles! If you have been following me through Geocities to MySpace to this respectable blog, you know that I am a huge Whedonite. I love all things Joss Whedon. I bow humbly to his greatness, from the incomparable Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angel to Firefly. His unique vision, Tarantino-esque knack for dialogue, and insistence that story comes from character, not the opposite, have won me over to the world of nerdy fandom.

Today, I got some news that just made my whole year. According to Variety, Joss has been chosen to direct Robert Downey Jr, Edward Norton, Samuel L Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Evans in the big-screen Marvel crossover adventure, The Avengers - the superhero supergroup made up of The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America.

This would be his second feature as director, the first being the amazing big-screen adaptation of Firefly, Serenity. If you have any doubt about this movie being good, check out this clip from his first movie:

On Tax Day, Mystery and Intrigue (And a Whole Lot of BS) Surround the Tea Party

2010-04-15T02:02:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! I've always been on the fence about the Tea Party, preferring to watch with bemused ambivalence from the sidelines like a dispassionate anthropologist. I feel like Dian Fossey, fascinated because they look oddly human, and they make sounds that seem libertarian.

But I've also been skeptical. While on the one hand, they talk a good game about smaller government, less spending, and lower taxes, on the other, they support the opposition of one of the most fiscally conservative Representatives in Washington - Ron Paul, whose supporters started the whole neo-Tea Party thing in the first place. Then they invite Sarah Palin, of all people, poster-child for the anti-intellectual, welfare/warfare, culture war crusading Right, to deliver the keynote address at their National Convention, which may or may not have actually represented the Tea Party.

That's what's so interesting, though. They're very decentralized, which a spontaneous order guy like myself should appreciate. But in this case, it seems that the lack of organization has exposed some weaknesses. For one, they have no apparatus for defending themselves from stereotyping. The most common charge against the Tea Party is that they are just a bunch of racists and homophobes. It seems to be the go-to smear against any popular movement on the Right.

Of course by now everyone has heard the allegations that some Tea Partiers yelled "Nigger!" at Rep. John Lewis, spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, and called Rep Barney Frank a "faggot." There were also claims that Tea Partiers left coffins on the lawn of Rep. Russ Carnahan. Pretty soon, people were connecting their own dots and attributing things with no evidence of ties to the Tea Party. A rock was thrown through the window of Rep Louise Slaughter's office, and it's attached as an update to a Huffington Post story about the racial slur incident. At least the Cleaver claim happened at a Tea Party event.

Still, in both instances, the evidence was slim. Andrew Breitbart offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove that the racial slurs were indeed spouted, and so far, with all the cell phone video cameras in The United States of YouTube, no one managed to catch even one utterance of the unholiest of all words. Even Cleaver is apparently backing off the spitting story, and the coffin story turned out to be much ado about nothing, as well.

This didn't ever really happen with the Ron Paul folks, and they were very decentralized. I think the difference may be that while they had no top-down structure, they weren't rallying behind an idea, but a man with an idea. With no figurehead for the Tea Party movement, there is no one for the media to use as a representative for the demands and dissatisfaction of its members. And that makes it very diffucult to deflect stereotypes and false accusations.

It also leaves a hole for opportunists to try and rip the Tea Party sword from the stone and claim leadership. Witness Dale Robertson (right) and his ironically illiterately racist sign. He's the founder of the Tea Party movement. And he's clearly a fat, moronic racist. The left has had a great deal of fun with that picture.

The only problem is, he isn't the Tea Party founder after all. He's just a scumbag trying to piggyback off the movement to get his 15 minutes, and he fooled a lot of people. Even the mainstream media outlets bought it. As Mother Jones reported:

Like many of the media hounds claiming to represent the grassroots Tea Party movement, Robertson's main credential is opportunism. [...] While real Tea Party leaders have distanced themselves from Robertson, the media have embraced him and his false claim that he founded the entire Tea Party movement. Despite efforts by Tea Party leaders to publicize Robertson's phony creds and racist sign-making habits, Robertson has appeared on Fox News, C-Span, Russia Today, as well as a host of radio shows, and he's been quoted with authority in a variety of newspapers. The Washington Post quote, though, is definitely a coup for Roberston, and a true embarrassment for the Post, which really should have known better.

In fact, the only connection to the Tea Party he even has is the honor of having been thrown out of the rally he was attending for carrying the idiotic sign in the picture. I think, though, that people were willing to buy him as the leader of the movement because they desperately needed someone specific to associate with it, as they did Ron Paul, and their own prejudices made them more willing to accept at face-value with no hint of skepticism that a mouth-breathing bigot could be the head of a small government movement.

Lies, propaganda, power struggles - it's like a Tom Clancy novel. Can you see why this has been so fascinating to me?

But it gets better. The Associated Press reports that a group called Crash the Tea Party! plans to infiltrate the tax-day rallies today with racist and homophobic signs, saying things as ignorant as possible to cameras to try and condemn the group to public opinion hell and marginalize their message. "We have already sat quietly in their meetings, and observed their rallies," they warn on their site.

Speaking of their site, when I tried to go to it, Web of Trust (WoT), the wonderful little Firefox add-on I use to protect me from dangerous websites, threw up a hand and warned me that I might not want to go there. Curious, I clicked the link to view an explanation of the rating, and found that most of the negatives attributed to it were labeled "hateful, violent, or illegal content." Criticisms ranged from "Very Unamerican!" to "A Bunch of Scumbag Leftists that HATE free speech. Go Fuck yourselves."

One voice of reason came through and mentioned that what the critics were doing - making WoT tell web surfers that the site was dangerous - was "an absolutely disgusting misuse of Web of Trust," urging users to "Stop using this tool to push your individual political agendas."

In the end, though, it was really just one phase of a greater propaganda war. The site itself was promoting a plan to mislead the public about a group of people, and the WoT attack was that group pushing back with their own attempt at misleading subterfuge.

The battle is on to claim the territory of public perception about the Tea Party, and their lack of organization is going to become a hindrance to their ability to stake that claim. It could also harm their ability to affect any change at all in the upcoming elections.

Without an organizational apparatus, they could be just tilting at windmills. It seems clear that they want to remake the Republican Party in their own image, and critics are wondering if that is a good thing, if "Tea Party Conservatism" is even helpful to the GOP's chances.

The Cato Institute's Roger Pilon says that if you love liberty, "The question...is not whether Tea Party conservatism is a help or a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power," but "whether the Republican Party is a help or a hindrance to the Tea Party movement." He concludes, "It will be a help only if it returns to its roots."

All that's fine and good, but if the Tea Party doesn't win the war of public perception, they're dead in the water.

Constance McMillen Comes Out On Top

2010-04-13T11:10:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! You might recall the story of Constance McMillen, the high school student who was banned from bringing her girlfriend to the prom. When the ACLU got involved, rather than have their prom tainted by girl-girl love, they cancelled the entire prom. A compromise was ultimately reached and the prom was back on, but when McMillen arrived, she found that the only people there were her, her date, some special-needs kids, and other misfits.

Her prom was attended by seven people.

Meanwhile, there was a secret prom going on elsewhere, and the other students were having the time of their lives. In a town of 4000 people, the school, parents, and other students had to go to great pains to keep this news from Constance and the other students.

Well, there's a rare bit of good news as an epilogue to this story. She has been asked to be the Grand Marshall of New York City's LGBT Pride Parade in June, which will mark the 30th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

“I never dreamed so many people would support my fight to take my girlfriend to the prom, much less that I’d end up being asked to be a Grand Marshal at NYC Pride,” said McMillen. “I’m really honored and touched to be asked to be part of this celebration.”

Good for you, girl. Add that to the $30,000 scholarship Ellen Degeneres gave you, and there is definitely a silver lining to this hate-cloud.

Thanks to Haakon for the tip. Here she is on Ellen:

Ebert and Rotten - At the Movies

2010-04-13T09:04:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! In case you were wondering what happened to Roger Ebert, he fell victim to thyroid cancer, which has stolen his voice from him. He still reviews movies and writes a blog, but his days on At the Movies are over.

But the gift that we have gotten from this horrible tragedy is that he has been waxing poetic about his life on his blog, sharing the most interesting stories about his fascinating life.

The death of Malcolm McLaren, about which I have already written, was occasion for Ebert to revisit the movie that almost was. McLaren approached Russ Myers to make a Sex Pistols film, and Myers asked Ebert to write it in 1977.

The film was to be called Anarchy in the UK, but Ebert changed it to Who Killed Bambi? Meyers said he was going for a cross of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and A Hard Day's Night.

Ebert was instructed to be as controversial as possible. He hit many high notes, even being an early one to criticize Scientology, by writing Rotten into a confrontation with the "Church of Scientography," where a batty girl wanted to hook him up to an "H Meter."

He wrote one scene in particular that he was afraid would anger and repulse Sid Vicious, but McLaren said, "Nah. The more shocking, the better. That's what the boys stand for. Just put it in, and we'll run it past Sid in London, see what he says."

So, they brought Sid in the room and had him read the following scene:

INT. NIGHT. BEDROOM
The shades are drawn. Propped up against the pillows of the bed, Sid's MOTHER is just in the act of shooting up. As Sid Vicious appears in the doorway, she pulls the needle from her arm. He leans against the door, regarding her. She releases the rubber tube from around her arm.

SID VICIOUS (not unkindly)
Still on the shit, mum?

She looks up and sees him. We sense this is not the first time he's seen her shooting up.

MOTHER
(a surprised greeting)
Sid!
(pause)
How are you, then?

SID VICIOUS
All right... I came for my things, mum.

MOTHER
Your things?
(brightens)
You got a job, then?

SID VICIOUS
Not a chance!

His Mother nods to confirm that of course there was not a chance. She sits upright on the side of the bed.

MOTHER
I thought Tony told you not to come 'round here any more.

VICIOUS
Bugger Tony. It's your house too - isn't it?

MOTHER
He pays the rent... come on then, sit down.
She pats the bed next to her. He sits.

VICIOUS
I didn't come 'round because I wanted to. I need money, mum. I'm starving.

His mother isn't giving him her total attention.

VICIOUS
(continuing)
I'm starving, mum...

He puts an arm around her. She looks at the hand on her arm, lets it stay. Her dialogue implies more than it says.

MOTHER
What if Tony walks in?

SID VICIOUS
He won't come walking in here . He's down at the pub with his mates.

MOTHER
I don't want you to get hurt, Sid. You'd better get out in case Tony comes.

He pulls her closer to him, and kisses her on the cheek.

VICIOUS
What's the matter, mum?
She is deep into the rush of the heroin.

MOTHER
He could come walking in here any time now...
Effortlessly, Sid Vicious pushes his mother back on the bed and moves to cover her with half his body. He kisses her on the neck and lips.

SID VICIOUS
I told you -- he's at the pub with his mates, getting sloshed.

MOTHER
But he doesn't have the money to get sloshed, Sid. He'll be back

SID VICIOUS
Come on, mum. Give us a kiss.

She does. And then she puts her free arm around him, and they begin the preliminaries of love making.

Sid read the scene, smoking a cigarette and quietly contemplating the scenario into which he'd been thrust. He finally closed the script, looked up at them, and said, "I don't think me Mum will like the part about the heroin."

Brilliant stuff. Read the rest here.

BREAKING NEWS: Big Time DEA Bust

2010-04-10T23:03:00.000-05:00

DEA Official Announces Successful Drug Bust On Son's Room

God, I love The Onion.

Malcolm McLaren Dead at 64

2010-04-09T11:28:00.006-05:00

Sad news, Freedomphiles. Malcolm McLaren, punk rock's PT Barnum, died yesterday at the age of 64. I have a love/hate relationship with McLaren, an opportunist who ruined The New York Dolls, made The Sex Pistols, had a huge influence on the early punk and hip hop movements, and then tried to take credit for it all.

Back in the mid-70's, he visited America and found himself managing the proto-punk outfit The New York Dolls, replacing their unique (at the time) gender-bending style with red leather outfits and Communist-inspired stage setups.

It was pretty much the end of The Dolls, but while in New York, he got a chance to meet Tom Verlain and Richard Hell of The Neon Boys. Both were to later be in legendary punk act Television, and Hell would go on to be in The Heartbreakers with Dolls alum Johnny Thunders, and then would form The Voidoids, who recorded the punk classic, Blank Generation.

McLaren fell in love with Richard Hell's look and attitude, and was determined to go back to London and create a band based on Hell's unique style and vision.

He returned to his clothing store, Sex, which he ran with Vivienne Westwood, and offered to manage the band The Strand. He replaced the bassist with Glen Matlock and the singer with John Lydon. Lydon changed his last name to Rotten, and The Sex Pistols were born.

"I came back to England determined. I had these images I came back with, it was like Marco Polo or Walter Raleigh. I brought back the image of this distressed, strange thing called Richard Hell," he said in Legs McNeil's amazing oral history of punk, Please Kill Me. "And this phrase, 'the blank generation'.... Richard Hell was a definite, 100 percent inspiration, and, in fact, I remember telling the Sex Pistols, ‘Write a song like Blank Generation, but write your own bloody version,’ and their own version was 'Pretty Vacant.'"

A born provocateur, McLaren rented a boat to go down the Thames to Parliament (the fascist regime) during Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. On this boat were the ornery lads he'd put together, singing their first single, God Save the Queen. It was a rousing success - McLaren was arrested, and The Sex Pistols were legends.

What's more, with songs like Pretty Vacant, Anarchy in the UK, and Submission, their first studio album, Nevermind the Bollocks, was a masterpiece, and really introduced the world to punk rock, which had been brewing and building with Iggy and the Stooges and the MC5 in Detroit and The Ramones, New York Dolls, and Television in New York.

"I never thought that could be remotely possible," he said in an interview last year. "It never occurred to me. What occurred to me was that it didn't matter if they were bad."

They replaced Glen Matlock with Sid Vicious, who wasn't half the bassist Matlock was, but really is iconic in setting the look of punk rock. From his leather jacket and boots to wearing Chrissie Hyndes' storage shed lock around his neck on a chain, he was the prototype that set the uniform for punk.

They went on a tour of the United States, and it was their undoing. Sid hooked up with Dee Dee Ramone's ex, Nancy Spungeon, and fell down the rabbit hole of heroin addiction. Meanwhile, Johnny was having arguments with McLaren over the direction of the band, money, and McLaren's supplying of drugs to his friend. Within half a year, the band had gone from angry upstart to the biggest band in the world to nothing.

At their last performance, at The Winterland in San Francisco, the show ended with Johnny saying in his nasal snarl, "Ever get the feeling like you've been cheated?" and walking off the stage.

After the band split, McLaren made the film, The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle, in which he claimed that The Sex Pistols, and punk rock as a whole, were entirely his creation. The Pistols were not a band - they were a Monkees-like creation designed to further McLaren's goal of total chaos.

As much of a dirty lie that movie was, mixed with infuriating disco mixes of Sex Pistol songs, it also features some amazing rough demos that were done before Bullocks, like Anarchy in the UK and Belsen Was a Gas. Also featured were a fantastic remake of My Way, performed by Sid, and ironically, a balls-to-the-wall brilliant cover of The Monkees' Steppin' Stone.

This was the last straw for much of the band. It seemed McLaren's narcissistic histrionics had finally crossed the line, especially for Lydon.

Eventually, the record was set straight, when Julien Temple released his amazing biopic, The Filth and the Fury, which was the true story of The Sex Pistols.

McLaren went on to manage the early careers of some of the Pistols' bigger fans, like Adam and the Ants, Boy George, and a band featuring The Ants minus Adam plus a 13 year-old lolita named Annabella Lwin, calling them Bow Wow Wow.

There's been a lot of controversy in the punk community and within the surviving members of The Sex Pistols over McLaren's contribution to the movement, but news of his death have left them in a reflective, forgiving state.

Lwin said of McLaren: "He had a strange, mystical way of recognizing something in somebody that they didn't know that they really had."

Pistols guitarist Steve Jones said, "The whole thing probably wouldn't have taken off the way it did without him, there's no doubt about that, but his downfall is that he spent the rest of his life trying to take credit for all of it...I was always next in line when it came to slagging him and calling him a crook, but when I found he was dead, when his son called and told me, I was really saddened by it. Underneath it all I really loved him."

And Lydon? Even he was finding that death has a way of smoothing out the rough edges. "For me Malc was always entertaining, and I hope you will remember that. Above all else he was an entertainer, and I will miss him, and so should you."

Indeed, Johnny.

Where is the Line Drawn Between Exhibitionism and Voyeurism?

2010-04-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! You know, when Matthew McConaughey was busted for playing bongos in the nude, my mother-in-law said, "If it were me, I wouldn't be calling the police - I'd be calling my girlfriends."

I can certainly understand that - his torso looks like it was carved by Michelangelo. If I had come upon Alyson Hannigan in the same state, I'd get a folding chair and some popcorn.

In this country, we have a love/hate relationship with nudity, and we are almost all secret voyeurs, whether we want to admit it or not.

The question is - where is the line drawn between public and private? Where is the line between exhibitionism and voyeurism?

Courts have ruled we have an expectation of privacy in our own home, but they have also ruled that if police see you doing something illegal through your window, that's considered "plain sight."

But why are we looking in people's windows to begin with? The truth is, we are all voyeuristic. That's why we love shows like Survivor, Celebrity Rehab, Intervention, and even America's Funniest Home Videos. Movies like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are cult sensations. We like feeling like the fly on the wall, like we are seeing people as they really are.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in pornography. Amateur pornography is the most popular kind on the internet, with sites like ProjectVoyeur and PornTube hosting user-generated content. It's the crossroads of our love of voyeurism and exhibitionism, and it gets more popular by the day.

Even celebrities get in on the act, as sex tapes are "lost or stolen" and suddenly all over the web. Would Paris Hilton or Pamela Anderson be where they are today if the whole world hadn't been sitting in darkened rooms with Astroglide and a box of tissues, watching them give hummers? D-List celebrities understand better than anyone that if they can embrace their inner exhibitionists, they can tap into the secret voyeurs in all of us.

So, what is it that makes us peek in that window as we walk down the street? Is it really accidental, or are we looking for a little titilation? Are we compelled by what we might see, whether it be nudity or someone picking their nose?

Erick Williamson was just acquitted of an indecent exposure charge, after stumbling down to the kitchen to make coffee in the nude. Two different women saw him, and called the police. It was eventually determined that he didn't expose himself intentionally to these women, and he told The New York Times, ''I think (the verdict) kind of sets the record straight. It was an innocent action.''

But what compelled those women to look in his window in the first place? Our eyes don't just dart around randomly, fixing themselves on the most offensive display in our periphery. They knew there was a house there, they knew it had windows, and they knew that looking in those windows would give them a view of a person's private space and habits.

Is it the same as the compulsion to slow down and look at an accident? You don't enjoy seeing death and misery, yet there is an insistent need to see how bad it is, to peer into the worst moments of a person's life.

Certainly, these women would not have seen his love tackle had he thrown on a robe before making his coffee, but likewise, they'd not have seen anything had they kept their eyes to themselves. Where does his apparent exhibitionism end, and where does their voyeurism begin?

Setting aside my personal feelings about how we are way too uptight about nudity in this country, I must point out - if you are looking in people's windows, you have no right to be offended by what you see. When you engage in voyeurism, you are attempting to see someone at their most vulnerable - when they think no one is looking - so don't be surprised at what you find.

High School Throws Separate Prom for Lesbians, Learning Disabled

2010-04-07T09:38:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! I've been following the story of Constance McMillen, a lesbian student that was forbidden from taking her girlfriend to the prom in Fulton, Mississippi. When the ACLU sent a letter on her behalf to Itawamba Agricultural High School, they simply cancelled the prom altogether.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year,'" said McMillen after returning to school, post-cancellation. Was the school board being spiteful? Did they cancel the prom simply to turn student opinion against the girl? I guess we'll never know, but it sure appears that way.

In court, it was found that the school had violated her First Amendment right to free expression, and in an apparent compromise, the school said that parents would organize a new prom with chaperones that she could attend with her girlfriend.

Seems good, right?

Not so fast.

When she arrived at the prom, she was a little startled to see that there were only seven people there. You see, the parents and students at school had conspired to throw two proms, and they sent all the "undesirables," like lesbians and learning disabled children to the one prom, while they had the time of their lives at the other.

On the plus side, McMillen finds a silver lining. She said the special needs kids "had the time of their lives. That's the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn't have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom]."

If you'd like to sign a petition condemning the school for their actions, click here.

UPDATE: An alert reader hipped me to this story. It seems the douchebag kids at the douchebag school have started a Constance Quit Yer Cryin Facebook page, saying such enlightened things as, "Seriously, you've pretty much eff'd up your fellow classmate's best memory of High School."

The good news is that the page was quickly taken over by Constance supporters and has become now a de facto support page.

I Love My Dead Gay Son!

2010-04-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! I was having a discussion about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act today, and it made me think of an Freedom File I wrote back in the day about the right to discriminate. So, I dug it up and am posting it now. I warn you, I must have been feeling pretty punk rock that day, because I did not censor the slurs when imagining what a bigot might say. Yes, yes, I was so young and brash and shocking and cool. The title, of course, is taken from the brilliant black comedy, Heathers.

Anyway, here it is, from May of 2003:

__________________________

Hello Freedomphiles! Today, I was reading an article in The Saint Louis Post Dispatch – buried in the middle of the business section – entitled Group Says Most Firms Bar Bias Against Gays. After reading this tiny piece, two of my opinions were immediately reinforced. The first was the theory that the media suffers from what I call axiomatic inversion – good news is no news. The second was that every good social change that has ever happened in this country has been a product of us – the people ¬– not the government.

The article quoted Elizabeth Burch, executive director of The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the organization that performed the survey. She said, “The truth is, it’s corporate America that has been the unlikely hero in the movement for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.”

Unlikely?

Hardly.

Take out that one word, and the sentence makes complete sense. Kim Mills, the group’s education director, provides the perfect explanation for what Burch finds so damned baffling: “Most successful companies know discrimination is bad for business.”

This is as it has been since the dawn of time, and this is why free markets are so much more consistently effective than government coercion. It doesn’t matter what the CEO of Big Business, Inc. thinks of homosexuals. He could go home and complain to his wife about having to spend the day with those “fudge-packing faggots” at work, but if he wants to stay rich, he better keep hiring and serving them. That is the brilliance of capitalism – it recognizes the self-interest of the individual and forces him to cooperate peacefully with members of every sex, race, religion, and sexuality if he intends to become or stay rich. As The Cato Institute’s David Boaz said in his brilliant book Libertarianism: A Primer, “People who may not see themselves as comfortable members of a tight community with the others in the group can come together for a specific purpose, in the process learning to coexist if not to embrace.”

But then governments get involved and screw everything up. As it is right now, it is perfect. Choices for everyone. The majority of people don’t think a business should discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation – and the majority of businesses don’t do that – 92%, according to the HRC. That leaves 8% of the businesses in this country free to hire all the bigots and homophobes they want and keep them the fuck out of my office.

But there is a minority whose rights are being threatened. It’s that 8 percent. From the HRC to the ACLU, there are organizations out there fighting to take away an individual’s right to hire or not hire anyone he chooses. This is America, kids, and it is based largely on the idea that each individual has the freedom of association. Just as an employee has the right to work or not work anywhere he chooses, an employer should have the right to hire or fire anyone he chooses. In the same way, as a consumer has the right to buy or not buy anything he wants, a producer should have the right to sell or not sell to whomever he wants. Neither you, I, nor anyone else should be able to impose our values on anyone else. Once again, people would like to abrogate your right to be an asshole.

I wear rainbow-colored shoelaces in honor of Roy G. Biv, the first openly gay mnemonic device, so don’t think that I am against gay rights. I mean, think that if you want – I don’t really give a fuck what you think – but if you want to follow my logic, you have to keep up. So – if you brought them with you – leave your cumbersome knee-jerk reactions at the door.

People do not have the right to go anywhere they want and work anywhere they want. People do have the right to offer their services for money, and they also have the right to offer their money for services. But if someone doesn’t want their services or doesn’t want their money, they have no right to force it on them. A right is an expression of your freedom. And we really have only one freedom – the freedom of self determination. This is the freedom to live your life in the way you see fit, free from coercion. The only stipulation is that you must not coerce another. Rights are merely the various ways you are protected from coercion. The right to not have a religion forced on you, the right to not be censored by the government, the right to be secure in your person and property from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Your rights are the government’s limitations. You are free only to the extent that the government is in chains. Ayn Rand said freedom “does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state – and nothing else.”

So what is the government’s job? It is to protect our freedom, and you don’t do that, as Rand also said, “by the violation of the rights of others.” Your right – as an expression of your freedom of self-determination – is to live your life to your best ability. It’s to know that here, ideas and initiative determine your place in the world – not accidents of birth. To know that any agreement you make will be completely voluntary, that you steer your own ship.

But you don’t.

Maybe you, like me, couldn’t care less who your co-workers sleep with, so a law prohibiting discrimination doesn’t affect you much. But it does. Once we let a politician decide that there are some people we have to associate with, the precedent is set.

You see, discrimination isn’t a bad thing. If someone only accepts the best in life, they are said to have discriminating tastes. It is the person who discriminates for no reason that makes no sense. To say that you don’t hang out with racists or homophobes is rational – you know that a racist or a homophobe will not be intellectually compatible with you, or that they don’t share the same values with you. But you cannot tell just by looking at someone – unless they are wearing a shirt that said “I hate niggers and faggots” – what their values are. So to say that you don’t want to hang out with someone because of a superficial physical characteristic is both lazy and narrow-minded.

The market nullifies this problem, as any homophobe or racist must keep these opinions to himself if he wants to do business. It may also lead some to notice the good things about individuals from the different groups they hate and lead to a greater understanding of the nature of people. You see, every person who is saved from a hate-filled life is done so by an individual, not an interest-group. I can pinpoint the two or three people who opened my mind to homosexuals. They didn’t do it by calling me names or taking me to court – they did it by being nice and open and honest with me. Few myths hold up to the brilliant power of truth.

When a bunch of individuals surrender their autonomy to a collective promising to lead them to a better place in society, they also surrender their opinion of what a better society is and the best way to get there to the leaders of that group. In his book, Parliament of Whores, PJ O’Rourke said, “A special interest is any person or group that wants to be treated differently from the rest of us by the government.” Once the government takes away one person’s freedom to meet its own end, every one of a million special interests will come out of the woodwork, asking, “Where are my perks? Where’s my justice?”

When justice loses its objectivity, protected classes are created, which will naturally cause a fracturing of society into specific, set demographics. Next thing you know, you’re filling out a census form, telling the government that you’re a disabled black Jewish homosexual woman – and you’ve lost your individuality. You’re wrapped into a neat little package, and everyone assumes they know your point of view on various subjects without ever bothering to know you as an individual. It was this idea of the individual – whether he know it or not – that led Legs McNeil, the man who coined the term “punk,” to say, “No, being gay doesn’t make you cool. Being cool makes you cool…”

The next step in this phase is for different classifications of people to fracture off and pit themselves against one another. That beautiful market synergy that exists independent of government is now destroyed by a few who profess to speak for an entire group of people, claiming to know their minds for the same reason racists and homophobes claimed to know the “truth” about whatever group – because they’ve taken a superficial characteristic about someone, drained them of all individuality, and generalized every character trait, opinion, talent, or philosophy to fit into a neat mold: gay, woman, black, Christian.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is where it all began. For generations, corrupt and bitter little white men upheld Jim Crow Laws, government’s attempt to suppress the equalizing forces of the market. The Jim Crow Laws forced businesses to not serve or hire blacks. Think about that for a second. Why would there be a law if that kind of discrimination was the status quo? Because it wasn’t – the self-interested lure of green burns far more brightly than the blackness of organized hatred. So someone had to step in and stop the market forces – the Jim Crow laws.

That is where the CRA comes in. It was supposed to end the Jim Crow Laws and stem the tide of racism, but have we reached a world where, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, we are judged “not on the color of our skin, but on the content of our character?” Of course not. We have not become a color-blind society. If anything, we are more acutely aware of race than ever before in our society. We’ve been segregated and labeled, and pitted against one another to fight for a little more power – some advantage over another group that the government deems “different” from us one way or another. But, as Rand said, “Remember also that the smallest minority is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

There is no such thing as group thought or group identity. The only person you are just alike is you. The only person who can know what you need and what is best for you is you. The only person who can speak for you is you. To think that someone can or is entitled to speak for you because they share a skin-tone or a love for same-sex romps with you is short-sided and pretty fucking stupid.

Understanding and love is a virus. It spreads wherever truth is present. Truth cannot be present where coercion exists. In the world, things progress naturally at a steady, healthy pace, and right when it looks like things are getting better every day, the government smells what’s in the air and tries to help it along with legislation. This results in a stagnation of progress, a polarizing of races, genders, and orientations, endless legal problems, and an entrenchment of the more extreme haters on either side of the issue, acting as “representatives” of their race, gender, or orientation, which naturally leaves many people in the middle with the misinterpretation of those as the views and values of the mainstream. Then you have three years of race riots immediately following the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

It was originally intended to end the practice of hiring, firing, serving, promoting, and such based on race or sex. It was not supposed to give anyone an advantage over someone else, but that was impossible. Just by saying that you cannot do that is saying you don’t have to worry if you hire most of the minorities that come through your door. It was wrong right away to tell people who they could and could not hire and fire. To say that there should be no law passed that discriminates is fine and consistent with our liberal tradition and our constitution – the government does not have freedom of association. A law written this way would have ended the Jim Crow laws and equalized the legal support for anyone trying to make it in the world. But the act itself, opposed by racists and non-racists alike, was wrong from the start. In fact, it only passed as a tribute to the slain John F. Kennedy, to secure his legacy.

Shortly after it was passed, though, Lyndon Johnson said at Howard University that the “next and profound stage of the battle for civil rights” was “not just [for] equality as a right and theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.” This is a scary thought. The whole point of our system is a reaction to the truth that there is no such thing as equality of outcome. People are not born with the same intelligence, beauty, drive, or anything else that gets you a leg up, regardless of their sex, their race, or their sexual orientation. The point is to allow everyone to develop their talents to the best of their abilities. This naturally leaves the world with corner stores and Microsofts. To say that those two have to be equal in outcome is to say that we must take most of what Bill Gates has rightfully earned and give it to the corner store. If we do say that, what incentive is that for anyone to succeed?

But they did say that. And in September of 1965, Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, which created “affirmative action.” This basically threatened people who received government money that they better take some actual concrete steps to hire more minorities, which was our first step away from the implication of unfairness to the actual abrogation of the right of free association.

This further led to other proactive measures, such as Section 8 of the Small Business Act, which created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and set aside a percentage of all government contracts for minority owned businesses. Now was the idea of “equality under the law” now officially dead – apparently some were created, as Orwell said, “more equal than others” – but the government had asserted it’s freedom of association, which it stole from us, and told us who we were required to do business with and it what numbers.

Then the Supreme Court got in on the act. In 1968 and 1969 (United Paperworkers v. United States – no link, sorry), two court decisions found that certain seniority systems for advancement in business were illegal because they kept minorities out of many promotions. In a world that was barely free of Jim Crow laws, what seniority system wouldn’t be discriminatory? It takes time to build up numbers and seniority, and a seniority system is a way of promoting job loyalty. It discriminated against people who had only been there a short time. And who would have been there the shortest time? Unfortunately, a problem that would have corrected itself eventually was then exacerbated by do-gooder morons who couldn’t see how much fucking harm they were actually doing.

In 1971, the final guidelines for Affirmative Action were set. The Supreme Court put the burden of proof not on the accuser, but on the accused. If a business wanted to set a minimum employment requirement – like a High School diploma, degree, or experience – they had to prove before a government judge the need for that requirement. Even if they could prove it was a fair requirement, if it had the effect of limiting minorities, it was said to be a “built-in headwind” against minorities. As the unanimous opinion stated, “Congress has placed on the employer the burden of showing that any given requirement must have a manifest relationship to the employment in question.” So much for due process – another right gone for the “greater good.”

That landmark decision was followed for twenty years. Business after business was hauled into court to prove they didn’t discriminate based upon race. According to Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground, “a business that relied on the federal government for its income, or a substantial portion of its income, could find itself in big trouble even if noncompliance was only being investigated.”

Then in 1991, Congress passed and George Bush signed The Civil Rights Act of 1991. This addressed a problem brought up by Alfred Blumrosen of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in 1971, “If discrimination is narrowly defined, for example, by requiring an evil intent to injure minorities, then it will be difficult to find that it exists.” And that problem is the problem of taking away people’s freedom a little at a time – all that other freedom gets in the way. You cannot legislate intent, and outcome is too dubious a standard to judge by.

Blumrosen, as Tony Snow, speechwriter for the first Bush Administration, described it in 1995, “helped devise a standard that would make it almost impossible not to detect prejudice everywhere. He argued that the government should sue any business that failed to hire designated minorities in proportions roughly equivalent to their appearance in the general public.” Blumrosen got his wish with the CRA of 1991. It was called disparate impact analysis, but it was quotas.

Also in 1995, Bob Dole, the grumpy half-a-man (this was pre-Viagra), “asked the Congressional Research Service to list all the statutes and executive orders that require race or sex-based preferences. Investigators found 166, touching upon everything from technical proposals for Agriculture Department grants to nuclear waste disposal.” Snow continued. That’s a lot of government sponsored discrimination, and it can only lead to one thing.

In the August 7 issue of the Riverfront Times, St. Louis’ version of the Village Voice, an article entitled Dressed for Deceit addressed the issue of fronting: “If Miller, the owner of a St. Louis software- and technology-testing company, would agree to allow her company's name to be used in a bid on a state contract, he'd kick her 10 percent of the contract amount.”

Miller was black and a woman, one crippling industrial accident away from hitting the protected class trifecta. The government has a classification for these businesses – of course – WBEs (Women-owned Business Enterprises) and MBEs (Minority-owned Business Enterprises). She was both.

Now, if you read the article, you’ll see a lot of the horrible things that some white-male-owned business have done to create, enforce, and keep secret fronting operations – including but not limited to alleged breaking-and-entering, pet mutilation, and death threats. These are horrible things to do, and are illegal for a good reason.

But would this be a problem if the government weren’t discriminating against them?

Would this be a problem if the government hired whoever was best for the job, regardless of race or gender? Of course not. This is a problem created by the Small Business Act. Another problem created is that it makes an already inefficient government more so. If anyone has to take more into account – especially arbitrary things like race and gender – anything other than quality, price, and reputation when judging bids, they’re going to waste more and more of your time and money.

Within the confines of a peaceful, non-coercive fronting agreement, who is injured? A black-owned business gets 10% of a contract big enough for someone to break the law to get, without having to lift a finger, while another worker, unfairly discriminated against by the government, rises above the bigotry, gets the contract, and stays in business a little longer. Not only does this market solution solve the problem like a Jim Crow-era restaurant passing plates of food out the back door to blacks, but creates goodwill between the two parties – of opposite races – in the blissful occupation of commerce.

On Tuesday, March 21, 2000, the Department of Justice settled a lawsuit with the Adam’s Mark hotel chain for discriminating against blacks. The hotel chain was ordered to “implement non-discrimination policies, attract more minority customers, and pay $8 million in monetary relief, including $1.5 million for hotel management programs at four historically black colleges in Florida.”

I don’t care whether they did discriminate or not – is it right for the government to tell someone they have to sell their property to someone? No, of course not. Besides, the market is far better at regulating this type of thing. In fact, it was doing it. There was a boycott against the hotel chain, with more people signing on every day. A boycott is good because it is a statement by consumers to a company that “you better shape up – or you’re history.” It is the exact way a market should work. Pure democracy. We vote with our dollars every day more effectively than we do every four years on our leaders.

It’s a dangerous path we travel when we seek to fix past injustice with further injustice.

We have to be conscious of our rights as individuals, because some fuckhole is eventually going to take them away for the “public good.” That course always leads to strife, polarization, more lost freedom, economic danger, and protected classes. It’s a path we walked over the race issue, and we’re worse off for it. The public good is never bondage. Let’s try not to walk this same road with the gay issue – we’re doing so well on our own. As Ayn Rand said, “Since there is no such entity as ‘the public,’ since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights, and have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.”

And that’s the recipe for tyranny.

Until next time, make every day a good one!

"I Strangled Him, and His Body is Decomposing in My Lock-er!"

2010-04-03T16:10:00.002-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! The man you see there is Jaime Escalante, inspiration for the Edward James Olmos character in the brilliant Stand and Deliver. He died this week at the age of 79, and his legacy is one of promise and hope, as well as frustration and sadness. The Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson explains:

With the help of a few dedicated colleagues at Garfield High in East Los Angeles, he shattered the myth that poor inner-city kids couldn't handle advanced math. At the peak of its success, Garfield produced more students who passed Advanced Placement calculus than Beverly Hills High.

In any other field, his methods would have been widely copied. Instead, Escalante's success was resented. And while the teachers union contract limited class sizes to 35, Escalante could not bring himself to turn students away, packing 50 or more into a room and still helping them to excel. This weakened the union's bargaining position, so it complained.

By 1990, Escalante was stripped of his chairmanship of the math department he'd painstakingly built up over a decade. Exasperated, he left in 1991, eventually returning to his native Bolivia. Garfield's math program went into a decline from which it has never recovered. The best tribute America can offer Jaime Escalante is to understand why our education system destroyed rather than amplified his success — and then fix it.

The whole piece is worth a read, not just as a memorial to a great man, but as an examination of the phenomenon where great teachers are driven out to keep the others from having to compete, and a history of the failures of an ever-centralized bureaucracy to recognize good practices and export them to the nation's schools.

More importantly, he provides a blueprint for success:

Consider the Kumon chain of after-school tutoring centers. Founded in 1954 by Japanese math teacher Toru Kumon, it now serves more than four million students in 42 countries. Not only does the tutoring sector reveal the feasibility of globe-spanning education growth, it offers a glimpse of how brilliant educators can and should be treated. Thanks to profit sharing and Web broadcasting of their lectures, top teachers in Korea's tutoring sector earn big salaries and have virtual class sizes in the scores of thousands. The combination of high technology and market incentives not only allows but compels tutoring firms to recognize and make the most of their top teachers.

Asian tutoring services are often criticized for focusing too narrowly on exam preparation. But in Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries, college admission hinges almost exclusively on high-stakes entrance exams, and degrees from elite colleges play a far greater role in determining career opportunities there than in the U.S. If parents demanded a broad liberal arts education, these entrepreneurially run schools would respond or be driven from the market.

America not only needs more teachers like Jaime Escalante, it needs an education system that recognizes them and helps them to reach a mass audience. The tutoring sector is a proven model for doing so: Unleash the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace, so teachers like Escalante become the Steve jobs or Bill Gates of education, profiting from their exceptional ability to serve our children.

In case you were wondering, here is the source of this blog's title:

Racist Conspiracy in the Midwest?

2010-03-26T12:12:00.001-05:00

Hello Freedomphiles! Saint Louis, MO, is an interesting place to live. It sits right at the edge of the Mississippi River, and is an odd microcosm of small town life, suburban bliss, and big city violence and corruption.

This Gateway to the West was the home of Scott Joplin, Tina Turner, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, and William S Burroughs, and would have been even larger had Chicago not taken over as the hub for shipping and travel to the West. Because of this, we have the amenities and culture of a big city, with a small town attitude.

There really are two cities here. There is Saint Louis City, the corrupt, dirty metropolis with all the character, and there is Saint Louis County, the sanitized, homogeneous, safe vanguard of mundanity.

Nestled in the middle of this suburban landscape is the city of Ladue, a mini-Midwest Palm Beach, with a median household income of $161,613. Lilly-white, wealthy, and exclusive, its among the most affluent communities in the entire Midwest.

As with most exclusive communities, they have strict guidelines on what you do and how you do it. In the early 90's, they went all the way to the Supreme Court against a resident who put a sign in her yard reading, "Say No to the War in the Persian Gulf, Call Congress Now."

They lost that one, but they won another in the mid-80's against an unmarried Brady Bunch, where they told E. Terrence Jones and Joan Kelly Horn - living in sin for nearly four years in Ladue - they had to get married or leave town. The Missouri Court of appeals ruled that "there is a governmental interest in marriage and in preserving the integrity of the biological or legal family."

Ladue is now embroiled in another controversy. It's a heady mix of alleged racism, corruption, and favoritism.

Larry White was a retired Major in the Missouri Highway Patrol, who was hired as Ladue's Chief of Police in 2007. Shortly thereafter, he claims that Mayor Irene Holmes and several council members advised him to pull over blacks and remove them from their cars, to make a spectacle "so that others would see what was going on and avoid the city of Ladue."

Further, he claims that he was told not to arrest drunk drivers in Ladue, but instead simply drive them home and pretend it didn't happen. He also says she balked at his ending the ticket-quota system, wanting him to write lots of tickets to fill the coffers - as long as they weren't Ladue residents.

When he refused, saying he was beholden to the law and not them, and that he would not violate people's Constitutional rights, he says they fired him to "cover up the misconduct" of city officials. He filed suit earlier this week, seeking $25,000 in damages.

In the lawsuit, he reveals the numbers. Before he was hired, the city, with a black population under 1%, the people pulled over were 22% black, and the people arrested were 44% black. After he took over, those numbers went down to 14.5% and 39%.

Spokesman for the mayor, Mike Wooldridge, responded to questions by The Saint Louis Post Dispatch, asserting that "the city has reviewed its decision to terminate Mr. White, and it acted appropriately and in the city's best interest."

Right now it's a lot of he said/she said, but I think the truth of it all will come out eventually. In the meantime, if you are a black person in St Louis, you might want to play it safe and avoid Ladue. If not, at least check out this video from Flex Your Rights:

UPDATE: If you are interested in what you saw in the above trailer, Cato @ Liberty just posted the movie in its entirety. There's an introduction by Tim Lynch, and then they show it.

Click here to watch.