This occurred at a relatively unlikely place, the language-focused blag Lingua Franca. Geoffrey Pullum, professor of linguistics and prolific language blagger, wrote:

The 1897 session of the Indiana General Assembly passed “A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth.” It asserted that (i) the ratio of the chord and arc of a 90-degree segment of a circle was 7/8; (ii) the ratio of said chord to the circle’s diameter (hence to the diagonal of a square inscribed in the circle) was 7/10; and (iii) the ratio of the diameter to the circumference was (5/4)/4. Pi must be equal to 3.2 for these things to be true. Yet the bill nearly made it through committee in the Senate, until one senator pointed out that it was ultra vires for the Assembly to define mathematical truth.

…when you assemble a few hundred ambitious people who managed to win elections and let them vote on proposed laws, you occasionally get silliness. Possibly about mathematical truth, or even linguistic truth.

The latter came up this past week when the French Senate passed a bill (already passed by the National Assembly in December) criminalizing a specific linguistic act: asserting that the slaughter of Armenians in Turkey during 1915 does not satisfy the definition of the word genocide.

This law (which President Sarkozy is widely expected to sign into law) makes it a crime to deny or “outrageously minimize” the number and motivation of the mass killings of Armenians. To assert the view “What happened in 1915 was not genocide” would be a prosecutable offense. The bill legislatively insists that a certain set of contingent historical events meet the criteria for use of the term genocide, and forbids asserting the opposite. If a document were found proving that all the killings of Armenians in 1915 were unintended side effects of a hyperspace bypass construction operation by extra-terrestrials, it would apparently be illegal for historians to discuss the document at a conference in France. This is legislative idiocy.
[...]
I have not expressed any opinion about the history. Since Armenian-Turkish journalist and editor Hrant Dink was murdered in broad daylight for treating the topic, I’m not exactly eager to. And my ignorance of early 20th-century Anatolian history is profound, so perhaps it’s just as well. But Mark Liberman noted on Language Log that The New York Times, after decades of demurral, reportedly decided in 2004 that “genocide” was and is an appropriate word for the events in question. (And you don’t turn the Gray Lady around easily—The New York Times still requires clause-initial whom, for heaven’s sake).

Mass killings of Armenians in Turkey as the Ottoman Empire collapsed appear to be copiously documented. My reasons for calling the French legislation crazy do not lie in any disagreement about the documentation. And I don’t care for wacky historical contrarians—nobody despises Holocaust deniers more than I do. I just think that it would be a monumental blunder to enact a law stipulating a point of lexical denotation. Insisting that you have to count the events as meeting the definition of genocide is as silly as trying to legislate the area of a square inscribed in a circle of diameter n.

The right way to handle thought crimes (or mathematical contradictions) is the American way: We grit our teeth and let people utter their loony ideas. We don’t use the criminal law to define their lexical denotations as erroneous or to forbid their ideas from being uttered.

Sarkozy isn’t Satan, and the fanatical Turkish denialism about 1915 is not virtuous or even sensible; but passing a law stipulating anything about how the word genocide is to be applied would be a stupid legislative mistake.

A commenter going by beedhamm wrote the following comment:

The main piece of support for your argument (something to the effect of it’s “legislative idiocy”) is stated here:

“The right way to handle thought crimes (or mathematical contradictions) is the American way: We grit our teeth and let people utter their loony ideas. We don’t use the criminal law to define their lexical denotations as erroneous or to forbid their ideas from being uttered.”
Now ask, what proof is there for this statement in the rest of your article? You’ve taken a serious, complex, nuanced situation and attempted to treat it in a lighthearted fashion, primarily by repeating something to the effect of it’s “a stupid legislative mistake.”

Perhaps a cognitive linguist, like Lakoff, would be better suited to comment on this issue?

I didn’t reply to this comment because I didn’t even know where to begin, perhaps largely because beedhamm failed to even make a point or state a single opinion, other than insinuating that Dr. Pullum’s conclusion is wrong and that a more detailed, in-depth, scholarly treatment of the proposed French law would lead to a different conclusion. Such a weak stance and absurdly heinous implication (that such laws aren’t mistakes and punishing speech can be desirable) were about par for the course for this morally questionable and intellectually bankrupt individual, as I discovered later.

Below that, an Armenian fellow whose name I will not paste because it was written in Armenian script, wrote:

Sound like you (the author) are one of the extremely uneducated (although have the opportunity to study whatever desired), wrongly self-confident Midwesterns that I’ve seen for years while studying there, that are no different from the uneducated (mainly cause they don’t have the choice to study), extremely ignorant immigrants whom I see every day now at the East Coast.

Please note that the language barrier has nothing to do with this Armenian’s misunderstanding of the principle of freedom of speech, as seen by the ensuing exchange. I responded:

Geoffrey Pullum: “Governments have no business legislating word definitions, any more than they have legislating mathematical relationships. We also shouldn’t silence, censor, fine, imprison, threaten, or otherwise punish people for the words they say and write that harm no one, however wrong or insulting they are.”

You: “You must be an uneducated, ignorant, privileged, out-of-touch moron.”

Nice job. You made your case really well, except I thought your Concluding Statement could have used a few more baseless insults.

This Armenian responded,

For your knowledge (since you need some): A word is the most powerful weapon existing on this planet (that is the same as religion, propaganda, etc.). So you agreeing with the thought “We also shouldn’t silence, censor, fine, imprison, threaten, or otherwise punish people for the words they say and write that harm no one, however wrong or insulting they are.” (by the way, see how it’s done? I mean the quotation) is another indicator of your low level education.

I ended my interaction with him with:

Just to clarify, you’re basically saying that it is ignorant (uneducated, stupid, wrong, unenlightened) to object to the idea that a government should define certain speech as harmful and punish users of such speech in proportion to the harm their words cause? Maybe you don’t realize how ridiculous that sounds to the English-speaking world. I didn’t think there was anyone outside of totalitarian governments who thought that way anymore. It is clear that nothing can be gained from interacting with such a sorry excuse for a human. Have a good life, and I hope you find your authoritarian police state someday.

(There was another brief exchange between us that was definitely hampered by the language barrier, but that’s not vital here.) Language barrier or no, this person’s intent is perfectly clear: The State should define certain speech or (mis)uses of words as harmful, should outlaw them, and should punish transgressors with the full force of the law.

I don’t care where you’re from, who you’re descended from, what your family or country has gone through, what your native language is, how fluent you are in the language you’re writing in, or what type of government you have lived under, there is NO EXCUSE for advocating the use of the police power of the State to punish people’s words or ideas. Boycotts, fine. Retaliatory slander, fine. Peaceful protests, fine. But this Armenian would lock you and your family in a cage for years for saying the wrong words in the wrong context. Those are monstrous thoughts written by a monstrous person, plain and simple. We (well, especially I) use all kinds of colorful language to describe people whose ideas and actions are abhorrent, so perhaps some of their meanings or effects get watered down on the internet. Well, here we have as clear-cut an example of a fascist, authoritarian, hateful, uncivilized, Statolatrist barbarian as I have ever had the displeasure of interacting with. Over the last couple years, spurred mainly by my own regret at how I responded to some people in internet discussions and the unpleasantness I felt when people were assholes to me, I have committed myself to responding politely and respectfully to others at all times, much to my and their mutual benefit, I’m happy to say. (You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, right?) However, I have no sympathy for anyone who would ever even consider taking such an anti–free speech position, and such a pathetic excuse for a human being deserves no respect, politeness, benefit of the doubt, or moderation in our condemnation of his opinions or exposure of his depraved, wretched character. As Professor Farnsworth would say, I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

beedhamm responded to my first comment as well:

When did we agree that the deniers of genocide use “words … that harm no one”?

I suspect that we have to be a bit more careful to make sure that when we write “no one” we don’t just mean “me and the people like me.”

Again, he fails to really even make a point, other than to imply that words do, in fact, harm people, and by failing to qualify his statements with at least an admission that censorship laws can be a bad idea, he implies that they are good ideas, specifically the French genocide law. Therefore, I decided to take him behind the woodshed:

Of course words themselves harm no one, except emotionally and psychologically to the extent that the victim lets them. I guess you should be arrested and charged with a crime for harming my emotional state? Should I be arrested and charged with a crime for insulting you and the Armenian person above? How about if I said these things in the wrong locations:

The Holocaust never happened. Hitler was a great guy. No events in or around 1915 could be considered genocide, especially as concerns Armenians.

Those are all false statements and terribly offensive and ignorant, but no one was harmed by them. Yet according to German law and soon-to-be French law, I could be punished by law for typing them within their borders. That is absurd. If you disagree, I doubt either one of us will gain much by continuing this discussion.

Do you think it’s morally unjust right now, i.e., an attack that should be punishable or defensible by force, to deny that Armenians were the victims of genocide? Or is it only wrong after a government outlaws it? If it has always been harmful since 1915, then what action or recourse should victims of such denial have been taking all these years? Surely they are right to strike out in self-defense in response to such offenses. What compensation are they due? If it has always been morally wrong, then surely it is wrong everywhere, not just France or Turkey or Armenia. Plenty of Armenians live in the U.S. What punishment should the New York Times be subject to for refusing to acknowledge it as a genocide? Surely if it’s wrong, period, regardless of law or geography, then I should be put in jail or fined heavily (or retaliated against in self-defense by all my victims) for typing it to prove a point.

Furthermore, surely there is not just one word in all of the French language that the government should determine the definition of. What other words fit the criterion of requiring definition by the government? What words in the English language fit the bill?

Is denying that Armenians were the victims of genocide a punishable offense if any human sees or hears it? Or just Armenians? Should the severity of the punishment be proportional to the number of humans or specifically Armenians who are exposed to it? What about someone who copies and spreads a speech or writing with such denials? Should this person be commended for alerting the Armenians (or all humans) to such offenses, or should they be punished similarly to the original perpetrator for spreading such lies? The words themselves do harm, remember, so it can’t matter why that person was motivated to spread the offending speech or what context it was done in or what commentary the spreader appended to the genocide denial. (You can’t rob someone and say “Theft is wrong” to avoid punishment. If the words do harm, the offender must be punished, right?) If someone wrote it in a private, personal journal and it was discovered happenstance by a visitor, should that offense also become punishable? After all, the words themselves are harmful. What if no Armenians actually saw it? What if only a single half-Armenian saw it? Should the fine be reduced by half?

How about implicit denial? Is that an aggression against person or property that should be punishable by force of law? For instance, someone talks about Armenians or Turks in or around 1915 but simply fails to mention the word “genocide”. What if they use all kinds of other words, like massacre or slaughter or travesty or injustice, but implicitly deny that it was genocide by avoiding this specific word? Surely that must also be wrong, not just after Sarkozy signs the bill but every day since the genocide ended (or even during it). What if future books about genocide are published that do not mention anything about Armenians? How about any current books about ethnic cleansing or genocide that might not mention the Armenian genocide and thereby implicitly deny it? By your logic, such books must necessarily be banned in France, and unless you’d say that right and wrong depend only on the law, such books should be banned everywhere, forever, in self-defense to prevent further harm being done by the words on their pages. If anyone’s definition of right and wrong depends on what laws politicians write and pass, then they can’t carry on an intelligent conversation with me.

The reason Dr. Pullum did not offer a detailed or academic defense of his contention that this French law is the wrong way to deal with offensive speech is probably partly because none is needed. It is self-evident. One’s innate right to free speech is not bound by anyone’s sensibilities or any laws, and certainly not math or history. If you agree with such censorship and dismissal of free speech, then, well, I would certainly want nothing to do with authoritarians of your ilk. Denying someone of a part of their property and liberty for typing or saying something offensive or insulting would be a far worse crime than any the offender supposedly committed. The words themselves are not harmful, not in any way that falls under the purview of law. And to re-state Dr. Pullum’s point, it is simply self-evidently absurd to suggest that any government can or should define words and punish people for their misuse.

I could have gone much farther than this reductio ad absurdum, but I doubt he got very far into my rant or understood how the absurdities that would result from censorship laws expose the inconsistency and untenability of his position. It is not possible to retain any semblance of a principled moral or political philosophy or even to put on a show of being a civilized, respectable, intelligent human being while asserting—even failing to deny—that words and ideas inflict harm upon others in ways that should be punishable by the State.

I am saddened to learn that many European and Asian countries already have laws against genocide denial, not just Germany. You might say, “Oh, now that you see how widespread genocide denial laws are and how acceptable they are to hundreds of millions of people, do you want to tone down your attack of the supporters of such laws?” Quite the contrary. They are all objectively, verifiably, undeniably wrong, just as all murder, rape, taxation, conscription, and all other free speech–abridging laws are wrong. It is quite possible that Holocaust deniers deserve for bad things to happen to them, but I’m thinking more in a karma-driven way, not through the police power of government.

If I had to guess, based on spelling and (lack of) opinions on the merits of free speech, I would guess beedhamm is from somewhere in the Eastern hemisphere, perhaps Germany (“hamm”?) or somewhere farther east, where the innate right of free speech is less universally acknowledged than it is in North America. Therefore, it might be far past noon where beedhamm sits and longs for the kidnapping, beating, and imprisonment of people who misuse the word “genocide”, so I will take his current silence as an admission of defeat and acknowledgment of the beatdown I handed him (or her).

What made the summer of LeBron even more annoying and worthy of space on my blag is the claim that the backlash against him was racially motivated. That is, people criticized LeBron James’s decision to become part of a superstar trio in Miami rather than staying in his home state of Ohio or going somewhere to build a championship team around himself, and his decision to make a huge deal out of this by announcing it in a 1-hour prime-time special on ESPN, because he is black and they’re prejudiced.

Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert overreacted to LeBron’s decision with idiotic remarks like the idiot that he is, so Jesse Jackson naturally responded with idiotic race-baiting like the race-baiting idiot that he is. Now, in an interview with CNN that aired on September 29, LeBron said he thought race was a factor in the criticism of his decision. Like any timid, untalented interviewer, Soledad O’Brien did not follow this up with anything probing for a more detailed answer. What was racially motivated? What specific comment or action was committed by a non-black person at least partially because you are black? Some suits at ESPN probably wanted to extract from LeBron what Soledad O’Brien failed to, so they sent Rachel Nichols there to ask him for specifics, but of course he declined to give any.

To my surprise, a normally pretty sensible commentator like Michael Wilbon completely agreed with Jesse Jackson. So did a lot of people. I was so surprised because no aspect of racism or plantation-owner mentality had even entered my mind. I dare say it never came close to entering anyone’s mind who isn’t a black person overly concerned with racism, seeing racism everywhere they look. You might argue that we white people don’t think about racism in these situations because it’s just subconscious, always underlying our thoughts and actions and reactions, and that the fact that we don’t consider that certain things might be racially motivated is proof of how pervasive and influential and second-nature the racism really is. That is not correct.

What is correct is that every time a black person cries “racism” when it isn’t warranted, it does contribute to making race more prominent in people’s minds instead of contributing to making it barely an afterthought. Race should only be brought to our attention when it really did hurt someone. Everyone’s goal in the realm of race relations should be to make race a complete non-factor, something people don’t notice, don’t consider, and don’t blame for anything. Instead, what Jesse Jackson and now LeBron have said will make people more likely to think of race in the future. Alerting the country that you thought racism played a role, however small, in a situation, when (in my judgment) it really didn’t, does not make people more considerate or less likely to show racism in the future. It makes the issue of race more likely to pop up in their minds the next time, which keeps it relevant. It should only be discussed when it is relevant, and our goal should be to make it less relevant every day. Bringing up racism when it shouldn’t be brought up doesn’t do anything to foster an attitude of togetherness or harmony, and it certainly doesn’t help make the issue go away. Irrelevance rather than awareness should be the goal.

On Friday, under tremendous pressure from US attorneys general and public advocacy groups, Craigslist shut down its “Adult Services” section. There is little doubt that this space has been used by people engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, many of which result in harmful abuses. But the debate that has ensued has centered on the wrong axis, pitting protecting the abused against freedom of speech. What’s implied in public discourse is that protecting potential victims requires censorship; thus, anti-censorship advocates are up in arms attacking regulators for trying to curtail First Amendment rights. While I am certainly a proponent of free speech online, I find it utterly depressing that these groups fail to see how this is actually an issue of transparency, not free speech. And how this does more to hurt potential victims than help.

If you’ve ever met someone who is victimized through trafficking or prostitution, you’ll hear a pretty harrowing story about what it means to be invisible and powerless, feeling like no one cares and no one’s listening. Human trafficking and most forms of abusive prostitution exist in a black market, with corrupt intermediaries making connections and offering “protection” to those who they abuse for profit. …

The Internet has changed the dynamics of prostitution and trafficking, making it easier for prostitutes and traffickers to connect with clients without too many layers of intermediaries. As a result, the Internet has become an intermediary, often without the knowledge of those internet service providers (ISPs) who are the conduits. This is what makes people believe that they should go after ISPs like Craigslist. Faulty logic suggests that if Craigslist is effectively a digital pimp who’s profiting off of online traffic, why shouldn’t it be prosecuted as such?

The problem with this logic is that it fails to account for three important differences: 1) most ISPs have a fundamental business—if not moral—interest in helping protect people; 2) the visibility of illicit activities online makes it much easier to get at, and help, those who are being victimized; and 3) a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement than for criminals. In short, Craigslist is not a pimp, but a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.
[...]
When Internet companies profit off of online traffic, they need their clients to value them and the services they provide. If companies can’t be trusted — especially when money is exchanging hands — they lose business. This is especially true for companies that support peer-to-peer exchange of money and goods. This is what motivates services like eBay and Amazon to make it very easy for customers to get refunded when ripped off. Craigslist has made its name and business on helping people connect around services, and while there are plenty of people who use its openness to try to abuse others, Craigslist is deeply committed to reducing fraud and abuse. It’s not always successful — no company is. And the more freedom that a company affords, the more room for abuse. But what makes Craigslist especially beloved is that it is run by people who truly want to make the world a better place and who are deeply committed to a healthy civic life.
[...]
Working with ISPs to collect data and doing systematic online stings can make an online space more dangerous for criminals than for victims because this process erodes the trust in the intermediary, the online space. Eventually, law enforcement stings will make a space uninhabitable for criminals by making it too risky for them to try to operate there. Censoring a space may hurt the ISP but it does absolutely nothing to hurt the criminals. Making a space uninhabitable by making it risky for criminals to operate there — and publicizing it — is far more effective. This, by the way, is the core lesson that Giuliani’s crew learned in New York. The problem with this plan is that it requires funding law enforcement.
[...]
Censorship online is nothing more than whack-a-mole, pushing the issue elsewhere or more underground.

Censoring Craigslist will do absolutely nothing to help those being victimized, but it will do a lot to help those profiting off of victimization. Censoring Craigslist will also create new jobs for pimps and other corrupt intermediaries, since it’ll temporarily make it a whole lot harder for individual scumbags to find clients. This will be particularly devastating for the low-end prostitutes who were using Craigslist to escape violent pimps. Keep in mind that occasionally getting beaten up by a scary john is often a whole lot more desirable for many than the regular physical, psychological, and economic abuse they receive from their pimps. So while it’ll make it temporarily harder for clients to get access to abusive services, nothing good will come out of it in the long run.

More than a thousand people [as I mentioned, it was actually 30,000 in the end] gathered Wednesday outside a metro-Atlanta shopping mall in hopes of being placed on a waiting list for federal housing assistance.

Fights broke out, children were reportedly trampled, and police had to stop the crowd from storming a nightclub being used by the East Point Housing Authority in East Point, Ga….

[T]the line for Section 8 housing vouchers formed two days ago and grew into the hundreds Tuesday night. People even slept outside the nightclub despite repeated assertions from the housing officials that the line was unnecessary and everyone would receive an application.

By Wednesday morning, the crowd had grown so large that East Point police began patrolling the area in riot gear and first responders were tending to people who were overheating in the sun.

People became frustrated when officials, feeling overwhelmed, did not open the doors at 9 a.m. as they had planned, reports CBS Atlanta. Those waiting in line were told by officials to move from one location to another before riot gear-clad police and housing officials handed out applications.

“I find this amazing,” Ed Schultz said on “The Ed Show” Wednesday night. “One can only imagine watching this videotape … how many other cities have it like this across America. And I think we have to ask ourselves the moral question, aren’t we better than this?”

Indeed. But when a welfare-statist government arrogates to itself the function of providing anything to its subjects, especially some basic necessities like housing or food, the subjects will naturally become dependent on the government, expecting it to provide things for them and thinking of those handouts as their right, instead of becoming self-sufficient adults like they ought to.

The Regular Guys show, which broadcasts on an Atlanta rock station and which I frequently listen to online, sent someone out to the scene of this travesty on Thursday, knowing that chaos and pitifulness would ensue again and hoping to get some good audio from some of the handout seekers. One of the Regular Guys interviewed an aspiring rapper/producer/mixer/whatever, who was in line to get rent-free housing mainly so that he could raise his young son with slightly less hardship than if he had to pay for housing. He was less pathetic and clueless than you might expect, and probably less so than the Regular Guys were hoping for. Naturally, the radio guy turned the issue to where the money was coming from to pay his rent and who would be providing this money. The interviewee said something like, “The government, I guess,” and might have understood the radio guy’s point by the end: all of the tax-paying citizens were going to be paying for this housing, not some magical fund from “the government” or “Obama”.

This was predictable and uninteresting, quite depressing, actually, but I suppose that’s the best they could do with only audio at 6:30 in the morning.

I think it would have been much more interesting, though admittedly too heavy for a brief segment on morning entertainment radio, to discuss how those people in their cars in the 85° heat braving a chaotic crowd of 30,000 angry, unemployed people and waiting in line for not hours but days, in some cases, were the victims of our welfare state to a much greater degree than white, suburban, tax-paying radio show hosts. They are the victims of Obama and Bush and Clinton and Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt and the Federal Reserve. The Imperial Federal Government with its impoverishing wars and debt and inflation have made it harder to get a job. The insidious social programs of the 20th-century welfare state have destroyed the families of inner-city black people. The Drug War has wasted almost as much money and lives as aggressive foreign wars. The endless regulations on housing, labor, education, farming, et cetera ad nauseam have made all of those things more expensive and less attainable for everyone, most of all the people who were born into poverty or bad families or bad neighborhoods where success in anything other than rap or basketball is now considered selling out or shameful.

Before anyone goes lamenting their own woes and their victimhood under the heel of the modern welfare-warfare state, consider the people who never even got a chance to succeed because the United States government made their families poor and their neighborhoods poor and enforces thousands upon thousands of policies that are sure to keep them psychologically dependent on the government and therefore poor as well. This might not excuse them for much blame for their situation in life, but it certainly goes a long way to explaining why they are there, and this is a travesty we should oppose with as much vigor as we oppose anything our government does to its own citizens.

I know that Canadians, both from my personal experiences in getting to know several pretty closely during my time in Michigan and from their reputation, are easy-going, friendly, non-confrontational people. But I also think they’re pretty down-to-earth and proud people, and they certainly know how to drink and have a good time late into the night. Man, can they drink. A proper response from the Canadian women’s hockey team to the IOC and the rest of the political correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade would have been to tell them, in true Patrick-Royian fashion, “I’m sorry, we can’t hear you because we’ve got our gold medals clogging our ears.” Oh, no! They’re drinking alcohol! (Perfectly harmless, despite the *gasp!* 18-year-old on their team!) Oh, no! They’re smoking cigars! How un-ladylike! (Perfectly harmless.) Oh, no! They celebrated in public, on the rink! Won’t they think of the children! (Nobody should care how they celebrate. If anything it’s good to show kids how to celebrate peacefully and composedly, I think. It’s also good to show girls that women who like sports are cool.)

Political correctness pisses me off. The IOC and anybody who batted an eye at the Canadian women’s hockey team celebration are a bunch of craven, whiny pansies.

Today is Veterans’ Day, formerly called Armistice Day. But, our exalted warmongering Statolatrist congressmen and senators and presidents couldn’t have a holiday that celebrated the end of a colossal State endeavor, so in 1954 they renamed it Veterans’ Day.

The attention paid to Veterans’ Day and the misconceptions this holiday brings forth have annoyed me to the point of writing a short post about such misguided military-worship. ESPN is heavy into this spirit, broadcasting College Gameday from the site of the irrelevant Navy–Air Force game last Saturday and SportsCenter live from West Point Academy this morning. For the last week I’ve heard a seemingly constant stream of TV and radio commercials and discussions and interviews in which someone “salutes our troops” or thanks them for “protecting our freedoms” or says “they allow us to live the lives we do.”

Um, how? Who steals our money, kidnaps and imprisons us for harming no one, cripples businesses, dumbs down schools, devalues our currency, imprisons us for trying to use another one, violates our right to control our own bodies, outlaws self-defense, destroys families, rigs the court system to favor convictions and plea bargains over acquittals, deliberately and systematically enriches the powerful and well-connected at the expense of the common man, outlaws private protection and arbitration systems, and, oh, yeah, inspires hatred and terrorism across the globe? The Imperial Federal Government!

The military is not a sector of the market nor an extension of the populace; it is an arm of the State. It does what politicians and generals want it to. It is not possible for the military’s objectives to be in line with those of the public because the military wants what the State wants, and what the State wants is in direct opposition to what the people want. If this is not true, then why must the State institute a coercive monopoly and murder anyone who defies it?

The reality is that the exploits of the military result in less freedom for us because in every State in mankind’s history, military interests were used as justifications for expansions of State power; these powers, by their very nature, reduce the overall freedom of the State’s subjects. Second, the American military does not protect anyone’s lives but rather does quite the opposite. Noble though the intentions of the individual soldiers may be, the military endangers non-aggressing bystanders in foreign countries directly by its attacks on other people and indirectly by inspiring more military/insurgent activity; the Department of Defense kills thousands of soldiers and puts thousands more in danger with its military adventurism; and it endangers Americans by inspiring terrorism on our own soil. (Mark my words: America’s war on terra will bring suicide-bombing to the streets of American cities as exists in Israel and Iraq.) Lastly, the Department of Defense flat-out wastes literally hundreds of billions of dollars per year; this does immense harm to our economic and financial well-being, so, no, those servicemen and -women decidedly do not “allow us to live the lives that we do.”

A standard response might go like, “Well, yeah, but it could be even worse if a foreign power took over because our military didn’t protect us.” Not only is this not true for the United States, it has been true for very few countries in the history of the world. Probably some European countries in WWII, which was a direct result of the USA’s entry into WWI. Claiming a strong (enough) military is necessary to protect us against potentially terrible conquerors is typical Statist thinking: solve one problem caused by the State with more Statism: States exist solely to take power and money away from their subjects, so you want to strengthen the “defensive” arm of our State to protect us against other ones?

Sure, there could be a despotic foreign power that threatened the lives and freedoms of people living in North America, as other countries have been threatened occasionally throughout history. But the only thing that threatens to take the lives and freedoms of Americans today is the Imperial Federal Government. The military and all its brave soldiers, who go through a hell of a lot more hardship than I probably ever will, does not act in the interests of the American people and is used by politicians to justify further encroachments of our liberty.

Sign of the times, I suppose: there’s a new gold rush in Californee. Sorry to burst your bubbles, guys, but Gus Chiggins already beat you to it.

The founder of the airline passenger advocacy group FlyersRights.org had her computer and email account hacked by Delta Airlines. How despicable. A woman wants to prevent airlines from endangering people’s health by imprisoning them on cramped airplanes for hours on end, so instead of getting off of their fat, lazy asses to serve their fucking customers for a change, Delta instead resorts to hacking into her account to…to what? Extort her? Blackmail her? Scare her? Currently I am presuming Delta guilty until proven innocent. As a reminder, there is no way in hell most of the large airlines would exist in their current form without State interference on their behalf. Corporate-State socialism FAIL.

The Canadian copyright-advocacy group Access Copyright wants the Canadian government to ban free format-shifting and time-shifting. As far as I can tell, format-shifting means burning, ripping, or copying anything from one location, medium, or file type to another, and time-shifting means fast-forwarding through commercials with your DVR. This group wants to threaten murder against people for format-shifting or time-shifting without paying for permission to do so. As Voltaire said, “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

Absent from most commentary on the strength of the American (and world) economy and especially from the reassurances that the American economy is recovering is an analysis of whether the trends that harmed the economy in the first place are continuing or ceasing. They are continuing, says Peter Schiff, and it’s only making the inevitable correction (depression) worse.

Target gave in to political-correctness hysteria and agreed to stop selling a pair of “illegal alien” Halloween costumes which consisted of a green extraterrestrial alien mask and an orange prison jumpsuit with “illegal alien” stamped on the front. If Target had any sense, guts, or character, it would have taken advantage of the free publicity and stood up to these crybabies. It was a nice surprise to read that several other stores have not and will not give in to the political correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade. The costume was a complete non-issue, until some PC-obsessed morans made it into one. It’s a hilarious pun! Now I have a good Halloween costume idea for the future!

The latest from the “It IS happening here” files: Cops take DNA sample from boy for throwing ketchup at McDonald’s. (Actually, it’s happening there, as it’s the UK, but that doesn’t make it any better.)

10/19/09: Never forget.

Now, as harmful as the consequences of bigotry and prejudice can be, what did this homophobic couple do that was so harmful or threatening to these or any other homosexuals? Did they…oh, I don’t know…threaten to apply the full force of the police power of the State to their hated foes if the latter didn’t spend their time and money in a manner pleasing to the homophobes? Did they threaten violence against anyone? Extortion, beating, kidnapping, enslavement, murder? No, it was the gay landscapers who threatened exactly that against the bigots. This is always what government action implies: the use or threat of deadly force. By the very definition of its nature and its existence, the State can only take, injure, kill, punish, or threaten to do so. Liberals who favor political correctness laws should keep this in mind when they advocate social-engineering laws to weed out discrimination and prejudice. This type of discrimination might not be nice, classy, or thick-libertarian, but it isn’t nearly as bad as threats of murder against people who don’t share your values. Far worse than feelings that lead people to treat some groups differently from others are coercive actions that actually violate people’s rights.

Besides, we discriminate every day, even sexually and racially and in other seemingly unfair ways, but that’s human nature and it’s perfectly legitimate some of the time. It is illegitimate, and should be frowned upon, repudiated, or worse, when the discriminatory action violates someone’s rights or treats someone in a hateful, threatening, collectivizing manner. Most of the discrimination we commit in our everyday lives is completely innocuous. I don’t go to gay bars or hit on men because I’m heterosexual, not because I’m a homophobe. I didn’t take any women’s studies or African-American studies classes in college because they are a complete waste of time and money and (supposedly) perpetuate policies and stereotypes that actually do real damage in the world, not because I am sexist or racist. I’ve noticed that with the notable exception of country music (which I loathe), most of the music I dislike could be considered largely “black” music: blues, jazz, R & B, rap, and hip-hop. I don’t dislike it because it’s made by black people; I dislike it because it sucks. That probably only counts as “discrimination” in the original, literal sense of the word, but I get the feeling that the political-correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade would consider such an innocent thing evidence of racism.

This reminds me of another example that occurred to me recently. When entering my lab building after-hours, you have to swipe your ID card and the electronic sensor thing will unlock the door for you. I don’t like letting anyone in who came up behind me and didn’t swipe their card, but let me ask you something: if a 22-year-old college girl tried to grab the door before it closed behind you, or a middle-aged black man in a hooded sweatshirt and raggedy-looking clothes tried to grab it before it closed, would you react slightly differently? How would you think differently and how would you act differently? I’d confront any seedy-looking character (which, let’s face it, would usually be a male) and ask them where they work and where they’re going, but I would—and have—let plenty of people who looked like students or researchers into the building without authentication.

That’s not racism, that’s common sense! But most PC nazis are blinded from common sense! They can only think in terms of groups and collectives and victims and oppressors, and everyone and everything has to fit into those notions of discrimination and oppression, so they ignore the particulars of the situation! Common sense is all you need to determine if someone was acting fairly or not, not political correctness and certainly not legislation, police, and lawsuits.

I think my complete ignorance (everyone’s ignorance?) of the relative prevalence of false rape accusations to cases of real rapists going unpunished and even untried makes my default-accused-favoring stance less legitimate. A lot of times I’m right, though. Maybe that’s only because a lot of cases of lying rape-accusers make the news and the blags while unsolved or acquitted rape cases aren’t nearly as high-profile.

Like this case of a British woman who accused a man of raping her 40 times, but then changed her mind and decided she wasn’t raped after all. She faces no formal or informal consequences of any kind. I’ve never heard of a false rape accuser (even those who blatantly lie) facing any consequences other than a few news stories or blag posts. Perhaps the fact that women in the Western world know full well that they can cry “Rape!” at any man, anywhere, at any time, and the man will be arrested before she can draw another breath is an indication that something is very wrong with our legal culture and with the basic nature of gender relations in our society. The anti-male bias that I and many others perceive in rape cases and family law cases is an indication that political correctness and male-bashing have gone way too far and my pro-male reflex holds water. If there weren’t a problem with this type of thing, then no woman would be so confident that she could simply fabricate a story of being raped 40 times by a man she doesn’t like and suffer no consequences for it, or to cheat on her husband and get high on crystal meth with other men while her husband is away and her daughter is in the next room and then have the audacity to cry, “I’m divorcing you and taking half your money!”

Face it: On a college campus at 2 a.m. or a dark city street, the cards are stacked against women, but in the justice [sic] system the cards are stacked against men.

An acquaintance of mine was recently convicted of rape. His case is in appeal but he is in prison right now. After hearing a third-hand account of how this happened, I am far from convinced that he should have been convicted. It sounded like alcohol was more to blame than he was. I don’t know how innocent (an ethical term) he is, but my feeling is that he is not guilty of the crime he was convicted of. He will most likely be a convicted felon for the rest of his life, maybe because he did rape someone or maybe because a girl regretted having sex with him. I have no idea how fast a rape case usually gets to trial, but his trial was several months after the alleged incident, maybe almost a year, and his story stayed the same the whole time while hers did not, and she failed a lie-detector test, so it sounds like she started regretting the incident and, after a while, decided maybe she could get this guy convicted of rape. What did she have to lose? Exactly nothing. It is these types of cases that make me want to take juror conscription with a sense of duty and justice, to help keep innocent drug users and non-rapists and the like out of prison. I’ve never been conscripted to a jury, but I’m sure my time will come, and I just hope it’s worth my while.

Hat tip: Wendy McElroy.

Thornton said,

There are some reforms that we obviously do not want and that will not work. For example, we don’t want the supply-sider solution of the Federal Reserve targeting the price of gold—that would be very dangerous. We clearly do not want a “new Bretton Woods System,” whatever that would amount to….

We also do not want to return to a gold-exchange standard where governments are in charge of most of the gold and emit paper notes for people to use. This approach is unnecessary and inevitably harmful when too many notes are issued not matched with a corresponding amount of gold.

We actually do not even want to return to a gold standard system which still leaves government too much room for manipulation. In fact, we want no standard at all. “Standards” in money imply government regulation. Such a regulatory role resulted in the problems of bimetallism where government establishes a fixed ratio of gold to silver. As soon as reality deviates from the plans of government bureaucrats, either gold or silver money virtually disappears from circulation.

That’s the problem with libertarianish political campaigns like Ron Paul’s: as pro-liberty and anti-State as they were, his solutions had to be framed mostly within the context of the State, its Constitution, and what (some) people find acceptable. (Obviously most people in the world found Ron Paul’s ideas not merely unacceptable but downright horrific.) But his solutions were still somewhat Statist and too often based on “Constitutionality.” Ron Paul proposed, and has long advocated, abolishing the Federal Reserve and replacing it with nothing. This is good; it is very pro-liberty and pro–free market. However, he promoted, and has long advocated, returning the U.S. dollar to the gold standard. A truly free society has no currency/commodity “standard,” at least not one imposed by a monopolistic authority; any such standard would be mandated by the matrix of billions of free-market decisions that occur every day.

I think Ron Paul knows that true individual liberty, true free markets, and true Austrian economics demand that no gold standard or silver standard or any other standard be applied to our currency from on high. But he can’t propose that because it is too anarchist for mainstream tastes. Again, he isn’t mainstream, but there is a limit to the extremity of libertarianism that he can propose, framed by our Constitutionalist/democratic-Statist mindset.