First, this controversy provides a delightful contrast to the Obama administration’s decision to force all Americans to purchase contraceptives and subsidize abortions.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation chose to stop providing grants to Planned Parenthood. Lots of people didn’t like (and/or don’t believe) Komen’s reasons. Some declared they would stop giving to Komen. Others approved of Komen’s decision and started giving to Komen. Many declared they would start donating to Planned Parenthood to show their disapproval of Komen’s decision.

Notice what didn’t happen. Nobody forced anybody to do anything that violated their conscience. People who don’t like Planned Parenthood’s mission can now support Komen without any misgivings. People who like Planned Parenthood’s mission can still support it, and can support other organizations that fight breast cancer. The whole episode may end up being a boon for both sides, if total contributions to the two organizations are any measure. Such are the blessings of liberty.

Contrast that to Obamacare, which forces people who don’t like Planned Parenthood’s mission to support it.

Second, there seems to be a bottomless well of delusion from which supporters of Planned Parenthood draw the idea that this decision shows Komen has injected politics into its grant-making.

Assume for the sake of argument that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has been hijacked by radical abortion opponents who forced the decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood. Even if that is true, that decision did not inject politics into a process previously devoid of politics.

Millions of Americans believe that Planned Parenthood routinely kills small, helpless human beings. Believe it or not, they have a problem with that. When Komen gives money to Planned Parenthood, it no doubt angers those Americans (and makes them less likely to contribute). When Komen decided that the good it would accomplish by funding Planned Parenthood’s provision of breast exams outweighed the concerns (and reaction) of those millions of Americans, Komen was making a political judgment.

Perhaps Planned Parenthood’s supporters didn’t notice the politics that was always there, since Komen had been making the same political judgment they themselves make. But if Planned Parenthood’s supporters are angry now, it’s not because Komen injected politics into its grant-making. It’s because Komen made a different political judgment and Planned Parenthood lost, for now anyway. (Then again, if donations to Planned Parenthood are the measure, the group may be winning by losing.)

I must confess to a little bit of Schadenfreude here, as those who are complaining about Komen’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood are largely the same folks who applaud President Obama’s decision to force everyone to fund it (and, without a trace of irony, describe themselves as “pro-choice”). I predict that when a future president reverses Obama’s decision, supporters of Obama’s policy will likewise delude themselves that the future president has “injected” politics into the dispute.

UPDATE: The Susan G. Komen Foundation has again adjusted its grant-making policies, and Planned Parenthood will once again be eligible for funding. A reporter asks me: “So what does it mean now that Komen’s reversed itself?” My reply:

It does not mean that politics has been banished from Komen’s decisions. It just means that Komen has again made a political decision that more closely reflects the values of Planned Parenthood’s supporters than its detractors. But that is how we should settle the question of who funds Planned Parenthood: with vigorous debate and by allowing individuals to follow their conscience. When Obamacare ‘settles’ the question by forcing taxpayers to fund Planned Parenthood, it violates everyone’s freedom and dignity.

That was a hell of a lot more thoughtful than the reactions of all my liberal friends and acquaintances, which all boiled down to “Stop supporting Komen for the Cure because they caved in to right-wing political pressure!”

The very same faction that pretended for years to be so distraught by Bush’s mere eavesdropping on and detention of accused Terrorists without due process is now perfectly content to have their own President kill accused Terrorists without due process, even when those targeted are their fellow citizens.

—Glenn Greenwald, on the Democrats

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).

Every right-thinking person abhors child pornography. To combat it, legislators have brought through committee a poorly conceived, over-broad Congressional bill, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. It is arguably the biggest threat to civil liberties now under consideration in the United States. The potential victims: everyone who uses the Internet.
[...]
In the early 20th Century, a different moral panic gripped the United States: a rural nation was rapidly moving to anonymous cities, sexual mores were changing, and Americans became convinced that an epidemic of white female slavery was sweeping the land. Thus a 1910 law that made it illegal to transport any person across state lines for prostitution “or for any other immoral purpose.” Suddenly premarital sex and adultery had been criminalized, as scam artists would quickly figure out. “Women would lure male conventioneers across a state line, say from New York to Atlantic City, New Jersey,” David Langum explains, “and then threaten to expose them to the prosecutors for violation” unless paid off. Inveighing against the law, the New York Times noted that, though it was officially called the White Slave Traffic Act (aka The Mann Act), a more apt name would’ve been “the Encouragement of Blackmail Act.”

That name is what brought the anecdote back to me. A better name for the child pornography bill would be The Encouragement of Blackmail by Law Enforcement Act. At issue is how to catch child pornographers. It’s too hard now, say the bill’s backers, and I can sympathize. It’s their solution that appalls me: under language approved 19 to 10 by a House committee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required to track all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along with your name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, and IP addresses you’ve been assigned.

Tracking the private daily behavior of everyone in order to help catch a small number of child criminals is itself the noxious practice of police states. Said an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American.” Even more troubling is what the government would need to do in order to access this trove of private information: ask for it.

I kid you not — that’s it.

As written, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 doesn’t require that someone be under investigation on child pornography charges in order for police to access their Internet history — being suspected of any crime is enough. (It may even be made available in civil matters like divorce trials or child custody battles.) Nor do police need probable cause to search this information. As Rep. James Sensenbrenner says, (R-Wisc.) “It poses numerous risks that well outweigh any benefits, and I’m not convinced it will contribute in a significant way to protecting children.”

Among those risks: blackmail.

In Communist countries, where the ruling class routinely dug up embarrassing information on citizens as a bulwark against dissent, the secret police never dreamed of an information trove as perfect for targeting innocent people as a full Internet history. Phrases I’ve Googled in the course of researching this item include “moral panic about child pornography” and “blackmailing enemies with Internet history.” For most people, it’s easy enough to recall terms you’ve searched that could be taken out of context, and of course there are lots of Americans who do things online that are perfectly legal, but would be embarrassing if made public even with context: medical problems and adult pornography are only the beginning. …

You’d thing that Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), who claims on his Web site to be “an outspoken defender of individual privacy rights,” wouldn’t lend his name to this bill. But he co-sponsored it! You’d think that the Justice Department of Eric Holder, who is supposed to be friendly to civil libertarians, would oppose this bill. Just the opposite.

(I didn’t quote the part about tea partiers failing to oppose it because they obviously have, once they have heard about it.)

I’m not the least bit surprised Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder supports (supported?) this bill. It’s completely consistent with this regime’s hunger for power and disregard for all civil liberties.

You know what else wasn’t surprising? Lamar Smith (R-TX), who introduced SOPA in the House, also introduced PCIPA on May 25, 2011. He is a frightening, alarming, parasitic, authoritarian control freak whose every action and word seem to prove that he should have no access to power of any kind.

For example, Congressman Darrell Issa has proposed the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) act, which Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other powerful internet companies endorse. To the extent that it takes powers away from the federal government and nullifies previous laws, I applaud it. But I don’t trust 99% of politicians at all, and I distrust 100% of the rent-seeking corporate–State system of governance that we have. I don’t think either would allow a sustained defense of our online freedoms.

The U.S. government has already signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the European Union will soon follow. A bill dubbed Ireland’s SOPA is soon to be enacted without a vote in its legislature. The FBI shut down MegaUpload.com and arrested four of its employees outside of the U.S.’s borders, in New Zealand (with cooperation with foreign authorities, of course). Universal Music Group (UMG) steals people’s music and takes down their original, non-pirating, legally compliant YouTube videos with the power and privilege it has gained from its collusion with the Imperial Federal Government.

What have people’s protests done to stop governments from accruing these restrictive, violating, wasteful, wealth-destroying powers? What has “democracy” done, for that matter? What will any amount of protesting, voting, petitioning, or lobbying do to stop the future encroachments that are guaranteed to be tried this year, and the next, and the next?

The problem with Rep. Issa’s OPEN act is that the internet and the realm of IP/copyright need fewer laws, not more. Repealing old laws like DMCA, renouncing ACTA, and doing something to prevent the MPAA and RIAA from influencing law in any way would actually help. How in the world can we accomplish that in this day and age? Most liberals will never vote for a civil-libertarian congresshuman, senator, or president who also has libertarian-ish economic stances, and most conservatives refuse to vote for anyone who isn’t an authoritarian, paternalist warmonger (i.e., State worshipper). (Observe the extent to which the Tea Party has been diluted from a position of strongly advocating actually smaller government to “well, lower taxes and fewer business regulations would be preferable.” At least, that’s my perception of them.)

I also applaud the Occupy protesters and the SOPA protesters, who made millions if not billions of people more aware of their issues and sympathetic to their causes, and in the latter case, who actually seem to have influenced policy for the good.

I don’t think it will last long, unfortunately. Our ardor and stamina in defending our rights just don’t exist. Our quality of life will have to be severely, immediately, and clearly impacted by a law for widespread protests and backlash to defend us against our corrupt political system for long. There will be another SOPA/PIPA, and it will pass the House and Senate and be signed by the president, probably President Obama. It won’t be egregious and alarming to most people, but it will be bad enough. Liberal and conservative voters will pat themselves on the back for being reasonable, realistic, and bi-partisan and defending themselves against the horror of SOPA, and the professional criminal class will chuckle to themselves saying, “Stupid, gullible SOPA protesters. That’ll teach ’em what standing up to our authority will get them.”

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

Well, he said it wasn’t about politics or party, but what he meant was that it wasn’t about his party vs. the party in the White House. Obviously it’s exactly about politics.

I commend Tim Thomas for having the political awareness and principles to oppose both political parties, to the extent that he really does (he’s an outspoken Tea Partier), and opposing the whole political-power machine run by the Republocrats in Washington. Outside of the political discussion, though, it’s hard to say whether I think it was a good idea or a bad idea for him to skip the White House visit that the rest of his team attended. I lean towards bad, because he plays a team sport and should put his politics aside for team matters and sports-related events. On the other hand, perhaps he would say he protests the entire idea of championship teams being celebrated at the White House and congratulated by the president because, as his teammates and others have opined, there is no place for politics in sports. He or I might say, “You think there should be no politics in sports? I agree. No team should go to the White House for a celebration because we shouldn’t idolize that office and its power so much.” On the third hand, in a closer-to-ideal world, the president and the White House might busy themselves with frivolous matters like hosting sports teams instead of spending that time intruding into our lives, taking our money, and violating our rights.

The other story that was only marginally politics-related (but isn’t at everything at least marginally politics-related, thanks to the nature of all governments today?) was the decision the Indianapolis Colts and their future-hall-of-fame quarterback Peyton Manning face. The reason I think it’s politics-related is because of the employer–employee relationship between Colts ownership and Manning and the relationship between owners and the NFL Players’ Union.

Manning started every game at quarterback for the Colts from when he was drafted in 1998 through the 2010–11 season but hasn’t played a down since last season’s playoffs because of a neck injury that has required multiple surgeries. Obviously, with a neck injury, especially one that takes this long to heal, any athlete’s future is in major doubt. He has stated that he wants to finish his career with the Colts and also hinted that he doesn’t feel like he’s done playing football. However, he would have to receive a contract extension from the Colts sometime in February or early March in order to stay with the Colts. Andrew Brandt summarizes their positions nicely:

The Colts must affirmatively exercise an option clause to continue to have Manning’s services for 2012 through 2015. The window of time for which that option must be exercised is between “two days following the Super Bowl until five days prior to the 2012 League Year.” … Thus, the Colts must exercise the option to keep Manning—or not—in a one month period between February 7th and March 8th.
[...]
The structure of Manning’s contract shows a clear intent by [Tom Condon, Manning's agent] and Manning: they wanted the Colts to commit to Manning—or allow him his freedom—beyond 2011.

Manning and Condon have forced the Colts to essentially choose between two contracts for Manning: (1) a one-year, $26.4 million deal for 2011 [which has already passed and which he was already paid for], or (2) a five-year, $90 million deal with $70 million in the first three years.

Manning and Condon were determined to not allow the Colts a structure that allowed them an exit after Manning reached a certain age of expected decline, a fate experienced by accomplished NFL players every year.
[...]
Thus, if the option is exercised [by the Colts, choosing to extend Manning's contract], on top of the $26.4 million Manning made in 2011 [for not playing a down], Manning’s earnings for the two-year period of 2011-12 will be almost $62 million. He will be a Colt for the life of his career and be paid more than any player in the NFL for such career.

I often wonder, in considering the employer–employee relationship in professional sports and the role of players’ unions, what things other people with various political beliefs see wrong and right, good and bad with their employment situations, union negotiations, union and ownership power, and salaries. Obviously it’s pretty hard to ever feel sorry for someone who made $26 million in hard cash in one year or feel like they were wronged in any way, regardless of the turns his career takes.

But I could see some indignant sports-traditionalists (who wish athletes and teams would show more loyalty to each other) and some strong anti-corporatists (who think owners and management have too much power over players) criticizing many things about the Manning/Colts situation. They might say the ownership is being typically crass and greedy by not rewarding Manning for his loyalty and decade-plus of stellar service by giving him the contract he deserves. They might say it’s typical of ownership to get rid of a player as soon as he starts going downhill, revealing how much more the players need the team than the team needs the players and showing once again how unfairly power is distributed in the modern corporate world. They might even say it’s illegitimate for a single owner, company, or group of owners to own any business and that any wealth accumulated by one person into the hundred-million-dollar range must have been ill-gotten (State-assisted).

I won’t expound upon the last position here except to say the first half of it is wrong and the second half usually right. What I will refute is the assertion of greediness, crassness, or unfairness on the part of the Colts owner, Jim Irsay, and his management team. Thankfully, players’ unions in all American team sports have gained power and influence such that they can stand up for their players’ rights, legal protections, negotiated benefits, and ability to sell their services to the highest bidder on the market. Unions are the main reason athletes make so much money today, and more power to them. But with the power and the right to earn the best contract possible via free agency, the players also have to give up something(s) to the owners. Basically, the form this takes is that players treat teams as the source of their highest possible lifetime income, and owners run their teams like businesses and treat the players like numbers in an account sheet. The players have almost surely gained more than the owners with the flourishing of free agency, and possibly (hopefully) gained at the expense of a lot of owner power and money, but they can’t have their cake and eat it too. They can’t realistically sell themselves to the highest bidder almost invariably and negotiate contracts that pay them millions of dollars for not playing at all, while still being treated loyally and warmly by owners.

This reminds me of another recent free agent signing, in baseball: Albert Pujols signed a 10-year, $250-million contract with the Anaheim Angels, the second-highest-paying contract in sports history, instead of staying his whole career in St. Louis, the best baseball town in America and the team he won two World Series with. I had hoped he would stay in St. Louis, but the Cardinals didn’t want to pay him that much. Slightly differently from Peyton Manning, Pujols was the one who didn’t remain loyal to his team rather than the other way around. (The Cardinals offered him a large contract, but the Angels almost certainly overpaid for him.) It would be ridiculous and inconsistent to say that a player should try to get the best deal possible but the team shouldn’t also try to maximize its value. That’s what both the Cardinals and Pujols did, and that meant they had to split ways. I’m sure Arte Moreno of Anaheim thought he was maximizing his (team’s) value, but I doubt it.

This also reminds me of Tom Glavine’s defection from the Braves to the Mets after the 2002 season. One important fact about Glavine is that he was the most vocal players’ union representative throughout the 1990s, including during the 1994 strike negotiations and strike. (I always thought he was like the highest-ranking player in the union, followed by David Cone, always at the forefront of the negotiations and speaking to the press on behalf of the players. Maybe it was less official than that, though.) After he and the players’ union negotiated so toughly and spoke out so vocally about player salaries and benefits, Glavine of all people couldn’t realistically stay with his loving and beloved Braves for a dollar less than any other team was offering him. He had to take the largest contract offered to him, despite the fact that he pretty much hated the Mets (as much as most baseball players can hate another team these days) and the fact that it would sour Braves fans’ opinion of him for a long time. But he couldn’t take such a hard line in union negotiations in favor of player salaries and benefits and then go take a lesser contract in order to remain loyal to his team. Otherwise, owners and general managers could say, “Ah! Look at your vocal, outspoken, tough negotiator, Tom Glavine! He apparently cares more about loyalty than money! So we know players aren’t so devoted to the almighty dollar as they pretend to be.” Players can’t have that, because they are devoted entirely to the almighty dollar, at least most of them, as are most owners. (It turned out that Glavine was awful with the Mets, probably because of some combination of regret and complacency, except in 2006, so the Mets also overpaid for him.)

This reminds me of yet another player-contract situation, this past season in the NFL. Tennessee Titans running back and current fastest man in the NFL Chris Johnson held out during training camp to negotiate a bigger contract/contract extension. When the Titans finally paid him and he joined the team, he had a crappy year. He might have a great next three years, but this year, they definitely overpaid for him. Johnson and many others say that this simply makes up for him being underpaid in previous years, which is also true. That’s why players have the ability to hold out and negotiate for contract extensions/improvements in the middle of a contract. The short average career of running backs in the NFL is the main reason running backs want to get paid as soon as they can, as soon after a great season as possible. If they just wait until their first contract is up, either their performance will have started to decline or owners will expect it to start declining soon, and they will have gotten underpaid for the best years of their career without ever getting overpaid after.

What the Chris Johnson holdout/huge contract/crappy season did was lower the stock of all other running backs who were in a position to start negotiating a new contract during the 2011 season and 2012 offseason. Matt Forte of the Chicago Bears will almost certainly not get a high-paying contract extension during this offseason or, possibly, at any time in the future. He sprained his MCL last month and missed the rest of the season, although it is not a career-threatening injury. All throughout the season, Forte wanted a contract extension from the Bears, but many talking heads said Chris Johnson’s shortcomings were Exhibit A among the Bears’ reasons to offer their running back considerably less money than he wanted. He was their best player and will probably get a good extension, just not really, really high-paying. Management saw what a giant contract did for the best running back in football, so they are understandably wary of a similar outcome with Forte. Who can blame them? Who can blame any team for wanting to maximize the value it gets out of its salary payments? Who can blame any athlete for wanting to get overpaid for a period of time after getting underpaid before?

All the Indianapolis Colts and owner Irsay can do is maximize the value of the salary they pay their quarterbacks. If they exercise Manning’s option, they might very well pay him $35 million in 2012 without him playing a single down. If he does play, he might be much worse than he used to be. Their team certainly sucks, which is why they are in a position to draft quarterback Andrew Luck with the first pick in the upcoming draft. If they keep Manning and draft Luck, they will pay their top two quarterbacks $50 million in 2012 alone. They just paid their quarterbacks $32 million in 2011 for a horrible, miserable collective performance. That was partly the fault of the head coach and general manager, who have now been fired for failing to assemble and lead a team that could even function without Manning. Obviously that means he’s worth a lot—or rather, has been worth a lot—but maybe the combination of the salary he’s demanding and his uncertain future means it’s time to fire Manning, too.

If they did, it would be the result of value maximization on both sides, which basically amounts to market forces. If Peyton Manning really wants to stay in Indianapolis, he will have to do it at a salary Jim Irsay agrees upon, just as Irsay and all owners have to keep players or sign new ones by offering them the money it will take to sign them. The owner must offer the (ideally, lowest) money and contract length it takes to sign the player, and conversely, the player must offer the immediate and future value it takes to earn the (ideally, highest-paying and longest-term) contract a team will offer. It has always been like this and should continue to be like this in contract negotiations, especially when the salary recipient is supported by a union. Or maybe especially especially when they aren’t supported by a union (ideally…but we all know that’s not always likely in our current corporate–State socialist world).

Maybe if restrictive, market-perturbing labor laws were repealed, unions no longer colluded with governments, and self-employment and other non-traditional forms of employment were allowed to flourish in our society—in a free society—all workers from all walks of life would have more and better opportunities to maximize the value of their employment, in terms of both their compensation and the wealth they produce for others.

On the bright side, the January 17 internet “blackout” day of protest against SOPA and PIPA prompted several lawmakers to withdraw their support for the respective bills, with 13 more following on January 18. As left-libertarians are fond of saying and other libertarians need to be more vocal and specific about, “public” or “community action” doesn’t have to mean voting and government action. Massive protests might very well have succeeded in killing these bills in their current forms.

Ron Paul has introduced a bill to repeal section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA, the part that authorizes the President to order the military detention, without charge or trial, of any American citizen who has been labeled as having “substantially supported certain terrorist groups”. Yet another reason I think Ron Paul deserves more attention and praise, especially among libertarian anarchists who demur over actually supporting him because of perfectly valid philosophical reasons (they don’t like his stance on immigration, for instance, so they will not actually vote for or support the candidacy of anyone they have any differences with, or anyone at all, for that matter). Still, it becomes more obvious every day that he is on our side and does a great job spreading the message of liberty from his platform, which is that of a politician. As Glenn Greenwald would be quick to point out (actually, has already been), praising a few of Ron Paul’s positions, votes, and introduced bills doesn’t mean you’re going to vote for him, hope that he wins, agree with him 100% of the time, or even support democracy as an acceptable or effective means of change (well, Greenwald hasn’t mentioned this last one). I, for one, do hope he wins the Republican nomination and would probably vote for him if he did. In fact, I’m likely to vote for him in Michigan’s primary.

The city of Detroit will soon go bankrupt and its finances likely put under the the charge of a governor-appointed (corporate) emergency manager. When Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was elected in 2010, he received much criticism for his “emergency manager” law, which would place a bankrupt city’s finances under some type of corporate manager(s) appointed by him. This criticism reached new heights recently when he defended this law in his State of the State address, said it could apply to Detroit soon, and became the object of street protests outside his home. Maybe if Detroit hadn’t recklessly run up its debt as its revenue plummeted and its idiotic citizenry, led by both unions and corporations, hadn’t twice elected that worthless, disgusting abomination of a human being Kwame Kilpatrick as mayor, the city wouldn’t be in such financial ruin.

But of course Detroit unions oppose any substantial cuts or an emergency manager and basically seem to be saying they don’t want to suffer now, regardless of what this will mean for later. Many other voters, Republicans, and Democrats in and around Detroit are saying the same thing. My perspective on Detroit’s dilemma reminds me of the battle between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and government unions: it is perfectly libertarian and principled to oppose both the public-sector unions resisting the cuts and the governor’s proposals to balance budgets. That said, the city of Detroit and especially the people responsible for its finances don’t have the option of “well, we just oppose everything” and will have to choose some course that will result in its citizens and businesses losing either more or less money. I feel compelled to opine not only on the root causes of their problem (monopolistic government, democracy, a captive tax base, corporate–government collusion, union–government collusion) but also on the situation they currently face: bankruptcy and further debt and loss of money, or bankruptcy and a governor-appointed emergency financial manager. Maybe there are more options, but it’s hard to criticize the governor too much on this point. It seems almost certain that the Detroit city government will go bankrupt, so what’s wrong with an austerity plan that will make it less bad? Medicine tastes bad, but you have to take it. The opponents of the emergency manager say that it is undemocratic and requires too many concessions by unions. Well, democracy and government-supporting (especially Democrat-supporting) unions largely caused Detroit’s problems in the first place, so they sure as hell shouldn’t be relied on to solve its problems. The only thing that seems a little inequitable about the demand that unions make concessions to balance the budget is that unions aren’t responsible for all of the city’s debt; decades of mismanagement by officials and businesses are equally responsible, and they don’t appear to be required to make concessions or any types of payments or contributions to fix the problem they helped create.

The Monster Cable company claims EBay, Craigslist, Costco, Sears, Backpages, FatWallet, PriceGrabber, and ComputerShopper are “rogue” sites that should be targeted for takedown by the Imperial Federal Government, such as by SOPA/PIPA-type legislation, which of course it supports. While I have to admit I see nothing about a free society that would prevent a company like Monster Cable from existing and succeeding, that doesn’t mean I can’t rail on it for the dishonest, conniving, exploitative, Statist, anti-consumer, piece-of-shit company that it is. Monster Cable has issued cease-and-desist letters to other cable makers for completely frivolous patent infringement reasons. It has sued a mini golf company, an automotic transmission shop, and a deer salt block company for trademark infringement. Monster Cable’s entire business model, other than using the patent system and the courts to try to bully people into giving it money, seems to be exploiting customers who think more expensive HDMI cables are even one iota better than cheap ones. Regardless of company or price, all standard HDMI cables perform identically (barring some defect, which is vanishingly rare). It is not the least bit surprising that Monster endorses fascist government takedown of any website that treats consumers well or doesn’t subscribe to Monster’s fantastical acid trip of a definition of property, theft, and criminality. Fuck Monster Cable and everyone who works for it, especially its lawyers.

Speaking of SOPA, its author, Lamar Smith (R-TX) is, not surprisingly, a hypocrite who violated provisions of SOPA that would have labeled him a criminal. Lamar Smith is a despicable scumbag on the level of Kwame Kilpatrick. He’s a clueless Republican authoritarian control freak who ought to be locked away in a nuthouse for the rest of his life as a precaution for the rest of society.

In case you doubt how much power and influence the United States professional criminal class has on policies all around the world: the U.S. ambassador to Spain threatened to put Spain on a trade blacklist if it didn’t pass SOPA-style site-blocking legislation. Of course, Wikileaks, which has all but vanished from the news in recent months, leaked the documents that revealed this. Later, “American Chamber of Commerce in Spain chief Jaime Malet wrote a cautionary letter to incoming Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. He warned of the potential flight of foreign investment from Spain and urged him to take action on the protection of intellectual property once in office.” Rajoy’s government responded by passing acceptable legislation, known as the Sinde law, within 10 days of taking office.

$56 billion later, airport security is still junk.

So far, 80% of “green energy” loans the Obama Department of Energy has issued have gone to top Obama donors, according to Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer.

I often oppose the goals of unions in 21st-century America because those goals are so wholly opposed to the outcomes of wealth production and freedom. However, I found myself solidly in a pro-union position recently when reading this discussion thread on Fark.com about Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndomukong Suh being suspended for two games for unsportsmanlike conduct after a play against the Packers on Thanksgiving Day. While he and several players from both teams were on the ground after a play, he slammed/pressed Evan Deitrich-Smith’s head into the ground three times, stood up, and stomped on Deitrich-Smith’s arm. Deitrich-Smith wasn’t hurt, but that type of behavior is clearly unacceptable at any time, so Suh was ejected from that game, fined, and suspended for two games.

I only visit Fark.com anymore to read the funny, punny headlines of the week, which is probably for the better because I’d had enough of debating with Farkers a long time ago. I did happen to click on the link to that discussion thread, though, for one reason or another. Possibly because the Lions are currently my “home” (i.e., geographically closest) team and I was happy they were doing well this season. Given Suh’s history of fines for dirty plays, many commenters opined that Suh should be banned for life for this infraction. Here are some of their comments:

There is no excuse for this. He should be banned from the NFL for life. Period. You act like that, you’re out.

I agree with you completely but we both know that’ll never happen. Professional sports are rarely if ever about sportsmanship or acting with class.

I fully endorse this. It is a privilege to work in the NFL and to act like a thug on or off the field should result in banishment from the sport.

Two farking games, big deal. He should have been suspended the rest of the season and if he did it again, for life.

Maybe if the punishment were a little steeper each time [it happened in the league, not each time an individual player did it], this kind of thing would stop happening altogether. [Note: The punishment is steeper each time a player does something.]

Many commenters did counter that such a suspension is somewhat standard and seems about right, and one mentioned precedent, but not a single person mentioned anything about the NFL Players’ Union or their collective bargaining agreement with the league. A search of the word “union” returns no hits among 353 comments.

Because these people are Farkers, I can safely assume that the vast majority of them are State-loving socialists who support the Democratic party and the liberal agenda in general. (I have no idea how the commenters on the sports stories of Fark differ from the general Farker population, but at the risk of oversimplification, I’ll assume they’re similar.) Therefore, it seems very likely that at least a few Farkers calling for a lifetime ban of Suh would call themselves pro-union or have taken actions in the past (voting) that are at least nominally pro-union. Did it never occur to a single one of them that it would violate the union’s collective bargaining agreement to automatically ban someone for life for an infraction that didn’t actually injure anybody? Are they completely unfamiliar with the nature of union–employer relations and the due process and protections afforded by union membership? Don’t they know that there are standard, precedent-based procedures for how, when, why, and how much to discipline transgressors? To suggest that the procedures agreed upon by the players’ union and the league, including gradually escalating fines and suspensions, should be changed to include steeper punishments for dirty play that threatens people’s health and tarnishes the league’s image would be reasonable and fair. But no one in that thread even broached that topic, much less considered the role of the players’ union in this type of punishment.

It’s probably that these commenters don’t so much care about the justice and benefits of unions per se, only how they can be used to promote a socialist/communist agenda. Their conclusion, which seems to be, “The benefits and protections afforded union members are good as long as I agree with the outcomes…and the beneficiaries aren’t rich,” is about like saying, “I approve of democracy [mob-rule] as a way of governing society, except when the majority elects someone I don’t like; then we should expel that person and replace him with someone the majority doesn’t want but I do.”

The ACLU says of this signing,

While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use the authorities granted by the NDAA, and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations. The White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA, but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill.

“President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”
[emphasis in original]

These thoughts about the pathetic state of American political discourse, especially on television (but also, in my experience, within my circle of friends, mainly Facebook), were inspired by Glenn Greenwald’s absolutely masterful (as always) tirade against the vast majority of liberals and Obama supporters for their constant hypocrisy and total evasion of any acknowledgment of his failings. The essay is mostly about Ron Paul, whose every interview, appearance, press release, and sound bite do address those civil-liberties and foreign-policy issues and do criticize the supposedly “progressive” Obama for being such an abject failure on every civil-liberties issue in every possible way. Greenwald writes,

But in America, the fixation on presidential elections takes hold at least eighteen months before the actual election occurs, which means that more than 1/3 of a President’s term is conducted in the midst of (and is obscured by) the petty circus distractions of The Campaign. Thus, an unauthorized, potentially devastating covert war — both hot and cold — against Iran can be waged with virtually no debate, just as government control over the Internet can be inexorably advanced, because TV political shows are busy chattering away about Michele Bachmann’s latest gaffe and minute changes in Rick Perry’s polling numbers.
[...]
Then there’s the inability and/or refusal to recognize that a political discussion might exist independent of the Red v. Blue Cage Match. Thus, any critique of the President’s exercise of vast power (an adversarial check on which our political system depends) immediately prompts bafflement (I don’t understand the point: would Rick Perry be any better?) or grievance (you’re helping Mitt Romney by talking about this!!). The premise takes hold for a full 18 months — increasing each day in intensity until Election Day — that every discussion of the President’s actions must be driven solely by one’s preference for election outcomes (if you support the President’s re-election, then why criticize him?).

Greenwald wrote this and more to preface his positive thoughts about the candidacy of Ron Paul, who is the only Republican or Democratic presidential candidate to firmly oppose the aggressive foreign policy and civil liberties trampling that Obama has implemented, that every other Republican candidate agrees with or worse, and that liberal Democrats ignore when discussing, thinking about, and voting in elections.

Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil.

As Matt Stoller argued in a genuinely brilliant essay on the history of progressivism and the Democratic Party which I cannot recommend highly enough: “the anger [Paul] inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview.” Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception.

The thing I loathe most about election season is reflected in the central fallacy that drives progressive discussion the minute “Ron Paul” is mentioned. As soon as his candidacy is discussed, progressives will reflexively point to a slew of positions he holds that are anathema to liberalism and odious in their own right and then say: how can you support someone who holds this awful, destructive position? The premise here — the game that’s being played — is that if you can identify some heinous views that a certain candidate holds, then it means they are beyond the pale, that no Decent Person should even consider praising any part of their candidacy.

The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.
[emphasis in original]

Perhaps one of my many failings as a purported political commentator is that I don’t regularly read any liberal blaggers or websites except Greenwald, and him not often enough (which would be every word). Therefore, I can’t judge how few liberal Democrats really acknowledge and criticize all of these heinous actions of Obama’s—one example that I’ve saved is a column by the liberal law professor and staunch civil libertarian Jonathan Turley titled “President Obama has been a disaster for civil liberties” in the mostly liberal Los Angeles Times—but I am mainly frustrated and actually quite a bit disgusted with my hypocritical, smug, liberal, Obama-supporting friends and acquaintances who share links on Facebook about this or that awful thing a Republican(s) has done or said, join in the circle-jerk with the ‘Like’ button and their comments with nary a word of dissent, ridicule Republicans at every opportunity as if they are all a single fetid mass of benighted, hateful, racist, jingoist primitivism that only exists to prevent Democrats from delivering us to Utopia, and never mention a single objectionable thing any Democrat has ever done or said.

Some recent Facebook posts from my friends include a link to the article Speaker Cuts Off C-SPAN Cameras When Dems Attempt To Bring Vote On Payroll Tax Cut with a snarky comment, an admonishment of the United States that if we only paid more taxes, we would have better health care and infrastructure like the country that person is currently visiting, and at least a half-dozen articles about why the envy-based wealth-redistribution politics of the Occupy movement are noble and desirable. None of those people has ever written or linked to a single thing critical of Obama, his regime’s relentless assault on our civil liberties, his regime’s total obsession with secrecy despite promises of transparency, his continuation and escalation of the murder of innocent civilians in Asia, the fact that Obama is obviously bought and paid for by Wall Street banksters as much as any Republican, or any other Democratic failing or hypocrisy. Where are the Facebook posts about SOPA, which Democrats are equally as responsible for as Republicans? Where are the Facebook posts about Obama’s signing of this year’s NDAA with its flagrant disregard for half of the Bill of Rights? Plenty of neutral and left-leaning sites have published articles and columns critical of these bills, and you have seen them! You are part of the problem, you stupid self-blinding morans! You are party to the murders, the imprisonments, the rights violations, the cronyist favoritism, the wealth destruction that the politicians you elected and will re-elect have inflicted and will continue to inflict upon millions of victims!

I try not to judge them for their political beliefs, but it’s hard. They define themselves so much by their total adoration of Obama and the Democratic Party and base so much of their social lives (especially online, which is the only way I currently interact with some of them) on deifying the Democrats and vilifying Republicans that I can’t help but conclude that their systematic bias, their selectively targeted vitriol, and their continuous self-deception are pretty important parts of their character and their personalities. I don’t talk about politics with my friends or write about it anywhere other than here because no one likes trying to parse radical libertarian philosophy that challenges basically every political thought they have ever had and because I don’t like stressful discussions or arguments, especially ones that will alienate me from others who all think alike. It’s true that people who would judge me for my libertarianism are not worth having as friends, but it’s also true that it’s nearly impossible to completely avoid judging others for their politics even though you know their politics rarely say anything bad about their character. Case in point: this very post, in which I judge my friends and colleagues as hypocritical enablers of totalitarian fascism from the anonymity of my blagging chair. I want to keep my friends, and I have made a conscious effort as I’ve gotten older to judge people as people only on the basis of whether they mean well, which my friends all do. This is especially true in discussions/arguments on the internet with anonymous strangers, when courtesy and respect are all too rare.

However, regardless of their intentions, the consequences of their silence about Democratic failings, especially Obama’s, cannot be ignored. There is no better example of the Red-vs.-Blue, with-us-or-against-us, the-right-politicians-will-solve-everything mentality than the average American Democratic voter. Perhaps the average American Republican voter could only equal the loyal Democrat’s ignorance, self-denial, bias, and crippling hypocrisy. What these failings are going to get us are another murderous, oppressive, secretive Obama term, more Democratic legislators who are too morally bankrupt and cowardly to stand up to the neocons for our basic Constitutional rights, and more silence on the uncomfortable truth about the state of American liberalism.