A great summary of here we are/how did we get here.
The Myth of American Freedom
by Andrew P. Napolitano
Here is Judge Napolitano's closing argument yesterday on his FreedomWatch.
Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Is freedom in America a myth or a reality? Tonight, what if we didn't live in a free country?
What if the Constitution were written not to limit government, but to expand it? What if the Constitution didn't fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, but betrayed it? What if the Constitution actually permitted the government to limit and constrict freedom? What if the Bill of Rights was just a paper promise, that the government could avoid whenever it claimed the need to do so? What if the same generation – in some cases the same people – that drafted the U.S. Constitution enacted laws that violated it? What if the merchants and bankers who financed the American Revolution bought their way into the new government and got it to enact laws that stifled their competition? What if the civil war that was fought in the name of freedom actually advanced the cause of tyranny?
What if the federal government were the product of 150 years of stealing power and liberty and property from the people and the states? What if our political elites spent the 20th century importing the socialist ideas of big government Statism from Europe? What if our political class was adopting the European political culture from which our founding fathers fought so hard to break free?
What if our political leaders no longer acknowledged that our rights come from our humanity, but insisted instead that they come from the government? What if you had to produce your papers to get out of or into our once-free country? What if you couldn't board a plane, a train, or a long-distance bus without providing documentation telling the government who you are and where you're going, without paying the government, and without risking sexual assault? What if your local police department could shoot down a plane? What if government agents could write their own search warrants, declare their own enemies, and seize whatever property they want? What if the feds could detain you indefinitely, with no visitors, no lawyer, no judge, and no jury? What if they could make you just disappear? What if the government broke its own laws in order to enforce them? What if the government broke down your front door in the middle of the night and shot your dog, and claimed it was a mistake?
What if you were required to purchase a product that you didn't need, didn't want, and couldn't afford, from a company you never heard of, just as a condition of living in the United States? What if the government told you what not to put in your body as well as what to put into it; and how much? What if the government claimed that since it will be paying your medical bills, it can tell you what to eat, when to sleep, and how to live? What if the government tried to cajole and coax and compel you into behaviors and attitudes it considered socially acceptable? What if the government spent your tax money to advertise to you how great the services are that it provides? What if the government kept promising to make you safe while it kept stripping you of your liberties and committing crimes in your name that made you a target of more violence?
What if you didn't have a right to every dollar you earned? What if the government decided how much of your earnings it will keep and how much it will permit you to have? What if the government took money from you and gave it away to its rich banking and corporate friends whose businesses were failing? What if the government thought it knew better than you did how to lead your life and had no problem telling you so? What if the government took the credit for every success your own human actions helped you achieve? What if the government told you that only it could build roads, run schools, keep you safe, and collect trash even though it's never been able to do so efficiently before? What if the government spent nearly twice as much as it took in? What if it couldn't pass a budget on a timely basis and funded itself just weeks at a time? And what if the government kept borrowing money against the wealth of future generations to pay for wasteful programs today?
What if you worked for the government and the government didn't work for you? What if freedom were a myth? What if we don't live in a free country? What do we do about it?
From New York, defending freedom; so-long America.
September 30, 2011
Showing posts with label Egalitarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Egalitarianism. Show all posts
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Discrimination
Kristor at VFR writes at this post:
I would like to enter a word of support for discrimination. You can't run your life without it. The doctrine that we should not ever discriminate among people would entail that it is offensive and biased for a woman to withhold her sexual favors from anyone at all, or to favor her own children over those of other women. Likewise, it would be offensive and biased for her to prevent anyone who wants to from staying in her house and eating her food. These are absurd examples, to be sure, but they serve to illustrate the general principle that it is not possible to organize social activity except by discriminating among people.
If it is wicked to treat some people as citizens because they were born here, and others as aliens because they were not, then in order to avoid that wickedness a nation would have to treat everyone in the world as its citizens, entitled to vote in its elections, reap all its civil benefits, etc. But then "citizen" and "nation" would become empty terms, and that society would vanish along with the lines and definitions and distinctions that had differentiated it from its neighbours. Thus suspicion and distrust of abnormal people, inclining us all to discriminate against them and favor those we recognize as fellows, is the only way societies survive.
To have a nation, a society, a firm, a church, any organization at all, you have to draw lines. Furthermore, you have to empower people differently, or dignify them differently. For example, if there is to be any leadership whatsoever, leaders must be somehow disproportionately empowered. Ditto for citizenship, or membership in a group or club: one must pay one's dues, the membership cannot be free or it is void. In the world as it is actually constituted, nothing is free (with the exception of God's love for creation, which, being infinite, can be provided to creatures without any cost to God). Ditto also for mate selection, which is an act of discrimination for one person, and against all others.
One of the inescapable elements of discrimination is a moral or aesthetic judgement that some people or things are better than others, in at least some important respect. It would be perverse to dignify someone as a leader if you thought he was not likely to do better at it than the average bear. It would be stupid to turn for counsel to the village idiot. The same holds on the playground when boys are picking sides, and in triage on the battlefield. Discrimination can really hurt. But you can't run a society without it. And it does work in practice, too, because some people really are better than others, at job x, or in terms of characteristic y.
So it is a fantasy to think that we can make life equally nice for everyone. The world doesn't work that way.
Note that none of this is to say that in deciding someone is not right for citizenship, or for cohabitation, or for our soccer team, we are deciding also that they are ipso facto actively bad, and that we are justified in persecuting them. That inference is not justified; that only one runner wins the race does not entail that his competitors should henceforth be kept off the track. To decide that a person or class of people are actively bad, or dangerous, requires a further determination. But we can't shrink from making that determination, either, if we are to survive. For some people truly are bad or dangerous, and if we are to survive we must harass and persecute them: the serial killer, the enemy in wartime, and so forth.
Many members of this community are either Christians, or used to be, or are sort of Christian, or something; at any rate, they hold in high esteem Jesus' injunction that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. This saying at the core of the faith, and thus at the core of our civilization, had always been a stumbling block for me, because it seemed as though it contravened the whole order of the universe, which operates on gradations in value and worthiness, on differences; and that it contradicted also the entirety of Biblical religion, in which God is (among other things) a Judge discriminating the relative merit of everything that happens, right up to the differences among the choirs of angels.
The best interpretation I could come up with was that Jesus' first great commandment that we should love God with all our being meant that I should have no love left over for myself. This would not be the death of me, because in loving God I should also love his will for me, which provides for my best good. That is, I should be more inclined to do His will, and so to prosper. Loving God instead of myself would be good for me. How then should I love my neighbour? Just as I should love myself: not at all. If I love God with my whole being, then I will do what is best for me, and I will also do what is best for my neighbour, because God wills what is best for both myself and my neighbour.
I recently read a comment by a fellow named Sage McLaughlin that, "When we are told to love our enemies as ourselves, this does not mean we are to treat them the same way we treat ourselves--Christ did not say, "Don't have enemies." He takes for granted that we shall have foes, but demands that we love them as human beings and that we hate the disfiguring effects of sin on their immortal souls, just as we hate them in ourselves. We must do this, and we must forgive all those who ask our forgiveness--but we do not have to outdo God, who abandons to eternal damnation all those who turn from Him and walk in darkness." I.e., we are to love the good and hate the bad in other people just as we love the good and hate the bad in ourselves. In order to do that--in order to move closer to goodness and further from wickedness in ourselves, and in our society, and in the creation at large--we must discriminate between good and bad, and choose goodness. That we forgive the wickedness of our enemies does not automatically make them friends; and if they cannot let go of their deadly hatred of us, then in order to control the risk to us of their hatred, we must perforce destroy them with it. In that case, we cannot survive to forgive them except by defending ourselves, and working their destruction, however that may grieve us.
I would like to enter a word of support for discrimination. You can't run your life without it. The doctrine that we should not ever discriminate among people would entail that it is offensive and biased for a woman to withhold her sexual favors from anyone at all, or to favor her own children over those of other women. Likewise, it would be offensive and biased for her to prevent anyone who wants to from staying in her house and eating her food. These are absurd examples, to be sure, but they serve to illustrate the general principle that it is not possible to organize social activity except by discriminating among people.
If it is wicked to treat some people as citizens because they were born here, and others as aliens because they were not, then in order to avoid that wickedness a nation would have to treat everyone in the world as its citizens, entitled to vote in its elections, reap all its civil benefits, etc. But then "citizen" and "nation" would become empty terms, and that society would vanish along with the lines and definitions and distinctions that had differentiated it from its neighbours. Thus suspicion and distrust of abnormal people, inclining us all to discriminate against them and favor those we recognize as fellows, is the only way societies survive.
To have a nation, a society, a firm, a church, any organization at all, you have to draw lines. Furthermore, you have to empower people differently, or dignify them differently. For example, if there is to be any leadership whatsoever, leaders must be somehow disproportionately empowered. Ditto for citizenship, or membership in a group or club: one must pay one's dues, the membership cannot be free or it is void. In the world as it is actually constituted, nothing is free (with the exception of God's love for creation, which, being infinite, can be provided to creatures without any cost to God). Ditto also for mate selection, which is an act of discrimination for one person, and against all others.
One of the inescapable elements of discrimination is a moral or aesthetic judgement that some people or things are better than others, in at least some important respect. It would be perverse to dignify someone as a leader if you thought he was not likely to do better at it than the average bear. It would be stupid to turn for counsel to the village idiot. The same holds on the playground when boys are picking sides, and in triage on the battlefield. Discrimination can really hurt. But you can't run a society without it. And it does work in practice, too, because some people really are better than others, at job x, or in terms of characteristic y.
So it is a fantasy to think that we can make life equally nice for everyone. The world doesn't work that way.
Note that none of this is to say that in deciding someone is not right for citizenship, or for cohabitation, or for our soccer team, we are deciding also that they are ipso facto actively bad, and that we are justified in persecuting them. That inference is not justified; that only one runner wins the race does not entail that his competitors should henceforth be kept off the track. To decide that a person or class of people are actively bad, or dangerous, requires a further determination. But we can't shrink from making that determination, either, if we are to survive. For some people truly are bad or dangerous, and if we are to survive we must harass and persecute them: the serial killer, the enemy in wartime, and so forth.
Many members of this community are either Christians, or used to be, or are sort of Christian, or something; at any rate, they hold in high esteem Jesus' injunction that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. This saying at the core of the faith, and thus at the core of our civilization, had always been a stumbling block for me, because it seemed as though it contravened the whole order of the universe, which operates on gradations in value and worthiness, on differences; and that it contradicted also the entirety of Biblical religion, in which God is (among other things) a Judge discriminating the relative merit of everything that happens, right up to the differences among the choirs of angels.
The best interpretation I could come up with was that Jesus' first great commandment that we should love God with all our being meant that I should have no love left over for myself. This would not be the death of me, because in loving God I should also love his will for me, which provides for my best good. That is, I should be more inclined to do His will, and so to prosper. Loving God instead of myself would be good for me. How then should I love my neighbour? Just as I should love myself: not at all. If I love God with my whole being, then I will do what is best for me, and I will also do what is best for my neighbour, because God wills what is best for both myself and my neighbour.
I recently read a comment by a fellow named Sage McLaughlin that, "When we are told to love our enemies as ourselves, this does not mean we are to treat them the same way we treat ourselves--Christ did not say, "Don't have enemies." He takes for granted that we shall have foes, but demands that we love them as human beings and that we hate the disfiguring effects of sin on their immortal souls, just as we hate them in ourselves. We must do this, and we must forgive all those who ask our forgiveness--but we do not have to outdo God, who abandons to eternal damnation all those who turn from Him and walk in darkness." I.e., we are to love the good and hate the bad in other people just as we love the good and hate the bad in ourselves. In order to do that--in order to move closer to goodness and further from wickedness in ourselves, and in our society, and in the creation at large--we must discriminate between good and bad, and choose goodness. That we forgive the wickedness of our enemies does not automatically make them friends; and if they cannot let go of their deadly hatred of us, then in order to control the risk to us of their hatred, we must perforce destroy them with it. In that case, we cannot survive to forgive them except by defending ourselves, and working their destruction, however that may grieve us.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
One STDV: Special Guest Post: You Are All Racist
LINK - OneSTDV: Special Guest Post: You Are All Racist
The following is a very special Guest Post from a college student in Race and Gender Studies.
Click the above link for an UPDATE
I am glad that OneSTDV, despite being an incorrigible racist, has given me this outlet to inform you inbred hicks about true racism and legacy of the authoritarian menace that is the white race and the nefarious deeds said race has foisted upon People of Color in lands that they have never been welcome in despite thinking that they are welcome there, indubitably. Since I am currently studying these courses at a top American university, I am far better equipped to understand the historical infractions engendered by the white race as it proffers its legacy of extirpation around the world. People of Color have been mere innocent bystanders as racist whites have taken over their lands, destroyed their traditions, rapaciously plundered all the intrepid innovations of People of Color, raped their women, and then had the audacity to impose upon them the racist standards of modern society. Just to be clear, you are all racist and I am only writing this post because it is incumbent upon the informed to inform the uninformed and even though I believe you all are inconsequentially perturbed and beyond redress, I have a duty to my brothers and sisters of color to do so.
Now I am a white male so one must understand that everything I say and everything I know is undeniably motivated by the insidious and vapid constructs of social and societal and political privilege that dominate this racist and sexist and colonialist and ableist and genderist and socially constructed and racist and sexist and biased and anti-fat and anti-anti society that I unfortunately must call home and that pays all my bills via student loans. So while I'll try my best to relay the information about historical legacies of structural and institutional racist sexism and People of Color suffering inherent to society's structures, only a handicapped, half-blind, fat, invalid, black, female-trans, lesbian could do so in a sufficient manner.
Since OneSTDV, probably because he's a racist, has only given me limited amount of space, let me just explain why you're all racists. First, you're all white and even those of you that aren't white have been fomented by the invidious constructs of social construction that underpin the institutional racism that pervades this society. In other words, white people are all racist because society makes them all that way. You can do nothing about it, only the tears of a Person of Color, preferably an illiterate lesbian from South Africa, can cure you of this affliction. White people can not understand the plight of People of Color because they are blinded by society and its inherent white morality, a morality that views all People of Color as intractably below them. Only People of Color can understand the vast problems of society because they must deal with white racists every single day and every single minute of their lives.
Further, every single white in the world should be held accountable for the collective moral transgressions of the white race. People of Color have been victimized by whites for far too long and until those past sins are expunged from the moral record of whites, either by disenfranchisement or as in killing such as in the justified killing of Amy Beihl, then whites must ask for forgiveness every day. Any crime committed by a Person of Color is justified because People of Color can never do any wrong. They are just reacting to a racist society and so anything they do, even killing for no reason, is justified and should be celebrated. Whites can never complain about crime because white people killed some People of Color in 1750 and we will never forget that. People of Color who commit crime today can never get back all the years of abuse from whites and so whatever they do now is just collective retribution for white transgressions of the past and so I think every Person of Color criminal is actually a hero because they are righting a wrong inferred by the callous actions of the white man, who is bad.
People of Color do not commit crimes then, they commit acts of justified retribution. Every death of a white person, especially of a cop, is justified because People of Color can never do anything wrong. People of Color in prison are all innocent because they never did anything, it was racist judges and racist lawyers and racist policemen and racist shopowners and racist grandmothers and racist dogs and racist squirrels and racist buildings and racist cars.
Damn, you hicks just don't understand the struggle. I grew up in New Hampshire and I knew a black kid once and I felt for him so much because all the other kids at school were so nice to him and so willing to include him in everything they did. And all the other parents would treat him like all the other kids. Damn racists.
Now, I know you racists will throw out some racist stuff like test scores and everything, but those are culturally biased. Asians score better only because they hate themselves. Blacks would actually score better than whites if the tests were appropriate. Did I mention that you guys have small penises and you're just jealous that black men have big penises and could give it to me so hard? Back to test scores and statistics, statistics are really just a ploy of racist whites to keep People of Color down, same with victim surveys (racist eyes), track and field, and education. All racist and all wrong. In fact, even reading those racist studies is racist, so I don't do that.
Finally, let me explain why People of Color have done everything good in this world. They commit no crime, it only looks that way because Law and Order has racist writers and so does the news and the crime pages and the newspapers and YouTube and cameras are racist too. People of Color have invented everything good in the world, but then white people stole it all because that's what the insidiously criminal white race does to the humble and generous and sacred People of Color, with their hard bodies and their voices and their chocolate skin and their rapping, oh their hardcore rapping is so great. So white people steal stuff and then try to take credit for all the great stuff invented by People of Color who are way better than they are. Whites just can't compete with People of Color so that's why they run and hide. But you can't hide for long racists, People of Color are taking over and we'll have our utopia of big, bad, brothas and their doorags and their Tim boots and oh yea, can't wait for that. People of Color will rise up and then we'll have the society we always wanted where there is no crime, no oppression, no victimization, and nothing wrong because any problem ever caused in the world, white people did it. Even if they didn't directly do it, they did it by being white and existing and also by looking at People of Color with their white privilege.
But the day is coming when People of Color will undermine white privilege and it will be great. So heed my advice you racists, with your math and statistics and incontrovertible evidence for every single racial disparity, you will rue the day when People of Color, the rainbow coalition, rises up against you and your horrible society with the highest standard of living, the best medicine, the most stable social landscape, and the most opportunity for success. When this racist society comes crashing down on your racist heads, you will understand how it feels and you should grovel for the forgiveness of People of Color who have done the thankless work to keep your society going - running drugs and guns across the border, working in your prisons (for free!), maintaining gang life, rapping about bitches and hoes, and updating the lexicon and social landscape with stuff like making it rain and droppin' it to the flo'.
White privilege is done racists. So take your computers, your technology, your food, your modern medicine, your democracy, your poetry, your music, your low level of crime, your civic service, your academia, your science, your philosophy, and your stable societies and shove it.
Oh and race is a social construct, we're all the same except blacks are the best, there's more variation in group than out group, tests are all biased, institutional racism, white supremacy, Western beauty standards, and mother's basement losers small penis in the ass jealous.
Click the above link for an UPDATE
I am glad that OneSTDV, despite being an incorrigible racist, has given me this outlet to inform you inbred hicks about true racism and legacy of the authoritarian menace that is the white race and the nefarious deeds said race has foisted upon People of Color in lands that they have never been welcome in despite thinking that they are welcome there, indubitably. Since I am currently studying these courses at a top American university, I am far better equipped to understand the historical infractions engendered by the white race as it proffers its legacy of extirpation around the world. People of Color have been mere innocent bystanders as racist whites have taken over their lands, destroyed their traditions, rapaciously plundered all the intrepid innovations of People of Color, raped their women, and then had the audacity to impose upon them the racist standards of modern society. Just to be clear, you are all racist and I am only writing this post because it is incumbent upon the informed to inform the uninformed and even though I believe you all are inconsequentially perturbed and beyond redress, I have a duty to my brothers and sisters of color to do so.
Now I am a white male so one must understand that everything I say and everything I know is undeniably motivated by the insidious and vapid constructs of social and societal and political privilege that dominate this racist and sexist and colonialist and ableist and genderist and socially constructed and racist and sexist and biased and anti-fat and anti-anti society that I unfortunately must call home and that pays all my bills via student loans. So while I'll try my best to relay the information about historical legacies of structural and institutional racist sexism and People of Color suffering inherent to society's structures, only a handicapped, half-blind, fat, invalid, black, female-trans, lesbian could do so in a sufficient manner.
Since OneSTDV, probably because he's a racist, has only given me limited amount of space, let me just explain why you're all racists. First, you're all white and even those of you that aren't white have been fomented by the invidious constructs of social construction that underpin the institutional racism that pervades this society. In other words, white people are all racist because society makes them all that way. You can do nothing about it, only the tears of a Person of Color, preferably an illiterate lesbian from South Africa, can cure you of this affliction. White people can not understand the plight of People of Color because they are blinded by society and its inherent white morality, a morality that views all People of Color as intractably below them. Only People of Color can understand the vast problems of society because they must deal with white racists every single day and every single minute of their lives.
Further, every single white in the world should be held accountable for the collective moral transgressions of the white race. People of Color have been victimized by whites for far too long and until those past sins are expunged from the moral record of whites, either by disenfranchisement or as in killing such as in the justified killing of Amy Beihl, then whites must ask for forgiveness every day. Any crime committed by a Person of Color is justified because People of Color can never do any wrong. They are just reacting to a racist society and so anything they do, even killing for no reason, is justified and should be celebrated. Whites can never complain about crime because white people killed some People of Color in 1750 and we will never forget that. People of Color who commit crime today can never get back all the years of abuse from whites and so whatever they do now is just collective retribution for white transgressions of the past and so I think every Person of Color criminal is actually a hero because they are righting a wrong inferred by the callous actions of the white man, who is bad.
People of Color do not commit crimes then, they commit acts of justified retribution. Every death of a white person, especially of a cop, is justified because People of Color can never do anything wrong. People of Color in prison are all innocent because they never did anything, it was racist judges and racist lawyers and racist policemen and racist shopowners and racist grandmothers and racist dogs and racist squirrels and racist buildings and racist cars.
Damn, you hicks just don't understand the struggle. I grew up in New Hampshire and I knew a black kid once and I felt for him so much because all the other kids at school were so nice to him and so willing to include him in everything they did. And all the other parents would treat him like all the other kids. Damn racists.
Now, I know you racists will throw out some racist stuff like test scores and everything, but those are culturally biased. Asians score better only because they hate themselves. Blacks would actually score better than whites if the tests were appropriate. Did I mention that you guys have small penises and you're just jealous that black men have big penises and could give it to me so hard? Back to test scores and statistics, statistics are really just a ploy of racist whites to keep People of Color down, same with victim surveys (racist eyes), track and field, and education. All racist and all wrong. In fact, even reading those racist studies is racist, so I don't do that.
Finally, let me explain why People of Color have done everything good in this world. They commit no crime, it only looks that way because Law and Order has racist writers and so does the news and the crime pages and the newspapers and YouTube and cameras are racist too. People of Color have invented everything good in the world, but then white people stole it all because that's what the insidiously criminal white race does to the humble and generous and sacred People of Color, with their hard bodies and their voices and their chocolate skin and their rapping, oh their hardcore rapping is so great. So white people steal stuff and then try to take credit for all the great stuff invented by People of Color who are way better than they are. Whites just can't compete with People of Color so that's why they run and hide. But you can't hide for long racists, People of Color are taking over and we'll have our utopia of big, bad, brothas and their doorags and their Tim boots and oh yea, can't wait for that. People of Color will rise up and then we'll have the society we always wanted where there is no crime, no oppression, no victimization, and nothing wrong because any problem ever caused in the world, white people did it. Even if they didn't directly do it, they did it by being white and existing and also by looking at People of Color with their white privilege.
But the day is coming when People of Color will undermine white privilege and it will be great. So heed my advice you racists, with your math and statistics and incontrovertible evidence for every single racial disparity, you will rue the day when People of Color, the rainbow coalition, rises up against you and your horrible society with the highest standard of living, the best medicine, the most stable social landscape, and the most opportunity for success. When this racist society comes crashing down on your racist heads, you will understand how it feels and you should grovel for the forgiveness of People of Color who have done the thankless work to keep your society going - running drugs and guns across the border, working in your prisons (for free!), maintaining gang life, rapping about bitches and hoes, and updating the lexicon and social landscape with stuff like making it rain and droppin' it to the flo'.
White privilege is done racists. So take your computers, your technology, your food, your modern medicine, your democracy, your poetry, your music, your low level of crime, your civic service, your academia, your science, your philosophy, and your stable societies and shove it.
Oh and race is a social construct, we're all the same except blacks are the best, there's more variation in group than out group, tests are all biased, institutional racism, white supremacy, Western beauty standards, and mother's basement losers small penis in the ass jealous.
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