Richard Falconer's thesis confirmed

In my series Sword of the Bright Lady, the rate of expansion of the universe is revealed to be tied to morality: good acts slow it down, and evil acts speed it up.

Which is why the news that the universe is too thin and expanding too rapidly for our current models to explain does not surprise me at all.

Philosophy in Fantasy

I found something to watch with Sophie - The Dragon Prince on NetFlix. She watched it because it has dragons in it, specifically a very cute baby dragon. I watched it because it's a pastiche of every fantasy epic ever - there are direct lines and scenes swiped from Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings (including "One does not simply walk into..."), and a dozen other films. It feels like homage, but I'm worried that when Sophie's generation watches those original sources they'll think they are riffing off of The Dragon Prince.

The film is pretty clearing aimed at kids, keeping the bloodshed to a minimum, the romances to holding hands and kissing, and the logistics to entire armies showing up just when they're needed (especially in a scene that totally riffs off of Sansa showing up at the Battle of the Bastards, which of course itself riffed off of Gandalf showing up at Helm's Deep). Despite that, the jokes were well-delivered, the plot was coherent, and the characters were nuanced. In particular most of the tragedy is shown to stem from bad choices made for good reasons.

At one point, however, the show leaps ahead of all of its peers. The king explains Lady Justice has three aspects: the sword, the scales, and the blindfold. He chooses the blindfold so he can know what justice is, and in doing so expresses John Rawl's Theory of Justice in a paragraph. (For those of you who have forgotten, I essentially credit Rawl's theory as the entire underpinning of all morality).

A little research shows I wasn't the only one who noticed this, and as it turns out the author had taken a class with John Rawls. So now I'm jealous and impressed.

I whole-heartedly recommend the show. Its YA-orientation doesn't put me off like His Dark Materials does, for reasons I can't quite name but probably because TDP knows it's for kids and winks at it. And I welcome this trend of real philosophy showing up on TV. Maybe The Good Place has started something.

The New Aristocracy

The new aristocracy is the 9.9%. They have convinced themselves that they deserve to be at the top because of their superior intelligence, talent, and work ethic. And yet, somehow, those traits get passed on to their kids... but not through genetics. More through legacy college admissions and other mechanisms of privilege.

Here in Australia college really is meritocratic. You need good scores to get into good schools, and all the schools are free (you have to pay them back after you graduate, but only if you earn enough money. The point is if you are accepted to a good school you can afford to go). So what's a wealthy family to do? Private high school. Many of which charge over $12,000 a year.

Elite colleges don't have better instruction, they have better research projects. Go to an elite college and your Teaching Assistant is doing Nobel prize work as his day job. That has obvious advantages, but the point is that the advantage isn't so much from teaching skill as other factors. Factors that don't apply to high schools. The education isn't that much better at a private high school than at a public one.

What does apply, though, is sending your children to school with the children of the rich. Not just because all of the kids there are studying all of the time (so your kid does it through peer pressure) but because the connections they make will keep them in the aristocratic class more than any education they get.

“Our new multiracial, gender-neutral meritocracy has figured out a way to make itself hereditary.” - The Birth of the New American Aristocracy

And in one of the enduring absurdities that always makes me crazy:

You see, when educated people with excellent credentials band together to advance their collective interest, it’s all part of serving the public good by ensuring a high quality of service, establishing fair working conditions, and giving merit its due. That’s why we do it through “associations,” and with the assistance of fellow professionals wearing white shoes. When working-class people do it—through unions—it’s a violation of the sacred principles of the free market. It’s thuggish and anti-modern. Imagine if workers hired consultants and “compensation committees,” consisting of their peers at other companies, to recommend how much they should be paid. The result would be—well, we know what it would be, because that’s what CEOs do.

The First White President

Ta-Nehisi Coates is on fire here. Epic in scope, eloquence, and truth.

But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.
The First White President

I only wish I could use the word "eldritch" with such potency.

There is a scene in 12 Angry Men where one of the jurors goes off on a racist rant. The other men freeze him out: they turn away, cross their arms, frown, and refuse to speak to him. That was a model of racial awareness for its day, but the problem is it remained the model.

We passive beneficiaries of white maleness can no longer follow that model. We have to stand up and engage; we have to confront; we have to actively combat. The men in that room should have spoken back. They should have argued, condemned, shouted, and then had the racist thrown off the jury.

We can't tolerate Uncle Bob saying racist things at the Thanksgiving table anymore. We have to speak up: "You're wrong, you're racist, and you have to leave now. And you can't come back until you understand the most important thing of all: you are wrong."

Filling in the Drake equation

Yes, there have been aliens

The odds that we are the first and last technological civilization seem to be irrational, as the article says, now that we know how many planets exist that could support life.

Which, in it is way, is depressing; because it implies that the controlling factor of the Drake equation is "how long a technological civilization lives," and that factor must be very, very small.

The Englishman in Kansas

A most extraordinary text, and this only in the editor's foreward, discussing the nature of the South and its peculiar institution:

I have seen a girl, twelve years old, in a district where, in ten miles, the slave population was fifty to one of the free, stop an old man on the public road, demand to know where he was going, and by what authority, order him to face about and return to his plantation; and enforce her command with turbulent anger, when he hesitated, by threatening that she would him well whipped if he did not instantly obey. The man quailed like a spaniel, and she instantly resumed the manner of a lovely child with me, no more apprehending that she had acted unbecomingly than that her character had been influence by the slave's submission to her caprice of supremacy; no more conscious that she had increased the security of her life by strengthening the habit of the slave to the master race, than is the sleeping seaman that he tightens his clutch of the rigging as the ship meets each new billow.

I do not think I could write such an incident in my fiction, and get away with it. No one would credit it.

The foreward is about the effect the South's reliance upon instant and savage violence has upon its people. living as they did in a permanent "state of siege." I cannot help but see the echo of "a good man with a gun," and this sense that everyone, everywhere must be always armed and prepared to engage the enemy, whether they be thugs, terrorists, or the walking dead.

And this phrase, from later on: "an idolatrous estimate of the virtue of physical courage." Does anything better describe "a good man with a gun?"

Is this chutzpa, karma, or irony?

Noted anti-Obamacare activist Sheriff Mack now has a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover... his medical bills.

http://www.gofundme.com/helpsheriffmack

The best part are the comments and the donations, which are utterly dominated by liberals and progressives telling Mr. Mack just how foolish he has been... and then donating money anyway.

I love those people. They are leading by example, showing Mack in the most unambiguous way how to be a better person. Unfortunately, I can't join them, as my own private code of ethics prevents me from giving money to scammers, and past history tells me that anything any RWNJ does is always, always, always a scam for money.

Something else Obama and I have in common

I loved Spock.

When I was a kid I barely tolerated that loud-mouthed, pushy. manic-depressive buffoon of a captain. Spock was quite literally the only adult on the show. At one point he explains to Dr. McCoy, "It's not that I don't have emotions, Dr. Its that I don't let them control my actions." (OK I can't find this quote, but I certainly remember it, so it is an accurate impression of what I thought Spock was all about).

Spock was a role model for all nerds. We knew that our intellect would always be subordinate to some hairy ape's power lust, but at least Spock showed us we could be cool while we did it.

The new opiate of the masses is outrage

This is a excellent article that sums up why people choose to inflict outrage on themselves.

They said one possibility is that negative emotions represent “a reliable source of arousal, one that can be continuously converted into positive affect as long as people place themselves within a given protective frame.” This protective frame can actually take several forms: it can be that the individual feels the danger of the stimulus but has the confidence to overcome it; or that a “safety zone” is created, where the individual places herself sufficiently away from the danger; or, finally, that the individual observes the danger but simply doesn’t engage with it.

The Psychology Today article also notes that the expression of outrage signals affiliation—we know you’re on our side if you exhibit the same level of indignation at the same perceived violations. And since there is safety in numbers, when we see and hear the thousands of comments in our respective echo chamber we know we’re not alone—and this is likely what gives us such confidence to deal with those violations. We enjoy feeling outrage because it increases our sense of camaraderie with like-minded fellow believers. And as Tetlock says, true believers “seek reassurance from each other that their beliefs are not mere social conventions but rather are anchored in backstop or sacred values beyond challenge.”

Not only does this explain Fox News, it also explains the doctrine of Hell. Defining actions as moral crimes worthy of outrage, coupled with the protective frame of God's forgiveness, allows the believer to safely engage in negative emotions. Like a horror movie, he can scare himself silly and yet enjoy it because he knows he is safe. This creates camaraderie with other believers, which in itself feels good. But there is a more insidious aspect to that camaraderie: because belief in the protective frame is difficult to sustain, the support of the group becomes doubly necessary. The fact that the idea of God is not independently derivable from empirical observation and requires an act of faith means that a group of like-minded believers is necessary to maintain that faith. And since that faith is the protective mechanism, the group becomes inescapable: the more you indulge in the outrage and fear, the more protection you need, which means the more you need to identify with the group. And the group exists to indulge in outrage and fear. It's a self-feeding cycle.

It also means that de-converting someone is literally rescuing them from hell (or at least their imagination of it); but, like Marx's famous quote, it's not as easy as it sounds. Have you ever tried to get between a junkie and his opiate? He'll knife you in an instant. In the same way, people who are quaking in fear of Hellfire are actually thrilled; just like being in combat, every second counts, every action is significant, colors are brighter, sounds are louder, and the sense of engagement and presence in the world is turned up to 11. But unlike combat, this state is enjoyable, because they are certain they will emerge unscathed.

In other words, those hellfire and damnation traveling tent shows were the equivalent of the Saw movies. And watching Fox news is like playing Doom with your buddies. Outrage is the junk food of the mind, and the USA will stop gorging on it just as soon as McDonald's closes up shop.

(Note: this mechanism might also explain the growing contingent on the Left that seems to glory in how irreparably broken democracy seems to be. Escape I can't figure out what their protective frame is.)

Japan leading by example

This is a fascinating look at Japan, but what I wanted to highlight was this:

People I interacted with in Japan seemed to be intent on being honest and conscientious in their work because it was part of a cultural code of conduct. That’s just the way we do it in Japan is what it felt like to me...

Within a few days in Japan, my cynicism was replaced by trust, which made me begin to feel an obligation to the society as a whole to keep within the social code of integrity.

We are social animals. We copy what others do, especially if those others are social leaders. Now look at how many of our social leaders behave, from celebrities to politicians. That should explain a lot.

Trust is the most valuable cultural asset, and the Libertarian enterprise to reduce everyone to a profit-seeking machine destroys that trust. I don't particularly want to live in Japan (its social conformity has plenty of downsides), but the basic concept of integrity is something that is self-replicating. Sadly, that's the only way it replicates: people are only trustworthy after others have been trustworthy to them.

The solution to the police state

The solution to police brutality is already available: What happens when Police wear body-cams.

Of course it's not perfect. Any system has flaws and potential for abuse or misuse.

But the fundamental point is that people cannot remain moral without accountability. This is not a knock on police officers; it is a statement about human nature. We are feedback loops; if no one is standing beside us to frown when we drift in the wrong direction, we literally go off the rails. We have known this since forever: "absolute power corrupts absolutely" was well-understood long before John Dalberg-Acton wrote it down. And haven't internet forums exhaustively proven that anonymity = douchebaggery?

In the first year the Rialto police force wore these cameras, complaints about police behavior went down by 88%. That is incredible. Can you imagine any other technology increasing quality of customer satisfaction by that much and yet not being instantly adopted by every company everywhere? What is stopping every police chief in the country from reducing his civilian complaint file by a factor of ten via the trivial expense of a few cameras?

Much more tellingly, the use of force went down by 60%. Now there can be a lot of explanations for this: perhaps perpetrators who were aware their actions were being recorded were reminded to behave better, lest a jury see their intransigence. But it is hard to dismiss the notion that police use of force had perhaps been higher than strictly necessary the year before.

It was not too long ago that people were being threatened with severe criminal penalties merely for filming cops performing arrests (sometimes even when they were the arrestee). It may not be too far in the future when every public servant who is legally authorized to wield deadly force must also wield a camera. And when that day comes, we will look back on today the same way we look back at the early firearms that lacked safety catches.

Paul Krugman finally catches up to me

Inequality is a drag

And this, in turn, implies that redistribution — that is, taxing the rich and helping the poor — may well raise, not lower, the economy’s growth rate.

Apparently, the leading economic minds of the day are beginning to grasp the fact that Ronald Reagan sold us all a lie. Voodoo economics, it turns out, really is just voodoo. All this nonsense about the Laffer curve really is just laughable. Everything the ordinary citizen of the last two decades thinks about the economy is simply bunk. All lowering taxes does is make everyone poorer.

The secret to a healthy economy is high taxes. The reason is as simple as it is obvious. What makes an economy grow? DEMAND. Nobody builds a factory because they have a lot of money; they build a factory because the one they have isn't making enough stuff. And what drives demand? SPENDING. You have to spend to create demand. And what do governments do with all the money they collect in taxes? THEY SPEND IT.

This is so mind-numbingly simple as to defy explanation. How could those Austrians have been so wrong, but more to the point, how can the educated population of the world not see how wrong they are? For over 30 years the economies of the world have been driven by this idiotic inversion of basic truth, and the result is massive injustice, financial panics, and crumbling infrastructure.

Taking money from people who have it and then spending it makes the economy go. If you can't understand this, you're probably the kind of person who can't understand why fiat currency is better than a gold standard. Taxes are in fact why the world has progressed past subsistence farming.

If you think that rich people deserve their money, because they made it all by themselves without any help from anyone else, then just consider taxes as the price we charge for calculus. You want to avoid taxes? Fine, make your money without calculus, or logic, or democracy, or literacy, or fire, or any of the rest of the heritage of civilization and knowledge that you inherited for free.

This reminds me of an old joke, ironically a Christian one, which makes it even stranger that the people who often tell this joke don't see how it applies to their own economic prejudices:

God was once approached by a scientist who said, “Listen God, we’ve decided we don’t need you anymore. These days we can clone people, transplant organs and do all sorts of things that used to be considered miraculous.”

God replied, “Don’t need me huh? How about we put your theory to the test. Why don’t we have a competition to see who can make a human being, say, a male human being.”

The scientist agrees, so God declares they should do it like he did in the good old days when he created Adam.

“Fine” says the scientist as he bends down to scoop up a handful of dirt.

“Whoa!” says God, shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast. You get your own dirt.”

Stories that bring sermons to life

Is it wrong of me to tell Libertarians - get your own math?

Police State back on track

Mother arrested for letting daughter play in park

So this woman is working at McDonald's. She can't afford child care, obviously, so she takes her daughter to work. The kid gets bored after a few days, so Mom gives her a cell phone and lets her go to the local park. Someone else at the park is so concerned about the possibility that the child will be snatched by strangers (never mind that the chance of that is lower now than any time in America's history) that she calls the police.

The end result? The police - who are of course strangers to the girl and her mom - take the kid away. Then they arrest the mom.

Once again, we see the police preventing a crime by committing it.

The only danger the child was in was the potential danger of being snatched. The only harm here was a child that might be abducted by strangers. And the state's response is to have the child abducted by strangers.

America is now officially a Police State

Virgina police have a warrant to photograph a teenage boy's penis


On top of all the other stories - forced enemas, setting fire to toddlers, etc. - comes a story that, in its way, is worse than all of those. This is not just overzealousness; this is officially insane.

The basic story is that a teenage girl sexted her teenage boyfriend some naughty pictures, and he responded in kind. The girl's mother saw his picture and called the police.

The girl is 15 and the boy is 17. Whatever you think about teenagers having sex, the law in this case treats it as a misdemeanor. Calling the police in the first place was an insane act by the mother, which is going to cost her any chance at a relationship with her daughter, but whatever. The cops actually pursuing it is pretty stupid, but whatever.

But it doesn't stop there.

The cops are going for a child pornography charge, apparently under the theory that a law designed to stop sexual exploitation of minors can be used to charge a minor with sexually exploiting himself. The idea that two kids can have physical sex and be charged with a misdemeanor, but if they take pictures of themselves not having sex it's a felony that lands them on the pedophile list for life, is insane. If I stopped the story right now, you'd be like, "That's f*cking insane."

But it doesn't stop there.

In an effort to prove that the boy is the perpetrator, the cops apparently sought and received a warrant to reproduce the photograph as evidence. That's right, they plan to “just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need.”

So: to enforce a law that protects children from sexual trauma and exploitation for adult ends, the cops intend to sexually traumatize and exploit a child for adult ends.

Mind you, we're not talking about a rape/murder case where they need to prove who the perpetrator is. The only crime greater than a speeding ticket is a picture on a phone. We're not talking about harassment or stalking or assault; the girl is not an innocent victim of a brutish predator. The only sin here is a teenage girl disobeying her mother by her choice of boyfriend.

But even the wildly disproportionate response to the trivial issue is not the problem. That's just par for the course; that ship sailed long ago when SWAT teams started delivering summons. What makes this case so much worse than all the others is the Kafkian absurdity of the police obtaining evidence for a crime by committing the same crime.

How could any sane human being think that forcibly inducing an erection in an underage boy and then forcibly subjecting him to photography by strangers is an appropriate way to protect children from being sexually exploited by adults?

What the hell are the police going to do with the photograph? Show it to the jury as evidence? It's one thing to show a jury a stash of filthy pictures you found, it's something else to manufacture child pornography to show the jury.

Maybe they'll just have their experts examine it and determine if the two match. Can you imagine the defense attorney's cross examination? "Please tell the court, sir, what your professional qualifications are. Just how many hours have you spent looking at underage boy's erect penises?"

Setting fire to toddlers, however horrific, is still just violence out of control. Forcibly searching a person for drugs by administering enemas, however sick, is still just the cops trying to beat the bad guys. But this is another level entirely. This is the not the abandonment of reason, it is the embrace of unreason.

This is not just careless disregard for human life, this is not just viewing people as a means to an end, this is not just using the law without regards to its intent: this is the perversion of the entire concept of criminal justice, making the cops worse criminals than the bad guys. In a world where reporting sexual assault results in you being raped by the police, we are better off without police. Anarchy would be safer than living under the kind of police officers that could utter the above quote without spontaneously combusting out of pure irony.

But this is not madness. This is not simple insanity; the true offense here is obvious. The police offered the boy a chance to plead guilty, and only resorted to this strong-arm tactic when he dared to assert his rights under the law. This is punishment for defiance of state power. This is authority for authority's sake.

This is the Taliban.

UPDATE: Apparently the police have decided not to pursue this opportunity because of the public outcry. So apocalypse is averted - but only temporarily. It's not like any of the police or the judge will lose their jobs. They'll just wait a until next time and hope the press doesn't catch wind of it.

UPDATE: One of my loyal readers (thanks, Dad!) has alerted me to the fact that the boy is now on probation, and charges will probably be dismissed in a year. This is a perfect metaphor for America: things slide out of control until people start paying attention. Participating in politics is not a right, it is a duty. The system doesn't work unless people do their part, which means paying attention, being reasonable, and voting.

Paul Krugman has a more optimistic view

Well, think about global warming from the point of view of someone who grew up taking Ayn Rand seriously, believing that the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest is always good and that government is always the problem, never the solution. Along come some scientists declaring that unrestricted pursuit of self-interest will destroy the world, and that government intervention is the only answer. It doesn’t matter how market-friendly you make the proposed intervention; this is a direct challenge to the libertarian worldview.
Interests, Ideology And Climate 

In Krugman's view, the only real problem is ideological. I agree. All of my arguments with libertarians have gone the most screwy at precisely the moment when I point out that the looming environmental crisis cannot be managed by the free market.

These are data points that are unassailable: we are heading for disaster, and the only solution is collective action. Libertarians can only respond by ignoring the scientific facts, ignoring the consequences of their own ideology, or by embracing defeatism - essentially, our destruction is inevitable and inescapable.

Think about that. These people would rather see the world burn than admit that their governing philosophy is simply bunk. But that's not as defamatory as it seems, since it basically describes all people ever. It is only now, with the advent of science, that people can separate their personal worth and self-esteem from the factual positions they happen to hold at the moment. And even now, most people simply can't do it.

Because most people have built an edifice on those "facts," an edifice they know is unfair and unjust, and they rightly fear that if they surrender on those "facts" they will have to dismantle their edifice, and at that point they may well be required to account for the injustice they have done (or even merely be subject to someone else's injustice). By most people, of course, I mean the entire Western world which has consumed the lion's share of the Earth's resources for centuries.

An accounting is coming, either at our own hands or at the hands of Nature, in the form of brute reality; and as any biologist will rush to assure you, Nature is not by any definition merciful.

Blogging the end of the world

It starts here: Erza Klein lists seven reasons why it's too late.

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5779040/7-reasons-America-fail-global-warming

1. We waited too long. Self-explanatory.

2. The people most affected don't get to vote. For those of you who read Collapse by Jared Diamond, this is the number one reason societies collapse.

3. We're bad at sacrificing now for the future. As Neil Degrasse Tyson and Thomas Piketty keep pointing out, that is a design feature of capitalism.

4. The effects are not reversible. It's not like if we just stop burning carbon, things will go back to the way they were. These changes are effectively permanent.

5. The Republican party. Self-explanatory.

6. International cooperation is too hard. Here I think he is wrong; if America were leading the way on this, we could actually pull it off. There is a value to having a military roughly equivalent to the rest of the world combined; people listen when you speak. If the USA were of one heart and mind on this, we could make it happen. But see #5.

7. Blind faith in magic doesn't work. But I guess this is really just #5, again.

What am I doing about it? I only had one child, we own a single car, and I will be buying a house at least 10 meters above sea level.

Thomas Piketty summed up

Daily Kos referenced an article that summed up Piketty's book.

Piketty's research, which is immaculate, reaches back hundreds of years to establish a simple thesis: the American dream – and more broadly, the egalitarian promise of Western-style capitalism – does not, and maybe cannot, deliver on its promises. That, he writes, is because economic growth will always be smaller than the profits from any money that is invested. Economic growth is what we all benefit from, but profits from invested money accrue only to the rich.

The consequences of this are clear: those who have family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. It's Jane Austen all over again, and we've just fooled ourselves that the complicated financial system has changed a thing.

This is a deep point. Many American households, if they are lucky, will grow their wealth at the same rate as the economy. But, because the wealthy are growing their fortunes at a much faster rate, no one else can ever catch up.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/27/thomas-piketty-economist-american-dream

Catholics of yore

From an article discussing when Catholics on the Right were against capitalism. True, they were proto-libertarians and religious zealots, but I have to admire the passion in this passage:

Chesterton, always the better stylist than Belloc, could work himself into righteous fury in defense of the distributist ideal over the capitalist one. He gave that ideal a peroration in the book What's Wrong with the World that suffices as a conclusion for this article, because it has all the revolutionary romance and inevitability of Marx, but more moral force and beauty:

With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property, because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict's; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and multilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and slip and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down; and not one hair of her head shall be harmed. 

The conservative case against capitalism

Mencken on the Dunning-Kruger effect

The agents of such quackeries gain their converts by the simple process of reducing the inordinately complex to the absurdly simple.  Unless a man is already equipped with a considerable knowledge of chemistry, bacteriology and physiology, no one can ever hope to make him understand what is meant by the term anaphylaxis, but any man, if only he be idiot enough, can grasp the whole theory of chiropractic in twenty minutes.

- H.L. Mencken

An example of Privilege in action

This Duck Dynasty thing that's burning up the interwebs - turns out some Southern cracker is a homophobe, and apparently that's like news or something? - is the perfect example of privilege in action.

The cracker gives an interview, in which his homophobia is made plain; his employer decides that makes him not a cost-effective employee insomuch as his job is entertainment; and the right-wingers go ballistic because they think his freedom of speech is being abridged.

Three points. One, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. You can say anything you want, and people can react to it anyway they want.

Two. If the Federal Government sends men with guns to silence you, that's an abridgement of freedom of speech. Anything less... not so much.

Three, and by and far the biggie. The first two are just basic failure to understand concepts, which is nothing new. But the most important thing to notice here is that the people calling for the Federal cavalry to defend this man against his employer are the very same people who think that employers should be allowed to fire and hire at will for any reason including race, creed and color.

Apparently it should be OK by Federal law to fire a man for being black... but not for being a homophobe. You can refuse to sell cakes to gay weddings... but you can't refuse to employ people who say things about gays you don't like.

Here we see the knife of privilege cutting exactly one way, and one way only. Basically, they support freedom of speech when its speech they like. And apparently, there are lots and lots of people who like to talk smack about gay people.

I wonder how long they can keep the wall up? Given that they've pretty nakedly admitted that bashing gay people is protected speech, but defending gay people is not; how much longer before they just come out and admit that bashing black people is protected speech, but bashing racists is not? We came perilously close with the Paula Deen affair, and this seems like another step in that direction.

I, for one, would welcome it. Just say what you actually mean. Honesty is always the best policy. I read some of the things the Duck Dynasty patriarch said, and as one pundit said, they were at least said without malice. No doubt Duck Dude is a little surprised at all the froufrou (just as Paula Deen was). That's just the way he thinks. I applaud him for his honesty, and I wish the rest of the right-wingers would hurry up and join him. Just come right out and say it. Put down the dog whistles and plainly say what you mean.

Of course, it would be the near-instantaneous destruction of the Republican party; but even if it weren't, I would still prefer a world in which racism, sexism, and homophobia were openly recognized as what they are.

"The best antiseptic is sunlight," Mencken said, and I'm sure some long dead Greek guy said a similar thing. To put it in military terms, identifying the enemy is the first step in destroying him.