Johann Hari on Religious Censorship This video is an impassioned declaration on the importance of not allowing "sensitivities" and an unwillingness to offend become a force against free speech. It is also, underneath, an argument for rejecting the pseuodthink of irrational defenses of absurdity.
It’s the Fourth of July. I’ve been pondering whether or not to write something politically pithy or culturally au courant and here it is, almost noon, and I’ve made no decision. I think I pretty much said what I had to say about my feelings about this country a few posts back for Memorial Day, so I don’t think I’ll revisit that. Last night we sat on our front porch while the pre-Fourth fireworks went off in the surrounding neighborhood. Folks nearby spend an unconscionable amount of money on things that blow up and look pretty and we benefit from the show. Neither of us like large crowds, so going down to the St. Louis riverfront for the big explosion is just not an option. The older I get the less inclined I am to squeeze myself into the midst of so much anonymous humanity. We’ll likely go to bed early tonight after watching the rest of our neighborhood go up in brilliance, starbursts, and smoke. I suppose the only thing I’d like to say politically is a not very original observation about how so many people seem to misidentify the pertinent document in our history. The Declaration of Independence is often seen as more important than the Constitution and this is an error, one which leads us into these absurd cul-de-sacs of debate over the religious nature of our Founding. [More . . . ]
Rick Santorum exudes an unbelievable hypocrisy over abortion. You can read the article here. Basically, Mr. Santorum has it in mind to use the law to prohibit a medical procedure his wife had to go through in order to save her life. As the piece makes clear, in October of 1996, Karen Santorum underwent an abortion in the 19th week of pregnancy in order to save her life from an infected fetus. She had a 105 degree temperature. She would have died without the procedue. Santorum would make that option illegal. Basically, his position seems to be that sacrificing his wife for the fetus would be his choice now. This overlooks the fact that had they not done the procedure, the fetus would not have survived, either. He would have lost both. Sacrifices to his conscience, which seems incapable of the kind of triage humans must make all the time. Well and good, some people just can’t go there. But this man is running for president. He intends that his personal inability to cope be made a national policy of denying anyone the choice of coping. [More . . . ]
This morning I opened my front door to find a flier lying on the porch. I thought it was another local contractor ad or announcement of a barbecue-and-rummage sale, so I scooped it up to glance at it before dropping it in the recycle hopper. Instead, I find in my hand a vile piece of unconscionable poison. And it seemed like it would be such a nice day! I’m not going to dignify this crap by citing the source. The header of the two-side sheet reads: The Holocaust Controversy The Case For Open Debate. What follows is a putrid example of revisionist nonsense designed to suggest that six million Jews were not systematically slaughtered by the Third Reich. In tone, it is reasonable. It does not make many strident claims with exclamation points, just calmly asserts one bullshit “fact” after another (plus a photograph of an open pit containing the skeletonized remains of concentration camp victims labeling it a photo of typhus victims) to lay the groundwork for the claim that the Holocaust didn’t happen, that it is all a Big Lie assembled by a Zionist conspiracy to advance the cause of sympathy for stateless Jews in order to get them a state. [More . . . ]
Paul Ryan and his supporters are trying to sell their spending cut and lower tax program and they’re getting booed at town hall meetings. They’re finally cutting into people’s pockets who can’t defend themselves. They thought they were doing what their constituency wanted and must be baffled at this negative response. Okay, this might get a bit complicated, but not really. It just requires a shift in perspective away from the definition of capitalism we’ve been being sold since Reagan to something that is more descriptive of what actually happens. Theory is all well and good and can be very useful in specific instances, but a one-size-fits-all approach to something as basic as resources is destined to fail. Oh, I’m sorry, let me back up a sec there—fail if your stated goal is to float all boats, to raise the general standard of living, to provide jobs and resources sufficient to sustain a viable community at a decent level. If, on the other hand, your goal is to feed a machine that generates larger and larger bank accounts for fewer and fewer people at the expense of communities, then by all means keep doing what we’ve been doing. Here’s the basic problem. People think that the free market and capitalism are one and the same thing. They are not. THEY ARE CLOSELY RELATED and both thrive in the presence of the other, but they are not the same thing. But before all that we have to understand one thing---there is no such thing as a Free Market. None. Someone always dominates it, controls it, and usually to the detriment of someone else. How is it a free market when one of the most salient features of it is the ability of a small group to determine who will be allowed to participate and at what level? I’m not talking about the government here, I’m talking about big business, which as standard practice does all it can to eliminate competitors through any means it can get away with and that includes market manipulations that can devalue smaller companies and make them ripe for take-over or force them into bankruptcy.