A soldier's grieving mother and free speech.

Lottie Hermanson's son, Michael, was killed in Iraq. At his funeral the hateful fundamentalists from the Westboro Baptist Church showed up to taunt her and the rest of Michael's friends and family. As you no doubt know, the Supreme Court recently ruled such protests are legally protected by the First Amendment.

Lottie said: "Even though speech may be hurtful, wars mean things. If you're not free to speak your mind, your thoughts, then you're really not free. She endorsed a group called the Patriot Guard, which was formed to protect grieving families from the hateful "gospel" of the Jesus-mongers from Westboro. The head of that group, Tony Krogh, was also interviewed and said: "The decision was based on the fact that these soldiers have died protecting that freedom, the freedom of speech. ...[I]t is literally the reason these soldier give everything they have."

Now, I am sure these are fine people who are well intentioned, but they are wrong in a rather spectacular way. The proof is easy to understand. Imagine that when 9/11 took place that the US government responded, not by waging war on Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11, but with a world-wide hunt to capture the man who was responsible: bin Laden (No, I don't believe the 911 Truther bullshit and won't turn the comment section into a forum for that topic—so don't even try.)

Would freedom of speech be less secure had our government responded that way? No! Let us be clear, as far as I can tell, in at least the last 150 years, the American people never had their freedoms under threat by a foreign power that was actual able to deny them freedom. Not even the Soviets had the ability to strip Americans of freedom of speech. The only war of any significance that actually did end up protecting some rights, whether that was the purpose or not, was the Civil War. (No, I also don't buy the neo-confederate bullshit that comes out of some faux libertarian circles either and won't turn the comment section into a forum for that topic either.)

What has threatened American freedom has never been the enemies our government fought, often after creating them. What threatens American freedom is no on and nothing but the American government itself. They are the only entity able to smash constitutionally guaranteed rights in this country, and they are doing it with relish.

The war did not protect freedom. The war is the excuse by which government destroys freedom.

Remember the freedom guaranteed to be secure in your person and papers from warrantless searches. Gone. The government took it to fight terrorists. During World War I and II we had Americans incarcerated for opposing the war. The enemy didn't take away their freedom of speech, the government did. It wasn't Hitler who put American civilians in concentration camps—it was Roosevelt, the great saint of the American Left.

The Patriot Act, allegedly set up to defend freedom, has done more to destroy freedom than bin Laden could ever hope to do. It is not radical Islamists who strip Americans of their rights, it is the government that the American people put into power that does it.

The Soviet Union, at its height could not touch freedom in America. It couldn't put on show trials and force Americans to defend what they do or don't believe. That was Joseph McCarthy not Joseph Stalin. It was the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and I would certainly say they were an "unAmerican" committee, that forced Americans to testify about their beliefs.

War is not a means of protecting rights, not in reality, but an engine for the subtle, sometimes blatant, destruction of rights. Each of the "great" wars in our history left the American people with fewer rights and freedoms than they had when they went into the war. There is little question that the people we went to war against were unpleasant individuals, but as unpleasant as they were, none of them were actually able to strip us of guaranteed freedoms.

They might have been able to inflict some limited harm on some Americans in some places. But they could never make all of us less free, not even most of us. Bin Laden plotted and succeeded in taking the lives of a few thousand Americans. But he couldn't touch the Bill of Rights, for that he needed accomplices in the United States government. Bin Laden understood the paranoid political center well. He was explicit in saying that his attack on the United States would have small impact in destroying the America he hated. But he also said that the response that the US government would put into place would do that work for him.

He realized that the only way he could destroy American freedom is to get the United States government to do that job for him. In that sense he was a lot smarter than the president he faced down. George Bush did bin Laden's bidding, albeit unwittingly. Bush wasn't alone. The United States Congress lined up to almost unanimously strip away freedoms, in the name of protecting freedom.

It is not the enemies we face who threaten our rights or our freedoms. While we have foreign enemies they can't harm the freedom of the American people. It is the domestic threat fostered by war that does that. War is the health of the state, and a healthy state is always a formidable threat to freedom.

I would also like to close with a brief discussion of the Supreme Court ruling on the Westboro case.

Chief Justice Roberts said that speech can "inflict great pain" but that under the First Amendment "we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker" and thus we must protect "even hurtful speech." Roberts said that the Westboro morons at least highlight "the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military and scandals involve the Catholic clergy," which are "matters of public import."

But, sexuality is also a matter of public import. It is also about morality. Yet, the Supreme Court would not afford sexual speech these same protections. Just as the First Amendment made no exceptions for hate speech or for offensive speech, neither did it make an exception for "obscene" speech.

If pain is not a sufficient reason for inhibiting speech then why is "disgust" a sufficient reason?

Roberts said that Westboro's actions are "certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible." Both are true. But erotica is similar in that it can certainly disgust some people and perhaps its contributions to discourse are negligible, but pornographers don't have the same rights at Westboro's nutters do. I can assure you that far more people would rather read a porn magazine than be subjected to Westboro hate.

Consider how the Supreme Court treats these two forms of speech so very differently. Under court rulings an erotic publican can be declared "obscene" with no objective definition, based on the undefined "community standards" of the location where it is possessed. A police thug in Florida can order a publication from California and then prosecute the California producer according the backwater values of the swamp people in his area of the country.

Westboro Baptist can violate community standards in every neighbor of every state with impunity, according to the Supreme Court. Speech that inflicts severe pain on people, says the Court, is absolutely protected but speech that gives a lot of people pleasure, may be banned and punished.

Yes, there can be some weird shit, and I mean that literally, in some forms of porn. But it isn't inflicted on unwilling participants the way Westboro does at funerals. Surely erotica ought to have the same protections that Westboro hate has. That it doesn't is itself enlightening. Apparently the Supreme Court is fine with inflicting pain but has problems with pleasure. And to me, that is very kinky indeed.

What passes as obscene in Arkansas.

Elton John and spouse, David Furnish recently had a child using a surrogate. US magazine ran this cover of the couple and the baby.

In Arkansas, a small state located between Mississippi and the 4th Century, a local grocery store got complaints that the cover was offensive to the good Christian folks that inhabit the thriving metropolis of Mountain Home, where men are men and their sisters are nervous.

Harps grocery store decided that since some good Christians were unhappy they had to take immediate action. This is what they did.

The "Family Shield" says it is there to "protect young shoppers." I'd bet a doughnut that no "young" shoppers actually complained. Of course, in Mountain Home, the median age is 53 and 36% of the population is over 65, so young is relative there. The town, which has a population of just over 12,000, has 15 churches, 10 of which appear to be fundamentalist.

A spokesman for the grocery store said they put the "Family Shield" up because of complaints. Asked if they would have done the same regarding a complaint about a straight couple and their child the spokesman lost his voice after saying, "no comment." After that all journalists calling for information received a curt "no comment" and phones were hung up on them.

Our man-on-the-street interviews (notice to the humorously challenged, satire to follow) got the pulse of the town. We interviewed Darryl Dungswamp and Cheryll Dungswamp. Since this was a "Family Shield" we asked them if they were a family.

Darryl: "Well, we is married if that's what's yer asking. But Cheryll here is a liberated woman and used her maiden name."

Us: (Not to be confused with the obscene magazine) "Okay, but didn't you say Cheryll's last name is Dungwamp as well."

Darryl: "That's right. Her maiden name is Dungswamp, just like mine."

Us: "Isn't that confusing?"

Darryl: "Round these parts it is. You could just call her Cousin Cherryl, I do."

Us: "What do you think of the controversy about the magazine cover at Harps."

Cherryl: "I knew it would only be a matter of time before godlessness would creep in to the city. Let in filth like magazines and pretty soon they'd be perversion all over the place. Right Counsin Darryl?"

Darryl: "You's said it Cherryl. It all started when the library went out and added books to the shelves. Reading ain't natural, you have to recruit kids into doing it. If God intended us to read we wouldn't have to be taught how to do it."

Us; "So, is it true that you required black folks to ride at the back of the bus."

Darryl: "Course not! We''s enlightened. What's a bus?"

Cherryl: "What's a black folk?"

Motes, beams and whinging Christians

Here is the story that has caught the attention of Christians around the world, especially the right-wing types. As usual there is more than meets the eye and their accounts are not entirely truthful.

A fundamentalist Baptist was standing on the street in England yelling out one of his typical sermons to people who found themselves within earshot of the man. Among his content was the usual rant that fundamentalists have against those demonic homosexuals, their favorite scapegoat for all that is wrong in the world today. He was then arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act for causing "harassment, alarm, or distress." He was told that he couldn't do this in public again. Keep the words "harassment, alarm, or distress" in mind.

Right-wing websites are in an uproar. One site falsely claimed that the same sort of arrest could happen in America because of hate crime legislation. There is no truth to that claim. The right-wing Melanie Phillips claimed that the minister was arrested merely for "preaching Christian principles," and that this is proof that "the attempt to stamp out Christianity in Britain appears to be gathering pace." According, to Phillips this is being done "under the rubric of promoting tolerance and equality—but only towards approved groups" and "some people are more equal than others." Phillips seems quite clear that while gays are protected Christians are not.


Phillips tried to tie this into unrelated cases to prove her claim that poor Christians are being oppressed in England. She lies about the actions of one "poor pensioner" who she says merely complained to her council about a gay parade. I covered this case and the "poor pensioner" was an antigay campaigner who went to a gay event and intentionally insulted people and then demanded they be censored by the law when they were rude to her in return. That, as we shall see, is fairly typical for Christian conservatives.

Phillips also wrote of government employees who were fired for being Christians. In fact they were fired for refusing to do the job they were hired to do. These were civil servants who refused to give services to gay people that are routine for others. If a Christian won't do their job they should be fired just as any employee who refuses to do their job should be fired. Religion is not an excuse for failure to perform according to the job contract. Phillips apparently thinks it is. In another case she laments how someone could lose a job for wearing a cross. Again that is the typical distortion of the Religious Right. In that case the employer had a rule against all employees wearing any jewelry, regardless of the content. Christians weren't being singled out.

The Christian Institute, in the UK, which always get involved in these cases, has come to the Baptist's defense claiming his rights as a Christian are being violated. Catholic conservative Cristina Odone made reference to "inquisitors" fuelled by "a vicious secularism that allows no tolerance for views based on Christian values." I guess as a Catholic she would be an expert on the Inquisition, after all, they invented it.

Make no mistake about it, I don't condone the arrest. It was wrong. But it is not an example of Christians being singled out for persecution, as they would have you believe.

The law is question is bad. Unlike all the Christians who have whinged about this case I actually support freedom of speech for everyone. None of them do. They are merely a special interest group wanting to protect their turf. They want the right to criticize and condemn others but equally wish to deny others the right to criticize or condemn Christianity.

Here is some evidence. While we all have read about the Baptist bigot who got arrested, how many heard about the atheist arrested on the exact same charge? His crime, however, was insulting Christians. According to the BBC, Harry Taylor, was "found guilty of causing religious aggravate intentional harassment, alarm or distress" because he left anti-religious leaflets in the Liverpool airport "prayer room." (Why do airports need prayer rooms but bus stations don't?)

These two incidents were only a few weeks apart. Yet the one got hardly any notice while the Christian Right has been bleating about the other endlessly.

Taylor had leaflets with cartoons. One showed Jesus on the cross smiling as he advertised "no nails" glue. Another showed Islamists at heaven's gate being told: "Stop, stop, we've run out of virgins." According to the BBC the chaplain at the airport was "severely distressed" by the cartoons. Really? What a wimp! Taylor was banned "from carrying religiously offensive material in a public place," and given a suspended six month jail term, 100 hours of unpaid work and a £250 fine.

Notice that Taylor was charged with precisely the same offense. But his punishment was far more severe than that inflicted on the Baptist. The Baptist stood on a step-ladder shouting at people. Taylor left leaflets sitting around. But I can't find any prominent right-wing columnist lamenting the death of free speech in Taylor's case. These right-wing hypocrites are selective advocates of freedom of speech. Their view is: "Free speech for me, censorship for thee."

What these cases show is the totalitarian nature of England's laws on speech. I've argued that before. It is not merely an attack on Christian values, as the Right wants to pretend. It is an attack on the most fundamental secular right of all—the right to express an opinion, even an offensive one. This is an assault on classical liberal values, not on Christian values. Christians don't value freedom of speech.

What is especially irksome in these hypocritical rants is that some of the same groups lobbied for legislation to prevent criticism of religion. The Vatican lobbied for laws restricting the right to criticize religion. When the controversy over the cartoons of the alleged Prophet Mohammad started in Denmark, Vatican officials were out in public demanding censorship and special laws restricting freedom of speech. Cardinal Ersilio Tonini said "Freedom of the press, including satire, must stop where religious belief begins." Cardinal Achille Silvestrini said: "Western culture must find a limit to its goal of making freedom an absolute. We too, here in Europe, should rebel against the idea of mocking religious symbols."

According to one Catholic site Cardinal Silestrini "said Christianity has similar sensitivities." Aldoo Giordano, general secretary of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, said on Vatican radio that the satire used regarding Mohammad "goes against human rights" and that "the entire Christian world is very saddened and pained by satire of this type, aimed at the brothers of another religion."

Cristina Odone didn't utter a peep about that, but then it was the actual source of the Inquisition demanding the censorship, so she was fine.

The Vatican itself issued a statement regarding the cartoons that expressly said that censorship ought to be the law. "The right to freedom of thought and expression... cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."

On the one hand we have Christians weeping and wailing when the law is used to silence their anti-gay sentiments. When the same law is used to silence an atheist not a single one of these Christians uttered a peep. And when the cartoons "insulted" the alleged prophet of Islam we saw religious leaders demanding censorship. They said the law should not allow people to cause distress to others. Unless, of course, those others are gay, then the law should support unlimited bigotry because that's what Jesus would do.

Once again we see the Religious Right refusing to support freedom as a principle. To them freedom of speech is a special privilege bestowed on them, but denied to others. Equality of rights, in their mind, is "special rights."

As a classical liberal or modern libertarian, I argue that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The Baptist bigot should be allowed to shout until horse, if he wants. But the offensive atheist shouldn't be banned from handing out "offensive" leaflets either. These Christians need to be a little more honest and a little more rational—I know the latter request goes against everything they believe.

When they lobby for laws that ban speech for causing "distress," as they did during the Danish cartoon controversy, they have no right to complain when those laws bit them in the ass when they cause distress to gay people.

This is what really irks me about the Religious Right, they are totally Orwellian in the use of language. When the law censors critics of religion that is "respecting religious values." When the laws censors critics of homosexuality [which is as sensible as criticizing blue eyes] that is an assault on Western values. When gay people have the same rights as Christians that is "special rights" but when Christians have rights that gay people don't have, that is just peachy keen.

Rights are the same for everyone. So yes, the Baptist should be free to say all the silly things that Baptists are prone to say. They can't help it, it's in their nature. And critics of Islam or atheists with offensive leaflets, have the same rights as well. Gays can be called sinners and the Vatican can be ridiculed for all the various atrocities it has been involved with. Free speech is for everyone.

The same law in England was used against a Christian last week, and against an atheist a few weeks ago. The law was wrong both times. And while I condemn both applications of the law, the Christians who are now weeping about persecution, were silent when an atheist was the victim of the law. And just a couple of years ago these Christians were demanding legislation to protect people from the sorts of free speech they are now demanding.

Many years ago a minor figure in Christianity—after all he never became Pope or even a bishop—named Jesus said: "You hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then shall you see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother's eye." Of course, as a libertarian I'd reply: "Hey dude, keep you damn fingers out of my eyes unless I ask you to help." But he was much closer to a reasonable view than these whinging Christians today.

Knife weilding fanatical Muslims attack church property or not?

Exactly how would the Religious Right respond to the following story? A church puts up a billboard which questions some aspect of Islam. Within days the billboard is attacked three times. The church is inundated with unpleasant and threatening phone calls and emails from Muslims around the world. One fanatic shows up with a knife in hand and the church caves in and removes the billboard. What do you think conservatives would have to say about that?

Plenty I suspect. They would be outraged by the use of force to silence a religious institution. And they would be right to be outraged. All the above is true with the exception that the attacks were not carried out by Muslims but Christians. That may explain the relative silence from conservatives about this outrage.

St. Matthew-in-the-City is small Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand. And it posted the following billboard on church property. Their purpose was the challenge the concept of a male God sending sperm to earth to impregnate a virgin. They don't buy that line at all and argue that the true meaning of Christmas is lost in all this mythology. It really doesn't matter whether or not what they say is right. The issue is their right to say it. I don't buy the mythology either but I suspect that their idea of the "true meaning of Christmas" is probably wrong as well. They said all they wanted was people to think about the story and it's meaning. Fair enough.
In less than a day the sign was attacked by a Christian who drove up to, then stood on the roof of the car and covered the sign with paint. A spokesman for the church commented after the first attack: "They are driven to give threats and abuse — and they say 'we love Jesus and he loves us'. I'm sorry, but they don't get the irony of their beahviour." Once news of the billboard got out "the church had spent yester answering hundreds of abusive emails and phone calls from around New Zealand and overseas." The billboard was replaced. Someone stole that billboard and it was then replaced.

Then yesterday the Vicar of the church, Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was "attacked by a knife-wielding Christian fanatic who was then apprehended by a group of homeless people who care about our church. Later in the evening another group of fanatics ripped it down.

I can't imagine the outcry if Muslims had done a similar thing to church property. I am sure it would be very loud, very vocal, very hysterical. Glen Beck would have fits for days about the actions of the fanatics. But it wasn't Muslims, it was Christians who acted this way. That explains the silence. And only that explains the silence. The outcry from the Right over the Islamic response to the cartoon controversy was phony from the get-go. The Right doesn't believe in free speech at all. What it came down to was that the Right hates Muslims more than it hates free speech. There are no principles involved just competing hates. And sinces they dislike Muslims more than free speech they used the free speech issue to beat up on Muslims (not that the Muslims didn't deserve it).

But now the controversy was over Christians attacking a cartoon image they found offensive. So all the moral posturing from the Right about freedom of thought and the sanctity of open debate has disappeared and they react to this attack with silence. You figure out why that is.

Silencing the heretics: the Holy Inquisition of the Warmers

The presumed hacking of emails and records from the Climate Research United at the University of East Anglia has drawn a great deal of attention. And there is even some speculation that the hacking wasn’t a hacking a leak.

Some of the coverage, especially from fellow travellers with the warming advocates, repeats the party line that “there’s nothing here to see folks, just keep moving.” But there is enough meat in the documents to attract the attention of some press outlets usually known for their uncritical acceptance of anything the warming advocates say.

The Washington Post is as “establishment” media as you can get, only bested by the New York Times. It tends to be a reliable ally for the warming advocates. Yet, even the Post found the emails worthy of a news story that was less than flattering. It described the emails as providing a “rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.” I would have hoped it was a battle over the facts of science myself. But it is what it is.

The Post says that the emails revealed the defenders of the consensus as a circle of intellectuals “eager to punish its enemies.” And it describes them actively campaigning to stop studies from being published, if those studies do not correspond with their “consensus.” In one email, the center’s director, Phil Jones, writes to prominent warming advocate Michael Mann, concerning some studies that contradict aspects of his own theories. Jones tells Mann: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

The Post reveals:

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes. "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

As warming skeptic, Patrick Michaels notes in the Post article, this sort of attempt to intimidate editors into refusing to publish papers contrary to the “consensus” is very troubling. Michaels said “these same academics repeatedly criticized him for not having published more peer-reviewed papers.” On the one hand the number of published papers are used against critics while the warming advocates are simultaneously working behind-the-scenes to make sure that they don’t get papers published.

In one email to Jones, Mann complains about a paper published by Climate Research. He complains that the paper “couldn’t have cleared a ‘legitimate peer review process anywhere.” But since the paper was published, in spite of Mann’s opposition to it: “That leaves only one possibility—that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board.” Mann says that the hijackers presumably include “a member of my own department.”

Mann is upset that the skeptics “achieved what they wanted—the claim of a peer-reviewed paper.” He laments that once published, “there is nothing we can do about” it now. Instead he suggests pretending that the paper was never published saying it “will be ignored by the community on the whole.”

Mann refers to the strategy of attacking skeptics on the basis of peer-reviewed papers and says that the paper in question reveals of the “danger” of that tactic. He says that the skeptics responded by a “take-over” of the journal. It strikes me as a bit paranoid to assume that the only way ones critics pass peer-review is by a plot to take over a journal.

Mann then suggests that the journal in question must be punished. He says: “So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”

Jones writes back: “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.” He notes that his own organization has “a person… on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.” Jones says he tried to get von Storch to stop publishing critics: “I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere.”

In another set of emails Tom Wigley writes Jones, Mike Hulme (who we have covered in our previous post on this issue) and Timothy Carter. It appears to be about the journal edited by von Storch. Wigley says he is unsure of the “best way” way to handle the problem of critical papers getting published. He says: “Hans von Storch is partly to blame—he encourages the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate.’” Well, they can’t have that, can they?

Wigley says that perhaps the best method of making sure skeptics are not published “is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium of disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work.” Wigley goes further noting that it doesn’t actually matter if this is true or not. “I use the word ‘perceived’ here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about—it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.” Wigley says he get a “large group of highly credentialed scientists to sign such a letter — 50+ people.”

Wigley says he added Hulme to the discussion because Hulme previously suggested they “get board members to resign,” but Wigley said that wouldn’t work. The board members they would get to walkout would be the ones on their side and they might get replaced with skeptics. Instead, he says they “must get rid of von Storch” and says that a mass protest to the publishers, aimed at von Storch “might remove that hurdle too.”

In another exchange, Wigley writes to Mann about the Geophysical Research Letters journal, another journal that deem too unreliable for their agenda. Mann says: “It’s one thing to lose Climate Research. We can’t afford to lose GRL.” This was over a paper the journal wanted to publish. Mann says they need to investigate and if “there is a clear body of evidence that something is amiss, it could be taken through the proper channels.”

Wigley responds that “GRL had gone downhill rapidly in recent years” but says “proving bad behavior here is very difficult.” But, says that if “you think that [the editor] is in the greenhouse skeptics camps, then, if we can find documentary evidence for this, we could go through official AGU (American Geophysical Union) channels to get him ousted.”

In another exchange Graham Haughton speaks of another climate journal that Jones considered unreliable. Haughton also feels it necessary to remind Jones that academic freedom includes critics. He says that when he next sees the editor he will try to “have a quiet word with her about the way the affiliation to us is used, but the moment she is entitled to use it in the way she does.” H tells Jones, “I want to protect another academic’s freedom to be contrary and critical, even if I personally believe she is probably wrong.” (Good for Haughton.)

While some are still trying to pretend that the leaked documents mean nothing, or only that one has to be intellectually challenged to take them seriously, one of the most reliable advocates for the warming crowd realizes the evidence is very damning indeed. Left-wing columnist George Monbiot has been a staunch advocate of the warming scare and he says he and his allies have a problem.

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

Monbiot’s response after this is to note that these emails alone, don’t prove the anthropogenic theory of warming as false, but then no one said they did. He then concocts absurd satirical emails that would prove that. However, he does recognize that the real emails that have been released are a major blow to the political agenda that he, and the email authors, shared. It is no longer sufficient for the apologists to claim this was merely harmless banter. It is clear that these men were trying to figure out how to apply political pressure to silence critics of their own theories and shut down debate. I repeat my claim from my previous post: this is not science at work, this is politics.

One problem with the hack/leak is the massive volume of material that has been released. More and more eyes are going through the material every day. As more and more material is exposed concerns about the leak itself will diminish with most people and concerns about the content of the material will increase.

I will try to cover more angles of this story, including emails which show that data sets, used to calculate current global temperature trends, were hidden from skeptics. In the emails they discussed that the best strategy to avoid a Freedom of Information request was to claim that they lost the data. Coincidentally, when a request for such data was made, the CRU claimed that they didn’t keep the “original raw data” and couldn’t supply it, precisely the strategy planned in the emails. I suggest this story is just beginning.

Addendum: When this was posted I did not read the comments to Monbiot's piece at the Guardian. However, it was brought to my attention that Monbiot actually posted an additional comment there which is pretty shocking. One reader commented: "By now I suggest you review your file of correspondence and articles, and figure out who you need to apologize to." What was truly shocking was Monbiot's response: "I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely."

A little more comes out about the old bigot.

In my previous post I mentioned how Pauline Howe, of England, was demanding that the city council strip gays of the right to have a rally because she found them offensive. According to the news story that ran she wrote an anti-gay letter to the city council and was visited by the police, who filed no charges. They were investigating whether a hate crime had been committed by her letter, or so we were told.

But it seems Howe intentionally tries to agitate people. She didn't merely write a letter to the council while spending her days sitting at home, sipping tea and watching the telly. The gay rally she wanted banned was one she attended. She went with the express purpose of handing antigay tirades to gay people. This sweet old lady was not so sweet after all.

Howe said she went with other "Christians" to protest "the public display of such indecency on the streets of Norwich which is so offensive to God and to many Norwich residents." She handed out anti-gay leaflets to people at the rally. So she was intentionally offensive to them. And people responded, as you might predict. But no one violated her rights. She says that the people she attacked "were in our faces with aggressive verbal abuse." In other words, the people at the rally responded to her speech with their own speech.

And this old cow then sends a letter to the city council demanding that the speech of others be restricted while her own speech be allowed to flourish. But, she entertains the delusion that she is speaking for some god.

The Christian Institute is, as expected, defending Howe's demands that others be censored because apparently Howe's "rights to free speech and religious liberty under the Human Rights Act" were being transgressed.

I would say that is the case. But I still have no sympathy for this old woman. She believes in censorship. She demands it for others while claiming free speech for herself. By her own values there are no rights to free speech. Or, does she really want to admit that she believes only Christians like herself have rights and that other people do not.

She had the right to go hand out her narrow-minded, religiously-induced hate leaflets. And the recipients of those leaflets had the right to tell her off verbally. That is freedom and that is what happened. But it was then Howe who demanded that the State step in and ban one side of the debate, and only one side.

Yet, as predicted, the fundamentalist Christian Institute is making out that Howe was the victim. And, I can assure you that other fundamentalist groups will pick up on that distortion, probably magnify it several times over, and spread the falsehood around. Keep watching the web to see if that happens.

Free Speech Under Assault

Criticism is not censorship

It is astounding the amount of bullshit being spread around over Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean and her befuddling, confused answer regarding gay marriage. Prejean, who has no claim to fame other then coming in second in a contest showing off her mammary glands, is milking the issue (pardon that unintended pun) for all it worth. She was a nobody with hopes of becoming a somebody, who failed. Now, the way to seek fame for herself, is to play the victim card and run around rallying Right-wing crazies and religious fanatics to proclaim her as some sort of saint. I can’t wait until they produce the little plastic statue for my dashboard—Saint Carrie of Bigotry.

Let us try to put some sense into this debate by looking at the silly claims that are being made and debunking them. The prime one that ought to concern freedom-lovers is the matter of freedom of speech. Larry Norton, at OregonLive, says that the Prejean controversy somehow deals with the “core value” of freedom of speech. He argues that the question she was asked shouldn’t have been asked—though he offers no reason whatsoever for that. And then he says: “There should have been no wrong answer.” Yes, of course, there are no “wrong” answers anymore, just opinions, just feelings, just damn irrational whims that have nothing to do with reality.

Norton’s opinion piece never comes close to explaining what “freedom of speech” issue was involved here. The closest he comes is when he says: “The fact that someone’s views are not yours is not the basis for ‘punishing’ that person." What he means by punishing is left unstated.

Of course, another person’s opinions are an absolutely valid reason for “punishing” them in one sense of the word, but not in another. If the term refers to denying them their rights, then it is invalid. If it means other forms of “punishment” there is nothing to say about the matter as public policy. For instance, let us assume that you are dating Miss Prejean and she opens her mouth and spews out some other form of ignorance. You thank her for the date and tell her you won’t be calling again. You just “punished” her but you haven’t violated her rights. She has no right to date you.

Let us assume that Miss USA judges decided that the comments Prejean made were “wrong” enough that she shouldn’t represent the pageant in public. Assume they vote her down in the judging in that area and that tips the scales in favor of another contestant. What right was violated? None. Prejean doesn’t have the right to represent the pageant anymore than she has the right date people who don’t like her opinions.

Miss USA represents the pageant, not herself. As such the pageant can decide whether or not she meets their criteria as their spokeswoman. Clearly several of the judges felt that Prejean would be a bad spokeswoman for this pageant. That is what the judges are supposed to do, that is within the pageant’s rights to do, and Prejean never suffered any diminution of her rights.

Apparently what the Right is doing is confusing consequences of actions with violations of rights. Mel Gibson went into an anti-Semitic rant not long ago, entirely consistent with the pro-Nazi viewpoints of his father. Numerous Jews said they would no longer work with Gibson—and I don’t blame them. Gibson suffered consequences due to his bigoted, drunken rant, but his rights were untouched. The idea that there should be no consequences to actions is a bizarre notion. If someone takes cocaine consistently and finds they lose their job due to their lack of attention, their rights are intact but they have suffered consequences. Removing consequences from people’s actions is a very dangerous thing to do—it encourages bad decisions and subsidizes destructive actions.

Carrie Prejean has the right to be biblically bigoted, if she wants to be. But she has no right to assume others will like it, and no right to assume that others can then be forced to work with her against their will.

Of course, it is possible to “censor” someone but she was not censored at all. That is evident from the fact that she is doing the interview circuit pumping herself up like crazy. At this point I suggest her “hurt” is just a PR tactic to get more publicity for the loser of a beauty queen pageant. At no point was her speech impeded. What she lost was the opportunity to represent a pageant as their winner. But no one has that right to begin with. It is a voluntary contract. In this case the pageant hires judges to decide which contestant will be given the position. They chose someone else instead. That is not infringing Carrie’s freedom of speech, that is exercising freedom of association.

Censorship requires force. It may be government forcibly preventing an opinion from being expressed or punishing people, through law, for expressing said opinion. Or, it may be a private person using force against another person to prevent them from expressing an opinion. But that is it. Other consequences to opinions are not censorship and not free speech issues. If I kick you out of my house, because you are a racist that is not censorship but property rights. If I refuse to hire you because you are racist that is not censorship, but freedom of contract. However, if I were to kick you out of your house that is censorship. If I were to forcibly prevent you from printing a book, that is censorship. But if I refuse to cooperate with you, in order for you to print your book, that is not censorship.

Roland Martin, a fundamentalist Christian, wrote on CNN as if Prejean was being crucified for her sins. He says she was “savagely attacked," by which he means she was criticized. I find it interesting how these fundamentalists downplay gay bashings when they happen yet describe criticism of themselves as “savage.” Martin claims that Prejean is “being torn to shreds” for her answer. Martin says: “The day we condemn folks for speaking honestly is the day we become a bland society.” Martin's piece was headlined "thanks for the honesty." I wonder if Mr. Martin, who is black, would thank David Duke for his honesty in regards to the rights of black people?

Odd that we have a Christian writer now demanding that we not condemn people for their comments. Mr. Norton says Prejean “stood up for her principles—quite refreshing.”

But those comments are rubbish. People stand up for principles all the time. And it is proper for us to judge those principles and laud them or condemn them as we seek fit. It is not proper to prevent people from airing such opinions however, but that never happened.

What is refreshing about Prejean expressing a bigoted opinion based on her religious beliefs? That sort of thing happens all the time. Consider the Christian Identity folk who say that God made the White race his chosen people, that blacks are inferiors, and that Jews are the spawn of Satan. Would it be “refreshing” to listen to them spout their hate? The Christian fundamentalists I grew up with taught that blacks were punished by God under the “curse of Ham” and that they were condemned to a life of servitude to white people. They used Old Testament verses to allegedly prove this.

There are lots of religious opinions that people hold that can be petty, bigoted, uniformed and wrong. Are we really supposed to stop judging such comments? Have we reached the stage where there are now only subjective opinions? Are we to restrain condemnation of religiously motivated suicide bombers merely because they are religious?

Christians have the right to morally condemn gays if they want. Prejean has the right to damn gays to hell but no right to try to send them there1 prematurely. She has the right to disassociate from people she thinks of as sinners, just like the Miss USA pageant has the right to move away from her and not give her the beauty crown. Nor is there anything wrong with condemning Prejean’s opinions.

I suspect that if Miss Prejean had been asked about the Middle East instead, and then gave a rambling answer about how Jews are evil people, and how this belief is confirmed in her own family, no one would be defending her today—except perhaps the American Nazi Party or the Klan. No would be calling an anti-Semitic answer “refreshing.”

What it comes down to is two things. One is that Prejean used religion as her excuse for denying equality of rights. Lots of people think that religiously-motivate opinions should never be judged scrutinized or condemned. Apparently, if you wish to deny rights to Jews, based on the words in Mein Kampf, you can be called a bigot and criticized. If you wish to deny rights to gays, based on the words in the Old Testament, you are immune from criticism and your opinions need not be justified or rational. Yet, there is no reason that religiously-motivated speech must be held to a lower standard of criticism.

The second issue is that lots of people, particularly those who are steeped in religious mythology, are bigoted against gays. Apparently, if enough number of people share your bigotry, then it doesn’t count as bigotry, but is merely “a difference of opinion.” Of course, it is much more than that.

If I condemn fundamentalism as a social evil that is an opinion. If I deny fundamentalists their rights as human beings that is much, much more than just an opinion. That is an assault. We all have the right to voice approval, or disapproval, of the values of others. None of us have the right to deny others their equal rights merely because we dislike what they do with those rights.

Warning message for Harvard classes needed?

Here is a tasty bit of circular reasoning used by a feminist from Harvard’s law school, Diane Rosenfeld. Ms. Rosenfeld “teaches” a course on feminist theory. Rosenfeld went up against civil libertarian Nadine Strossen to “discuss” pornography.

She says that the students really want to discuss pornography but never “have the space to do it” except, apparently, in her alleged course. She claims, “There’s not a good way to talk about it, there’s not a forum in which to really talk back to pornography, to the extent that we consider pornography as speech.” Of course, this is rubbish. There have been endless discussions of pornography, endless conferences, forums and debates. There is no shortage of academic article, hysterical feminist diatribes, preachy sermons and energetic defenses of the material. What could Rosenfeld mean when she says no place exists to discuss the topic? In my experience what such comments tend to mean is that the other forums are not entirely controlled by feminist ideologues.

Right at the start Rosenfeld defined pornography as violence. She said: “Most pornography, as opposed to erotica, has an element of domination in it, or sexual coercion. And it usually, almost always, in studies that I’ve read, portrays women as always consenting to sex and if they didn’t consent initially coercion, or violence, or force is used.”

Her reasoning is that pornography depicts women as either willing to have sex of, if unwilling, that they are coerced into it. Considering that the depictions being discussed were, by definition, sexual then no other option was possible. If you depict sexual activity then that depiction must show either willing or “unwilling” (that is willing participants pretending they are unwilling) individuals. Nothing else is possible.

It worries me that someone is teaching law students with such bad reasoning. How can porn depict women “as always consenting” yet depict them as sometimes not consenting. Apparently “always” doesn’t actually mean “always”. It is equally bizarre that Rosenfeld thinks that her statement has any significant meaning. Since porn must depict either consenting or non-consenting individuals to state this adds nothing to the discussion. If I were to speak of a “towel that is either wet or dry” I have said nothing. I could say: “Ms. Rosenfeld is either in class or she isn’t.” That is verbiage, it conveys a thought of some kind, but it actually says nothing of importance or significance.

Rosenfeld also just lies about things. She said: “In the landscape of women’s legal rights to challenge male sexual violence we’re in really bad shape.” This is blatantly false unless one redefines “sexual violence” to mean something entirely different from what it actually means. But this is precisely what ideologues like Rosenfeld do. Because of this apparent cultural disregard for sexual violence she doesn’t think that complete bans on porn can be accomplished (oh, there is also that little matter of the First Amendment). Instead she says: “What I’m thinking we should do right now is have messages on pornographic websites that say, that are like warnings similar to warnings on cigarette packages… and have some kind of message that says this will perpetuate objectification of women and bad attitudes and might contribute to violence, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I’m working on the message right now.”

Somehow I don’t think a message about perpetuating the objectification of women will impact the desire to see sexual images. But I rest better knowing that Ms. Rosenfeld is ready to Nanny the rest of us with her silly message. I might be willing to swap with her, however. If she puts a warning message on her so-called courses then I won’t oppose her Nannyism. I’m working on the message right now. It should say something like this:

Warning this course is taught by an irrational profession, unable to follow logic or reasoning. It perpetuates a radical, feminist point of view disguised as social science cloaked in the law and surrounded by lies, falsehoods and gender stereotyping of men. It is dangerous to your civil liberties, First Amendment rights, and limited government. Consumption of the ideas in this course will not contribute to real life and are merely a propagandistic tool for the professor.

Rosenfeld says, “pornography eroticizes domination.” Alas, I fear evolution did that first. Humans evolved from species where domination and sexuality were intertwined. To a large degree humans have moved away from that form of sexuality. But pornography depicts domination, though not as persistently as Rosenfeld pretends, because humans already find it erotic. That is, people are not into domination because porn exists. The porn exists because people are already aroused by it. Rosenfeld has the cart before the horse.

She does admit “that message” is in music videos and popular culture as well. As she sees it, this message is pervasive through society. If its “all over”, why this obsession with pornography?

At another point Rosenfeld implies that erotic depictions are not “speech”. Yet she constantly harps about what she says is the “message” of pornography. While dismissing pornography as speech she is deriding the message it conveys. If it conveys a message then it is speech. For it to be “not speech” it must be void of any message. But that would give Rosenfeld nothing to say. At the core her problem is that she does believe it is speech but that it is speech that she wishes wasn’t speech.

A third bizarre statement made by Rosenfeld was that the “issue of pornography comes up in every class I teach”. The way it is worded she is saying that this is such an overriding concern of the students that they can’t wait to discuss the evils of porn. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that all her courses are in feminist ideology and nothing else. She leads a course pushing “Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice” as well as the panicky sounding “Child Exploitation, Pornography and the Internet” (a bugaboo that has been debunked by several major in-depth studies).

I won’t go into more of the discussion. If you are interested give it a listen. I will note that Nadine Strossen was excellent, and that she, unlike Rosenfeld, actually kept within the time limits given.

Government makes you stupid.

Government makes you stupid. I can prove it. Let me explain with this illustration.

Currently the New Zealand government, now being run by conservatives after the much-deserved defeat of Helen Clark is doing what conservatives love to do—prove they are tough on crime. I’m not opposed to being tough on crime but the typical conservative is stupidly tough on crime. Let me give an example of how stupid hurts when it comes to being tough on crime.

Now and then some monster kidnaps a child. So conservatives argue that kidnappers should be executed. That doesn’t stop snatching children anymore than it stops murders. Both will continue. But it will mean that the penalty for the two is pretty much the same. If a child snatcher kills the child the penalty can’t get any worse. They won’t execute him twice and if they did, he wouldn’t care. On the other hand, a dead child can’t testify against you. So the benefits, to the kidnapper, increase if he kills the child. That sort of measure would give the kidnapper every reason to kill his victim. Sometimes increasing the penalty does more harm than good.

Fighting crime doesn’t require knee-jerk reactions that sound good with voters. I would suspect that there is an inverse relationship between popular positions and positions that work.

The National Party government came up with the idea of banning “gang symbols”. Apparently this will reduce crime somehow. Exactly how it is supposed to do that doesn’t come immediately to mind. But it sounds like these conservatives a “doing something” and politicians are infected with the belief that “doing something,” no matter how absurd, destructive, counter-productive, is better than not “doing something”.

Let us note that this immediately regulates freedom of expression. Symbols are made criminal. I don’t think that is a good idea. It is a clear violation of rights. Let us also note that symbol wearing itself is a victimless crime. Sure, the gangs themselves might be violent. But the mere act of wearing a gang symbol is not the violation of the rights of any other person. Like all rights, you are free to do this provided you used your own property. So, if an employer asked you to remove a symbol that you were wearing, while at work, it is his right to do so. Restaurants should be free to tell people with said symbols they are not welcome. But it plainly is not a concern of the government’s.
I’m not sure why gangs, which are not worried about the penalties for killing one another, will suddenly become fearful of the symbol law. And from what I can see of New Zealand’s sentencing policies for violent offenders, they have little to fear at all from incarceration. Clearly New Zealand is too lenient when it comes to real crimes. But inventing fake crimes, like a ban on certain symbols, is not the answer to the defects in the Kiwi criminal justice system. On the contrary, it will only make matters worse.


I have yet to see the actual legislation so perhaps they manage to define gang symbols in such a way as to be absolutely precise. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to wear that symbol? If my elderly aunt happen to like the symbol for some reason, and were to walk around with it on, while visiting our Kiwi friends, apparently she would be a criminal. Under what definition of crime? Certainly it is not a crime in the sense of violating another’s rights. It is only a crime because some silly politicians concocted this nonsense law. Personally, if I knew what the symbol was, and were I in New Zealand, I’d wear said symbol in front of parliamentarians and urge them to have me arrested for it.

This brings me to the real disappointing aspect of this silly legislation. The relatively decent ACT Party recently was asked by National to form part of the government. They stupidly agreed to do that. I guess they were tired of the opposition benches and honestly believed they could do some good by accepting. As part of the government, that means National can put pressure on ACT to abandon principles and abandon them they have.

In its previous incarnation ACT opposed this bill. ACT Party leader Rodney Hide accurately depicted the legislation as an attack on freedom of speech and something unlikely to do any good. Mr Hide and his party now voted for the same legislation. The reason was simple. One of the ACT MPs is a conservative who likes to be tough on crime. To get the support of the hardcore anti-crime lobby Hide gave this man a list position high enough to get him into parliament. From what I can see the guy is a first-class jerk. As part of that ACT has proposed a badly thought-out piece of legislation modeled on the three-strikes-you’re-out laws in the US.

National told ACT that unless they caved on the gang symbols legislation then National will kill the three-strikes-you’re-out legislation of act. In other words, ACT traded a vote for really bad legislation so that National would vote for mildly bad legislation. National gets what they want. ACT gets what they want. Freedom gets shafted in the process.

One of the last measures of the evil Labour government in New Zealand was a monstrous piece of legislation, which regulated every single way a person could support a candidate. It made virtually all campaigning illegal unless it was reported to the state and followed all sorts of procedures. One absurd example of it was when Rodney Hide was charged with the violating the law. His crime was wearing a suit jacket that had the ACT party logo and slogan above the breast pocket. Please note that the jacket was not illegal because of the awful yellow color but merely because of the patch on the front.

The patch was deemed a campaign advertisement. As such the jacket had to have the name and home address of the person authorizing the jacket printed on it. And the cost of the patch had to be reported to the government. Of course, people found the idea that even a patch on a jacket was being regulated to be absurd and an attack on freedom of speech. Clearly the measure Labour passed was a desperate one meant to try and hobble the opposition going into an election. And that law is now gone under the new government. It was so obviously a bad law that even Labour, who wrote it, voted against it.

But really, what is the difference between Labour making Hide’s patch illegal because it was a political patch and National wanting to make a “gang patch” illegal? The wearing of patches does not violate rights. Hide knew that when it came to patch on his ugly, urine colored jacket. I suspect he knows it now. But he sold out on the principle because National pressured him. It’s a shame really. As I have long said: everyone is more libertarian in the opposition than in power. That is, I fear, also true of libertarians. Rodney’s patch was a free speech issue. Now that the jacket is on the other guy, however, it appears to be something else.

I also find this measure odd in that it really gives gangs a lot of power. The real legislation of banning a gang symbol is not in the hands of lawmakers. In this case, it is in the hands of criminals. A “symbol” becomes a “gang symbol” when a gang says it is. If they were to adopt a black skull on a red background then it becomes a “gang symbol.” So, it is the gangs who decide which symbols become illegal. Strictly speaking they could make any symbol a crime by adopting it for themselves.

So let us saw we have two rival gangs in town. The one gang decides to adopt the cross as their symbol while the other retaliates with the Star of David. Now, we have violent criminals with crosses and stars of David on their leather jackets. Under the logic of this absurd legislation those symbol would become “gang symbols” and would be open to prosecution.

To comply with the normal principles of the rule of law it would then be illegal for anyone to wear those symbols, not just gang members. Apparently a couple of elderly grannies, on the way to Mass, with a rosary in their hands, could then be arrested as gang members for carrying a “gang symbol” in public. And if you think about it, the cross certainly is a symbol of violence. It was a means of execution and not a pretty one mind you. Of course, through out history people have been burned to death with this symbol pushed against their lips. And the racist Klan burns crosses on people’s lawns and use it as a symbol of their hate.

I’m not advocating this sort of legislation. I’m trying to show how stupid it is. If a Kiwi gang adopts a cross as their symbol then exactly how would one ban that?

Politics is an ugly business. There are good people who try hard. I think Rodney Hide is one of them. But sure as shit even someone as good as Rodney can be pressured to do what he knows is wrong just to play the game called politics.

And while the government is wasting time legislating “gang symbols” the problem of real crime is not being addressed at all. I am astonished that governments, everywhere, manage to concentrate on inconsequentials while constantly neglecting their core functions. Regulating patches doesn’t protect life, liberty or property. And every minute spent on that is a minute diverted from real measures to protect people from real crimes (that is crimes that violate life, liberty or property). If anything, we’ll have the police and courts spending time pursuing prosecutions over a patch. Meanwhile robberies continue, rapes continue, murders continue, child abuse continues. Why can’t politicians ever get their priorities right.

My thesis was that government makes you stupid. Previously Rodney Hide got his position on this legislation correct. His retort to it was principled and intelligent. But then he was in the opposition and not in government. Now Rodney Hide is in government and, on the very same issue, he gets it very wrong. Government apparently made him stupid. It caused him to forget his principles. Long term that is deadly for the a minor party. Mr Hide may have disliked the opposition benches but his party's reason for being disappears when he acts this way. Those who approve of his abandoning previous principles are likely to want to vote for National anyway. And those who don't approve are now less likely to vote for ACT.

I note that when Guido Westerwelle refused to take his Federal Democratic Party (similar to ACT) into Angela Merkel's "Grand Coalition" government support for the FDP jumped dramatically. While in New Zealand, minor parties that join government tend to lose their identity and soon lose their support. As I said, government can make you stupid.

British government tramples on speech freedom -- again.

Tony Blair set England on a very totalitarian path. He was the George Bush of the UK, except he was more coherent. But the Labour Party government, under Gordon Brown has continued to push what can best be described as policies with a fascistic contempt for human liberty and privacy.

That vile government has once again shown its contempt for freedom. Recently Lord Malcolm Pearson, of the House of Lords, invited Dutch MP Geert Wilders to address a private meeting of members of parliament. He asked him to show his short film Fitna, and to explain why he produced it. (The film is below if you are interested.)



Wilders is an odd bird in politics. He has some libertarian streaks but some authoritarian streaks as well. But such a mixture doesn’t normally bother people -- such contradictions are common among politicians But Wilder has been an outspoken critic of the terrorist tendencies he believes are inherent in Islam.

Here Wilders is both right and wrong at the same time. These tendencies are inherent in a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam -- just as fundamentalist Christianity is inherently anti-liberty. Where Wilders is wrong is the assumption that to be Muslim is to be a fundamentalist Muslim. There are decent Christians and there are fundamentalists. There are decent Muslims and there are fundamentalists. Wilders doesn’t seem to acknowledge that much. However, in his defense again, the percentage of Muslims worldwide, who are fundamentalists, is much higher than the percentage of Christians inflicted with that anachronistic mentality.

The fascistic Left, however, tends to ignore any threat from Islamists while concentrating on the threat from Christianists. This is true even in countries, like the UK, where the Christianists hardly exist and where violently inclined Islamists are being recruited daily in some very radical mosques. Not only do such Islamists exist in the UK, recruited by these mosques, but they have bombed sites in the country and murdered people. This is not a theoretical threat.

But the radical Islamists still live happily in the UK. Many of them are receiving state support from Gordon Brown’s welfare state. Their leaders get public welfare due to their large family sizes. Meanwhile they openly preach to the members that good Muslims should go out and kill gay people. Gordon Brown and his cronies apparently have no problem with that.

But Mr. Wilders, because of the film we have attached, is a different matter.

After Wilders was first invited to meet with members of Parliament a Muslim member of parliament, Lord Nazir Ahmed, Labour, threatened to bring 10,000 Muslims to parliament to protest. This sort of threat is more than a threat to hold protest signs. Inherent in such a threat is the much heighted risk that Islamist extremists, who are a dime a dozen in the UK, will do something more violent and deadly than protest.

After Ahmed issued his threats Pearson backed down. Ahmed immediately started crowing that this was great victory for Islam. Pearson decided to reissue his invitation to Wilders to explain his position.

At this point Gordon Brown’s authoritarian tendencies burst through the debate and settled it. Quite simply the Brown government issued an order saying that Mr. Wilders will be banned from entering the country entirely because his views are insulting to the thugs who call Islam their religion.

If anything Islamists have proven Wilders to be more correct than wrong. His life has been repeatedly threatened by Muslims living in Holland and he is recluse living with around-the-clock protection. Also remember that when Dutch MP Theo van Gogh criticized Islam he was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam by an Islamist who was living off the Dutch welfare state.

Brown’s government is quite willing to suppress those who peacefully challenge the role of Islam in promoting violence and terrorism. But when a television documentary looked at the hate messages preached inside British mosques on a regular basis the police, instead of investigating the pro-terrorist side, investigated the broadcasters who made the film. Apparently speaking out against hate groups is considered “hate speech” while actually calling for killing people, as was done in the mosques, is ignored. Midlands police publicly said the documentary was false -- an accusation that was later ruled false and the police paid out $200,000 compensation for libel.

As a point of comparison it should be noted that Islamist clerics who preach violence and hate regularly live in Britain. Wilders, an elected official who doesn’t advocate terrorism or killing, is banned from entering the country. Brown’s government will shower Islamists with all sorts of benefits and payments while Mr. Wilders is not allowed to enter at his how expense.

You have to look at the Orwellian language used in the letter that Mr. Wilders received to understand precisely how mentally twisted the Labour government of the UK is. Wilders was told that his views “threaten community harmony and therefore public security.” The “harmony” that is threatened is that violently inclined Islamists may carry out the terrorism that they preach. This form of “hate speech” is not of concern to Brown, responding to this hate speech, however is banned. Maybe Wilders goes overboard, maybe not.

Hate speech laws are double-edged swords and cases like this prove it. These laws are enforced in blatantly discriminatory ways. So-called “hate speech” laws are the justification for keeping out a critic of Islamist extremism.

Islamist mosques told people: “We are not going to be like animals... or to be like the homosexuals. God save us from that, you understand? We have to take the judgment, the judgment is to kill them.” The same cleric told followers that Muslims who “gets out of Islam, he doesn’t want any more. What are we going to do? We kill him, kill, kill.”

Hate speech laws will be used selectively, they always are. They are political tools available to governments to harass opponents. Gordon Brown’s Labour government has actively tried to win the Muslim vote in the UK so criticism of Islam is prosecuted. But hate speech by Islamists tends to get ignored.

What does a police state look like?

What does a police state look like? That is a good question. Maybe it looks something like this. Here is a photo of a small group of people trying to hold a demonstration in Denver at the Democratic Party convention. Notice the police overkill.


But at least there is still freedom of the press! Right? Apparently not. Here is how the donutmunchers dealt with ABC news producer Asa Eslocker. Mr. Eslocker was standing on a public sidewalk with a camera crew when Democratic Party officials were exiting a hotel. He was doing a story on major donors to the Democratic efforts and some of those major donors were coming out of the hotel. Police decided that he had no right to do that story and began by manhandling him and pushing him off the sidewalk into traffic. ABC News reports that the donutmuncher told Eslocker: "You're lucky I didn't knock the fuck out of you." Here is some video of the incident. Welcome to America, land of the free. And, if you believe that, I have some swamp land in Florida for sale.



In this next video things are a bit sketchy but USA Today and Rocky Mountain News reported on the incident leading up to it. Alicia Forrest, 24, was watching a protest when a police officer yelled, "Back it up, bitch." He then struck her with his baton causing her to fall to the ground in pain. After she got up she was being interviewed peacefully by reporters about the incident. Apparently those interviews were enough. The police are seen then rushing in and grabbing her and taking her away. That is one way to put an end to interview.

Tolerance does not require silence.

No doubt you have heard of the controversial film, Fitna. It isn’t very long but it has Islamists upset. And that means Left-wing politicians are running in terror. (You may watch if below if you wish.) UPDATE: Liveleak which hosted the film said they have pulled it because extremists in Islam have threatened to kill them. This fact alone better illustrates the dangers of irrational religion than the film could ever do. FURTHER UPDATE: I have added the film here from Google video. Watch it now of you may never see. The Islamists may threaten Google and they may cave in as well.




The European Union president came out with a particularly stupid remark but I should note their position is not very different than the nonsense that comes out of the Vatican. The position of the EU presidency was they respect “freedom of speech”. Of course this followed by a “but”. To say the least European concepts of freedom of speech is often voiced with some very big buts (and you can spell that either way).

“However, [freedom of speech] should be exercised in a spirit of respect for religious and other beliefs and convictions.” So it is okay to say what you want provided what you say doesn’t offend a religious whackjob.

What is never explained is why religious beliefs deserve any more respect than beliefs about UFOs, the Abominable Snowman, the nature of money, or anything else for that matter. What makes religion the exception?

If we study the difference between religious beliefs and other beliefs we see that religion claims exemptions from the normal scrutiny applied to beliefs. It asserts the right to claim as “true” anything it wishes without evidence simply because it “religion”. And it demands that others not question it or its results. It is inherently authoritarian in that it demands obedience and acquiescence.

The modern Left surrenders to religious demands when those demands are made by non-Westerners. When made by Western religions they have no problem standing up to it. But they cave in when some “Third World” type demands respect for some absurd, false idea.

The modern Conservative is basically the opposite. He demands the right to question Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc but has fits when his Jesus myths are questioned. Of course some rabid conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t want even Islamic beliefs questioned.

Both the modern Left and the modern Conservative claim roots in classical liberalism. And each has adopted some true liberal values though neither does so consistently and both are fundamentally illiberal. The classical liberal or the libertarian is not entirely at home with either camp. Which is worse for freedom depends on the circumstances of the day. Certainly from the Russian Revolution to the collapse of Communism the Left was a bigger threat. Since then conservatives have stampeded toward authoritarianism and the bigger enemies of liberty.

True liberalism does defend the rights of religious folk to assert any belief they want no matter or absurd or unfounded. J. Salwyn Schapiro, in his little book, Liberalism: It’s Meaning and History, noted that liberalism placed stress “on intellectual freedom” and held that the top freedom was “liberty of though and expression.” Liberalism was “fundamentally rationalist” and “view religion from a secular perspective advocating freedom of religion but the separation of church and state.”

Throughout its history classical liberalism has questioned the authority of the church. It demanded the right to disagree with, to challenge, or to deny the faith -- any faith! But it has also defended the equal rights of the religious to uphold their faith and preach their gospel. The weak-kneed modern Left seems to think that “respect” for religion requires not just liberty, but silence. But silence in the face of irrationality is surrender.

This is not furthering the principle of toleration at all. It allows any religious thug to preach his authoritarianism and disarms the forces for individual rights. It gives the irrational a leg-up on reason. Even under the best of times reason has a hard enough battle. But what the EU president wants to do is disarm reason and give the forces of intolerance an advantage.

It is absurd to think that the peaceful presentation of a controversial film is intolerant especially in the face of the hysterical cries of jihad from butchers and killers.

The EU president is not supporting liberalism or tolerance but betraying both.

Phelps family slapped down: world cheers, I'm conflicted.

There is an old joke defining “mixed emotions” as watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new car.

Well, a jury just slapped down the vile bigots from the Westboro Baptist Church. They were ordered to pay $11 million to the father of a dead soldier whose funeral the church picketed with their hateful messages.

I find these people utterly disgusting. I put them in the same category as the odious creeps in Stormfront, the Klan, the League of the South, ad nauseum. I despise bigots, whether they are the openly bigoted like David Duke, the more subtle bigots like Joe Sobran, or the bigots who only expose themselves when drunk, like Mel Gibson. And I have to say a large part of my brain is cheering that the church lost this case.

Basically the church is the personal sect of Fred Phelps, an abusive Calvinist minister who has turned his own family into his personal cult. Phelps has a history of abusing his family members and he has intentionally isolated them from everyone and anyone outside their cult. This is precisely how cults control their members. A few of Phelps own children have managed to escape his clutches and flee from the sect but most are firmly under the control of this tyrant.

I have watched numerous videos with Phelps family members and I think these people exhibit the effects of the abusive treatment they have received. And often such abuse causes victims to identify with the abuser -- in this case Fred Phelps. So I do find myself feeling sorry for these people and wishing for the day when they will find relief due to Phelps “leaving this veil of tears” -- and the sooner the better.

Phelps hates the world passionately. He hates everyone and everything that is not under his own control. And Phelps says that everything that is wrong in the world is the result of God punishing the world for “enabling” homosexuals to exist. Fred is very obsessive about the gay thing; so obsessive that it makes one wonder.

Since America isn’t nasty enough to homosexuals Phelps says God caused the war in Iraq. Most people thought George Bush did.

Apparently when a soldier is killed as a result of Bush’s war it is God’s punishment for not stoning homosexuals to death. So Phelps sends his family of zombies out to show up at the funerals of soldiers with insulting and abusive signs. The family members yell rude things to mourners and try to disrupt this private moment of grief.

The jury in this case found the Phelps cult guilty of inflicting emotional harm on the family that sued after their son’s funeral was disrupted by this sad bunch of cult members.

I happen to think that there are vast areas where libertarian theory deals with issues badly. The broad principles are good and sensible but in some areas it doesn’t answer satisfactorily the questions that arise. And this is one area when I’m just not sure.

I don’t want emotional distress to be used easily to stifle the free speech of others. It is too easily abused. Anyone can claim distress and this would hold rights ransom to the emotionally weakest member of a community. I remember reading one Christian book explaining why sin should be outlawed and it argued that victimless crimes actually do create victims: Christians. It argued that since Christians are offended by the existence of gay people to allow gay people to to enjoy their equal rights is inflicting emotional damage on Christians. Of course there is no stopping that argument: Nazis would be offended by the existence of Jews, communists by the presence of private property, etc.

On the other hand there is clearly a great deal of emotional stress placed on a family when they are burying a son, a husband or a sibling. We all recognize that people are very emotional fragile at such moments. And surely having the fanatical Phelps family shouting hate during such a moment does cause legitimate emotional distress. It doesn’t have to be faked. And I’m surprised that more people have not simply lost it and knocked the teeth out of the mouth of some of these morons to simply take a shotgun to them.

And if someone did, and I was on their jury, I’d be rather inclined to go for as slight a penalty as is legally possible, if exoneration is not possible. If there is such a thing as a clear case of provocation then the Phelps family is it.

Yet that is precisely what Fred Phelps wants to happen. He needs to have his family alienated from the world in order to keep control over them. He wants them to feel threatened by the rest of society since that creates the cohesion that binds them. A cult often intentionally pushes their members to act offensively in order to create incidents where the members seek safety and acceptance within the confines of the cult alone.

Certainly what is said, and how it is said, can make a huge difference in the impact it has on others. A man writing a tract about the evil nature of Jews, for instance, who claims they are children of Satan is not violating anyone’s rights. If he were leading a rally of Nazis and then pointed out a Jew and screamed that this one man was a child of Satan, and harming the community, and his soldiers attacked the man and killed him, I would see a strong case for saying the speaker was also part of the conspiracy to deny that man his life.

And this gets to the area where I think libertarian theory is weak -- boundaries. The principles are good but sometimes there are grey areas where boundaries are not clear. Is it a violation of freedom of speech to prevent abusive individuals from spewing garbage at someone’s funeral? Given the reality of public streets and so forth it would be damn difficult to have a funeral service and burial without using public roads. So the property issue doesn’t solve it under these conditions.

Public property is where the conflict arises. If the Phelps kept themselves in their compound no one would give a damn about this band of lunatics. But they don’t. They use the public streets to get as close to mourners as possible in order to abuse them emotionally. And under current conditions it is impossible to for most funerals to be conducted without using the same public road system. Communal ownership creates a conflict. In light of the undeniable fact that socialized streets exist, what is the most rational way of allocating their usage in such conflicts?

Clearly the roads can’t be used for all things at all times. I tend to think that a road or sidewalk should be predominantly used for the purposes it was intended for. At the same time I see it necessary to provide reasonable access for alternative purposes. A street may be periodically closed for a “street fair” or a sidewalk may be used for a picket line. But not just anytime that someone demands. And there is no libertarian theory to answer this except to privatize, but the question is what to do in the meantime, isn’t it?

I wouldn’t ban the Phelps cult from picketing. At the same time I see no reason that they must be allowed to verbally assault others at a funeral. They are using private citizens as fodder for their message and imposing on them unfairly. On the other hand I think people should be free to protest politicians at any opportunity provided they aren’t actually disturbing a private event.

The reality is that there is a mess of issues and conflicts that result from the mixed system that we have -- largely private but also largely public. And there are issues where our libertarianism doesn’t have good answers. At some decibel level a protest chant becomes a nuisance but principles don’t determine where that is.

Historically I think the modern courts have done a fair job in working out just ways to deal with many of these problems. The “bong hits for Jesus” ruling by the Bush supreme court was a major case that went entirely the wrong way and was a blow against free speech, however. So my confidence in the courts does not apply to the current Supreme Court.

Sometimes the mixed system of public/private ownership creates conflicts that can be resolved, in the current situation, in an arbitrary manner. And perhaps their are some boundary issues where libertarian principles don’t have a clear answer and the only answers are arbitrary as well.

If that were the case I wouldn’t find myself grieving too badly if the Phelps were free to picket except when the roads and sidewalks were needed for other legitimate purposes -- such as a funeral for instance. H.L. Mencken wrote that “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” Surely if there are scoundrels around then the Phelps family qualifies. I wish things were a bit easier. I want to throw up my hands and confess: I don’t know where to draw the line in difficult situations like this.

The reality is that I don’t know how to resolve this conflict. It will take someone far younger than me to have the certainty that only comes from deep rooted inexperience to tell me that it’s really very simple after all.