Category Archives: culture

Another Response to a Desire for Freedom

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[Spain] Attorney General Eduardo Torres-Dulce charged Artur Mas and two other local officials with four crimes each, including contempt of court and misappropriation of funds, saying they had defied a court order by allowing the Nov 9 vote, in which 2.3 million people participated and more than 80% favored independence.

The Region in question, of which Mas is President and the “other officials” are his Vice President and Education Minister, is Catalonia, an erstwhile prosperous Autonomous Community of Spain, a nationality—so designated by the Spanish Statute of Autonomy. Catalonia consists of the four provinces Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona, and it sits in the northeast of Spain, hard against the Pyrenees and the Med.

The reason its prosperity is erstwhile is because it’s been bankrolling the rest of Spain’s regions and provinces as the latter deal with the Panic of 2008 and the six years of aftermath by spending profligately in the finest European (and becoming American) tradition. It’s Catalan-earned money that’s being used, little of it is coming back to the Catalans, and they’re tired of it.

Eighty per cent tired.

But wanting independence, rather than mere autonomy, wanting to be out from under Madrid’s thumb now is a crime. According to Madrid.

Wrong Answer

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At this week’s G-20 meeting in Australia, British Prime Minister David Cameron outlined his proposed restrictions on speech as a mechanism for combatting terrorism and youth radicalization at home.

Cameron told the Parliament the root cause of extremism was not poverty, social isolation from the mainstream or foreign policy.

“The root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative. So we must confront this extremism in all its forms,” Cameron said.

“We must ban extremist preachers from our country. We must root out extremism from our schools, universities and prisons[.]”

This is the wrong answer.

Youth “radicalization” is a part of growing up as children test boundaries, learn more, test more boundaries, and so on. It’s how they learn initiative and individual responsibility.

“Extreme” speech also is a way of pushing boundaries. More importantly, it’s a way of drawing the public’s and government’s attention to this or that problem, and of pushing authorities to take corrective action—where appropriate. The public, after all, is fully capable determining for itself whether the problem described really is worth any hoo-raw.

Most importantly, though, it’s an extremely dangerous thing for government to limit speech or radical behavior. What’s the limiting principle for such limits? In what way government draw the line here, and not one syllable further? In what way can government say this is too radical, but that is not? In what way can government discriminate incitement to riot from a misunderstood speech?

“I know it when I see it,” as a Supreme Court Justice said about pornography, is a poor standard, and it leaves the matter open to government abuse. If this speech is too extreme, then what about that speech? And the next speech? Absent a clearly stated limit—and Cameron appears to have offered none—there’s nothing to keep government from adding limits, extending them, barring, for instance, criticism of government as prejudicial to good order.

No, a better answer is to let the speech fly, let the “radicalization” occur. Give parents and schools the tools to teach better (which begins with holding the parents accountable for their failure to be parents). Let the “radicalized” go join the terrorists overseas—don’t let them come back. Punish the domestic crimes when they occur, don’t make additional crimes through legislation. There is already a sufficiency (and perhaps too many) conspiracy laws on the books which can be used to preempt domestic crime and terrorist activities; enforce these, don’t create more conspiracy crimes legislatively.

Cameron’s proposal is disappointing from the leader of the birthplace of John Locke.

To Gruber

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We’ve seen now a number of instances where Jonathon Gruber, MIT economist and Obamacare architect, is on record as having said we Americans are too stupid to understand Democrat policies and that it’s entirely appropriate for Democrats to lie to us in order to get their policies enacted.

We’ve seen Gruber express regret over his choice of words while explicitly, in a Ronan Farrow interview, standing by his underlying principles: we’re dumb, and it’s OK to lie to us in the furtherance of the greater Liberal good.

We’ve also seen the Democratic Party leadership—indeed, nearly all Democrat politicians—be utterly silent on the matter. By their broad, steadfast silence, they demonstrate that not only do these Democrats condone Gruber’s characterizations and view of lying, they consider these two things, the stupidity of Americans and the propriety of lying to us, to be core principles of the Democratic Party.

Their silence, though, isn’t quite universal. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has come out to deny knowing Jonathon Gruber.

She claimed she doesn’t know who he is, and that he didn’t help write the law. “Let’s put him aside[.]”

Never mind that then-Majority Leader Pelosi extensively cited Gruber’s pseudo-analysis of Obamacare while it was being developed.

Never mind that then-Majority Leader Pelosi cited Gruber by name as well as cited his “analysis” in a press conference she held while Obamacare was being developed.

In short, the Democratic Party, through their national spokesman, Congressman Pelosi, are Grubering the whole sordid affair.

Anything to Avoid Controversy

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The Montgomery County school board voted Tuesday to eliminate all references to religious holidays on school calendars, beginning in the 2015-16 school year. That includes Christmas and Easter, as well as Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

Their excuse? The board superintendent, Joshua Starr, said the board should remove all religious holiday references because local Muslim leaders had requested equal billing for Eid al-Adha.

The Muslim leaders’ request might hold water were there a significant number of Muslim students in the district. However, in response to these leaders’ own request that “families…keep students home on Eid al-Adha,” the absentee rate on the appointed day wasn’t different from any other day’s absentee rate.

Aside from that, though, this board simply chose to surrender the community’s Judeo-Christian heritage in order to avoid controversy.

What lesson is these folks’ timidity teaching those children?

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I’ve added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving. And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via BlackFive, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.