Category Archives: culture

Another Reason to Shoot Down Drones

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Deer Trail, CO, is looking at passing an ordinance allowing its residents to shoot down drones.  It seems those good folks have a proper disdain for government fishing expeditions masquerading as “surveillance.”

But it’s not just the government that’s intruding objectionably.

When Tina Turner got married at her estate in Switzerland over the weekend, she wanted to keep paparazzi away.  But photographers used drones and other aircraft to get the exclusives they [wanted].

And [emphasis added]

Drones are gradually becoming established in Germany as a tool of photographers and television crews….  Drones are cheaper and quieter than helicopters and can be navigated unnoticed over gardens or in front of windows.

And

“They can be very helpful—it works well in the US,” says Heiko Schoenborn of the photo agency WENN.

Maybe Deer Trail should expand its target list.

Some Thoughts on Citizenship

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…by Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a recent speech at the Chautauqua Institute [emphasis mine; deeper indents are Cohen quoting Kennedy].

[T]he Justice asked his audience to pretend first that “you are a government official, bound by the Constitution…. You’ll be a judge, a federal judge.”  Next, he told the audience, “assume this…you may not like it…but assume that you as a personal matter strongly reject:

the idea of ethical relativism, moral relativism.  That’s the philosophical school which says (and here the Justice’s voice elevated a few octaves and turned sing-song-y, as though he were trying to mimic a new-age guru) that all ideas are of equal value, you have a right to think what you want, all books are the same, all music is the same…the philosophy that one person cannot insist on the correctness of his or her views; the philosophy that there are no absolutes in art, architecture, literature, aesthetics, beauty, religion, the fact that you can and must tell your kids what’s a good book and not a bad book.

“Now how can you be a judge and enforce the first amendment,” Justice Kennedy asked, “If this is your personal philosophy?”  He then said:

The first amendment says all rights are protected.  All movies are protected.  All music is protected.  Aren’t you a hypocrite?  And if as a judge you are enforcing some mandate that is contrary to your conscience and your ethics maybe you should resign.  How can you do this?  There’s an answer.  The Constitution controls only the government.  The first amendment says it’s not for the government to say that this book is good and this book is bad, it’s not for the government to say that this movie is good and this movie is bad.  It’s doesn’t follow that the public cannot say so….

And here the hypothetical seemed to end.  And here Justice Kennedy seemed to be making his own point: “A nation that’s in the grips of moral relativism, as a private philosophic matter, cannot protect basic values,” he said, before offering an example about a group of students he met last summer who later went to Europe and then returned to “give little reports on what they had done.”  As the justice recounted, a young woman said to him:  “‘And I elected to go to Auschwitz and it was very important.’

“‘Why was it important?’ Justice Kennedy said he asked the student.  And she said: “That’s where Schindler’s List was filmed.’: Justice Kennedy then said:

Well, I had this sinking feeling that even with the crime of the enormity of the Holocaust, or of the Stalin massacres, that we are reluctant to condemn….  A strong society, a happy society, a society with a civic consensus, must make judgments on what’s good, bad, beautiful, ugly, right, wrong. That’s not just your right as a citizen.  In my submission it’s your responsibility.

There’s lots more in Cohen’s article, but this is enough for here.

 

h/t Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic.

Education the Obama Way

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In President Barack Obama’s shiny object speech at the University of Central Missouri last week, he talked some about our education system, the obstructiveness of Evil Republicans in not letting Obama have his way on education-related matters, and the politics of the matter.  He also said this:

Our kids don’t care about politics.

Isn’t that a terrible indictment of the Obama Education System?

Bunny Huggers

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…or seal huggers.

Mark Hodgdon was scuba diving around 1:30 pm when he found a stranded baby seal covered in bite marks.

“As I got a little [bit] closer, he just swam closer to me and jumped right up on my shoulder,” said Hodgdon.

…implying that the baby seal’s distress might have been more exhaustion than serious injury.

However.

After Hodgdon and his fiancé (who was with him during this) got the seal to shore and called the New England Aquarium for assistance, when the Aquarium’s volunteer arrived, he refused to lift a finger to help the seal.

In fairness to the Aquarium, this is driven by our bunny hugger laws that make it a crime even to touch baby seals.

Touching the seal was a violation of the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the couple could face a $5,000 fine.  Aquarium officials say even though their intentions were good, if you see a seal you should not approach it.

No, instead,

Anyone who thinks a seal is in distress is asked to call the US Coast Guard or emergency officials and stay nearby so it can be found.

This, on the heels of the Kennedy brothers’ rescue of a leatherback turtle that was tangled in a buoy line.  Rescuing that member of an endangered species was a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Remember: when the shark comes, and seconds count, the do-nothing authorities will be only hours away.  And expect you to pay the vig if you lift a finger to intervene in the interim.  It’s the law.

Some Thoughts on President Obama’s Remarks on the Zimmerman/Martin Case

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I’ll leave aside President Barack Obama’s segue into his hobby horses of gun violence, the role of government in self defense (which is, of necessity, first and foremost a personal matter), and how government should manage how we think about things.  I’ll just comment on his remarks about race and the Zimmerman acquittal.

The following excerpts what I believe to be the relevant parts of his speech [emphasis added] (the full transcript of which can be found here, via The Washington Post).

Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that—that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.

And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me, at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.

And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.  And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.
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And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration.
…
We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys?
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…figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African-American men feel that they’re a full part of this society[.]

Is this following, door locking, elevator nervousness, etc occurring at the same rate today that it was 35 years ago, with no improvement?  Locks, mechanically, are a whole lot quieter today than they were 35 years ago, and many (most?) cars today lock their doors as soon as they’re put into gear or start moving the first time; I have to wonder whether lock-clicking even is audible on today’s streets.  Regardless, is this behavior really occurring today unabated?  I’ve not seen any of this in the (very thoroughly integrated) stores, or elevators, or streets—or restaurants or any other public spaces—I frequent; although I certainly did see much of this 35 years ago.  But then, I’m just a pasty white guy….

Obama speaks of the inescapability of a history of 35 years and more ago.  He talks of the inescapability of a history of nearly two generations—and more—ago, as though today’s children still are trapped in the past of their grandfathers.  Yet, what’s also, if not more so, inescapable is that men also can bring to bear the fact of great improvement in relations over these 35 years.  It’s also inescapable that blacks can—and do—recognize that not every ruling—legal, economic, or otherwise—that goes against a black man or in favor of a white or Hispanic man must, perforce, have been a racial ruling and not an honest one.  For Obama to suggest otherwise is to demean the intelligence and maturity of the “black community.”  Indeed, adding to frustration levels on this matter is his, and his liberal confreres’, insistence on wallowing in that history (which roughly coincides with the last time Obama actually was in the world before entering the cloisters of legal academe and politics) as though it were the present, rather than moving forward.

No, the history of blacks and of black treatment is not the present.  Certainly there remains racism—but today is radically different from the general history of 35 years ago that Obama insinuates remains the present.  Yes, he did pay lip service to change with his stock phrases concerning progress made; he offered them as an afterthought at the end of his remarks.

Regardless of any of the foregoing, though, is the appropriate response to following, to door-locking, to nervous purse-clutching to attack the one behaving inappropriately, to “ground and pound” that one?  Is Obama suggesting that 35 years ago—or today—he could have been the one assaulting a man whose behavior offended him?

Then Obama asked that we think about how to bolster and reinforce African-American boys.  How about, instead, thinking about how to bolster and reinforce American boys?  And American girls?  (This, though, is not done by government involvement with our children, rather by government working to protect the economic and moral environment so as to let local communities bolster and reinforce families.)

Along these lines, on the subject of his last question quoted above: one way—the best way—to help “African-American men” feel they’re a full part of “this society” would be to stop holding them separate from society and to stop singling them out for special treatment (vis., “African-American men” instead of American men (who happen to be black), or making exceptions for them because of a history that is increasingly less related to the present, or affirmative action programs).  Let them actually be a full part of society.

Finally, what does our President see when he looks out over the audience at any of his speeches?  A sea of Americans, who happen to have a variety of ethnic heritages?  Or a collection of distinct ethnic identities who happen to have American citizenship?