Tag Archives: freedom

A Referendum

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Catalonia is trying to have one (had one as you read this) on whether the Autonomous Community should completely separate from Spain.  It’s turning violent as the Spanish military organization with police duties, the Guardia Civil, and the more civilian Policía Nacional, are using hammers and other such tools to break into locked buildings within which voting is occurring and truncheons and rubber bullets to try to block Catalans from entering and voting.

Nearly 850 civilian casualties had been inflicted by late Sunday, Dallas time.

This is counterproductive.  Like the Quebecois separation referenda, Madrid should let the Catalan referendum go forward without interference.  Most Catalans want the referendum, and most would vote to stay in Spain.

That vote would defuse the separation movement for a good long time.

The violent suppression is not going to work in the long run.

As Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is putting it,

The unjustified, unchecked, irresponsible violence by the Spanish state today didn’t just fail to stop Catalans’ will to peacefully and democratically vote….” It also made clear “what is at stake for us.”

It’s true enough that Puigdemont is playing politics with his characterization, but the characterization itself and its outcome isn’t far wrong.  Marc Quintana, a 34-year-old carpenter who was forcibly removed by police in Sant Julià before he could vote:

The only thing this will do is make those undecided people vote “yes” to independence[.]

It’s also true that the referendum is illegal under Spanish law.  However, if Madrid really thought it needed to arrest the referendum leaders, they could do that a lot more easily after a failed referendum.

On Catalonia’s Drive for Independence

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The Wall Street Journal argued against it Wednesday.  I disagree ( a surprise, I know).

Nor is such a referendum permitted by international law….

This is a domestic Spanish affair; dragging international law into the matter is just cynical.

…they [Catalonians] fail to acknowledge the price all Spain pays for the national defense and diplomacy that keep Catalonia secure.

This is a cost that Spain no longer would have to bear if Catalonia succeeds in secession. As the Spanish, Catalonians, and Tunku Varadarajan, who wrote the piece at the link, well know.

The separatists also do not mention that they would have to assume around 20% of Spain’s national debt were they ever to secede, and surmount a Spanish veto to be readmitted to the EU.

The one isn’t demonstrated; it’s only a claim by Spain. The other assumes they would want to join the EU; this is not a foregone conclusion, either.

Those who oppose Catalan independence are not going to show up to vote on Sunday.

That would be their choice in a democracy.

The only real argument against the referendum is its illegality under the Spanish constitution and a top Spanish court’s ruling. But, then, so was our own gunpoint revolution against the Crown illegal at the time.

Some Advice

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…for NFL players and owners who are pretending to protest police mistreatment of minorities while actually attacking our flag and national anthem and insulting families who’ve lost veterans and the veterans themselves who fought, were maimed, were killed for these Precious Ones’ right to attack our flag and national anthem.

The advice comes from an ex-Buffalo Bills New Era Stadium security guard who resigned his job of 30 years over the Bills’ shameful kneeling display last Sunday.

[P]players [should] go out into the community and try to solve problems rather than simply kneeling and saying, “There’s a problem. Someone else fix it.”

Of course, that would require them to do actual work within the communities they think are so abused.  It would require them to speak from the vast array of platforms they have as celebrated athletes other than metaphorically stomping on our flag and national anthem.

It would require that they take more substantive action than just virtue signaling from the safety of the literal sidelines.

Due Process and Colleges/Universities

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Recall the Department of Education’s 2011 egregious and cynically biased Dear Colleague Letter and its attack on due process and equal protection under law.  Things are being restored to legitimacy under the  Betsy DeVos DoEd via interim guidance just issued.

Colleges can now apply a higher standard of proof when determining guilt in sexual misconduct cases and must offer equal opportunity for the accused and accuser to have legal advisers participate in their hearings, according to interim recommendations issued by the US Department of Education on Friday.

Because

The Education Department on Friday formally rescinded guidelines issued by the Obama administration in 2011 and 2014….

There is one item to be cleared up; hopefully it will be when formal, final guidance is issued by DoEd.

Schools now have the discretion to apply either the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, or the higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard….

The criminal standard, preponderance of the evidence, must be the only standard allowed.  And the accusation must be investigated by the police, not by ad hoc amateurish kangaroo courts and pseudo-investigators of school faculty or staff.  A victim of sexual misconduct is not helped in the slightest by a jumped up school tribunal bent on social justice rather than justice.

Antifa, a Gang

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David Pyrooz and James Densley had some thoughts on this in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  They’re on the right track in that they urge Antifa be formally designated a gang with all the social—and legal—ramifications that would flow.

There are a couple of points I’d like to make or emphasize.

[D]on’t be fooled by Antifa’s diffuse structure. Conventional street gangs are pretty disorganized too.

Diffuse isn’t, of necessity, disorganized: the Bloods and Crips, which Pyrooz and Densley cite in their piece; the Black P-Stone Nation; al Qaeda; and the Daesh all are diffuse, by design, and well organized.

The emphasis:

Which brings us to the caveat: most gangs are apolitical. The line between domestic extremist groups and gangs is blurry at times. Antifa’s agenda sets it apart to the extent….

No, Antifa’s agenda doesn’t set it apart. Antifa meets the definition of “gang” laid out by Pyrooz and Densley. There’s no need to cloud the question with concern about motive.

Aside from that, we convict criminals for their behavior, not for their alleged motives. Motive is a concern only for sentencing.

Further aside: much of Blood, Crip, and Black P-Stone Nation behavior is domestically terrorist in nature; they consciously use terror to control their territories. We don’t waste time on irrelevant labels on their members; when they behave criminally, we convict them for that behavior, not for their “purposes.”

The irrelevancy of a “domestic terrorist” label was correctly dismissed by Pyrooz and Densley.

Just apply the “gang” designation, and move on from there with the full force of the law and the courts.