Tag Archives: rights

What Happens…

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…when government is the definer of a citizen’s, or of citizens’, rights? One outcome is illustrated by this particular enumeration of rights granted by Government:

The Fundamental Rights and Obligations of Citizens

Citizenship
Voting requirements
Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Religious freedom
Freedom of person
Freedom from insult
Inviolability of the home
Privacy of correspondence
Right to petition the state
Right and duty to work
Right to rest
Protection of retirement
Protection of old, ill, disabled
Right to and duty of education
Right to pursue art, science
Equal rights for women
Protection of marriage and family
Protection of Chinese while overseas

That list of Government-created and -granted rights is then followed and superseded by this:

When exercising their freedoms and rights, citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not undermine the interests of the state, society or collectives, or infringe upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

What Government giveth, Government taketh away. In the same breath in this case. As is apparent from that last clause, this is what the constitution of the People’s Republic of China does.

This is the risk we run as we allow to our government increasing authority to define our needs, our purposes—our rights.

Free Speech German Style

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A Gab user stands criminally accused of…free speech…in Germany. Gab, so far, is standing tall and refusing Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office demand that the social media outlet dox the user so s/he can be hauled before a German court to answer for his “crime.” The user, it seems, called the Leader of Alliance 90/The Greens, Ricarda Lang, fat.

This is from German Criminal Code, Section 186:

disseminat[ing] a fact about another person which is suited to degrading that person or negatively affecting public opinion about that person, unless this fact can be proved to be true [is a crime]….

Here is Lang, in all her bountifully curvaceous glory:

That’s fatter than fat, it seems to me, and her image provides ample proof of the Gab user’s characterization. But telling the truth, even when the truth is proved, seems to be illegal in Germany.

While we’re on the subject of free speech, here’s Section 188:

If…insult (section 185) is committed publicly, in a meeting or by disseminating content (section 11 (3)) against a person involved in the political life of the nation on account of the position that person holds in public life and if the offence is suited to making that person’s public activities substantially more difficult

Never mind that that’s the whole point of public insults against a political personage—especially if the insult turns out to be accurate and not merely contemptuous (which would be legal in any nation whose politicos are not terrified of their own constituents).

But wait—Section 192 the German attitude toward proof that Section 185 otherwise says would exonerate the person.

Proof of the truth of the asserted or disseminated fact does not preclude punishment in accordance with section 185 if the insult results from the form of the assertion or dissemination or the circumstances under which it was made.

Here’s my “form of the assertion or dissemination:” my echo of the Gab user’s characterization of Lang’s physique, repeated from above:

How far Germany has fallen.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wants Elon Musk arrested for…allowing free speech on his platform and for speaking freely himself. Reich actually said, with a straight face,

Musk’s free-speech rights under the first amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest.

That’s a Party leader saying that our American free speech rights, enshrined in our Constitution, are separate from the public interest.

Party is breathtakingly wrong on that. Free-speech rights are the public interest. Without freedom of speech, there is no public, only dependents of Government.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party. Free speech is what Party says it is. Nothing else.

A Couple of Suitable Civil Sanctions

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General Motors is being sued by Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton for allegedly

unlawfully collecting driving data from users and selling it to other companies.

GMC allegedly

used technology that was installed in the majority of 2015 or newer General Motors vehicles that would “collect, record, analyze, and transmit highly detailed driving data about each time a driver used their vehicle[.]”

That’s a long time to be collecting and peddling personal information without the permission of the vehicle’s owner.

After all,

Unbeknownst to customers, however, by enrolling in GM’s products, they were “agreeing” to General Motors’ collection and sale of their data. Despite lengthy and convoluted disclosures, General Motors never informed its customers of its actual conduct—the systematic collection and sale of their highly detailed driving data.

I see two suitable civil sanctions here, assuming conviction. One is to force GMC to disclose the amount of money it received over those two years from its sale of those data. It must then be required to pay that money to each person who bought a GMC vehicle from those two model years, whether the vehicle was bought new or used. Yes, yes, identifying all the used vehicle buyers will be difficult. Cry me a river. GMC should have thought about that beforehand.

The other isn’t really a sanction, per se. GMC should be required to disclose each of the buyers of those data, and then each of those buyers should be required to certify that it has purged all of the data of this type that GMC sold to it.

It would be suitable, also, to go after criminal sanctions against the GMC executives who authorized the illegal collection of the data, who authorized the sale of those illegally collected data, and who carried out the collections, and who carried out the sales.

It’s time to get draconian in sanctioning these data thefts. Bad enough we have to deal with hackers; we shouldn’t have to be subject to such thefts from allegedly mainstream companies.

Kamala Harris and a Smattering of History

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is proud of her record as California’s Attorney General. Here’s an example from that proud record of hers, against the backdrop of the Progressive-Democrat Biden-Harris administration’s lawfare campaign against their political opponent, former President and Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

As AG, Harris demanded nonprofits in her jurisdiction hand over their federal IRS Forms 990 Schedule B so she could pretend to be investigating self-dealing and improper loans involving those organizations and their donors. Her office then promptly “leaked” 2,000 Conservative cause-supporting organizations’ Schedules B to the public via Harris’ Attorney General Web site. Those organizations and their donors then began receiving threats of retaliation and death threats.

It won’t matter that the Supreme Court blew up her California AG case in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v Bonta. She’s already shown her disdain of the Court and complete disregard for its rulings; her demand for those Schedules B (much less her release of so many submittals) was in complete disregard of a much earlier, already long-standing Supreme Court NAACP v Alabama ruling which had held that similar demands violated the 1st Amendment’s right freely to associate as a critical aspect of the Amendment’s explicit Free Speech Clause.

Harris will continue Party’s lawfare campaigns against those of whom Party elite personally disapprove. This is the empirical practice and view of “law” that the highly experienced, and proud of that experience, Harris will bring to her administration, including the Department of Justice that she will build during her term.

That’s if we average Americans are foolish enough to elect her.