Maggie's Farm

Anything from the man who wrote "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink" is a blessing.

A former Marxist who eventually ran the National Lampoon through some of its glory years, and learned the value of a buck and a bit of responsibility, PJ has given the U.S. something it desperately needed: a Libertarian voice with a sense of humor. Since PJ, many others have followed, most notably Drew Carey and Dennis Miller, but none have matched PJ for sheer audacity.

Even his former National Lampoon co-workers, Democrats or Communists for the most part, admit PJ knows how to craft a sentence, and a damn funny one. They just lament that he's gone to the 'dark side'. I disagree. He's become funnier because he knows the truth, and he's not afraid to say it.

I had the good fortune of seeing PJ speak while I was a Freshman at Syracuse in 1981 or 82. He packed Hendrick's Chapel, a fitting place for his special brand of humor. I was lucky enough to see Barry Freed/Abby Hoffman stand in the same place and blather on about something he considered important prior to PJ's appearance, but PJ was much better than Abby.

We asked PJ a ton of good questions, and a few really awful ones, the kind that only college fraternity boys can come up with when they are really bored and thinking they are smarter than the average snowball. Things like "Boxers or briefs?" (Boxers) and "Crumple or fold?" (that's actually kind of disgusting and I have no interest in replying). But at least he entertained our questions and gave a reply.

He's one of my heroes. I still have "The Liberty Manifesto" hanging on my office wall, a wonderful piece he presented to the Cato Institute in 1993. I am amazed he was a fellow at the Cato Institute in 1993. Only 15 years earlier he was a drunken humorist working through Marxist tendencies while managing the National Lampoon in New York.

Oh yeah, and he graduated from Miami of Ohio....my son's school. Just like Paul Ryan.

The ruling class during the American Revolution was the British Government/Governors. You can say that the land and business owners who held the Congresses were a 'ruling class', but they were not. You have to have Marxist tendencies, implying that economics is everything, to believe they were a ruling class. However, economics is not everything, and they were not a ruling class. They were simply admired people because they were successful, intelligent, and motivated. They realized their success could be duplicated by many others WITHOUT the existing ruling class. Guess what? They were right! Shocking stuff, isn't it?

Malcom X is intriguing to toss in because he's right they didn't have to pass laws to make a polack a citizen. They didn't have to do it for African-Americans, either. It just made them feel better about their ability to exercise rights they already had.
The legislation, oddly enough, was meant to reverse previous GOVERNMENTAL BLOCKS to civil rights. Let's say, for example, the concept of 'separate but equal'. Which, interestingly enough, is exactly what many African Americans are employing today on their own to maintain their own 'cultural differences'. The legislation also gave them the right to bring racial offenses to court and seek redress, but they technically had the right to do that prior to the legislation, because (ahem) they had. So...that makes Malcom X uninformed, right? Hardly insightful, that's for sure.

You're not imagining any of those things. But as much as you assume they were societally driven, they were actually politically driven - the governments (in some cases local, in others state) were enforcing laws which were technically unconstititutional. There was no need for additional laws to 'make black people really free'.

I don't feel I'm a part of any 'ruling class', nor do I care if I feel like I am or not. It doesn't matter what race or ethnicity I am. If I can live a reasonably free life, then I'm better off than 90% of the rest of the world - correct?

My problem, today, is the slow erosion of those freedoms in the name of 'diversity' and 'equality'. I can no longer use words that offend people. Well, I can, but I'll be mistreated by people who are offended, even though it's my right to say those words and their right to be offended.
So should we pass some Civil Rights Laws to help protect my freedom of speech because I'm put upon by language Nazis?

This is a very real situation that mimics, to a degree, the experience of blacks in the US after the Civil War. I sit through interminable HR meetings explaining what represents a "protected class" of citizens and what language I can and can't use or face potential release by my company. A "protected class"???? Aren't we ALL protected? What in God's name is a "protected class"???

It is a 'class of people who have traditionally been mistreated or otherwise put down throughout history'. I see...so now they get SPECIAL TREATMENT to make up for stuff that never affected them to begin with? Seriously? This is what these laws represent, and it's absurd.

As for your use "all men are created equal", this is an interesting use of language that is rarely understood by anyone. It doesn't mean we are all physically or economically equal, nor was it ever meant to imply this. Any doctor can tell you that, at birth, not one single child is equivalent in any way. Some are healthier, some are stronger, some have been born into backwoods homes rather than Park Avenue apartments. This is not at all what the Founders meant.

What they meant was we all have the same inalienable RIGHTS - and we do, regardless of our physical or economic ability to take full advantage of them at any point in time. The problems you've outlined for the black community indicates they were somehow denied those inalienable rights, and to some degree this was taking place. But they often sought, and received, redress through the courts - as is right and proper. What additional laws were needed to make this concept real? None. The additional laws have done things to address physical and economic differences, which have wrongly been applied, as in Malcom X's examples, as the meaning of being American. He was wrong, he was applying Marxist and Hegelian dialectics to make a point by confusing the issue.

You're correct, American Exceptionalism IS real - but you seem to think those who promote it are ONLY cheerleaders. I disagree. We need cheerleaders to remind us that we ARE exceptional when we have so many idiots trying to knock us down by confusing reality with their perceived slights.

By bringing up the plight of black Americans, you prove the point of American Exceptionalism. As one of the few deeply heterogeneous nations in the world, we have gone farther than any other nation to make our nation welcoming of others. You may think it was these Civil Rights Laws which did it. Perhaps, but I disagree. Many other nations have passed similar laws which have done nothing to assist those who have been oppressed. What makes the difference, and what has ALWAYS made the difference, is the true nature of our citizenry. Our ability to learn, adapt, improve, integrate and move forward.

Not one other nation that I've visited has done as much as we have. They talk big, and they often talk down about the US. I lived in London and loved hearing how "well, it took you quite a while to accept the blacks, didn't it?", as if we were flawed in some fashion. Meanwhile, racial riots were occurring in Birmingham, Brixton, and several other areas. Paki-bashing and curbing were common complaints by non-Anglos living in urban areas. The National Front is still, today, a pervasive force.
Even Canada still has major issues with their Native American and French population.

We're not different than them, in some respects, but in many others, we better because we confront our issues publicly, discuss them, and more times than not, go a long way toward solving them WITHOUT government intervention (which I'd add is usually more a hindrance than a help).

I find it amusing that people look at certain laws, then claim we need more laws to 'fix' the old laws. In other words, as you point out, Jim Crow laws were very real. So we need laws to fix laws? I think not. Jim Crow laws were unconstitutional. We needed a legal judgement to eliminate them. There was no need to add additional laws to fix laws which existed due to a failure of good governance.

That is the kind of approach OTHER, less exceptional, nations take. With limited success.