Maggie's Farm

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."
George Orwell, 1984

The very notion of speech "crimes," or "thought crimes," deeply dismays me. It's not a slippery slope argument: we are already on the slope.

If I punch you in the nose due to an irritable mood, it's assault. If I punch you in the nose and call you a "filthy libertarian," they can add a couple of years to my jail time.

While we tend to think of Lefties when we think of proponents of criminalizing thought, no-one's hands are clean with this. From a piece by Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice (h/t, Daily Pundit):

The current view of the Supreme Court, that what you say can add prison time for what you do—in a "hate crimes" case—came down in Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993). The defendant, Todd Mitchell, black, was convicted for "assaulting" a white teenager, and the trial judge added two years to the normal two-year sentence for aggravated battery, making it a "hate crime."

This is what happened in the "assault"—as described in by far the best book on this issue, Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics (Oxford University Press), by NYU law professor James Jacobs and attorney Kimberly Potter.

Todd Mitchell and several friends had just seen the movie Mississippi Burning, about the notorious murders of civil rights workers in the South during the 1960s. In one scene, a praying black youth was beaten by a white man. As Mitchell and his friends left the theater, a white youngster walked by, and Todd Mitchell said to his companions:

"You all want to fuck somebody up? There goes a white boy, go get him." The white boy was beaten so badly that he suffered severe injury. But Todd Mitchell, as Professor Jacobs notes, "did not physically participate in the beating." (Emphasis added.)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the state "hate crimes" law that added two years to Mitchell's sentence unconstitutional because it punished an "offensive motive or thought." But writing for a unanimous United States Supreme Court, William Rehnquist overturned the state court and ruled that "bias-motivated offenses warrant greater maximum penalties across the board."(Emphasis added.)

Rehnquist was way wrong on that one. How about the Bloods and the Crips? Read the whole thing.

Image: Photo of George Orwell (Eric Blair), 1903-1950. No doubt he would be pleased to know that he is in the Maggie's Farm pantheon. 

Update: As if to reinforce the above, I see today at Env. Repub that the ADL wants Gibson charged with hate crimes - purely for speech. Thank God that in America we are all free to be jerks and disgusting idiots - because we all are, sometimes. Which is not a defence of Gibson - what a schmuck. (Is that hate speech too?)

From an important essay at Brussels Journal, From Citizen to Subject:The Rule of Experts and the Rise of Trans-National Anti-Democrats:

One of the most serious challenges to democracy in the 21st century is the unprecedented pressure from migration, and the fact that certain groups can decide to permanently change the entire demographic make-up of a country without public debate and without public consent, by simply refraining from upholding its borders. It has been called “the greatest demographic experiment ever forced onto a people politically.”

Self-defence is a basic human right, both for individuals and for nations - or for animals, for that matter. It is the most basic right of living creatures. An unprotected home is not a safe and secure home, and a handy gun is as essential as a shovel, duct tape, or a pair of pliers.

You cannot defend yourself and your family with a whistle and a phone call to 911 any more than Israel can defend herself with a phone call to the UN.

Guns are the best tools for self-defence by far, plus they are fun, too. And, thank God, we are still allowed to shoot when bad guys invade our space and our lives.

Looked at one of these yesterday at the gun shop. The Marines use them. I like it. Bad guys hate it, because it can turn their heads into instant pizza-topping, which is highly discouraging to those with evil intentions. The Benelli M4. One ugly-looking shotgun.

I do not think that having the "netroots" visibly on your side is doing any favors to the electability of Dems. I have several reasons: 1. Hate rarely produces good outcomes, 2. I haven't seen what they stand for other than hatred of those who think differently - or, more accurately - feel differently, and, 3. They always sound paranoid and nutty.

Ace discusses David Brooks' piece on the subject.

Freud's concept of "the narcissism of small differences" helps explain how the Dems can be in a hot fight against one of their own most visible leaders, Joe Lieberman who, in fact, is a very liberal if not Leftist politician. In politics, you aren't supposed to eat your own. It is counterproductive, unless you are caught up in something wierd.

But what if something wierd is going on? After contemplating all of the above, and recent news on the blogs, etc., one must consider all of the rumors going around that The Daily Kos blog is a Bush-CIA-RNC Nixonian construct designed to discredit the Democratic Party. Since all of the Rovian hallmarks are there, I suspect that it is likely, but I can't prove it.

Just think about it: you set up a couple of websites to get a million angry amateurs and mentally unstable kooks (many of them probably CIA junior staff guys and RNC junior staff folks having great fun posting and cheerleading, plus thousands of Christian right-wing extremist volunteers) to dig into the core of your opposition, and weaken it from within. What could be more Rovian? More devilishly ingenious and convoluted? And to hire a haute-nurdy ex-Army guy for cover... too clever to be an accident. Don't ya think?

And, just consider - how many blogs could rent a place in Vegas for a meeting of their readers? Could your blog do that? Hmmmm. I suspect half of the attendees were plants, collecting personal info, and half looked like homeless brought in for free food and tee-shirts to set the stage for the sting, and the third half, if my math is right, was true believers. What better way to get names and ID but to gather people at hotels voluntarily? Only an evil genius could create a trap that people would take out loans to get into, while easily harvesting their credit card data, addresses, gambling and other private personal habits (I have heard a story from an anonymous source that all Vegas hotel rooms are bugged and videoed for "security" purposes), etc.

Now this Affaire Frisch - definitely a suspicious effort to discredit the Dems: she provokes, takes a fake fall, and gets her checks and reappears with another alias and a fresh outrage in a few weeks. Don't tell me she didn't intend to get "caught," because every good sting has people getting "caught" to add verisimilitude. A pro only gets caught on purpose.

And the selection of Lieberman as a target - highly suspicious to pick the one guy the Repubs would like to keep on board - it's perfect cover, while it turns the netroots against the Dems, and distracts them from the Repubs - and Lieberman will win anyway. Ned Lamont? A useful idiot in the game - a pawn, utterly unaware of his role, targeted for the multi-millions of his own he could spend to complete the charade....after all, if half of the netroots are agent-provocateur posters with CIA-generated aliases and locations, and half are pot-addled hippies stuck in the 60s and paying off their PCs with Disability checks, where else would the money for a campaign come from?

Think about it. And this is happening shortly after Rove left his White House berth for "other operations." Could all of this be pure coincidence? Didn't Rove openly say "We have a plan, and we will win"? And, to date, Markos Mole-itsas has yet to deny the rumor.

I have heard some even speculate that the rumor itself is CIA-generated, so as to appear to discredit Kos, thus adding an additional layer of cover for Markos as his visibility increases. That would be classic CIA.

As soon as Rove-Bushitler-Nixon-CIA tracks all the names they want under the guise of "anti-terror," watch out!

Hawaii deals with race in very different ways than we do on the mainland. I think it is safe to say that most Americans' ideal is to ignore race entirely, and to deal with people as people, without preference and without prejudice.

"Created equal" was the noble, and historically mind-boggling term, as I recall. (Of course, character, manners, brains, honor, etc., are another matter...but basic human dignity is yours for free in the USA, unless you renounce it with bad  behavior or unfortunate choices. But that is free choice.) 

We posted the piece at RCP by Peter Brown this week, which asked whether Hawaii was part of the US, especially with respect to their handling of race - specifically, those descended from the native Hawaiians.

Bird of Paradise emailed us this comment on that piece:

Aside from the sheer ignorance of the writer of the actual "culture" and "ethos" of Hawaii Mr. Brown simply fails to mention that, unlike the segregated academies of the Dixie-South, the Kamehameha Schools was educating Hawaiian students in this manner (as interpreted in Princess Pauahi Bishop's will and endorsed by her husband after her death) back when Hawaii was an independent nation.  There is a strong sense of justice in Hawaii that appears to have been completely lost to Mr. Brown.  Here in Hawaii we respect the people who were once the sole inhabitants of this land and whose ancestors ruled and governed Hawaii as an independent nation (one of the few in the world during the 19th century) until a coup-d'etat overthrew the monarchy and established a republic that later became a territory of the United States and then, in 1959, our 50th state.

 

The Hawaiian people have, with little complaint (except for a few hateful individuals) been granted over 100 legal exemptions to state laws by the Hawaii legislature over the years (including access to certain private properties for gathering herbs, etc., etc.)  There are few who begrudge the admissions policies of the Kamehameha Schools (although there are many who desire that the Pauahi Biship Estate be better and more fairly administered to meet the many needs of the many poor and needy children of Hawaiian ancestry in the state.)

 

This is one reason why the Akaka Bill was supported by many in the Hawaiian & Hawaii communities (not a majority, but still a sizable number--I opposed the bill but only because it is so loosely written that the full implications of the bill would not be known until years after its passage).  By granting "native Hawaiians" indiginous legal status (as Native American tribal groups have) these exemption laws and the admission policies of the Kamehameha Schools could remain intact AS APPROVED BY THE STATE LEGISLATURE AND ENDORSED BY THE PEOPLE OF HAWAII rather than having these cultural "rights" thrown out by a bunch of legal bozos in San Francisco (who have nearly 2/3 of their decisions overruled anyway).

 

I am not pro-sovereignty for the Hawaiian people but I do desire (as virtually every resident in Hawaii does also) to extend to them certain rights and priviliges appropriate to their heritage, culture and traditions.

 

While the current interpretation of US Constitutional law may, in fact, negate those legal priviliges now enjoyed by the Hawaiian people (as distinct from the "people of Hawaii") it is nonetheless the clear consensus in this state that, in this case at least, Dickens was right when he wrote that, "The law's an ass."

 

Aloha -

In short, when perhaps our greatest need at this point in the war against Islamism is for our intellectuals – artists, people of letters, and philosophers to instill in the rest of us a sense of our own worth as inheritors of the traditions and values of Western culture, we are treated instead to lectures about moral equivalency and outright boosterism for the cause of the jihadis. In one of the greatest historical ironies in recorded history, those who have been nurtured in the freedom and tolerance of the West now would abandon the society that celebrates those values by either cowering in the shadows or giving voice to doubts reflecting the view that there is little in Western Civilization worth saving.

Despite its being very much in the "public interest," the NYT still refuses to disclose Pinch Sulzberger's IQ, or the length of Bill Keller's johnson under conditions of journalistic arousal. However, these are secrets the public has a strong need to know, and it would not kill Americans to know these closely-held secrets.

Image from The People's Cube:

As you can see, we are reposting some of our favorite essays we have collected over the past 18 months - none written by us.

In the deep summer, we like to recycle stuff. Yes, that is Cape Cod. Can you name that light?

Why I Became a Conservative, by (the great) Roger Scruton; it begins like this:

I was brought up at a time when half the English people voted Conservative at national elections and almost all English intellectuals regarded the term “conservative” as a term of abuse. To be a conservative, I was told, was to be on the side of age against youth, the past against the future, authority against innovation, the “structures” against spontaneity and life. It was enough to understand this, to recognize that one had no choice, as a free-thinking intellectual, save to reject conservatism. The choice remaining was between reform and revolution. Do we improve society bit by bit, or do we rub it out and start again? On the whole my contemporaries favored the second option, and it was when witnessing what this meant, in May 1968 in Paris, that I discovered my vocation.

In the narrow street below my window the students were shouting and smashing. The plate-glass windows of the shops appeared to step back, shudder for a second, and then give up the ghost, as the reflections suddenly left them and they slid in jagged fragments to the ground. Cars rose into the air and landed on their sides, their juices flowing from unseen wounds. The air was filled with triumphant shouts, as one by one lamp-posts and bollards were uprooted and piled on the tarmac, to form a barricade against the next van-load of policemen.

The van—known then as a panier de salade on account of the wire mesh that covered its windows—came cautiously round the corner from the Rue Descartes, jerked to a halt, and disgorged a score of frightened policemen. They were greeted by flying cobble-stones and several of them fell. One rolled over on the ground clutching his face, from which the blood streamed through tightly clenched fingers. There was an exultant shout, the injured policeman was helped into the van, and the students ran off down a side-street, sneering at the cochons and throwing Parthian cobbles as they went.

Read it all.