Lee's Blog

So, I was reading an anti-creationism blog the other day. In between criticizing creationism, the commenters take occasional breaks to sneer at President Bush, Tea Partiers (whom they refer to by a sexually explicit slur that I will not repeat), and anyone who disagrees with the present Administration.

In the course of such sneering, one of them conflated creationists, Tea Partiers, and birthers, saying that Tea Partiers believe all sorts of impossible things, such as that the President is a Kenya-born Muslim socialist terrorist and the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Uh, no. That the Earth is only 6,000 years old is impossible. That is to say, if that were true, pretty much all of our scientific discoveries of the past couple of centuries, and a large chunk of known history, would have to be completely wrong. That is as near impossible as it is possible to get.

That the President is a Kenya-born Muslim socialist terrorist is extremely unlikely but not impossible. Kenya-born Muslim socialist terrorists do exist, after all, so in the exceedingly unlikely case that the President somehow turned out to be one of them, that would not invalidate any scientific discovery or any history except the personal histories of a few individual human beings. That possibility dos not belong in the same category as a 6,000 year old Earth.

Actually, I think the possibility that the President is a Kenya-born Muslim socialist terrorist belongs more in the same category as the possibility that the Yellowstone supervolcano will erupt next year. It’s erupted before, so we know the possibility exists, but I’m not moving to the Southern Hemisphere to escape it

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned here, but Winston Churchill is one of my heroes. I was reading his finest hour speech again. The last paragraph sends chills down my spine every time I read it. And then I think of what has been thrown away…

Congressmen are above the law.

This has had 2,478,074 viewings as of noon on Saturday, June 19. I wonder how many million it will get to before the election.

I’ve been thinking about the comment by “Mike in Ontario, NY”, that the TEA Party is merely a cover for white supremacists and racists. What is exceptionally foolish about this comment is that any reasonable white supremacist would oppose the TEA Party and its goals.

One of the points that Walter Williams makes repeatedly is that individuals cannot afford to engage in systematic (society-wide) discrimination. He argues that systematic discrimination has to be enforced by the government, or it will fail.

Dr. Williams points out that, in apartheid South Africa, there were laws restricting the kinds of jobs blacks could hold — and white employers were charged with and convicted of violating those laws. Why did white employers take that risk? Because it was in their individual interest to employ the best available workers in the jobs for which they were best suited. It is only government — which has no concern for the bottom line — which can demand and enforce the inefficiency of refusing to place the best workers in the right jobs.

Likewise, Dr. Williams points to the segregated buses in the South, and observes that the bus companies resisted segregation — they fought the laws requiring segregation, and when they lost, they disobeyed the laws until they were threatened with legal action. Why would they refuse to humiliate black people when the law not only allowed but required it? Because those black people were their customers, and they didn’t want to drive off their customers. Only a government can ignore the bottom line and deliberately humiliate a class of people regardless of the economic effect.

Getting back to the TEA Party, the tea-partiers wish to reduce the scope of government and increase the scope of individual decision-making. This makes systematic discrimination more difficult rather than less, which would not be a desirable outcome for white supremacists.

You may reply that systematic discrimination is illegal in the United States, and indeed that the Federal Government is hostile to the goals of white supremacists. Well sure it is … now. But what basis is there for the Federal Government to be hostile to the goals of white supremacists? What reason is there for systematic discrimination to be illegal?

It has long been thought that the Constitution demands equal rights under the law, but we have seen that the Constitution is, well, less honored than previously. It is not self-executing. If all three branches get together and decide that, say, freedom of speech means freedom to say what the law allows when the law allows it, to those whom the law allows to hear it (McCain-Feingold) … well, there’s not much left of the Constitution, is there?

So what is there to stop the Federal Government from deciding that “equal rights under the law” means dramatically different rights for different groups? Can that happen?

The insane spending currently engaged in by Congress can end only in disaster. I do not know what the disaster will be, though I think Zimbabwean-style inflation is the probable end-game. Whatever the ultimate disaster, with a black President, don’t you think the white supremacists would seize the opportunity — the same opportunity a certain dictator of the 20th century seized — to blame all of the nation’s troubles on a specific racial group? Don’t you think they would be in an exceedingly strong position to take power? And once they were in power, with the nation in turmoil and the precedent established that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are not in fact guaranteed … how long would equality under the law last?

The tea-partiers want to avert the looming disaster by reining in spending. They want to re-establish the principle that the United States is a Constitutional republic. Why on Earth would white supremacists support the tea-partiers? On the contrary, I would expect white supremacists to be the most enthusiastic supporters of the Federal Government’s race to ruin.

I don’t drop by the Panda’s Thumb very often, but I did yesterday, and I found this gem of an interaction.

First raven quotes a report that many young adults are leaving Christian churches when they grow up, and adds,

What implies this is that xianity is on the skids in the USA. Making creationism a litmus test works both ways. If people have to believe that mythology is real and hating science is a requirement, some will just drop the religion. Mostly the best and brightest.

By my reckoning, based on the ARIS surveys, between 1 and 2 million people leave the religion every year. These days between the xian terrorist MD assassins, the Catholic child rape problem, and the Hutaree xian militia wannabe cop killers, xianity is providing quite the wind at the back for this exodus.

I don’t know about you, but “xian” for Christian strikes me as a deliberate insult. Mind you, I’m not even a believer, but this offends me. Yes, people sometimes used to write Xmas for Christmas, but that initial letter is not an X in our alphabet, it is a Chi in the Greek alphabet and so is correctly used as an abbreviation for Christ. Using a lowercase x is plain and simply wrong since there is no connection between lowercase x and “Christ”. And I think people like raven know that and do it intentionally.

Continuing, raven goes on to quote one (count ‘em, one) Catholic Cardinal saying atheists are “sub-human”. (Well, he’s scum. That doesn’t mean the whole Catholic Church is scum.) raven then adds,

This isn’t going to go over well. The No Religions are now 24% of the US population, 72 million people, the largest sect if they were a sect. Humans have a very predictable response when they are attacked, insulted, and demonized. Right back at them.

Yep, that’s quite true. And the people who are regularly called death cultists and accused of wanting to overthrow the United States, by people like raven, also have that very same very predictable response when they are attacked, insulted, and demonized. But strangely, raven doesn’t grasp that.

Amusingly, a few hours before raven started the comments above, John Kwok observed

The Tea Party Movement started in February 2009. Only within the last few months has it opted to align itself to the Republican Party. So, just on the face of it, I am quite confident that it will resist any “fundamentalist take over”. Most Tea Party Movement activists tend to be fellow Libertarian in their outlook and couldn’t care less about Xian concerns with regards to abortion, stem cell research, etc. etc.:

And, just minutes after raven correctly observed that “Humans have a very predictable response when they are attacked, insulted, and demonized”, Mike in Ontario, NY, responds to John Kwok,

Spontaneous? Grass-roots? Pffft. John, you’re talking out your arse on this one. The teabaggers are being promoted from “below” by white supremacist organizations who are mainstreaming their Xian terrorism via friendly mouthpieces like Faux Noise, Whirled Nut Doily, Dredge, etc. Stop trying to portray the new white power movement as being something actually sensible, credible, or even popular. The fringers are getting a lot of play right now, but they’re just being manipulated with divisive ploys and white suburban race paranoia. Restoring civil liberties? WTF are you smoking, Kwok? You sound like a YEC’er when you speak of the ‘baggers.

Yep, nothing improves dialog like impugning people’s motives without basis, calling them racists without evidence, and consistently using a crude sexual slur to refer to them. And of course they won’t respond in the predictable fashion … right?

If the people gloating over the Declaration of Dependence actually live in the same country I do.

All through the debate over federal health control, these people were saying that if you don’t have health insurance, you have no medical care of any kind. If you break a leg, they seem to imagine, you take a big slug of whiskey, put a belt between your teeth and get some strong friends to straighten it as best they can and splint it with a broom handle.

Well, no, that isn’t how it works. I used to work in a doctor’s office. People came in who were on Medicare or Medicaid, and we treated them; the working poor came in and we treated them, took time payments (without interest, of course), and wrote off what they couldn’t reasonably pay. Doctors are compassionate people. They have to pay the overhead, they often have heavy debts, and they want to make a good living to make up for those grueling years in med school, but they also want to see people get well — even people who can’t pay.

This morning, in a response to the outrage at this virulent assault on freedom, privacy, and human dignity, some totalitarian sneered, “Oh noes, the black people will get to be treated in our hospitals!”.

Again, does this totalitarian live in the same country I do? Has he ever actually set foot in a hospital? I have. More hospitals than I really wanted to, in truth. And every single one of them has patients of all races, doctors of all races, nurses of all races … Every one of them was fully integrated from top to bottom. You basically have to be willfully ignorant or astonishingly stupid to think otherwise. But I was referring to a totalitarian, so that goes without saying.

Well, there is one benefit to the Declaration of Dependence: it will get the uninstitutionalized mentally ill off the streets. Into Federal prison, it’s true, but off the streets. 

The homeless guy who followed me down the street in NYC, screaming obscene suggestions for acts I should perform with my mother: do you think he files income tax returns? No, and nobody cares because he has no income anyway. But do you think that he can get his act together enough to apply for insurance? That he can manage to apply for an insurance subsidy?  That he will manage to hold onto his proof of insurance so that he can produce it when the gendarmes shout “Papers!” at him?  No, so to prison he goes.

I trust the congresscreatures that voted for this travesty will tout this great benefit to their subjects. And I trust they will remind their subjects to keep their papers on them at all times.    

I was born in a free country. I woke up yesterday in a mostly free country. I woke up today in a partially free country.

IANAL, but I wonder if last night’s atrocity can challenged on grounds that Congress has delegated its lawmaking authority to private institutions which would, I think, be unconstitutional.

That is, Congress requires me to pay income taxes, but the requirements exist in laws duly passed by Congress; the forms to use, the deadlines, even the places to pay, are all established by law. Under last night’s Declaration of Dependence, I am commanded to identify an acceptable private actor, fill out their forms (which are entirely at their discretion and will differ from actor to actor), meet their deadlines (again at their discretion), and make payments as they require (using payment vouchers or whatever as they decide), all on pain of death. Oh, sure, the Feds say this is on pain of a fine, but as Walter Williams has said, all laws are on pain of death: if you don’t obey, they fine you; if you won’t pay, they arrest you; if you resist arrest, they kill you.

So, can Congress constitutionally delegate to unnamed third parties the power to issue requirements for satisfying federal law?  The power to decide, in other words, whether I am a federal felon?   

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if [this nation] last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”