Speak up if you don’t like silence

Olvlzl writes an angry denunciation of free speech for fascists. It starts off as a matter of personal (in)tolerance:

I won’t be fair to fascists. I won’t be nice to Nazis. I will not give them a fair hearing. They’ve had their hearing and on their own terms. We’ve had their message aired universally, enthusiastically supported by conservatives here and abroad, and we have abundant examples of what happens when they achieve power. The combination constitutes probably the most ill-advised test of time given in recent history. And they’ve failed the viability test. We know the catalog of their crimes and we know that those crimes are the only part of their platform that they deliver on. They promise to kill people, to enslave people, to exclude people and to plunder the property of their victims. And that they can do. That is they can until either their own population or another has had enough and overthrows them. Victory, a higher standard of living, what they promise their supporters will be bought with that blood? No. They’re not so good on that despite the lying Luce line.

I don’t have a problem with this. I’m not going to promise to say nice things to people who do bad things. I might be unwilling to talk at all, or listen to anything they have to say while they are engaging in acts of unbridled hate. I say we need dialogue but I don’t intend to lay down my neck to crave an audience.

But Olvlzl goes farther:

Given their stated intentions and their history it is bizarre that any leftist would entertain considering the free speech rights of fascists. Why should any leftist give them the time of day nevermind a fully paid legal representation? The old reason given by the most easily stomached of our fairness monitors is that, “if they are silenced then we can be too”. This argument has the virtue of replacing absolutist prissiness with an appeal to practicality. But it is empty. They haven’t been silenced, they are all over the place. Ann Coulter’s insane performance art is certainly not silent. And she’s only one of the slew of dispund that fills the airwaves and makes it into print. We, dear friends, are entirely frozen out. Effectively blacklisted. The real left appears only slightly less often than plate spinners on our media. There is the pantomime of liberalism presented but it is such a transparent farce that even dismissing it gives it more attention than it deserves. Free speech sermons by liberal scolds is one of the more popular scenes of the farce.

I won’t give you a typical sermon, I don’t think. But I do foresee a time in the not too distant future when it may be the left that has power, and without free speech it will be under a dictator of the other extreme. There must be an end to this.

What value is free speech anyhow if we don’t use it? Say something confrontational and important: end cannabis prohibition.

You think that might not be the most important issue? Do you see how many poor men and women, especially minorities, are swept up into the prisons? Do you see the destruction of the cities? Do you see the poverty that comes from being a single parent on welfare with no other means of support because you cannot afford daycare and your husband is in jail? How that destroys the children? Do you think this can be ended if you won’t even talk about ending cannabis prohibition?

So start talking. Say something real.

Freedom and security

No one living is perfectly good, and none is perfectly evil. So when it is said that good cannot negotiate with evil, lest evil win, let it be said that there can be no negotiation in any case as either one may be more good or more evil than the other. But this is absurd and leads only to the greatest evil of all, violence. So it is disproven and should be left aside.

There must be negotiation between us. There must be conversation. I do not mind if we are not perfectly in agreement at once. That there is an open exchange of ideas is the only thing, and an understanding may develop. You are all fighting for something, if you are fighting for anything. So what is it you want? Can you stop fighting if you can get it another way?

What everyone wants is a measure of security. Not perfect security. The fact of life is that life is unpredictable. But some things can be predicted. You need to eat something in the next 24 hours. Preferably a lot sooner than that. If you can’t do that every day you’re going to be miserable.

When anyone is deprived of security, everyone is deprived. When anyone cannot eat, he or she will do what must be done to survive. Will you be surprised if he steals from you? Will she resort to prostitution? Will they sell harmful drugs and do anything detestable even to themselves if it is their only way to another meal?

The presumption of capitalism

There is nothing so insidious to a culture as the in-built assumptions that are taught but never questioned. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, whether in fact you vote at all, you are presumed to accept a system of economic control by corporations for the benefit of an elite owner class. The reason the two parties are so often indistinguishable is this shared assumption, where the ordinary person born to no great wealth and possessed of no extraordinary talents is reduced to a life of penury and labor for the principle benefit of those owners who need never work a single day.

To maintain this state of inequity, a dichotomy was created against a bogeyman theory, communism: the abolition of all property, and state control of all resources and industry. It’s an obviously unworkable idea and it doesn’t even sound good in theory, all the better to make for a strawman alternative. Because we have more than two choices.

The ultimate extension of corporate capitalism is, of course, fascism. Totalitarian and bloody. The present administration in Washington is of this very kind, restrained only as much as a due respect for the courts must still be pretended.

The mixed economy is necessary for true freedom, as slavery by circumstances of deprivation will vitiate any pretense of liberty. The freedom of the plantation owner is not to be commended if his fields are worked by forced labor.

Recognizing the injustice, we cannot rectify it by further injustice. To seize by violence, and hold by force, would erect a new military dictatorship in the place of the old.

Yet if it is hard to see a peaceful way to transition to a more perfect union, then it is at least important that we understand what it must provide. There must be a base of support for all people from any circumstance, a sufficiency of food and shelter and medicine, at once desirable to those of lesser and greater means. It will be expected that complaints will be made by those who presently have more than they need, and those complaints should be met by an assurance that nobody will be forced to pay for it.

This appears at once unworkable and idealistic, how can a system exist without people being forced to participate? But that is precisely what the capitalists argue for in behalf of their own idealism. A free market is an invisible hand which is driven by desire or need. All I am saying is to eliminate the need, leaving people free to pursue their desires.

Do you think that people will not work unless they are forced to do so? That is only true if they are forced to work; it is the force that people resist. People will work at things they love to do and they will produce things of value to themselves and others. There will be no limit on artistic and creative expression. Nor will people shirk to do what is necessary to enjoy their pursuits, whatever labor might need to be invested.

And it works. GNU/Linux and the rest of the free software and open source economy exists right now in all parts of the world. People work on projects they love, and those projects enrich humanity. Not just free trade but unforced trade.

What do you think?

A word for feminism

I’m a man. I try to be a good one. Not every man is a good man.

Some feminists have been saying for years, every man is scum unless proven otherwise. That seems really shocking to men. Don’t we have the right to be presumed innocent? In a court of law, sure. But if you’re talking about how much of a threat a bad man can be to a woman, you cannot afford to be so generous. Don’t be too trusting until you know him.

Of course if you do know him, and he’s a good man, you don’t have to question it. It’s been proven to you. It doesn’t have to be proved again every day. If you have doubts, it hasn’t been proven yet. Simple enough.

It’s not something I would talk about ordinarily but I felt the need to speak up for what Egalia says,

Hat-tip to Gen. JC Christian.

DEA approves of Medical Marijuana

At least if you take them at their words. Says DEA Administrator Karen Tandy:

“The DEA does not belong in the practice of medicine. We want doctors to be able to prescribe drugs when people are in pain. We’re trying to give them a comfort level.”

So glad you see it that way. My doctor says cannabis is helpful for treating chronic pain, and has none of the really negative consequences of opiates, like physical addiction.

Hat-tip to Pete Guither.

Big brother is watching

That is the intention, anyway.

If you don’t follow the links and read the stories attached, you might not have any idea what is going on. It’s not some hypothetical future like Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s the reality, here and now. You are living in a prototypical surveillance state, a nascent dictatorship which denies fair elections, free press, or anything which can challenge their power now or in the future.

What are you going to do about it?

Start talking.

Bush authorizes torture again

As long as the CIA does it.

Marty Lederman talks about the draft legislation the administration is proposing to overrule the Supreme Court.

They have no shame at all.

Hat-tip to SCOTUSblog.

Propaganda on Television

If the government won’t tell us the truth about 9/11, the least the media could do is not whitewash airbrush even the official story.

Billmon suggests that the corporate consolidation of the media might not have been such a good thing for democracy.

Update: All good propaganda has to have a strategic objective, and the Rude Pundit shows us how it works.

Update 2: I know there are a lot of reasons to dislike Bill Clinton, but do you think for ABC to call his supporters Clintonistas is a bit much for a purportedly neutral mainstream media organization?

Hat-tip to skippy.

Update 3: Glenn Greenwald explains the implications of this and the timing.

Update 4: Oh it gets even better. George Bush wants them to reserve 20 minutes of the last hour for him, to personally engage himself with the audience.

Hat-tip to Jeralyn.