Words mean things...

...until they don't. 

An example: take the word silly.  What does that mean?  Stupid?  Goofy?  Childish?  Sure.  That's what it means...now. 

Originally, the word meant blessed.  The word evolved to mean joyful, then happy, and has...yeah.  Devolved is a good way to put it. 

Take the word racism.  Or, better yet, racist.  Used to, it meant someone who actively said or did awful things to people of other races--Native American, Chinese, African, you name it--because they thought those of other races weren't really human.  Barely a step up from an animal. 

Now? 

Well.

The word is applied to anyone born of visibly Caucasian background.  No, you don't have to do or say anything--in fact, silence is now deemed being racist.  Not noticing the color of people's skin is racist.  Treating everyone exactly the same is racist.

It's ironic, really.  Many of the proponents of this view are, at best, agnostic, and more often rabidly, evangelically atheist.  Yet the language they couch "racism" in is very familiar to Christians. 

It's Original Sin, just repackaged by leftists to make it useful for them to hit the rest of us with.  But, unlike with Christianity, there's no salvation, at all, ever. 

I am beginning to respond to the screams of "racism" with a shrug, and a "so what?" 

Words mean things...until the word's definition devolves to mean nothing. 

The second amendment protects the first

Or, at least, it's supposed to. 

I'm beginning to wonder. 

Recently, a favorite author who's a hell of a character with the type of sick sense of humor that tends to set me giggling, got banned from a social media platform for a month.

For posting song lyrics.

Someone reported it as offensive.

Granted, as the author admits, it was a particularly vile band.  Yeah, their stuff is offensive, nasty, and inappropriate.  But not ban-worthy, especially since the platform prohibits children under a certain age from setting up accounts.  Nor is quoting their stuff ban worthy.

Hell, I see LOTS of stuff on social media and regular media that offends me: my state pushing to open more abortion clinics in urban areas where minorities congregate; memes and posts denigrating men in general, and white men in specific; memes and posts advocating slavery (forcing individuals to provide service in private industry); ignorance, and a general lack of understanding (or even a wish to understand) the workings of the gods of the copybook headings.

I have not reported any of these things offensive. 

(I have posted as offensive spam ads masquerading as social media posts, specifically when they're political, and as far from factually correct as it's possible to be.)

I do not report things posted by individuals as offensive, no matter how offensive I find them.  To be honest, I'd rather know who the idiots are so I can avoid them in real life.  Or at least avoid the topics, if the idiots have made their way into my circle of friends.  It is each individual's right to hold whatever political opinions they hold, just as it is my right to disregard the utter dreck they claim as "facts" to support their opinions. 

If I'm truly offended by someone, I simply quietly unfollow them.  As I did to a couple of bands I really enjoyed who got too evangelically political.*  I scroll past the offensive posts.  I ignore stuff. 

I'm a grown up, and I know that offensive material does not cause actual harm to me--I've got thicker skin than most.  And I'm not the morality police.  It's above my pay grade to say something is good, and right--or bad and wrong.   Nor do I have the right to silence dissenting opinions, no matter how stupid they are.

*True believers who try to save people who don't believe from the sin of unbelief, and count those who disagree because circular arguments aren't evidence, and because the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," as evil.

Pretty sure the "I didn't mean it like that" defense didn't work for Edward II.

Back in the early middle ages, a king appointed one of his courtiers to the office of Archbishop of Canterbury.  He assumed that his man would represent the interests of the crown rather than that of the Church. 

It backfired spectacularly.  Thomas Becket was ordained, and began representing the interests of the Church, which pissed off the king...to the point where Becket fled to the Continent for a few years.  Once he returned, during the reign of the following king (who broke tradition and was crowned elsewhere--a bad sign), things got worse: the king, Edward II, said something along the lines of "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"  The exact wording is under dispute, but what happened was that four knights, freshly returned from the Crusades, decided that this was a Royal Command, and went to confront Becket.  And then, they murdered him in the cathedral. 

Three years later, he was canonized.  No, the king wasn't directly punished, but that was pretty much a slap in the face, a "we don't believe you didn't mean it" from Rome. 

I see shades of that happening in San Diego, now.  San Diego has passed an anti-gang law that states that even those inciting gang violence, knowingly or unknowingly, or profiting from it in some way, are liable as conspirators.  And now, they've arrested a rapper--Brandon Duncan, aka Tiny Doo--under said law.  He faces prison for life with all of the charges laid against him.

The ACLU are protecting him, stating that he has a right to rap about whatever he wants--that the first amendment protects him and his art. 

I can, on the one hand, see their point. 

On the other hand, Duncan's defense strikes me as a cross between that of Edward II who implied that he wanted the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered, and that of the type of idiot that screams "fire!" in a crowded theater, then tries claiming that it was his right under the freedom of speech. 

Pretty much all of the gangsta rappers tend to incite violence, crime, and rioting.  Why shouldn't they be prosecuted under similar laws that normal people inciting riots are prosecuted under?

I got a solution.

The Congresscritters with D after their name and district don't like the debt clock in D.C.?  I got a solution for them:

Stop running it up, you stupid fuckers!!!  Maybe do a little budget cutting to start reducing the amount of debt you're putting on my children, and grandchildren (if the country lasts that long). 

Or, y'all can quit your jobs and go home.  That way, the rest of the critters can slow down how fast it's being run up, and you don't have to see it anymore.

Actions should have consequences.

Stupid should hurt.  Losing her job should be the absolute minimum to happen to Lindsey Stone. 

Better would be random people beating the holy living dog shit out of her once a week or so for the rest of her life. 

I know many male vets wouldn't ever hit a woman, but the number of female vets is growing monthly.  Maybe they'd like the first several hundred cracks at the twat for her...political speech.

The first amendment was never intended to be confined to any one group.

I will admit that the Founding Fathers never envisioned the kind of megacorporations we have today.  In their day, businesses were owned by individuals or partnerships, as was wealth.

That said, neither did they envision typewriters, much less computers, and certainly not possibilities of instant communication like the internet.

If the first amendment applies to newspapers, leftist bloggers, and occupidiots, then it certainly applies to megacorporations.  There is no way in hell that Pelosi and her comrades can pass the amendment that they're pushing forward.  Nor is there any way they're on the side of the people in attempting to ban political speech by megacorporations.

Think about it: they've already banned political speech by churches--any church that mentions the way a moral voter should vote in any race gets their tax-exempt status yanked so hard and fast that it's likely they'll go under.  If they succeed in banning businesses from engaging in political speech, how long will it be before any owners of such businesses--and yes, I'm talking about even individuals who own small blocs of stock in said business--are banned from speaking their minds?  Or running for office?

This is a disgusting attempt to encroach on all of us, using the frame of class warfare.

SOPA/PIPA

Ruin things for everyone, why don't you?

Chicago gangs are taking over sports teams' accoutrement to designate membership. A good blog buddy of mine, Oldcatman, has it entirely correct:


Same with any other race. And, in my opinion, any individual that uses sports team branding to designate membership in a criminal organization is a nigger, regardless of race.

Feeling a bit better...

I'm still really morning (and afternoon, and evening) sick, but it is easing, bit by bit. I'll probably be back up and running on my usual schedule by the end of the month.

That is, assuming Dear Leader doesn't shut down all sources of "new media" with the new toy that Lieberman et. al. are trying to give him.

Irony, thy name is...

...Obama.

Although, I do have a theory about why there hasn't been a press conference with the TOTUS taking questions through the spoiled idiot child reading it: the people who put the turtle on the post want him to stay quiet to try to avoid revealing that he didn't get up there by himself. I mean, everybody knows it didn't, but there seems to be a bit of a conspiracy of silence.

Bad idea.

Once they're able to regulate how fast internet users can access things online (meaning, your broadband can't advertise different speeds for different price levels), they'll start regulating content.

And then we're truly fucked.

Thank God for the first amendment.

You know, the one that reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"?

Because Christianity deems a great many things wrong that are accepted as commonplace behaviors in the modern world. Things like coveting anything that is thy neighbor's to the point that, if you can't have it (or something like it) you either get the government to steal his wealth to redistribute it to those who didn't earn it, or destroy it. Or sleeping around outside of marriage. Or blaspheming (which I define as doing evil in the name of your so-called "good" deity).

Or acting on homosexual urges.

Over in Britain, a Baptist preacher was arrested for discussing what the bible defines as sinful. They can't do that over here, yet, and it's thanks to that first amendment. The Brits have nothing like that protecting their God-given rights.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I do not like Hillary Clinton. I think this says it all.



However, when it comes to the way some people see political speech, I think her rebuttal is dead-on.

Arrest the parent, not the child.

Police in Des Moines, Iowa, arrested a twelve-year-old girl for trespassing when she refused to leave a senator's office as it was closing, during an anti-war protest. Her mother, who was outside on the sidewalk, was ticketed for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

First of all, while I don't like the cause for which the child was protesting, the police were fully in the wrong to arrest any peaceful protester. Peaceful protest is protected speech and assembly under the first amendment. The most the police should have done was forcibly remove the girl and the woman who remained in the office to the sidewalk outside.

Second, the kid was twelve years old. The police should have arrested her mother, run both of them in, and called her father to come pick her up.

However you want to look at it, the girl's mother got off too lightly, and the police overreacted.

More violations of first amendment rights.

The first amendment to the Constitution states that we have the right to assemble, to speak our minds and our beliefs, and to worship as we choose. It doesn't give us those rights, doesn't grant us those rights. We are born with those rights. The government is forbidden from infringing upon those rights. All government, federal, state, and local.

This is an egregious example of government infringing upon the first amendment rights of a whole group, who happens to peaceably assemble in the homes of its members to study the Bible.

From persecution we came, to persecution we are returning.

And people wonder what's wrong with the world today.

Something I don't understand.

About a hundred years ago, our nation faced a major change: the women's suffrage movement. This movement argued that women were just as human, just as intelligent, and just as capable of rational thought as men, and that they were just as deserving of the natural human rights that'd just been granted to Negros. Until the suffrage laws were passed, women were basically chattel: they belonged to their fathers until they were married, then they belonged to their husbands. At no time did they have any rights that the men in their lives didn't permit. That included owning property, making (and keeping) her own money, suing and being sued in a court of law, bringing an abusive husband up on charges, and most definitely political speech.

That is no longer the case, and has not been since the nineteenth amendment was ratified. Because, once that passed, women were able to lobby and vote for laws that permitted them other rights.

I guess that must have changed at some point when we weren't looking, because there's no other explanation for this.

Seriously, with the passage of laws granting women the same legal rights as men, and preventing men from silencing their wives on political topics, how can being someone's wife curtail her right to free speech? I don't care if her husband is on the Supreme Court--she has the same rights to speak her mind and beliefs as anyone else.

And, if they're arguing that a woman who is not on the court will be able to politicize the whole court, tilting the whole court in favor of the Tea Party movement (which, to be frank, it should have been in the first place), then that means that the leftist members of the court don't have a brain amongst the lot of them.

Besides. The political hazing surrounding Supreme Court Justice Thomas's investiture did far more to polarize the court than his wife's activism could possibly do.

Really? Does that mean I can put him in jail for something I find offensive?

Sean Penn is not a bad actor. He is, however, an idiot that obviously has not read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. Nor does he use what little fluff he's got between his ears to reason out that, should the First Amendment not apply to everybody, it doesn't apply to anybody, and that he could just as easily find himself jailed for offending conservatives under a conservative president.

Thanks be to God for our Founding Fathers' foresight in forbidding our federal government from abridging our right to voice our opinions (and state facts) in the political arena.

Chavez is, in fact, a dictator. What's more, he's a Communist dictator in Russia's back pocket.

Next thing we know, all our homes will have remotely-activated webcams mounted in them.

Dear Leader's administration is using the Patriot Act and the specter of a massive cyber attack to watch what we do on the internet.

I don't think there's any way this can end well.

Disclaimers.

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

The above was printed in an edition of The Federalist Papers.

I don't know about you, but I highly doubt most parents have the education levels or reading comprehension to read the beautifully worded justifications for the way our government was set up that our Founding Fathers put together, much less that any children would be interested in reading those documents. And I don't think I'd have much of a problem with my son reading them when he comes to a point where he can read and comprehend them. The values, morals, and behavioral standards held by our Founding Fathers are, with few exceptions (like the treatment of other races, and the withholding of rights from women), far better than those of today.

To tell you God's honest truth, modern (nonexistent) values, (lack of) morals and (low) behavioral standards should be what comes with a disclaimer. Perhaps this one would work:

"Warning: indulging in moral relativism, transnational progressivism, socialism, promiscuity, homosexuality, or any other behavior advocated by the political left is unhealthy for the mental, physical, emotional, sexual, and/or spiritual well-being of any who practice said behavior. Talk to your children about the values and morals that they should have that were demonstrated by our Christian Founding Fathers when they created the framework of government for this great nation."

Ironies...

On the list of books banned from libraries:

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

This book is about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought. In late 1998, this book was removed from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words "God damn" in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.

Also on that list was Twain's Huckleberry Finn (banned for the use of the word "nigger") and Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (also banned for language--and, likely, by the current administration for its frank depiction of the Great Depression)

Now, a school library in Virginia has pulled Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. Because she confesses, in her own words, that she has an affair with another young Jew being hidden in the same attic. Yup, she had sex on the attic stairs sometime before the Nazis found and murdered her, and some modern stick-up-the-ass-prude parent thinks it's not fit for modern kids to see a girl from Hitler's Germany stealing a few precious moments to lose her virginity before she dies.

These twits make me sick. They dare to carp about their first amendment rights while they do this in the name of decency and taste.

These actions are no better than what they howl about the left doing to silence conservative opinion.

Nobody has a right not to be offended. And nobody has a right to withhold the right to learn and the right to choose what to read from anybody else.