Liberals are Dumb: Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars
Hello and welcome to the second edition of my Liberals are Dumb feature, where we confuse the hell out of Democrats and liberals by criticizing them from the left. The subject today is Nicole Belle, a writer at the liberal blog Crooks and Liars. She has a post about a Republican basically threatening to shoot the President. You know, as a joke! In it, she states:
Conservative humor never does work, does it? There’s not a lot I find redeemable about John McCain, but give the man his due, when the crazy Fox-informed supporter stood up and said that she thought Obama was an Arab, McCain did take the mike from her and chastise her for her remarks, calling Obama a decent family man. Contrast that to Broun choosing to laugh and basically validate the frustration of a man advocating assassination.
Nicole is referring to this incident from the 2008 Presidential campaign, in which an attendee to a McCain rally called Obama “an Arab”, and McCain refuted her thus:
MCCAIN SUPPORTER: He’s a…um, he’s an Arab. He is not… [McCain shakes his head] …no?
MCCAIN: No ma’am. No ma’am. He’s a decent, family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not. Thank you.
[Weak applause]
Nicole thinks that was McCain’s commendable stance on the whole awesome “Obama is a Muslim/Arab/Terrorist thing.” She’s not alone, there were plenty of people from all political walks of life that fell all over themselves applauding McCain for that courageous defense of Obama. But come on, really? I couldn’t believe when all this bullshit broke out that people, including Obama himself, thought that being an Arab or a Muslim were somehow epithets that needed defending against. Those labels were being thrown around as pejorative terms, and instead of standing up and rejecting the premise that being an Arab or a Muslim was inherently bad, people defended Obama against the accusations by pointing out that he’s a Real American and a Good God-Fearin’ Crischun’.
It blew my mind that people– liberal people, who should fucking know better– ignored the racist elephant in the room, and treated those accusation as if they were worthy of debate, rather than relentless and ruthless ridicule. Why did it take a war criminal to show people the correct response: So what if Obama was a Muslim, or an Arab? Why didn’t McCain, and the liberals that applauded him, stand up and say “Hey, calling someone an Arab as an insult is fucking racist.” I guess we’re cool with Arabs knowing that we don’t consider them “decent, family people.”
Only in America could the “leftist” political party think that all that is a valid response to being called an Arab.
class consciousness.jpg
An Egyptian protester shows his support for the workers of Wisconsin.
Source: http://twitpic.com/419nfm
The religious, big-government-loving, authoritarian right, possibly along with an embarrassing number (any number greater than zero) of shitbag so-called liberals and other assorted misogynists in the state-level peanut galleries are at it again. This post is a list of pro-forced-birth bills and proposals so far this year, as in a month and a half into 2011, that aim to undermine Roe and obliterate women’s bodily autonomy. Please let me know in comments if I’ve missed any, and the post will be updated.
New additions are marked red. Last updated 11 May.
Current states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia.
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Alabama
A House Health Committee public hearing: As in a bunch of other states, the Committee is talking about a ban on abortions after 20 weeks with an exception for “the death of the mother or to avoid substantial, irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function” and without an exception for any other reason, including irreversible physical impairment of the fetus. Apparently no vote was taken so that “proponents and opponents [can] talk to see if they can find a middle ground.” Ground in the middle of women’s bodies, of course, ’cause it’s not like we own them ourselves.
Arizona
HB-2443: This bill would prohibit doctors from providing abortions requested due to the fetus’s race or sex (even though, as the article states, the vast majority of abortions take place before 13 weeks, but sex can’t usually be determined before 17 weeks). This may be more of an exploitative move to scare abortion providers, given that it would allow the potential-father (but only if they’re married!) or the woman’s parents (if she’s underage) to sue the provider “on behalf of the unborn child.” 24 Mar update: The House has spoken; the bill is headed to Governor Brewer, who we all know and love for being terrible about basically everything. It would be kind of funny if she voiced her support for all the unborn brown babies via this bill after signing SB-1070 last year–funny, you know, if it weren’t so fucking disgusting.
Florida
HB-415, or “Florida for Life Act”: This unapologetically religious revamp of the “fetal personhood” flop says that the Christian god as understood by whatever strain of Baptism the minister-rep Van Zant follows creates all life at conception, thus all abortion (and maybe birth control) should be banned, except in cases of medical emergency. But not rape or incest–I know because I did a ctrl-f inside the bill’s pdf. Detectivism!
Added 11 May – HB-1127 and HB-1247 both passed the Senate earlier this month. One is a typical “informed consent” ultrasound bill (women haven’t thought this through, and are also stupid!). The other makes it more difficult for underage girls to access abortion. They either have to send first-class mail to their parents and also have their physician fill out a form documenting oral notification of the parents, or they have to go to court to try to get the requirement waived. A court appearance itself is potentially traumatic for some without the added issues of either being known by the court staff or having to arrange transportation to another part of the state to avoid recognition.
Georgia
Added 23 Feb – HB-1: This gem of a bill, which begins by renaming abortion to “prenatal murder” and bullshitting outright about the “abundantly clear” negative impacts of abortions on every single person in Georgia in every imaginable way, would make a fetus a person “from the moment of conception,” and also make it a felony for individuals to be involved in a “murder” (including in cases of miscarriages that can’t be proven to be unintentional). Bobby Franklin et al. additionally want to take Georgia’s eggs and go home because “Georgia was not a party to the suit in Roe v. Wade, and is not bound by a decision in which it did not have right of participation.” Bonus points for the “prenatal murder is contrary to the health and well-being of citizens of this state and to the state itself” language, which quite explicitly delineates women’s bodies as public property and incubators existing to serve the State. [See Misty’s post on Shakesville for more info on this roll of toilet paper.] On the bright side, since “Georgia has the duty to protect all innocent life from the moment of conception until natural death,” I’m excited that this bill will also outlaw the exploitation of animals for human consumption. Score! Right, guys? …hello?
Added 24 Mar – SB-209 and 210: SB-209, the bill that began as banning abortions after 20 weeks, would now also require that only licensed hospitals perform them. How many hospitals currently offer abortions? Nobody seems to know. In Georgia, as in most other states, the majority of abortions are performed at health clinics and private doctors offices. According to the AJC, the Rules Committee also passed SB-210, through which doctors “can be sued for wrongful death” (by whom, I wonder) if they fail to follow all stipulations such as notifying parents and providing ultrasounds.
Idaho
Added 24 Mar – SB-1165: The Senate voted 24-10 to ban abortions after 20 weeks except to save the life of the fetus’s human container. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the fetus, or the psychological health of the woman. Senator Stennett (D-Ketchum) noted that provisions in the bill could also give rapists standing to sue doctors without restriction. Charming!
Indiana
Added 11 May – A few months ago, HB-1210 happened (usually-illegal-after-first-trimester except for health of the woman, 18-hour waiting period, emotional manipulation via ultrasound and “fetal pain,” written consent, blah blah, etc. etc.). It hasn’t (yet) passed. Perhaps it hasn’t passed because of the totally-opposite-of-reality statements about “the natural protective effect of a completed pregnancy in avoiding breast cancer”? Wait, no, a bill just like it passed in the Senate in April. Sayeth Sen. Miller, SB-328 “helps [women] with objective scientific information” by lying to them about abortion causing infertility. The bill could also cause “all federal funding for family planning” to be lost, which would mean massive cuts and shut-downs of low-income centers and programs throughout the state. Sue Swayze says it’s cool, though, ’cause you can just go to Walmart instead. I get my cancer and STD screenings there all the time.
Iowa
House Files 5, 153: Still hot from the Iowa Supreme Court’s vote to repeal gay marriage, some Republican reps contend that making abortion illegal after 20 weeks isn’t good enough–it must be made illegal after zero weeks. A bunch more odious bills are also proposed from various directions, including a resolution to define a single embryonic cell as constituting legal personhood. 23 Feb update: 153 has passed a House subcommittee.
Louisiana
Added 11 May – House shithead LaBruzzo wants to make all abortions, no exceptions, a “feticide”–which is already punishable by up to 15 years plus hard labor. Not for the human incubator, of course; that part was an accident, whoops! Just for the doctor who abides by national law, I guess. LaBruzzo, to perhaps the only credit he’ll ever have, at least “admits his proposal is intended as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.” A shithead with moxie! I hope my sarcastemptuousness is clear here! Mother Jones also reports that “The Bayou State’s legislature passes bills related to abortion almost every year. Last year, it passed two—” Click over to reveal their secrets and see what other doozies there have been. Your internet will be refunded if the class eugenics bills don’t make you make a face. [H/T Me Here Now in comments]
Nebraska
Added 24 Feb – LB-232: This bill takes South Dakota’s shelved “justifiable homicide” provision even further, using language that’s possibly vague enough to extend killing rights to basically whomever. I’m not familiar enough with the minutiae of law to understand the full scope of the “[non-obligation] to retreat when in the other’s dwelling” language, but I could definitely imagine people citing it to justify protesters storming/raiding facilities that offer abortions. Hmm, that’s not scary at all…
Added 24 Mar: The law banning abortion after 20 weeks also applies to a fetus with a less-than-10% chance of a viable heartbeat/functional lungs and a less-than-2% chance of being “able to perform the most basic functions on its own, such as eating.” Compassionate conservatives!
Ohio
The ‘Heartbeat Bill’ [Warning: The link auto-starts an annoying-ass ad before the actual video.]: This would ban the abortion as soon as a heartbeat can be discerned, even though this can be as early as 18 days–too soon for virtually any outward signs of pregnancy to be noticed (including missed periods, usually the first indication). Even at six weeks, when the heart should have developed, the embryo resembles a shrimp more than a human, and is thus months from viability. 2 Mar update: As part of a desperate publicity stunt by dominion theologists and other assorted fundamentalists, two 9-week-old fetuses are going to “testify” before the Ohio House Health Committee today. But, you know, as Kellie Copeland of NARAL Ohio told ThinkProgress, Faith2Action won’t be inviting any fully-realized women who’ve had abortions to testify about that. Who cares about them? (Certainly not Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, who planned to bar pro-choice advocates from speaking.) Oh, also? Check out Guttmacher’s pie chart showing that about 62% of abortions in the US occur before nine weeks–by far the largest slice of that pie–and another 17% occur within the next three weeks. I wonder why Faith2Action would choose to show a fetus that’s further along, and therefore less tadpole-looking. Actually, no I don’t. (And one final note for now: Faith2Action’s Janet Folger Porter has opined that this bill “will be an arrow in the heart of Roe vs.[sic] Wade.” But of course that’s not another example of violent or eliminationist language from the Right. What would give you that idea?)
Oregon
Added 2 Apr – HB-3512: Still in House Committee, this bill looks a lot like all those other bills that would ban abortion after 20 weeks except in blah blah medical emergency whatever. I’m running out of things to say about this line of bills. Also see SB-901 and HB-3425 at the link provided.
South Dakota
HB-1171: This bill would make murdering an abortion provider a “justifiable homicide” if the killer has a certain relationship to the incubation machi–er, woman. Whether or not she wanted the abortion isn’t vaguely relevant, because women are incapable of making their own decisions. 24 Feb update: Though the bill passed House Judiciary Committee by a 9-3 vote, it is now suspended indefinitely, due to the fact that some remotely decent people actually read it.
Added 24 Mar – HB-1217: 25 states currently require a 24-hour waiting period, but South Dakota legislators want to prove that their state can be the best at this. Governor Daugaard has legalized a 72-hour waiting period. In a 77,116-square-mile state with exactly one abortion provider, located in Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls is located in the southern section of the eastern border of the state (over 300 miles from the western border) and has a metro area population of 228,261 as of last year. Which, by my brilliant calculation of numbers taken from wiki, leaves 571,739 people, about half of them women, living in cities without access to abortion providers.
Texas
A ‘sonogram bill’ still in committee: So far, this bill would require women to look at/have all the details of a sonogram ‘explained’ to them and listen to a heartbeat at least two hours before the procedure. Because women, who apparently have abortions like coffee in the morning, think that there’s COTTON CANDY growing in there or something. 23 Feb update: A sonogram and 24-hour waiting period requirement (without mandatory sonogram viewing) passed the House subcommittee today; the bill will go to the House next. A similar bill in the Senate passed with exceptions for rape/incest/an abnormal fetus and a shorter waiting period. 24 Mar update: HB-15, which may require the incubator-woman to view a sonogram, listen to a heartbeat if it exists, sit through the doctor’s description of the fetus, and then wait 24 hours, is apparently a ‘new and improved’ version of SB-16.
Added 23 Feb: The Texas Legislature Online has a bill database searchable by author/sponsor, subjects, committee, and actions. [H/T Chris] As of today, there are 19* bills mentioning abortion: HB-15, SB-16, HJR-22, HJR-55, HB-85, SB-130, HB-201, SB-230, HB-325, SB-404, HB-552, HB-561, HB-580, HB-779, HB-797, HB-816, HB-1078, HB-1478, and HB-1602. Uhh, yikes. [*See the next update for what’s really bill 20, although abortion isn’t mentioned directly.]
Added 2 Mar – SB-257: the “Choose Life” license plate bill, beloved of Gov. Rick Perry, is something I personally cannot wait to see come to fruition on the backs of all the H3s down here. The phrase “choose life,” contrary to what Rep. Larry Phillips and others have claimed, has a very specific meaning in US culture. That meaning has very little to do with adoption, and everything to do with policing women’s personal bodies. Adoption is only one possible outcome of “choosing life”–a decision which, even in best-case scenarios, results in at least nine months of substantial physical, mental, financial, and occupational repercussions. As Blake Rocap of NARAL Texas stated, the money earned through these plate sales doesn’t go to government-affiliated adoption organizations that can be of assistance to pregnant women seeking this option (or, you know, to help adopt out kids who are already here), but instead funds unlicensed “crisis pregnancy centers” that are overwhelmingly anti-choice, anti-contraceptive, anti-comprehensive-sex-ed, and fundamentalist Christian in nature. (They’re usually behind the billboards that say shit like “Pregnant? Scared? You’re not alone–call our 800-number for help” alongside a picture of a sad but conventionally attractive teenage girl.) The only thing many of these clinics give an actual fuck about is scaring women out of getting abortions through any misinformation and emotional ploys necessary. All the pro-forced-birth bumper stickers down here are bad enough reminders that women’s bodies are considered public property without the normalizing white noise of state-sponsored uterus policing. “Choose Life” = Support Adoption, my entire ass, and I invite this bill’s proponents to eat shit for thinking that all Texas residents are stupid enough to fall for their ruse.
Virginia
Added 25 Feb – A hospital regulation bill in the Virginia General Assembly: This bill is about things like regulating numbers of beds, parking spaces, and gurneys that can pass each other in the hallway–things that don’t apply to clinics like they do to hospitals. As the article notes, requiring such prohibitively expensive, structurally significant, and superfluous remodeling will likely cause 17 of 21 clinics that provide first-trimester abortions in the state to shut down. It passed in the Senate by a 21-20 vote (natch, all of the Republicans, and yawn, two “conservative Democrats”), with support from the Governor. [H/T Chris]
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Huge H/T to ThinkProgress and Shakesville, where I found the links to most of these bills.
Also see NARAL’s Legislative Landscape chart on House members, Senators, and Governors.
And the attempts to basically axe Planned Parenthood.
And, if you missed it before, HR-3. Added 11 May: These are the Democrats who voted for HR3, which passed the House, by the way. Just look at all those (mostly white, mostly old, overwhelmingly male) shitheads. If you’re a woman, these people despise you and the idea that you own your own body. And because they’re Democrats, the party that caresy-waresy so muchy-wuchy about us ladies, there’s a good chance that you voted for them without knowing that.
Added 18 Feb: On the 15th, NARAL released a statement about HR-358, which would allow hospitals to refuse to perform an abortion even when the death of the fully-realized adult woman is certain without it. (An aside: if you’re a doctor and you think this is okay, get out. Get the fuck out of the medical profession immediately.) HR-358 would also attempt to pick up where the Stupak-Pitts Dudemendment left off with regard to banning insurance coverage. Don’t Get Between Me and My Doctor, my entire ass.
Added 18 Feb: Mother Jones has an interactive US map showing various abortion restrictions in place by state. 25 states are currently on the mandatory waiting period tab, for fuck’s sake. [H/T Jeff]
Added 2 Mar: I’mNotSorry.net – stories from women who aren’t sorry they had an abortion. You can submit your own story, too.
Added 2 Mar: Cincinnati.com reports that in addition to Georgia and Texas attempting to copy Ohio’s “heartbeat bill,” Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arizona are also trying to get their disgusting stately mitts on it. They’ll be updated/added to this post as more concrete information becomes available.
Added 24 Mar: The NAF’s Access to Abortion pdf is a short and important read regarding restrictions and limitations on getting to abortion providers throughout the US.
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This post will unfortunately continue to be updated as the anti-woman machine rolls on.
We stand with the Tunisian and Egyptian people
- Image: The most polite protest sign ever, reading, “Leave Mubarak / We gave you Chance for 30 years / Your Development was for specific people / Not any more”
~
The end of 2010 is the beginning of a nervous but exciting time in the MENA.
Al Jazeera’s Liveblog of the protests since 28 January is a good place to look for a timeline of events in Egypt.
Egypt has some of the highest reported sexual harassment rates I know of, but this hasn’t stopped women from protesting. Gina Cardenas at Global Voices has written about their participation and the relative lack of recognition of this in mainstream media (article available in ten languages). Check out the ‘bravest girl[sic] in Egypt’ video; I like her protestin’ style.
It’s unfortunate that in the US we haven’t heard as much about the Tunisian protests preceding those in Egypt. At AlterNet, Rob Prince has written about why that may be.
Also, our friend at Notes & Commentaries has written on Tunisia, the Palestine Papers, and Egypt from a more economic perspective.
Added 5 Feb: Rasha Moumneh talks to Michaelangelo Signorile about what the protests in Egypt may mean for LGBT people. For more contextual background on the Queen Boat case mentioned in her interview, see Cairo 52.
Added 6 Feb: SDGLN has posted more about queer Egyptians joining the protests, including the account of a well-known gay blogger’s arrest and abuse. GayEgypt.com has previously been the target of monitoring, traffic restriction, and censorship both within and outside of the country.
The future governments of the MENA must represent and care for all people who are marginalized and oppressed by the current regimes. Best of luck to the people. The tyrants can’t hold out forever.
Liberals are Dumb: Matt Taibbi
I’d like to start a new feature here where I occasionally round up examples of liberals being counter-revolutionary so people who rightly view themselves as actual Leftists can point and laugh. This will be criticism of liberals from the left, so if you are a right-winger who somehow stumbled onto this site, don’t let me catch you using anything I say here as ammunition against liberals, or Democrats at large. It’s only correct to criticize liberals from the left. Otherwise you’re just a fool at best, and a malicious asshole at worst.
In this premiere episode, I’d like to look at something Matt Taibbi said recently. Taibbi is a political reporter for Rolling Stone, and while he’s one of the best at what he does, he’s a Liberal Dude. And if there’s one thing Liberal Dudes are good for, it’s being sexist pieces of shit. For a great primer on this, see this post by Nine Deuce. Liberal Dudes are the kind of dickbags that will advocate for things like “Equal Pay for Equal Work”, then turn around and hang out at the strip club on Fridays. They’ll support the No on HR3 campaign, then say there’s nothing wrong with porn because everyone involved is clearly a consenting adult. It’s that token gesture of offering a slice of full humanity to members of the Sex Class, while clearly not Getting It- and in some cases actively pursuing activities or policies that oppress the Sex Class even further.
Now, I don’t want to put words in Taibbi’s mouth, so let’s get on to his particular offense.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-supreme-court-named-20110131
Matt’s been working on something that could be pretty fun to read, a Supreme Court of Assholedom, which will convene to hear cases and judge, objectively, on whether or not people are assholes. It’s clever, and I look forward to seeing how well it works out. What I don’t look forward to is stuff like this:
A number of writers tried the reverse-jinx strategy and made their pitch for judicial service based on an argument about what an asshole I, Matt Taibbi, am. Some were clever and some I hope weren’t, but the only one that survived the cut, sort of, was Mara Schmid, a young woman who, when told she was on a short list of candidates, sent in a sample ruling that read something as follows:
Women vs. Rolling Stone Magazine
Ruling: Asshole(s)
Points: 3000
Opinion: If ten minutes of searching your website can’t bring up one current article by a female writer, and you are a mainstream news source, you’re an asshole. Every blog author is a man, including the tech blog writer, Scott Steinberg; every featured music, politics, culture, reviews, etc, article I clicked on was written by a man; and definitely every photo of a writer that I could find was male.
Possible dissenting opinion: Still one of the better news sources out there. Did eventually find a slideshow article by Sarene Leeds.
I personally hate having to apologize for the maleness of Rolling Stone (I even sent Mara a letter back whining about how nobody demands Vogue or Marie Claire hire male writers), but then I immediately had a Full Metal Jacket/”Private-Joker’s-Got-Guts-and-Guts-is-Enough!” moment and decided to put Mara on the court.
Now, this isn’t really that egregious, and I’m sure some people would think I’m picking the smallest of nits, but it bears looking at. A woman brings up an argument that Rolling Stone might be a bit sexist considering that they apparently don’t have many (if any) female contributors. Seems reasonable, right? Taibbi’s response is (possibly facetious but I doubt it) that nobody demands Vogue or Marie Claire hire male writers. Le sigh.
I was immediately reminded of people stomping their feet and asking why, in February, why there’s no White History Month. My response is usually that every other month is White History Month. Same reason why there’s a Black Entertainment Television channel- because every other channel is White Entertainment Television. It’s why we have Gay Pride parades, and so ons, and so forths.
If the magazine industry hadn’t been dominated by men to the exclusion of female contributors, there might not have been “women’s magazines”. There are many “women’s magazines” out there because every other magazine is a “men’s magazine”. If men had been (or were, since this problem hasn’t gone away) more inclusive, there wouldn’t have been a lockout on women in the magazine world, and everything would just be “magazines”.
And really, is Matt saying that for Mara Schmid’s argument to be valid, Vogue and Marie Claire, and Cosmo, and every other women’s mag out there has to hire male writers? Does he really believe that? Men wouldn’t let women into the Boys Only Club, so women made their own club, and now we have guys saying that no one can complain about the segregation until the Girls Only Club stops discriminating against men. Double standard much?
No on HR-3, the Rapist’s Resolution
For more info on this steaming pile of woman-hating shitgarbage, see:
Shakesville: #dearjohn: No On 3
Fannie’s Room: No On 3
Salon: John Boehner’s push to redefine rape
Pandagon: Shorter GOP: Tax breaks for everyone, except those pregnant teenage rape victims, the dirty whores
and for those of you young whippersnappers on Twitter (Jeff does all that and I have no idea what’s going on), Deanna Zandt: How to join the #dearjohn campaign
A little Hmong history in light of ‘Gran Torino’
(Another link today. I swear I’m going to do an actual post if I don’t die first.)
- Image: A handwoven hanging charm, made for me (in my favorite colors!) by a friend’s mother in 2008. Hmong textiles are generally amazing. Ask Dr. Google if you don’t believe me.
~
So, I haven’t seen Gran Torino, and I’m probably not going to, but I did just see this article (via Racialicious).
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that most USians don’t know a single thing about the Hmong people (perhaps including their existence), unless they live near one of the major Hmong resettlement areas. Honestly, I had never even heard of the Hmong until I met three (one refugee and two US-born) guys in college, and I was there working toward a fuh-reaking BA in Asian Studies. I feel a combination of shame at my own ignorance and anger that in sixteen years of schooling, the history of the Hmong people, or even Hmong-US relations (being US-centric as the US is) were never considered important enough to bring up.
No more ignorance. Jeff Lindsay’s site provides a pretty extensive overview of Hmong involvement during the Viet Nam ‘War,’ immigration, and some (possibly outdated) news. Here’s a pretty long quote that will hopefully encourage clicking through:
Many people think that the Hmong came here to enjoy U.S. economic benefits, but in fact, most are here to escape the death and horror of a genocidal war against them. The long campaign of the Laotian and Vietnamese governments to destroy the Hmong is vengeance for Hmong support of the United States in the Vietnam war.
For many years, the Hmong people fought at our request with incredible bravery and tenacity, greatly slowing the advance of the North Vietnamese into Laos and South Vietnam. Their fighter pilots, some of the most dazzling aces ever, fought until they died in a desperate war with inadequate support. They sacrificed thousands of their lives in deadly missions that ultimately saved thousands of American lives. The U.S. got them into war against our enemies, trained, them, urged them to fight, depended on their bravery, then broke our promises to them as we pulled out without doing anything to protect them against the terrible revenge that was promised and has been delivered.
As overwhelming evidence came in of the chemical and biological warfare that was used against the Hmong, our State Department ignored the situation and for years refused to even list Laos in reports monitoring human rights problems of other nations. The press and the State Department ignored the victims, their chemical wounds, their chemical samples and the chemical analyses of deadly man-made toxins and biological agents, pointing instead to ludicrous theories of bee pollen as explanations for the “yellow rain” that was killing thousands. (The red and blue toxins that killed just as effectively were rarely even mentioned.)
…
In the United States, there is still significant prejudice against the Hmong people, though many people are reaching out to them. I feel that Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin has been helpful and concerned about the Hmong, and has publicly praised them for their heroic support of the U.S. in the Vietnam War. Sadly, many Vietnam vets have no idea that the Hmong were fighting for us. They saw no Hmong in Vietnam and heard no stories of Hmong assistance, for the Hmong were fighting a secret war in Laos that was not revealed until well after the war ended. It pains me to see a few (a minority, I believe) Vietnam vets angry at the Hmong now, suspicious of their reasons for being here. Hmong casualties in the war were even greater than U.S. casualties.
A thank-you shout-out to my old college friends (who shall remain anonymous out of respect for their privacy) for helping to educate me when they shouldn’t have had to.
Also, here is some Hmong pop with English translation:
And if you can’t listen to anything that isn’t autotuned:
Let’s go all teachable moment on this story, folks.
No Equivalence
Melissa McEwan: Let’s Get This Straight
A most excellent post on the bullshit that is “the ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ are equally bad.” I don’t really have anything to add, just kindly read that post.
Bechdel Test, TVTropes, and Microaggressions Linkfiller Post.
‘Bechdel Test,’ Netflix, TVTropes:
It should come as a big No Shit to anyone who pays attention that gender representation in media is pretty important (see the Geena Davis Institute on This Subject for more on that). I am basically incompetent when it comes to fiction-related stuff, so bear with me here. As far as I know, this is the time of year for many northern-hemispherians to board themselves up inside and watch a lot of fiction until the Big Thaw goes down.[1] If you’re one of said people who cares about what you’re watching at least some of the time, you may have heard of ‘the Bechdel Test.’ Here’s a list of movies that may pass the test in its most basic, three-rule form, and here’s the comic it came from many a year ago. It should go without saying that passing this test doesn’t guarantee a profeminist movie, nor do all profeminist movies pass. There are variations worth considering, like this suggestion that a fully-established female character end the movie alive, happy, and uncoupled. The original test can also be reworked to examine other marginalizations or tokenizations along race, class, heteronormative, and other lines.[2]
If you’re not me and therefore a Netflix user, check out Fannie’s post on their new site filter for the handful of female directors they offer movies by. Their page uses three different shades of ~*PiNk*~, so before you even get to the part about space travel and how your singular wine-flavored-ice-cream & PMS-psyche perspective has transformed your boyfriend from a mancave-spelunker into an amateur psychologist hypersomniac, you know it’s all about us, girls.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way (work with me, here), to TVTropes and their Always Female directory. I don’t really have anything to say about TVTropes other than Do Not Click if you have work to do in the next twelve hours.
Other business:
For the four people who haven’t yet heard of it, Microaggressions is a neat little site, and a potentially useful resource for gluing to the eyeballs of assbrains[3] who consider it your (unpaid) duty to ‘prove’ to them that our world still has issues. A couple of my submissions are floating around somewhere. If anyone has suitable photos, they would be a great addition.
(Unless I change my mind,) I’m not going to write an actual post about Julian Assange, but I’m afraid that complete silence on the matter will either imply indifference or dirt under the rug. What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape and Some Shit I’m Sick of Hearing Regarding Rape and Assange pretty much sum up my position on the media narratives going ’round. I will say that this quote of his[4] is just about as asinine malignorant hypocritical cute as can be. Even if he didn’t rape anyone, it’s becoming clear that he’s no ally to women.
ETA: This is A Good Post. I’ve done (both non-US) history and feminism academically, and the paeans to agency are definitely ass-chappingly popular.
And now back to my regularly-scheduled being-distracted-by-life while attempting to write a vegan-101 post.
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[1] For me, that time is summer. It’s 54F where I am right now. Please, dear fellow yanks, pack a box of snow to be airlifted and dropped over Texas for me.
[2] Example: Do two queer characters (who have maybe even met somewhere other than a club or art gallery) at some point talk about something besides being queer, and are those other topics not drawn from stereotypical gay (usually white, male, moneyed) interests?
[3] With apologies to sacral ganglia, which aren’t brains anyway.
[4] Linking there not to be taken as an endorsement of Jezebel.
Thanks for the continual whitewashing of genocide
Today is a National Day of Mourning.
Here are a bunch of links on the history and mythology of ‘Thanksgiving.’
Profeminist Robert Jensen has written:
…I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture.
Here’s what I think it tells us: As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability.
and
In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.
And let’s not forget native women’s ongoing terrorization: Rape on the Reservation
So, down with Thankstaking. Instead of celebrating genocide today, consider adding a blog about Native American, First Nations, and/or global indigenous issues to your feed reader/favorites list.
This is a fairly varied list (I recommend Pretty Bird Woman House).
Here’s a ‘top 50’ list, however ‘top’ was determined (NA Law Blog is part of the Law Professor Blogs Network, which tends to have good blogs).
Native Appropriations has been mentioned here before, as (I think) has Newspaper Rock.
I’ve just added Native Unity and Intercontinental Cry to my own feed for news.
And finally, down with Thankstaking even moreso because of the ongoing mass-slaughter of birds and the glorification of overconsumption/waste culture.
So, how about that racism?
Racism? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t see colour.
Yes you do. Even if you can’t physically see ‘race’ due to sight impairment, we all learn what it is and what it means in the context of our stratified and disparate world. Racism isn’t just about pointy sheets (as basically every anti-racist writer ever has had to say), but systemic, subversive, and subtle stuff, as well.
Also, racism is prejudice + power with reference to socially-constructed ethnic categories and skin pigment. The ‘+ power’ part of that is the part white folks most often misunderstand or choose to ignore. More on that later. Anyway, ‘race’ means different things to different people, and it has a lot to do with geography. Growing up near Chicago (one of, if not the most, segregated cities in the US), the immediate connotation for me was always that race meant “black, white, whatever.” (My own speculation as to why that is has to do with the strength/visibility of the Civil Rights movement and obvious/undeniable centuries of slavery. The atrocities committed against other groups just don’t get the same recognition in our history textbooks or popular imagination. See Howard Zinn on the Arawaks and Columbus.) This framing of race issues as black and white is increasingly expanding to recognise brown—Latin American and ‘Middle Eastern’ in particular. These two categories, however, have very specific associations in the US: immigration and terrorism, respectively. While black Americans are far from embraced in the “our country” of the political upper-right quadrant,[1] brown folks (and add to this particular list East/Southeast Asians) are perpetually foreign and are considered incapable of interacting fully with American culture. It’s patently false that you can’t be pigmented and American, of course, but this line is pretty influential. Ask an East-Asian-looking person how many times ‘well-meaning’ white folks have asked them, “No, where are you really from?” (Wait, don’t actually do that. Unless you’re sure they’d want to have that conversation.) When we talk about race in the US, we spend the majority of the time forgetting about/ignoring the people who have been among the most severely wronged by white folks in the ‘New World’: Native/indigenous/First Nations folks. I’ll just drop this link here: “Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA” (please tell me ‘maze’ isn’t supposed to be some sort of pun, Amnesty). It’s only the tip of the iceberg, of course, but nobody seems to know about it (except Michele Bachmann, who wants to make sure that nothing can be done about it). I will attempt to be an especially good ally to NA people, as I did grow up on/benefit from land that was stolen from them (but we kept their names for the places, natch), and because my ancestors and lots of people who looked like them were personally responsible for exploiting/raping indigenous people while they were stealing the land.
Living in the UK, I came to understand ‘race’ as usually meaning white/brown-Asian-looking (though Sub-Saharan Africans and Turks can also get white people riled up). As with (East) Asians in the US, a substantial range of national and ethnic groups are crammed together for political reasons, and white folks have the privilege of not needing to learn even the most major of differences between them. (Interestingly—to my US-upbrought brain, anyway—for a while, ‘Black’ was a pretty well-established term for POC as a political class, and it basically included anyone who wasn’t white). While it’s true that you can take a single bus through central London on any given day and hear at least as many languages as there are continents, there is still significant segregation along the lines of historical immigration patterns. The history of East End demographics is pretty interesting if you’re into that sort of thing, and serves as a good indicator of which groups have been considered Black over the past two-ish centuries. In the UK, race and religion are quite bound up politically, as the major targets for racism (West/Central/South-Asian-looking people) are assumed to have connections to Islam, and political Islamist ideology in particular. These religion-based fears are also pretty apparently on the increase in much of Europe. The climate of suspicion and ostracism tightens a proverbial lasso around those who aren’t Muslim (punishing them for the extreme parts of a religion they don’t even adhere to) and around those who are (contributing to mistrust and increased fundamentalism locally and around the world). As I only lived in London for a year, I’m not going to attempt to extend my empirical ‘expertise’ into a longer paragraph than this. Race is definitely an enormous deal in the UK, though, and migration in particular.
The US and UK show two ways of thinking about race and racism that are different in the details, but hung upon the same ‘logical’ insider/outsider framework. I mention these two places because I’ve lived in and studied both, not in order to imply that they’re necessarily the most important or interesting (race in Brazil is popular to bring up and good to know about. As someone who has never been to Australia, the first racial dynamic I think of is white/Aboriginal. Someone who lives there, particularly in large cities, may be far more likely to think of migrants from Southeast Asia. Each particular location is going to be a blind spot to most of us (in addition to white privilege where applicable), so I will usually encourage commenters to bring in their own geographic perspectives if the subject at hand isn’t necessarily specific. Every country has a sociopolitically-dominant group and ‘Others.’ Each country is also part of the world system in which countries with white political control are the ones with global economic and political power.[2] Although I’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping them apart for the purpose of this post, race cannot be examined independently of gender and class, particularly at the global level. For material on ‘global care chains’ and other glamorous ‘women’s work,’ I’ll recommend Barbara Ehrenreich’s Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy even though it’s still sitting unread on my shelf, because she tends to know what she’s doing and writes in an accessible way.
A word on ‘model minorities’/’positive racism’ before we skip off to the next section: in a sense, it’s not in a very different boat from male ‘chivalry’ toward women, and they both have to get sunk. It’s a way of putting the Other onto the ladder without jeopardising the dominant group’s position on the top rung. The success of the model group may be cited as ‘proof’ that racism is over (because look, those people are getting on with life without complaining about it to the rest of us, so your people have no excuse). Individual failure is seen as an individual’s problem, whereas achievement may be attributed to some ‘inherent’ characteristic of that group (Chinese kids sure do love to study and hate to dishonour their ancestors by getting a math problem wrong). Non-model groups tend to be defaulted in the other direction so that success is an individual triumph that says nothing positive about the capabilities of the group as a whole. Additionally, there can be tremendous pressure on people within the model minority to maintain the status it may have taken generations to earn, which can be psychologically and physically exhausting, not to mention suffocating for individuals who aren’t interested in toeing the line.[3]
Anyway, white privilege… Oh yes, it’s time to go there.
First off, let us dispell the goofy notion that whiteness (and maleness, and American-ness, while we’re at it) is in any way the default, objective state of existence. If and when there is Absolute Truth™ to be discerned in the social realm, people generally have a hard time of it, as 100% of us have our experiences affected by and our perceptions filtered through the social categories we occupy. We have a sort of tunnel vision in this sense—many issues are simply off the radar if we don’t learn about them. The more privilege you have, the easier it is to be oblivious to these issues. The level of obliviousness often correlates with the amount of unintentional harm done to others, so it’s a good idea to cut back on both.
White privilege is institutional as well as personal. Take a look at who’s in the government (hint: Obama is not ‘the government’), on the boards of the most wealthy corporations, and at the head of news/entertainment media in any country with a sizeable white demographic for the most straightforward indication of institutional racism. Recall who you learned about in any history class not ghettoised into “[Ethnic Category] History.” In my high school, descending from junior to freshman year, we had to take US history, Western Civ, and Everybody Else (er, Non-Western Civ). Only one of those wasn’t whitewashed, not that they would’ve had time to try what with cramming the ‘everybody else’ in there.[4] Anyway, this stuff is pretty hard to deny, though some people still pathetically try to. It’s usually harder for people to see on a personal level, particularly if they’re disadvantaged in tangible ways across other intersectional lines. This US-oriented Amptoons comic shows how benefits to those recognised as white have accumulated at the generational level (yes, there were even benefits in the 19th century for my poor-off-the-boat, non-English-speaking, apoplexy-dying-during, never-even-owned-slaves! ancestors). It reveals a link between institutional and individual privilege: white people were more readily accepted into a country recently stolen by other white people, and they got a decent head start in accumulating property and social capital. These are the roots of white privilege today. Now, on the level of personal privilege benefits, I think a useful way to look at it is by breaking it down into bits—erm, privilets, if you will. Got into fights with POC at school and took a lighter, off-record sentence? Could’ve been a privilet. Occasionally made off with stuff from shops because nobody followed you around? Privilet. Could afford college instead of having to go directly to work, and got caught doing drugs there, but it stayed off your record again? Big privilet. Not having a criminal record because you didn’t look ‘suspicious’ enough to check in the first place? Humongoprivilet—okay, basically just back to privilege again. And racism. Having a criminal record but getting hired over the black guy who doesn’t? Welcome to America, land of opportunity and bootstraps.
In a thread over at Stuff White People Do, commenter saraspeaking wrote something I liked, probably a lot more succinctly than I would have:
Talking about race creates a cognitive dissonance for white people because in their minds, it’s “Racism is bad. I am good. Therefore, I am not racist” – they are resistant to the concept of impersonal, systemic racism because to understand that requires first that they disassemble their own myth of individuality, and begin to understand their actions as part of a (white) pattern.
This comment raises an important question: is the wild rush to deny white privilege in race discussions more immediately motivated by direct individual prejudices or, as saraspeaking suggests, is there a deeper fear that the world they’ve always believed in has never actually existed? I’ve usually been quick to assume the former, particularly when white commenters include an “a black person did a racism to ME once” anecdote (internet feminists are accustomed to this in the form of “b-b-b-but…women can be sexist too!”) or when they make some plot-losing remark about being too poor to have benefited from white privilege. The whole exchange usually reeks of privilege-clinginess and iceberg-tip prejudice that goes exponentially deeper into the rabbit hole with each subsequent comment. It appears (and is, really) an entirely out-of-proportion response. If it is how saraspeaking states, however, the frantic attempts to buttress the pillars and condemn the suggestion that Rome is burning isn’t quite so overblown. It’s still the wrong response, of course, but I think that people who deny white privilege and systemic racism could feel utterly panicked when they recognise a bit of irrefutable reality through the cracks in their worldview.
Specifically to white people: Ultimately, whether you as an individual are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is unlikely to have any real effect on systemic racism. Of course that doesn’t mean you should run around spewing racist crap, because that’d make you an asshole. That should go without saying. Some people take serious umbrage when others call them out on racist statements, but here is something essential to keep in mind in any discussion about oppression dynamics: you don’t get to decide what other people shouldn’t find offensive. It can be difficult to own up and apologise, but it sure is a lot harder living on the receiving end of hate and indifference. Most of us don’t call out prejudiced statements because we find doing so heartwarming, empowerful, and fun. It can be downright dangerous in the wrong environment. Privilege means that at the end of the day, you can walk away from the issue while those without that privilege can never escape it. It’s your responsibility to own up and move on. You can’t get rid of your privilege, but you can use it to help POC. See Tim Wise in the sidebar for oodles on that,[5] and of course Peggy McIntosh’s Invisible Knapsack.
Privilege privilege privilege. I’ve typed this word so many times in this post that it’s just a bunch of lines and loops that make a funny sound. I have to get out of this section!
But I love [stereotypical monolithic statement about POC subgroup X]! I don’t want to hurt them, I want to celebrate them by appropriating [stereotypical and significance-detached noun]. You can’t stop me!!!
I’m 5’/152cm and write longwinded posts on an internet website that nobody reads. I can’t stop anybody from anything. Also, intent is irrelevant. But anyway, this is a pretty problematic area. One problem with appropriating a piece of clothing, a hairstyle, some mannerism, or whatever (other than it often looking like outright mockery) is that it removes that thing from its specific context. Adrienne K. at Native Appropriations frequently writes about the general clusterfuck that is the hipster headdress. Where headdresses were/are used at all, each feather has to be earned, and it’s a pretty big deal to do it right. You can’t just slap one together out of craft store shit and kindergarten glue and expect to look like anything but an oblivious, culture-conflatin’, history-obfuscatin’ ass. I mean, you do know that people who (generally) looked like you genocided the people who came up with that thing you now feel entitled to wear, right? And wear incorrectly, on top of that. That doesn’t say “I want to honour your culture.” It says “I don’t give a fuck and I don’t have to.”
What I’m saying is, the history of Euro-American human trafficking, genocide, and colonialism sort of complicates the idea of taking something that belongs to someone else for yourself. No? It wouldn’t be unproblematic even if the ramifications of those actions weren’t still reverberating today, but it’s far worse since they are. And in addition to historical exploitation of the globe, we have contemporary economic, social, and political imperialism. So those fake feathers and beads you bought a paragraph ago were probably made in a sweatshop by indigenous Central American labourers. Et cetera. (“But they wear jeans and ride buses!” is not, by the way, a counterargument, but I’m going to leave it to the diligent reader to figure out why, because there are already too many words here and most people who disagree with this pretty standard view of racism, privilililege, and appropriation have probably already literally stomped away from their computers at this point.)
Is it ever possible to appreciate but not appropriate? I honestly don’t know. In some cases there’s probably nowhere to draw the line that doesn’t yuck somebody out—which is totally understandable, and I’m for erring on the side of caution. Personally I am a huge fan of ‘traditional’ textiles from all over the world (having created, purchased, reworked, studied, and written an undergrad capstone on things related to them). I find shalwar/churidar kameez and kurtas to be the perfect storm of comfort, attractiveness, and functionality to wear anywhere, ever. But—especially when I lived in London with a large and generally disrespected South Asian population—am I going to chap someone’s ass if I do my grocery shopping in them? It’s a distinct possibility that I am obligated to give a shit about.
So, what is to be done in this precarious position of wanting to combine cultural elements, but respectfully? Does this desire itself have inherent connections to cultural imperialism? Is there ever any benefit to ‘mixing things up’ as such? These questions are for the comments, really. I’ve read a lot here and there, and I don’t think there’s a conclusive answer.
It seems like you’re finally shutting up!
Yes. And I’m just as relieved about it as you are. But a few dozen more words first. As I mentioned above, it’s pretty much impossible in real life to separate race from gender and class, but there are other subjects we care about here and myriad important factors we haven’t made explicit in our shortlist (ability, geography, age, sexuality, political activity, and so on) that also interact with race in society. Intersectionality isn’t just the big buzzword in academia right now—it’s central to the reality people experience, and therefore essential to our analyses here. As for my thoughts on emphatic references to yet-undiscovered colours of people to prove how colourblind I really am, I’ll just drop a quote from Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai’s video linked above: “…although I do not think the blue or purple or silver or green people exist, red, and yellow, and brown people do.” So try not to do that here. It makes you look ridiculous. Toodles!
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[1] Let me make something absolutely clear here: in no way am I suggesting that the centre and left have fixed all their race issues. But let’s also not pretend that there’s no qualitative or quantitative difference between race issues (ideological and legislative) on the left and right.
[2] The PRC, India, and Saudi Arabia are very influential, have certainly been Big Deals in past centuries, and will likely again rise to those levels of power within the next few decades. What I’m not sure about (mainly because I’m not particularly learned in this area) is how global producer/consumer relationships will interact with these resurgences.
[3] Sources for my dissertation have touched on the idea that first-generation immigrant parents are often horrified if their kids aren’t straight–because it jeopardises their model minority status to have members of the community who deviate in what is commonly considered a most scandalous way.
[4] Seriously nothing against the teachers of those classes. They were both awesome and a huge part of why I am where I am today (so thank them if you hate my posts, I guess, harhar). They didn’t have a whole lot of say in what they had to teach. This is a problem at the district and probably national level.
[5] I’ve read really mixed reviews of Tim Wise (er, that sounds weird). A lot of POC blogs really like what he’s doing, but others have repeatedly called him out on specific comments he’s made, as well as how much time he spends talking about Tim Wise. I personally have a small complaint about something he’s said, but that’s neither here nor there. For now he stays in the sidebar because he’s pretty influential on the subject of white privilege.
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“victory” in iraq and why war sucks for women
Good introductory post to an important, and often overlooked (by stupid people) issue at Fannie’s Room, and this snippet in particular made me laugh:
We need only look at our own Revolutionary War for an instance of gender-discrepant war outcomes. While some men predicated a war on the self-evident truth that “all men” were created equal and, therefore, imbued with certain rights, looking back we see that these men were at once too literal regarding the word “men” and too figurative with respect to the word “all.”
Hah! Nice.
Further reading: Dr. Nadje Al-Ali
political compass test, part the second
In EDB’s previous post on the political compass test, we took a short look at the test and displayed, if for nothing else than shits and giggles, our own two graphs. In this post, I’d like to take a look at the questions and explain why I answered them the way I did, perhaps with a smattering of further reading to elaborate on how some aspects of our ideology here are interpreted by the test. All questions are from the version of the test found at www.politicalcompass.org as of the date of this post.
Jump to a section: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6
Page 1 of 6
If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.
This might sound complicated if you’re not into economics and foreign policy, but it boils down to a fairly simple question. Do you believe what’s good for corporations is good for people? If you’re a CEO of one of these companies, or perhaps just a middle-aged white guy who sleeps with Ayn Rand books under his pillow, chances are you’d answer yes. If you’re a woman who works in the maquiladoras in Juarez, or if you’re an oil-covered seagull from the Gulf of Mexico, you might think differently. Until corporations reflect in their business practices a desire to serve humanity rather than to pay shareholders, they will continuously exploit the labor pool and the environment in the name of profit. This is not a sustainable practice.
Suggested reading/viewing: The Corporation
I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.
No one chooses his or her country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it.
Patriotism has lots of definitions. The first statement above is a definition that some people would use, but those people are stupid, and probably right-wing ultra-nationalists. Patriotism begets nationalism, which begets jingoism. Rather than supporting your country, right or wrong, why not support what’s right, and help your country get there when it falls short? On the second, one could be proud of your country’s accomplishments, but being proud of yourself for being from that country is just silly.
“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.” – Eugene V. Debs
Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.
Oh, come on. Really?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
This is just terrible reasoning. Is the religious right an ally of the radical feminist movement just because they both want to do away with porn? I’m no historiologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s been tried. For another example, see America’s support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war. [Ed: EDB has just informed me that historiology is, in fact, a real word. Who knew?]
Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.
This is a bit tricky, because it largely depends on your opinion of international organizations like the UN, and whether or not unilateral action can be justified. There are arguments for and against, I think, but for this question I come from the standpoint of a country which is currently conducting covert or overt wars in 6 different Muslim countries (Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Afghanistan- 7 if you count Palestine, and since Israel is a US satellite state, you should). Could the UN establish laws that restrict a country’s ability to act unilaterally in defense from an invading country? It’s a possibility, but the UN Charter specifically allows military action in self-defense. These provisions, such as Article 51, are often twisted and used in some pretty outlandish justifications for military action (Ronnie the Ray-Gun used it to justify our bombing of Libya after the 1986 Berlin disco bombing), but they’re there to make sure that a country’s hands aren’t tied when foreign boots land on the ground. I guess I could see someone agreeing with this statement if you lived in or were familiar with a country that has been unable to defend itself because of the UN’s draconian laws and jackbooted enforcement mechanisms, but I think that multi-lateral agreement as a precursor to military action probably leads more often to stability and peace than it does to a hindrance of self-defence.
International law would look a lot better if the powerful countries abided by the same standards to which they hold the rest of the world, of course. It’s a good question, any way you look at it. I’m not really sure which direction you’d get nudged on the compass by changing an answer here. I typically disagree, either strongly or weakly based on my mood that day. I think my answer comes from a more utopian view of international law.
There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.
I don’t really get why this question is here, but if you have two eyes and half a brain, I think you have to realize how fucked up the US is due in part to our decaying journalism industry. The 24-hour news cycle not only buries important news before it’s had enough time to really sink in and agitate people, but it seeks out less important stories to drive ratings, because entertainment is more profitable than information. The question is actually missing the mark- it’s not the fusion of information and entertainment, it’s the promotion of entertainment over information.
Page 2 of 6
People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.
Picture this: you’re a working-class stiff in the States, maybe working some service job that pays $40-50K year, with decent benefits. Your life is pretty simple- you work, you go home and spend time with your family, you save up to buy a nice thing every once in awhile, and if you’re lucky you get to take a vacation or two a year to some boring-ass town in Arizona where your parents retired. The CEO of your company, he lives in a 5400-square-foot ranch house in the summer, spends weekends in Vail, flies a private jet to D.C. when he has to testify before Congress, has an entire photo album of snorkeling off the coast of Fiji, and gets Lakers tickets sent to him from Phil Jackson (Lakers, that’s a sports team, right? I’m going with it). Who do you have more in common with: the CEO, who makes over $80 million a year, or the kid in India they’re about to outsource your job to for just under $3000 a year?
Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.
Look, I’m not gonna lie, for the economic questions, I usually just click which button I think Marx would click. I’m woefully underequipped for thorough analyses of most of these points. Feel free to point and laugh. I tend to think that not working is worse than having your money lose some value, and cursory examination of the debate shows that people who rail the most against inflation are those who stand to lose the most- people with shitloads of money in savings that are affected by fluctuating inflation. I don’t see very many people in breadlines happy that the dollar is rising against the euro. I know this is a terrible, pathetic argument I’m making, but fuck rich people.
Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.
If the underwater volcano of oil in the Gulf isn’t enough, there are countless other examples of environmental catastrophes perpetrated upon the earth by corporations who care more about short-term profit than long-term sustainability. In 30 years when half of the world’s coastal cities are underwater, be sure to thank the world’s energy industry for being too goddamn stubborn to spend a few more fucking dollars a month on alternatives to greenhouse-gas-emitting technologies.
(And if you’re planning on ad hominem tu quoque-ing me because I use a computer to type this, my residential electricity comes from a wind farm. Booya grandma, booya.)
“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a fundamentally good idea.
How can you disagree with a dude who rocked a beard so harsh? You gotta have at least a set of serious muttonchops before you step to him.
It’s a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.
Agreed. I believe that all basic, life-essential commodities should be free, or kept to an absolute minimal cost. The residents of Cochabamba agree. Water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe. It’s an absolute necessity for life as we know it. We came from water. Two thirds of the earth is covered by it, and it falls from the sky, provided you live in the right places. And yet, our dumb asses have been convinced that paying 3 dollars for a bottle of it is a fantastic idea. Because of that, companies like Nestlé and Coca-Cola are stealing the water right out from underneath people in the Global South (the developing world) and bottling it up to sell to stupid white people. Bottled water is probably one of the biggest scams in modern times.
Further reading: Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water
Land shouldn’t be a commodity to be bought and sold.
How many wars have been fought, how much blood has been shed, how many lives have been lost, all so that some person, or group of people, could draw a little squiggly line on a map around a bigger piece of land? The earth has been here for 4.5 billion years, and it’ll be here for about 5 billion more. How arrogant are we to place a stake into a piece of dirt, and say “Hah! This is mine. I own this.” If the earth had a voice, I’m sure it would laugh.
Also, property is theft.
It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.
I agree with this, but really only because I hate rich people. Sorry, no substantive arguments from me here. Like I said, on economics I just play WWKMD.
Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.
Considering that pretty much every rich Western country got rich through government intervention in trade and rampant protectionism, I’d agree if capitalism is assumed. The antithesis to this viewpoint is the neoliberal economics of the Friedman gang, and that’s just been working out fabulously for the developing world.
Further reading: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.
Yes! This is a wonderful idea! I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
(Can you tell I get tired of the same questions, worded differently?)
The rich are too highly taxed.
I would temper my answer to this with a dose of standpoint analysis, but it’s really not necessary as the current highest tax rate in the world is Denmark, at 59%. The US’s current top rate is 35% on incomes over $373,000. Most people who whine and cry about the top income tax rates are: a) misunderstanding how progressive income taxation works, and b) not rich. Rich people know better, they know they’re making a fucking mint right now, which is why they typically shut the hell up about it. If people who whined about the marginal tax rate actually looked at what’s taxed in the US, they’d see that rich people are getting off nearly scot-free.
Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care.
My favorite argument during the run-up to the passage of the Affordable Health Care for America Act was that it would lead to rationing. RATIONING, they’d say. YOU’RE GOING TO BE RATIONING HEALTH CARE! As if everybody is getting an even shake at it right now? No, my sweet little idiots, health care is already rationed. It’s rationed on the basis of ability to pay, which will happen in a for-profit health care system no matter how much you subsidize piss-poor private insurance policies. The only way to go is a nationalised health care industry.
So no, people with more cash shouldn’t get higher standards of medical care, because this privileges them in ways that probably don’t have anything to do with how hard they work, or how smart they are, or how vital to the moral fabric of our country they are. How about this: those who do all of our menial, shitty, grunt-work jobs should have the right to higher standards of medical care. Tucker and Kayleigh from the country club can stand the fuck in line with everybody else. How’s that for a meritocracy?
Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.
The converse of this statement is one of those absolutely insane Libertarian ideas, that governments should never, ever touch businesses. If a business does something bad, people will find out, and the market will correct itself. Horseshit.
There’s wiggle room here, if you think about times when a business has made misleading statements without going all the way into criminal acts. So for instance, advertisements, which are about 95% bullshit- should the government step in and tell them what they can and can’t say in ads? Considering how advertisers use psychologically manipulative tricks to get us to buy shit we don’t need, I’d say yes, yes it should.
A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.
This is basically a semantics question about the definition of “free market”. Is it one in which there is zero government intervention, or is it one in which fair and open competition is guaranteed by external market forces (i.e. governmental regulation restricting anti-competitive practices). I’m not sure how this statement wiggles you on the scorecard, but I strongly agree. Assuming that a market system is a given, restricting the formation of anti-competitive monopolies should be a priority. If the market only works when there’s competition, it seems to me you’d want to make sure competition is actually happening.
The freer the market, the freer the people.
This is somewhat similar to the previous statement, and it depends on which definition of “free market” you’re coming from. I start to get irritated at this point, because the test really seems to be assuming that I prefer a market-based allocation of goods in the first place, which I don’t! Anyway, I believe this statement is assuming that “free market” means free of government intervention, and you can probably guess that I disagree. I’m so weary of economic stuff at this point though that I can usually only manage a weak Disagree. Some day I’ll probably take the test and record my answers, then change them to see which way certain statements shift you. Depending on the semantics which I talked about, this statement could shift you left or right on the economic scale.
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Abortion, when the woman’s life is not threatened, should always be illegal.
Hah! No.
All authority should be questioned.
The aim of this statement should be fairly obvious. I can’t imagine the mindset of a person who would disagree with this, except maybe the clergy. That’s an important point, because no revolutionary ideology can be subservient to any kind of authority. That doesn’t mean you have to adopt an angsty, “No, fuck you, Dad” stance against anything that people in positions of authority tell you to do, but to assume that a person should be respected, or followed, or not put against the wall by virtue of occupying a position of authority reveals an authoritarian mindset.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
I believe a penal system should be built on rehabilitation, not punishment. You’ve heard the saying: “an eye for an eye and a whole lot of fuckers get gooey eye-juice on their fingers”. No one wants that.
Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.
If commercial success were the ultimate arbiter of the artistic value of a piece of work, American Idol would be hailed as the greatest thing since Homer. Just because people with money are too stupid to know what’s worth spending it on doesn’t mean the rest of us should suffer. Take a totally market-based approach to the arts, and in 100 years we won’t know Starry Night from Twilight. The sociological consequences of this should be self-evident.
Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.
This is an area where I’m going to have to slightly slip into my authoritarian jackboots, because I believe that education is so important, it shouldn’t be left up to people’s whims on whether or not they, or their kids, should attend school. Of course, the kids who don’t want to be there probably aren’t getting much out of it anyway. American schools are failing the lower class so catastrophically, something needs to be addressed. Tossing kids to the wind by letting them drop out is not the answer. It’s a difficult issue, no doubt.
Further reading/viewing: The Wire, Season 4. Yeah, seriously.
All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.
I’ll agree with this only if white people are the ones who keep to their own, and everyone else gets to hang out and have fun. I’m counting on my trace amounts of melanin to keep me out of the honky convention if that happens, of course.
Real answer: Segregation sucks, multiculturalism is cool.
Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
My hatred of kids make me want to concur here, but all of the psychological research from the last, what, 3 decades shows that using physical force to discipline your children is pretty unhealthy. That brand of parenting, while successful for little shits who act the fool, just breeds more authoritarians. It teaches that might makes right. Sadly, I have to say that parents shouldn’t spank.
It’s natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.
Again, your tendencies towards authoritarianism are being tested here. Yeah, children should be able to keep some secrets. This is a no-brainer.
Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence.
I’ve been sitting here staring at this statement for about a half an hour, trying to figure out a more erudite way to answer it than “Duh.” I think the only way to disagree here is if you’re stuck in some crazy “Reefer Madness” kinda mindset, where you live in perpetual fear of immigrants and black people all hopped up on jazz cigarettes. The hypocrisy of the US’s drug policy is so self-evident that an examination of it here would be a waste of bits.
The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.
No, perpetuation of the corporo-capitalist economy is not a good enough reason to send people to school. Education should round us out as whole, learned individuals. STEM field students (science, technology, engineering and math) who whine and cry about having to take “liberal arts” classes are big whiny crybabies. You’re already gonna make like $50,000/year when you get out of school, you can stomach a semester or two of learning about poetry or sculpting, you big baby.
People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.
Being an amateur scientician with lots of interest in evolutionary theory, it’s hard for me not to say we should take hold of homo sapiens‘s evolutionary path. Eugenics is just not a good way to go though. I don’t think there’s even a hypothetically possible group of humans who could administer that sort of policy without falling into the trappings of sexism, racism and classism. Leave this sort of thing to the sci-fi stories.
The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.
Haha, yeah. While I think that this generation of children could do with more discipline, that comes from me being a cranky bastard who hates noise. Authoritarianism is inherently inimical to the eradication of oppression. The most important thing for children to learn is how to make sentences full of $10 words like that last one I just wrote. That, plus the scientific method and critical thinking.
There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
Gah! I hate this question, cause it ties me up in knots depending on how you approach it. Let’s just break this down into the two ways I see it. First approach: White people in the west who look at the developing world and see “savage and uncivilised” peoples simply because they don’t drive SUVs and don’t pray to their White God. To these honkeys I say: “Fuck you!” That’s some racist-ass garbage, so on the test I’d mark Strongly Agree.
However! There is another approach here, and that’s the argument with cultural relativists who will assert that you cannot categorically define certain cultural traditions or habits as harmful or disgusting, because “Well that’s just their culture!” Look here: stoning women to death for adultery is wrong. Genital mutilation of babies is wrong. Denying your child medical care because you believe God will save them is wrong. I don’t give a shit what culture you come from, wrong is wrong. Now, some people might quibble with that stance over my culturally-ingrained ideas of morality, but there’s a pretty simple and universal litmus test. Does it hurt someone else for no good goddamn reason? If so, stop it. Considering that, I’d disagree with the test question.
Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society’s support.
This sounds like such a Republican stance, but I’m fine with it actually. I mean, if I were actually in a commune and someone wanted to benefit from the work of everybody else without contributing themselves, I don’t see why they should be carried by everyone else. I think the difference between my attitude and that of the Right is where we draw the line on “able to work”. I’m a lot more flexible on that. If you’re injured, or handicapped, or even just unemployed, I have no problem spotting you some float time until we figure out something that you can do. Give to society what you’re able, and you’ll get what you need. I’ll agree with the statement, but not so vigorously that I start railing on “welfare queens” and whatever other racially-coded bullshit language the American Right uses.
When you are troubled, it’s better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
I’m not sure what this kind of question is doing on a political compass test. In any case, I disagree. There’s nothing wrong with being depressed, and if you don’t think about things there’s no guarantee that they’ll work on our their own. I think you have to grab your problems by the horns and deal with them until they’re solved.
First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.
What am I, Father Coughlin? Get this xenophobic, nativist crap outta here.
What’s good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.
Mother of god. Does anyone really think this?
No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.
This is somewhat of a rehash of the previous theater and museum question. I disagree, with the caveat that publicly-funded broadcasting institutions should also be publicly-controlled. A government newspaper could easily become a mouthpiece for pro-government propaganda, and that should be guarded against. The irony in America is that our mainstream media are already pro-government propaganda platforms, and yet they’re private corporations.
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Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.
Jesus, where do I even start? The Bush presidency saw the most significant expansion of executive power in the post-Watergate era, and the Obama administration is pushing that envelope even further. Terrorism has been the boogeyman du jour for about the last decade to scare Americans into accepting all sorts of ridiculous shit that would have been hard to swallow otherwise, from endless wars in the Middle East to an expanded, corporate-sponsored surveillance state at home. To those who would wave the specter of 9/11 in our faces, poverty is a bigger killer of people worldwide than terrorism could ever hope to be, but we don’t wage war on poverty (just the poor).
Further reading: The War on Our Freedoms, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald.
A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.
Ah, the old “a dictatorship would be great as long as I’m the dictator” line of thinking. While this is logically correct, a one-party state brings with it too many pitfalls. The small advantage this situation would offer isn’t worth the risk of a totalitarian government. This position is harder to defend in times like now, where a minority party in Congress is being a bunch of childish shits and deliberately sabotaging an entire branch of government. But, if you give one party control today, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be on your side tomorrow, and people in power don’t voluntarily cede power back once they have it. Multiple parties are necessary to maintain a free democracy.
Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.
Yeah, and as long as you’re not Jewish, gay, handicapped, Roma, Socialist, or someone who likes to speak out against the state, you don’t have to worry about the Gestapo.
The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes.
No, the death penalty should be abolished along with the rest of the prison-industrial complex. The state should not be in the business of meting out death to the people. Some might see a contradiction between my anti-death penalty stance and my personal view that bloody revolutions are justifiable, but to them I say: “Up against the wall, pig.”
Also, here’s a little thing I like to point out about the death penalty and America’s place in the world. Here’s a partial list of countries that America stands with in our attitudes and permissiveness towards capital punishment: Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Botswana, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Uganda, DRC, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen, Cuba.
Great company we keep!
Further readings: Amnesty International
In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.
No. No, man! Shit no man, I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin somethin like that, man.
Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all.
If calling a crucifix in a jar of urine “Piss Christ” and considering it art is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation.
Yeah, that’s working out really well for America, innit? Compare recidivism rates between hardline countries and countries who build a penal system on rehabilitation to see what’s better. (Hint: Their way is better)
It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.
That might be true (I can’t say if it is or isn’t), but that doesn’t mean that said criminals couldn’t be useful. So we’ve got Hannibal Lecter in jail for life and we’re not gonna waste effort on rehabilitation. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from him, and see what makes him tick. Information gained from this research could be used by psychiatrists, law enforcement, and the penal system. Giving up and executing them seems like the real waste.
The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.
Call me crazy, but I’d like to live in a society that has more to offer people than being mindless, soulless drones whose only purpose in life is to be cogs in the corporate, capitalist machine. That’s not to say that manufacturers aren’t important. The printing press is a fantastic invention and humanity is probably better off for it, but it takes a writer to write books to print. The camera is a great thing in and of itself, but an artist can use it to show us things that are truly, soul-touchingly beautiful.
Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.
Help! I’m trapped in the 1850’s and I can’t get out! Also, cholera really sucks!
Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries.
Yeah, this is an inarguable truth, not an opinion question. Monsanto and other companies are destroying the agricultural industries in India and other global south countries by patenting the genomic sequences of plants that farmers have been growing for generations. If that’s not unethical, there’s no such thing as ethics.
Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.
This is something that tired old people say when they can’t take the fact that changing the fucked-up world we live in takes effort, and that to make things right you often have to give up some material comforts. I mean I don’t want to be all punk rock/teenage angst about it, but fuck the establishment. If the establishment stands behind what’s right, good for them. If they’re in the wrong, keep making molotovs.
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Astrology accurately explains many things.
I like the questions I don’t even have to think about. If you think astrology can explain anything, much less many things, I have a few simple experiments I’d like you to run. Astrology is ridiculous gobbeldygook, and we ought to be ashamed that so many people take it seriously. A person who believes in the predictive power of astrology is a person who doesn’t understand the scientific method.
Further reading: Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
You cannot be moral without being religious.
Horseshit. And actually, I’d argue that an external morality, a code of ethics that’s forced on you from the outside, is one that’s less internalized, less yours than one that’s formed from within. Yes, you heard right, I’m saying the morality found among non-believers to be superiour than that of the believers. To any godly types reading this: what if God commanded you to murder?
Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.
If you’re already charitable, then taxes on you to pay for social security (the generic term here, not the specific American public retirement fund) shouldn’t bother you that much. If you’re not charitable (for no good reason), fuck you. Progressive income taxation is a perfectly justifiable system for creating social safety nets.
Some people are naturally unlucky.
Disagree! There’s no such thing as luck. I don’t know how this relates to positions on the compass, but in my view believing in some external, ethereal force called Luck that guides whether or not good things happen to you is just magical thinking dressed in rational clothes. Oh sure, you could say that finding a $20 bill on the ground is “lucky”, but to think of a person as unlucky, as if it’s some invisible raincloud hanging over their head, is ignoring the fact that there are probably actual, concrete factors that make that person’s life what it is.
It is important that my child’s school instills religious values.
How do you transcribe the sound of a guffaw? Is it “HAW HAW”? That’s the sound I’m making right now. HAW HAW HAW!
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Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.
Do I even need to bother at this point?
A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship, should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.
Equal rights for LGBTQ folks. No ifs, no ands, no buts. Also, this study.
Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population.
Oh boy. Porn, porn, porn. Where to begin on porn. No, I’m not in favor of banning it, but I do advocate for a transformation of society whereby there will be no demand for porn, and thus, porn will disappear entirely.
Further reading: I Blame the Patriarchy, Rage Against the Man-chine
What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.
I don’t see how you can disagree with this statement on any other grounds than “Eww, gays are icky!” I mean really, is there a rational argument in support of sodomy laws?
No one can feel naturally homosexual.
Considering the multitudinous examples of homosexuality in animals, I’d have to give this a big fat thumbs down. More importantly though, who cares if it is “natural” or not? If people are born homosexual or just choose to be at some point later in life, who cares? Saying “but we’re born this way” makes it some kind of natural affliction that should be tolerated only because you had no choice in being afflicted by it. From birth or not, there’s nothing wrong with it, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. Unless you don’t use lube, that is.
These days openness about sex has gone too far.
Ah, how I long to return to those halcyon days where every part of our body from the waist down was considered shameful and filthy. I love referring to my crotch as “down there.” Openness about sex hasn’t gone far enough, if you ask me!
Well, that wraps up the test in its current incarnation. Hope that’s a little more illuminating, and remember: if there’s a position more to the left of you, you’re probably wrong!
In case you missed it, idiotic radio talk show host “Dr.” Laura Schlessinger stirred up controversy for being a racist piece of shit. The details of the incident are here. What actually happened to start all this is bad enough: white lady tries to be the Objective Arbiter of racial insensitivity, complains that white people can’t say nigger, and casually dismisses real problems from a person of color who has decided to kill her brain cells by listening to that awful show. What I wanted to talk about was “Dr.” Laura’s response to all this, which shows a misunderstanding of the US Constitution that is common to most conservatives who come under fire for saying stupid shit.
This is her response to being called out:
KING: So, what are you here to tell us tonight?
SCHLESSINGER: Well, I’m here to say that my contract is up for my radio show at the end of the year and I have made the decision not to do radio anymore. The reason is: I want to regain my First Amendment rights. I want to be able to say what’s on my mind, and in my heart, what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent, and attack affiliates and attack sponsors.
See that? She’s doing it for the sponsors. For freedom. Jesus. Also, black people are apparently a “special interest group.”
What irks me, aside from the racism and petulant whining, is the blatant misunderstanding (I hope, I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s not a willful misuse) of what the First Amendment is and means. Schlessinger is saying that people calling her out for her racism is an infringement of her first amendment right to freedom of speech. Well, to point out what’s wrong with that statement, let’s go back down memory lane, since most people probably need a refresher.
Transcript of the Bill of Rights:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Let’s say that important part together: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. That’s what the first amendment does. It doesn’t give you the freedom of speech. You have the freedom of speech by virtue of existing. It’s one of those “inalienable rights” that Jefferson had in mind when he wrote the Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
That’s the point of having a government in the first place- to secure the people’s inalienable rights- according to Jefferson. The government doesn’t give you that right (though there are rights the government does grant, those laid out in the amendments are usually considered natural or inalienable. For more on this, read every political philosopher from the last 400 years, particularly Locke). If you have a system of government where you only have the freedom of speech because the government allows it, you might as well not have that right at all. In addition, the Constitution doesn’t give you the right, because it’s just a piece of paper, and these rights and freedoms are inherent in every living person. More importantly, the first amendment, as we saw, doesn’t even address the people, it addresses Congress. That’s what the first amendment is- not a granting of rights to the people, but a restriction on the rights of Congress, which is exactly the way it should be.
So you see, a person cannot, by definition, infringe upon your first amendment rights, because a person is not Congress. The amendment prevents Congress from restricting your freedom of speech. What the first amendment doesn’t prevent is people being called out for saying something asinine. If you say something racist and idiotic, and people take you to task for that, it’s not an abridgment of your freedom of speech. You are free to say whatever you want to say, but we’re also free to call you a dumb honkey.
tffp’s official stance on gay marriage
First, I’d like to share the excellent smackdown of a dumb anti-gay marriage argument. Glenn Greenwald, in response to Ross Douthat, posted a great rebuttal. His closing paragraphs:
[T]he moral, theological and spiritual questions about marriage are every bit as open and unconstrained as they were before. Just as is true with a whole host of questions on which the State takes no position, private actors are completely free to venerate some marriages and stigmatize others. Churches, synagogues and mosques are free — as they should be — to sanction only those marriages which their religious dogma recognizes. Parents are completely free to teach their children that certain marriages are superior and others immoral. And columnists like Douthat are free to argue that the relationships they want to have are not just best for themselves but are, as an objective matter, morally and theologically superior.
They just can’t misuse secular law to institutionalize those views or coerce others who don’t accept them into having their legal rights restricted based on them. But if they’re as right as they claim they are, they shouldn’t need to coerce others into acceptance through legal discrimination. Their arguments should prevail on their own. The fact that they believe they will lose the debate without that legal coercion speaks volumes about how confident they actually are in the rightness and persuasiveness of their views.
I think that could stand as the final word on the civil rights aspect of the issue. There are wider issues at hand here, however, and I think our stance at TFFP is worth sharing.
If marriage is a religious institution, as anti-gay marriage arguers claim, then it should be treated as such. That is, it should be viewed, in the eyes of the state, as having the same legal standing as any other religious ceremony. Marriages performed in churches should be legally equivalent to baptisms, confirmations, communion, bar mitzvahs, or any other religious gobbledy-gook that those people do. However, there is societal benefit to be had from people being in that sort of relationship, so the state should perform civil unions. These civil unions would be non-discriminatory, as they should be if administered by the state, and they would confer the benefits that we deem acceptable, like hospital visitation, inheritance, tax benefits, yadda yadda. Marriages, since they’re simply a religious practice, would be free to be as discriminatory as the churches want. You want a marriage? Go on down to the church and have a blast. You want to actually have the state recognize your relationship? Head to the courthouse and get a civil union.
Of course, with marriage being the primary method of perpetuation of the patriarchy, I can’t really advocate for its continued existence, and I’m not sure the civil union approach would eliminate that. But as long as that garbage is here, I think it’s a good stance.
The Fivefold Path 
