On the Banks

Chariots of Water

 

A cool story about how two crazy Irish brothers from Skibereen (Skibereen!) worked really really hard and won something:

 

 

 

 

Here's How Naive I was in 1989

 

 

 

This is embarrassing. I'm going through old letters and diaries, and I came across this entry, written the day after Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were overthrown and executed. The details of the brutality of that regime shocked the world – from the thuggish secret police who spied on the entire population, assassination and medical assault on dissenters, and the banning of contraception and close monitoring of women of child-bearing age in order to boost the sagging population (pro tip: maybe cut down on the political assassinations), to the horrifying treatment of orphaned children, the infamous infection of hundreds of babies with AIDS, and the economic deprivation that characterises all communist regimes. 

Given all of the misery and downright sadistic cruelty that had been exposed, the naive 1989 me thought this had to be the final blow for communism. It simply went without saying (to naive 1989 me) that university professors and other intellectuals would no longer be able to present communist ideology as something warm and cuddly that didn't necessarily require brutal authoritarianism. 

Here's what I wrote:

"There's nothing to say!! Finally! There's just nothing left to say. Except that maybe now you'll be able to go to university in America and not just learn how to make elaborate excuses for totalitarian oppression."

I know. I'm laughing at naive 1989 me too. Or maybe crying. I'm not sure. All I know is that, nearly thirty years ago, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, and as people in China and Hong Kong were still reeling from the violent crackdown on dissent that summer (29 years ago yesterday), the nature of communism should have been as clear as daylight to everyone. Honestly, it should have been clear as daylight much, much, earlier, when Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek laid out in painstaking detail the reasons why central planning could only lead to economic disaster. 

Of course, it was as clear as daylight then, just as it is as clear as daylight today, for anyone who is paying attention. Which I guess is why university professors have to sell their tired and morally bankrupt ideas to those who weren't paying attention 30 years ago.

Naive 1989 me should have known better.

 

 

Father Brown and the “Religion” of Libertarianism

 

 

Anyone who has been a libertarian for any length of time has probably been accused of being “religious” in their political beliefs at some point. The term is used to dismiss libertarianism as being somehow faith-based, or dogmatic and impermeable to reason (never mind the centuries of rigorous philosophical and economic work that underly libertarian thinking) and therefore not worth taking seriously.

My own tendency has been to defend libertarian thought by pointing to those centuries of important work, and to the evidence both throughout history and in the present day demonstrating that the more free people are, the better off they are. But I’ve come to realize, recently, that those who have accused me of being “religious” in my opinions all these years aren’t entirely wrong.

I owe this new revelation to Father Brown.

I started watching the current BBC series when I learned that it was based on stories by G.K. Chesterton. I know, the series is very different from the stories. I’ve read some of them and I do know that. But however the show measures up against its inspiration, it is an absolute gem that stands apart from most of what is on television – and in 2018 that’s saying quite a lot. The show is deceptive in its simplicity, and downright shocking in its non-cynical portrayal of a protagonist who is driven by principle.

In the BBC version, Father Brown is a Catholic priest serving the idyllic – yet astonishingly crime-ridden – town of Kembleford, in the Cotswolds. He is also an amateur sleuth who consistently shows up the local police, solving crimes that they cannot. Yet throughout, his focus is on the souls of his parishioners, and of the criminals themselves. His goal is always to convince the guilty to confess, so that they may find peace in the afterlife.

It’s not exactly a libertarian theme. And yet watching it, I feel a kinship. For me, no matter how great the writing, there is something fundamental missing in most mainstream entertainment. It’s hard to point to exactly what it is: “Morality” isn’t quite right. Neither is “spirituality” – and indeed, there are plenty of films and tv shows that deal with spiritual and moral topics. I think it’s something about holding a view of humans as being capable of acting from something other than their basest instincts, of being capable of living together in peace, and about earthly authority and law being subordinate to a more fundamental moral code.

It’s much easier to be cynical about these things. Or to insist (with what starts to feel increasingly like desperation) that humanity’s true nature reveals itself only in extreme situations, that we are really no better than animals, and childish concerns over right and wrong must always be cast aside in favor of survival.

So when I see a character who is driven primarily by a concern for adhering to a moral code, it strikes a chord. It may not precisely reflect my own values, but it comes closer than most of what the mainstream has to offer. That character has an explicit view as to what is right and what is wrong, grounded in belief. And so do I.

Those who accuse libertarianism of being a “religion” have a point: It is grounded in certain beliefs: The belief in self-ownership; the belief in the Non Agression Principle; the belief that no person has the right to rule over another. We may also have a ton of logical and empirical evidence on our side, but at its heart, libertarianism is founded on beliefs about right and wrong.

Of course, if the belief that no-one has the right to enslave another constitutes a religious belief, then so does its inverse: The belief that some people do have the right to rule over others, to make decisions for them, to use force to get them to do what they want them to. Those who sling the epithet of religiosity at libertarians are in fact every bit as religious as we are.

Their religious beliefs may be harder to discern, as they are largely unspoken. They may rarely be stated explicitly, but they are some of the oldest and most widely accepted beliefs on the planet. They make up the water that most of us swim in without even recognizing it as water. They form the religion of Might Makes Right; of rulers and ruled; of coercive violence being an acceptable way to organize society.

Critics of libertarians like to ridicule us for taking seriously our beliefs: the “absolute” sanctity of the individual, the right to live free of another’s rule, and the principle of self-ownership. But there is a belief system implicit in that ridicule, and it is an insidious one. For if the belief that no-one may rule over another is laughable, then what is the contradictory belief that is not?

 

 

Butler Shaffer - The More Complex Society Becomes, the Greater the Need for Anarchy

 

 

My dad, speaking a year ago at Jayant Bhandari's Capitalism and Morality conference:

 

 

Not About Feminism or Men's Rights – An Awesome TED Talk

 

This is one of the best TED Talks I've seen in a long time. It's much less about feminism or the men's rights movement than it is about the art of listening, the dangers of dehumanizing those we disagree with, and how the mainstream media is an instrument of this dehumanization, and of shutting down genuine discussion. 

 

I am Interviewed on Ernie Hancock's Show this Morning

 

I was on Ernie Hancock's show this morning to discuss my recent article No, I Won't Disavow My Racist Friend, and issues from the perils of identity politics to shutting down intellectual debate, being offended, and the double standard towards state violence. You can watch here:

 (Or here, if the Vimeo post is down.)

 

2017-10-31 Hour 3 Bretigne Shaffer from Ernest Hancock on Vimeo.

 

 

 

 

Happy Halloween from Anarcho Soccer Mom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Owen Nails the Gun Debate

 

This is the best commentary I've seen on the gun debate ever. And Michael Owen needs to start his own (real) blog:

"No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems. The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.

"For example, we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths. Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.

"The tough questions are those like, why do we have these two Americas? But that’s an uncomfortable discussion to have. So instead those on the left favor simple minded restrictions that target first world America, with its high gun ownership but very low murder rate, but don’t address the root causes of third world America’s violence at all. Meanwhile those on the right correctly feel their civil rights are constantly threatened, so they are constantly in a state of “better stock up before they finally ban it” and the guns and ammo fly off the shelves. The left’s constant gun control rhetoric is the greatest thing ever for arms manufacturers.

"Meanwhile, over the past 40 years, while the number of guns in private hands has doubled, the murder rate has dropped by half. The left are constantly prattling about “assault weapons” which are almost never used to commit murders (about 1% of gun murders; all rifles combined are around 3%). More murders are committed with baseball bats than “assault rifles”; the vast majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns, but it’s easier to sell restrictions that target “assault weapons”, even though such restrictions, even if 100% effective, would make no detectable change in the murder rate (especially because of substitution effects). They favor ridiculous measures such as bans on “high capacity magazines”, as if magazines weren’t cheap and easily swapped out in a fraction of a second.

"The uncomfortable fact is that roughly 80% of the US homicide rate is associated with the drug trade, and the drug trade is violent because the drug war reserves it for violent criminals. We have a system in place where the government subsidizes poverty in urban areas, imposes economic blight in those same areas through heavy taxes and regulations, renders the residents permanently unemployable via the “criminal justice” (sic) system, and creates a lucrative black market in drugs by restricting supply (not to mention increasing demand as people are desperate to escape their circumstances by getting high), meaning the only game in town is often entering the drug trade. The drug trade is violent because those in it have no access to courts to settle disputes. Powerful industries lobby to keep the drug war going; the top spenders are law enforcement unions, the prison industry, big alcohol, tobacco, and pharma.

"Guns are not the proximate cause of gun violence in the US. Childlike magical thinking and simple “fixes” to complex problems will not work. But it is comfortable, and self-righteousness feels so good. So I expect it to continue indefinitely."

 

 

No, I Won’t Disavow My "Racist" Friend

 

 

 

I have a friend who is racist. He wouldn’t use that word to describe himself, and it’s probably unfair of me to use it. But given what he’s done and what he’s said, I think most of the rest of the world (our part of the world, anyway) would say that he’s racist. So I’m not going to waste time arguing about the definition of the word, or explaining that my friend doesn’t actually hate people of other races. The fact is that my friend did something that most decent people with any awareness of our country’s history would find abhorrent: He donated money to the campaign of David Duke, one-time head of the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

For the benefit of anyone who doesn’t fully understand what the KKK is or was: The Ku Klux Klan was founded in the 1860s, and used violence to pursue the agenda of white supremacy. This included the extra-judicial hunting down, torture, and murder of thousands of black Americans between the 1870s and 1950s. We refer to these acts as “lynchings”, but that word does little to convey the full horror of what was done. Nor does it fully convey the motivations behind the atrocities.

Lynching has come to be associated with vigilante justice, as if it was simply one method used by angry mobs to punish those who they (rightly or wrongly) believed to have committed violent crimes. But that’s not what lynching was all about. Yes, some lynching parties went after blacks and others who they believed to be criminals. But just as often, they sought retribution against blacks who were deemed too “uppity”, who competed too successfully with white business owners. This was not about protecting white people from black criminals, but protecting them from social and economic competition. It was about – violently – keeping blacks “in their place.” And the accounts of how that was done are stomach churning.

So I completely understand why anyone would be shocked and offended to find that the owner of their favorite Chinese restaurant was in any way associated with this organization.

I wasn’t especially shocked, when I found out that my friend had been “outed” for having donated $500 to David Duke’s campaign. Roger and I have been friends for more than thirty years, but in recent years we have drifted apart as he became attracted to white racial-identity politics. I made a real effort to understand where he was coming from, and I know him well enough to know that he doesn’t just take on a new point of view or philosophy without doing some serious study of that view. In the end though, I see identity-based politics as being antithetical to civil society and peaceful coexistence, and none of the writing or thoughts he shared with me made me think otherwise.

So when I saw that there was a campaign to boycott his restaurant, the O’Mei, in Santa Cruz, because of his donation, and that the O’Mei’s Yelp page and social media sites were full of comments referring to my friend as a “racist”, “white supremacist”, “nazi”, and a few other choice epithets, I wasn’t entirely surprised. But when I learned, a few days later, that the O’Mei had closed, the news hit me like a stab in the heart.

Roger and I met in the mid-80s, at UC Santa Cruz. He was helping to start an alternative student newspaper (an alternative to the monolithically left-wing official student paper) and I became the editor of that paper. We disagreed about pretty much everything from the beginning. He was a conservative, with an appreciation for free markets, and I was an anarcho-libertarian. We both had an interest in China: He had lived in Taiwan many years ago, and had created what I was later to learn was one of the best Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area; and I was getting ready to head off for my junior year abroad in Hong Kong.

We spent a lot of time together over the years, both in Santa Cruz and in the various parts of Asia where I was living for most of the late 80s through 2000. I have fond memories of staying up all night to get the newspaper out only to find stacks of it dumped in trash bins on the UCSC campus; of heated arguments over the value (or lack thereof) of indifference curves; of listening to him discuss the finer points of recipes with cooks in China; of deep conversations about cultural differences over cans of Asahi on the streets of Tokyo. And of many, many, meals at the O’Mei.

When I said that the O’Mei was one of the best Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area, I was being modest on Roger’s behalf. I spent about a decade in Asia, living in three different countries and traveling quite a bit in China. I’ve eaten a lot of really really good Chinese food. But I’ve never encountered anything quite like the O’Mei.

It was unique. There is something that Roger did, not “Westernizing” traditional dishes, as many Chinese restaurants do, but something else. Re-creating them almost: Pine-nut shrimp with crunchy spinach, pork (or tofu) roasted with dates and yams, a crispy Taiwanese snapper that was nothing less than heavenly. He would take an already delicious dish and push it up a level, turning it into something even more beautiful and memorable. I guess that’s called “cultural appropriation” now. I call it genius.

Roger and I argued all the time. About everything. In hindsight, it seems odd that we were such good friends, when we had so little to agree about. But I think it had to do with the fact that we both cared about the big questions, and we had enough respect for each other, and for the pursuit of the truth, that we could be brutally honest with each other.

When the story emerged that Roger had made a donation to Duke’s campaign, and there were calls to boycott his restaurant, people who knew me asked for my thoughts. I tried to find a way to express them. But I couldn’t.

How could I say anything in my friend’s defense and not simply be dismissed as a “racist” myself? How could I condense a 30-year friendship into a comment on a FaceBook post? And how could I even begin to explain the revulsion I feel – absolute revulsion – at those who have decided that the only crime for which there can be no forgiveness is the holding of racist beliefs, but who tolerate and even admire those who perpetrate institutionalized violence and authoritarianism?

I’m not going to defend Roger’s views, but I’m also not going to pretend that they can be dismissed as simple “racism” or “white supremacy.” In his own words, commenting on the campaign against his restaurant:

“We are just a token in a much larger process of terrorizing White European Americans into silence in what has come to be known as the ‘war on Whites.’ My campaign contribution was to one of the men supporting European American Civil Rights. As a European American, it would be insane for me to not support said rights.”

Again, I don’t support his position, but after decades of being told that all the problems in the world are the fault of white males and that there is “no such thing” as racism against white people, I can understand his desire to defend what he sees as the interests of his group.

Nor am I going to equate my friend’s support for David Duke with the actions of the KKK a hundred years ago. In fact, Duke has said that he left the KKKK because he “…disliked its associations with violence and could not stop the members of other Klan chapters from doing ‘stupid or violent things’”. And in any case, the KKK today is hardly a force to be reckoned with. At its height, the Klan’s membership numbered in the millions. Today, it is estimated to be between 5,000 and 8,000, and is held in contempt by most of society. The KKK is a symbol of great evils committed in the past, but hardly one of the most serious threats to life and liberty today. Even its extrajudicial killings of black Americans has been appropriated by state and local police forces – yet I don’t see widespread calls to boycott those.

I can’t help thinking that the people who shut down my friend’s restaurant are more concerned with symbolic gestures against evil than they are with combatting actual evil in the world.

Do I find my friend’s views on race to be repugnant and indefensible? Sure I do. But I find the views of most of the people around me to be repugnant and indefensible. If I were to “disavow” my friend who donated money to a man who was once a leader in the KKK, then I would have to disavow pretty much everyone I know.

One friend, for example, worked on the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama. You remember, the guy who went on to oversee the murder of thousands of civilians – more than six times as many as his predecessor; who could have ended the federal war on drugs but did not; who continued to imprison and torture people charged with no crimes in Guantanamo after promising to close it; who allowed unprecedented spying on the American people; and who gave himself the power to put any human being on earth on a “kill list”, as well as to wage war without Congressional approval. My friend knows how I feel about his support for this man, but I haven’t “disavowed” him. And oddly, no-one has pressured me to.

I have friends who support the military; I have friends who have no problem with the police state, or with throwing people into prison cells for years of their lives when they have harmed no-one; I have friends who eagerly support the idea of re-distributing other people’s wealth at gunpoint; I have friends who openly support the ideology of communism, seemingly unconcerned about the hundreds of millions of corpses it has produced; I have friends who supported the warmongering and authoritarian Hillary Clinton; And I frequently eat at restaurants that display photos of murderous heads of state on their walls. I find those photos to be offensive.

Here’s what offends me: Violence offends me. War offends me. Slavery offends me. Imprisoning innocent people offends me. I know, I’m weird that way. I am told that the only things that should offend me are racism and sexism and “micro-aggressions.” But I am more bothered by the macro-aggressions.

I wrote about this a few years ago, when Helen Thomas was forced out of her 67-year career in journalism over “offensive” remarks about Israelis:


“…there is nothing out of the ordinary about politicians calling for mass murder, torture, preemptive war and other acts of barbarism, while their careers remain intact. Meanwhile, a comment that can be construed as racist, or offensive to certain groups, can ruin a mere plebeian. We have elevated name-calling to a higher offense than advocating (state-sanctioned) mass murder and wars of aggression.”

If I boycotted my friend’s restaurant, then I would be a hypocrite if I did not boycott a whole lot of other restaurants. I’d certainly have to stop going to the empanada shop down the street from me that proudly displays a photo of then President Obama stopping in. If I boycotted every business owner, or denounced every friend or relative, who holds views I find repugnant, I’d be living a pretty isolated life.

This crusade that has been launched against my friend and his business is not about “standing up to evil” or “speaking out for what’s right”. If that’s what these people were up to, they’d be calling for a boycott of of the military-industrial complex, of the TSA, the drug warriors, and a host of other genuine criminal enterprises. But they aren’t interested in confronting the real evil-doers in our society. They’re interested in easy targets. They are interested in looking good, and in getting to feel good about themselves without having to do the uncomfortable work of confronting the evil they may actually support and enable in their own lives.

So now a phenomenal restaurant no longer exists. Getting it closed hasn’t changed anyone’s views – certainly not those of my friend, who I’m sure now feels more persecuted than ever, and more justified in his belief that there is a campaign to stamp out those who speak on behalf of white males. But a lot of self-styled justice warriors get to feel like they’ve accomplished something.

I am sad that my friend has gone down the path of identity-based politics. Not only because I abhor the collectivist, racial-identity-based view he has adopted, but because it seems to me such a waste of what he has to offer the world. It is no exaggeration to say that Roger is a genius at working with Chinese cuisine, and he has the focus and discipline to create pretty much whatever he wants to in the world. For as long as I’ve known him, Roger has always been immensely creative, always coming up with new ideas for his restaurant, or for the many other projects he has taken on, whether writing a bike-tour guide to Japan or learning to play the accordion. He is a very thoughtful person and very well-read. He knows more about Marxism and left-wing ideology than do most of the people who advocate it, and knows more about getting to know other cultures than do most people who consider themselves to be tolerant and open minded.

But none of that matters now. Roger has been tarred with the brush of “racism” and so nothing he says or thinks matters anymore. He has been effectively shut out of public discourse, by people who – I am absolutely certain – have no idea what he really thinks or believes about race or anything else.

And this is what is most insidious about this kind of political correctness. It has become little more than a bludgeon for shutting people up, and shutting them out. I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if it was shutting up the right people, but it’s not. Madeline Albright hasn’t been shut up. As of 2010 she was bringing in between $60,000 - $75,000 for speaking engagements, even after her offensive statement that the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq were “worth” the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. Yet I don’t see calls to boycott her speaking engagements, or to shut her out of public discourse.

There is a reason for this. As I wrote about Helen Thomas in 2010:

“There need to be some forms of behavior at which we can all shake our fists and declare ‘shame!’ Everyone wants to feel righteous, to feel that they stand on the side of the good and against evil, and when someone like Helen Thomas makes a remark that offends an entire group of people – particularly a group of people who have been persecuted in unthinkable ways – she provides an outlet for that need. Those in government pile on too, not so much to deflect attention from their own acts of actual violence, but to reinforce the idea that while state violence is legitimate, name-calling and insult are not.”

 

When the people who want me to disavow my friend start to turn their attention to the serious evildoers in our world, then I may begin to take them seriously. In the meantime, for those who have asked me for my thoughts on the controversy, here they are:

Roger Grigsby is one of the best people I’ve ever known. He’s one of the hardest working, most creative, and most genuine people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. I am proud to call him a friend, and I’ll be damned if I help to sacrifice him on the altar of feel-good politics.

 

 

 

 

In Which a Bunch of White People Lecture Me on the Black Experience and I Am “Outed” as a Casual Racist

 

 

 

 

I’ve made a real effort in recent years to avoid getting into any political debates or arguments online, for what are probably obvious reasons to anyone who has ever engaged in them. So I was completely unprepared for the level to which online discussions had sunk in my absence.

I wouldn’t ordinarily write an entire blog post about a conversation I’d had on Facebook – certainly not one as deeply stupid as this conversation became – but I think there’s something important to be learned from this particular exchange. I see it as sort of a snapshot of what is going on all over the country right now. So I hope you’ll bear with me.

Here’s what happened: My friend (who I’ll call “Veronique”) wrote a post where she tried to explain the insensitivity of saying “all lives matter” in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, with an analogy to babies who have Down Syndrome:

“If I started a campaign/movement to save babies with DS from abortion and called it ‘Down Syndrome Lives Matter’ – would you be up in arms? Would you argue with me that all babies lives matter and try to negate my purpose in saving babies with Down Syndrome from the 92% selective abortion rate?”

I thought she made a good point, and I “liked” her post. I saw that someone else (I’ll call him “Pete”) had commented:

 

 

I responded with what I thought was a reasonable enough - and fairly innocuous - counterpoint. Here’s what happened:


 

 

 

In fact, I have read quite a bit about “white privilege”. I’ve even written a little about it. Here is why I think “privilege” is not a very good word to use in discussing racial (or gender, etc.) inequality:


“The word “privilege” connotes the possession not only of something one has not earned, but of something one really has no right to.  It implies a benefit that has been granted by someone else and that can and perhaps should be revoked by someone else.

"There is something insidious about this.  It is an upside-down way of looking at discrimination.  Instead of seeing behavior that ends up marginalizing groups of people as the problem, it turns our attention to those who are not marginalized.  To declare that they are thereby “privileged” is to hint that they are somehow culpable in the harm that has been done — whether or not any specific individuals ever actually engaged in discriminatory speech or actions themselves.

“Using the word in this way is also to accept bigotry as the default.  To assert that not being harmed by discrimination is some kind of “privilege” is to assert that oppression is or should be the norm and suggests, in a manner reminiscent of PC’s Maoist roots, that those who do not suffer from discrimination ought to.

“To declare that non-oppression is a privilege is to lay the intellectual groundwork for bringing everyone down to the level of the oppressed.  Wouldn’t empowering everyone be a more noble goal?”

 

But Pete is about to demonstrate another problem with the term: It has become little more than a bludgeon for shutting down opposing viewpoints or any kind of reasoned debate.

He has this down:

 

  

My friend – you remember my friend, the one who wrote the original post? – tries valiantly to defend me, and says she hopes we can all get along and be nice to each other. After this, Pete (still ignoring all of the points I have made thus far) decides to show some civility:

 

 

 

  

Julie agrees with Pete – which is a little strange to me, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never met Julie, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know who my “friends of color” are. I’d like to hear more from her about how my relationships with them aren’t “real”, but I’m kind of afraid to ask.

Meanwhile, I make a mental note to speak with my black friends and gently ask them if they could try to be better “friends of color” and talk with me about the things they are supposed to talk about, so that I can score more Sanctimonious White Person points with my white friends (or, as in this case, with a bunch of white total strangers.) I’ll also ask them to be sure they hold the right opinions on these topics, because as Pete knows, all people of color think exactly alike and have the same opinions on important issues.

 

So just to catch everyone up:

This entire vitriolic exchange is happening because I said that I don’t believe everyone who says “all lives matter” is an actual racist. Because of that, I am now guilty of “…stupidity, arrogance and hate.”

I am also now someone who doesn’t listen to black people, even though I think that I do. And never mind that there ARE NO ACTUAL BLACK PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN THIS CONVERSATION. Pete has taken it upon himself to speak on their behalf, and anyone who thinks that some black people might think things other than what Pete says they think is… I don’t know. A racist?


My friend (remember?) once again tries to rescue me. But I fear it is too late:

 

 

To be clear: I think all “Julie” is accusing me of is excusing casual racism, by refusing to call everyone who says “all lives matter” a racist. She has not yet said that I am guilty of “casual racism.” What is interesting though, is that Julie actually “liked” my initial comment, where I expressed the view that she now refers to as “casual racism.” So now I’m starting to wonder about Julie.

Note that there is no room for discussion here. The question of whether or not everyone who utters the words “all lives matter” is a racist is not up for debate. They have been declared to be racists, and so they are. And anyone who disagrees with that assessment is not “expressing another viewpoint”, but is “excusing casual racism.” Do you see how this works?

Pete has more to say. This time, it’s in the form of a weapon he’s been holding back the whole time: Words from an actual black person:

 

 

And I have to say, I’m taken aback. I truly hadn’t realized that failing to call people who say “all lives matter” racist could be so deeply upsetting to someone. I am really astonished at this man’s depth of feeling over this issue…

…Oh wait! He’s not actually talking about this issue at all, but about the recent demonstrations in Charlottesville where actual white supremacists marched in public and spewed actual racist rhetoric:

 

 

I make another mental note to ask my friends of color to please provide me with a sampling of quotes that I can pull out in situations like this. The quotes don’t need to be about anything in particular, as long as they are heartfelt. I can use them anywhere. And if my friends of color are “real” friends, they’ll do it for me, right?

I do see Pete’s point though. Shouting “racist” at everyone who sees the world differently than you do is probably a more effective way of getting through to them than is engaging them in a discussion as if they are reasonable human beings. I make another mental note about that.

It occurs to me that what is happening here, between Pete and Julie and me, is almost a kind of communication. It is of course not rational discourse – that would involve at least a pretense of listening to what the other person had said and responding to it. But nobody has responded to any of my arguments, other than to shout at me to check my privilege. And yet some form of communication is going on here. If not rational discourse, then what?

It seems to me that what is going on here is pure signaling. In the same way that ants signal to each other through pheromones, that they belong either to the same nest or to a different (enemy) nest, there is a kind of “communication” that happens in human society that consists of little more than sending signals to alert others as to whose side you are on.

I think I’m starting to get it now. I see what Pete is doing, and I think to myself, “OK, I can play this game too!”


So I try:

 

 

 I fear my comment might be a little ambiguous, so I elaborate:

 

 

 Another commenter (I’ll call her Brunhilde) jumps in:

 

 

Ladies, take note: Calling out a man on his sexist ways only counts if a lot of other women agree with you.

But I can see what Brunhilde is up to, and I’m going to “call her out” on it:

 

 

I’m starting to like this game!



Brunhilde doesn’t though:

 

 

 

So here’s another funny thing: Brunhilde ALSO “liked” my initial comment where I said that not everyone who says “all lives matter” is racist. But now she says I’ve been “called out” for my “casual racism”. I’m not sure where this happened, but it had to be somewhere between my initial comment and this last one. Yet I can’t find it. Looking back over the conversation, I see a lot of vaguely worded non-sequitors about “white people” and “racism”, but nothing about anything I’ve said or done being racist. Which only leaves my initial comments. Which Brunhilde “liked”. So now I’m starting to wonder about Brunhilde too…

Notice that Brunhilde has not been bothered by any of the vitriol directed at me throughout this conversation. I wonder why that is. Notice also that she stops just short of saying that she will pray for me. Wow, Brunhilde’s not enjoying this game at all!

But Pete’s back:



 

 

And now I truly am floored. I’m not sure how I expected Pete to react to my attempt to take the crazy up a notch in an already batshit conversation. I thought maybe he’d be angry at me for making fun of him. But this… I am tempted to feel bad for what I’ve said.

But then I realize that all he’s doing is more signaling. He’s Saying the Right Things when “called out” because it is literally the only thing he knows to do. And he has no choice but to Say the Right Things, because not to do so would blow the whole “calling out” game out of the water. I have no idea what Pete really thinks about what I’ve said, and he probably doesn’t either.

I realize then that my mistake lay in trying to satirize something that had already gone well beyond the limits of satire.

So why does this matter? Why have I just spent nearly 2,000 words, and why have you spent whatever time you’ve just spent, re-hashing one of the most unbelievably stupid conversations in the history of humankind?

Here’s why: Because what happened in this conversation is happening all over the country. It’s in the news, it’s on university campuses, it’s probably in a lot of the conversations you and I engage in every day. And I think it’s important for people to understand what’s going on. As I wrote above, it is a kind of “communication”, but more akin to the communication that occurs between insects than the kind that is required to build and maintain human civilization.

So here’s what happened in this conversation: I was a newcomer here. I only knew one other person, my friend who had written the original post. And when I joined in, I failed to send out the proper signals to let the others know whose “side” I was on. I also didn’t back down from my position and even argued with some of them, and I think, in a very base, very primitive part of the brain, that made me seem like some kind of threat.

So at some point in the conversation – pretty early on, I think – the substance of what I said no longer mattered. What mattered was that I wasn’t making the right noises, or sending out the proper tribal signals, to reassure everyone that I was a part of their larger “tribe” of “right-thinking people.” And without those reassurances, that base part of their brains concluded that I must be the enemy.

This is what tribal behavior looks like. It is what mob behavior looks like. It is groupthink at its ugliest, it is “us vs. them”, it is the rejection of reason in favor of base tribal allegiances and signaling. It is base, it is divisive, and it is destructive of human relationships and civilized coexistence.

There is a word for this kind of thinking. And Pete and Julie (probably also Brunhilde) wouldn’t like it.

 

 

 

 

 

War and Terror: the Hypocrisy Is Not the Point

 

 

Every time there’s a terrorist attack in a Western city, people like me start reminding everyone of all the brutal (and ongoing) attacks Western governments have waged on the countries the terrorists come from. We’re predictable that way. And maybe it gets old. Maybe it even seems petty to be pointing out hypocrisy at a time like this.

But the hypocrisy is not the point. The point is that all around us, people are responding just as predictably, with their immediate, reflexive, emotional appeals: Either to “come together and heal”, and “just get along”, or “throw out all the Muslims!” The two world views smash against each other over and over again and create the impression that the question of how to stop terrorism will be resolved by adopting the correct attitude towards Islam and Muslim immigrants.

Yet all the compassionate hand-wringing, and all the racist bellowing in the world will not solve the problem of terrorism because none of it addresses what is at its root. Those on both sides of the reflexive left-right spectrum resist digging at its roots. Like cats scrambling to avoid a bath, they grasp at whatever platitudes serve their world view, and absolutely refuse to consider that perhaps it is not just a matter of “good people” vs. “bad people”, or society as a whole not being “enlightened” enough. Perhaps it has something to do with a long history of violent intervention by Western governments who became accustomed to not suffering any consequences for their actions.

That this is even controversial to anyone is bizarre. The connection between military intervention and terrorism is well established, most notably in the 2006 study by Robert A. Pape. Pape compiled a database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world, beginning in 1980. He found that:



“The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions…

“Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.”

And yet the debate still rages. Most mind boggling to witness is the blind rage of those who blame “Islam” and want to deport all Muslims, who they blame for the attacks – yet cannot fathom that people in countries brutalized by Western governments might be capable of feeling (and acting on) that same rage.

As long as enough people cling to their beloved nation states, then we will continue to see more of the same: Unrestrained, violent, military adventurism on the part of powerful states, and the much smaller, but every bit as brutal, violent responses of those lashing out against them in whatever ways they can. And what neither left nor right wants to acknowledge is this: When society allows for an institution to hold a monopoly on violence, on justice and its enforcement, it unleashes a monster into the world. We can pretend that “we” control that monster, either through Constitutional restraints or through the magic of Democracy. We can even pretend that the monster represents our interests and not its own. But the reality is that none of that is true.

The attachment that so many adults have to the nation states they happen to live under is hard to explain. But it is deadly, and this is nowhere more apparent than in war and the violence that ongoing war perpetuates. If you’re not willing to confront the evils of the state – including the specific state you happen to live under – then expect to see more of the same for a very long time. No well-intentioned pleas for compassion, changing your FaceBook status, or deporting all the Muslims from your country is going to change that.

  

 

What You Probably Don't Know About Healthcare in America - If You Watch Nothing Else Today, Watch This.

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to say it one more time: Everything that is wrong with healthcare in the US is the result of government intervention of some kind. I'm sure some nitpicker readers will try to find some minor exceptions to this blanket statement - go for it. I'm eager to hear what you come up with.

In the meantime though, for anyone who is genuinely interested in making health care accessible and affordable for everyone, please take the time to familiarize yourself with the history of healthcare in this country (and elsewhere) so you can better understand how we got here. Also so you can see what is in fact possible - not because a bunch of geeky economists who understand these things say it's possible, but because it ("it" being affordable healthcare) is a part of our very recent history.

This short video (based on an article by Roderick T. Long) is an excellent place to start:

 

 

Of course this isn't the whole story. There's more, such as the role of Blue Cross and Blue Shield in using the government to shut out smaller competing insurance companies, and the way the AMA conspired with the state to restrict the supply of doctors and of medical schools. You can read more about that in this excellent little article by Dale Steinreich: 100 Years of Medical Fascism.

I'll say it again (like the broken record that I am): The problems we have with health care are the direct result of government interference in the market for health care. If you are someone who cares about fixing those problems, who cares about making sure that everyone has access to affordable medical care, then please take the time to educate yourself about the historical roots of those problems and please stop calling for more of what caused them as the solution.

 

 

 

Michael Owen Nails Pre-Existing Conditions Mandates

This is really one of the best commentaries I've seen on the uproar about the possibility that insurance companies will no longer be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. From Michael Owen, who you can find on FaceBook:

 

"Coming from the GOP, I'm sure whatever is in the bill the house passed today is awful. But I see a lot of emotional response, mainly around "pre-existing conditions." How awful it is to deny people insurance if they have a pre-existing condition.

"I'm about to say something that is going to hurt your feels. You cannot buy insurance for a pre-existing condition, not as a matter of "market failure", but as a matter of the definition of insurance. You cannot buy homeowner's insurance after your house burns down. You cannot buy car insurance after you've wrecked the car. You cannot buy life insurance after your spouse dies. That's not what insurance is. Insurance is the pooling of risk BEFORE something bad happens. That's what keeps the price down when it is allowed to work properly. Something bad but unlikely is costly (rebuild a house, get cancer treatment), so people pool their risk and pay a small amount up front. The pool then has the funds to pay out to those few unlucky enough to get cancer, wreck their car, or have their house burn down.

"I'm going to hit you in the feels even more: mandating that pre-existing conditions be covered by insurance completely breaks this. It is no longer insurance, and unsurprisingly, it makes costs shoot up. Imagine if the government mandated that insurance companies had to sell you a homeowner's policy, even after your house burned down. Who would buy a policy BEFORE their house burned down? You'd have to be a sucker to do so. The risk pool would collapse, with the only people buying policies being those that needed payouts. But of course there is no money in the pool. So of course to "fix" the market it just destroyed, the government then has to mandate that everyone buy into the system. Individual mandate; sound familiar?

"The problem with that is that the government has been intervening in healthcare and insurance for so long and so pervasively that the levels of coverage it has mandated and the services themselves have become so expensive that people can't afford them. So premiums ratchet skyward, as they have for decades, well outpacing the general rate of inflation. Low income people would be priced out completely. This is politically unpopular, so the government externalizes those costs onto taxpayers and other people via taxes, inflation, and higher premiums. Unsurprisingly, this causes massive friction, as it pits demographics against each other.

"The thing nobody want to hear is that the possibility of bad outcomes has a social utility. Because we might die, we buy life insurance to provide for our families. Because our house might burn down, we buy home owners insurance. Because we or our families might get catastrophically ill or injured, we buy health insurance. By doing this we set aside and do not consume now the resources that society needs later to deal with these crises. But because the government limits supply (licensure schemes, huge regulatory burdens that only a few large suppliers can navigate, intellectual property laws, coverage mandates, etc.; all of these supply limiting measures are in place to drive up profits for these industries) and subsidizes demand, prices skyrocket and fewer and fewer people can afford it. People of very modest means can afford technological marvels like smartphones and flatscreen TVs, but they can't afford healthcare and healthcare insurance.

"The natural operation of markets is to reduce costs. The market is nothing if not a giant machine whose purpose is to grind away costs. Consumer electronics are cheap and amazing precisely because they are relatively unregulated and unsubsidized. Healthcare and insurance are the exact opposite. If you really want to make healthcare affordable for everyone, get the government out of it completely and let the market treat it like flat screens and smartphones. Let charity handle the truly needy. The system we have now is making everyone into the needy."

 

 

 

What's the Story Here?

 

Last month, our daughter had her first grand mal seizure and had a visit to the local emergency room. We were mistakenly billed as "uninsured" and received the bill below (don't worry, it's being corrected). But that's not the real story. What's the real story (or stories) this bill tells us?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speechless in 2017

 

 

 

It’s been a weird couple of months. I’ve seen more people unfriend each other on FaceBook than in the past few years combined; There have been several reports of both Trump supporters and minorities being physically attacked; I’ve been asked to wear a safety pin to proclaim to the world that I am not a racist, because the presumption now is that everyone is a racist and you have to (secretly - only not so secretly) announce to everyone if you’re not; and the senior editor of ThinkProgress is afraid of his plumber. (This, based solely on whatever profiling techniques they use over at ThinkProgress - “…a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week’s news.” - rather than anything resembling a conversation with the man.)

Here’s the thing: I’m a libertarian. I’ve been surrounded by people who don’t agree with me for as long as I can remember and it has never occurred to me to isolate myself from everyone because of our political differences. Certainly not to assault them. Nor am I filled with anxiety by the thought that people who work in my home might have different political views than mine. To me, you’re all a bunch of fascists. But I’ve somehow learned to live with you.

For me, watching people unravel over this election has been instructive. The - yes, I’m going to say it - bigotry of many on the left, in their caricaturing of Trump supporters, has never before been so blatant. Nor has the jaw-dropping, mass-hypnosis level of selective partisan-driven outrage. I understand that a lot of people are worried, upset, even frightened over the prospect of a Trump presidency. Good. They should be. But they should have been worried eight years ago, or at the very least, four years ago.

I was worried four years ago. And I was worried eight years ago. I tried in vain to get my Obama-supporting friends to see what I saw, but with very few exceptions (which I appreciated, thank you) I was met with silence, accused of mean-spiritedness or just told that I should “give him a chance” (did I have a choice?)


I was right in all but one of my predictions for the Obama administration, by the way.

So in case you (like some of my friends) somehow missed out on what’s been happening over the past eight years, let me catch you up:

1. We no longer have a Fourth Amendment, nor the right of habeas corpus (you remember: it was kind of the foundation of our justice system). Yes, the demise of these fundamental protections has been a long time coming, but President Obama delivered the death blow when he gave himself (and all future presidents) the right to imprison indefinitely or even assassinate any human being on the planet with no due process whatsoever.

Number One should be enough. Any normal person should look at the first item on this list and say “OK, I guess that’s a little bit worse than making fun of a disabled reporter.” (And I say this as the mother of an intellectually disabled daughter.) But, because I know it won’t be enough, I’ll continue…

2. Obama has bombed more countries than George W. Bush did, and his drone strikes have killed more than six times as many people as those under Bush, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (killing unintended victims 90% of the time.)

3. He has given himself (and all future presidents) the power to wage war without Congressional approval.

4. He has greatly expanded the mass surveillance of American citizens.

5. He put in place a statist health insurance mandate that has sent insurance premiums skyrocketing.

6. He has continued the same brand of crony capitalism and debt expansion of the previous administration.

7. He has deported more than 2.5 million immigrants - more than any other American president in history. (See correction below.)

8. After running on a platform of more government transparency, he has presided over an administration more hostile than any other to whistleblowers and a free press.

9. Police brutality has not abated, nor has the mass incarceration of Americans (and especially black and Hispanic Americans. Maybe it’s only “racism” if the president is a white Republican?)

10. Did I mention he - and all future presidents - now has the legal right to kill anyone on the planet, including American citizens, with no conviction, no charges, no semblance of due process at all. Did I mention that?



Yes, there have been other things. There have even been a few marginally good things. I applauded when Obama commuted the sentences of hundreds of non-violent drug offenders (though I also wondered how that news went down with the rest of the more than a million non-violent prisoners who won’t be getting out), and I cried happy tears when he commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. These are undeniably good actions. But they are “good” in the same sense that flowers from an abusive spouse are good. They don’t even begin to make up for the bad.

So as I watch my friends and thousands of other Americans gather together to protest the inauguration, I find myself a little speechless. It cannot be that all of these people only see evil when it wears the other team’s uniform. It cannot be that they are more upset by offensive speech than by a man claiming the right to kill any human being on earth at his whim. These things simply cannot be. And yet it sure looks like they are.

I love my friends. I share many of their concerns (or rather, it seems they have recently come to share some of mine) and I don’t think less of them because of our political differences. But after eight years of deafening silence about these concerns, their newly discovered outrage has no credibility with me.

So I’ll wish them well on their road trips to D.C. or whatever other cities they’re protesting from, and hope they all stay safe. And I’ll try not to gag too hard when I see their social-media status updates gushing over the Royal - sorry, “First” - Family and lamenting the departure of the man who has given Donald Trump the power to put any one of us on a kill list. As for me, I’ll be watching from home - completely, utterly, speechless.

 

CORRECTION: A number of readers have written to say that #7 on my list is incorrect: Because of changes to how "deportations" are counted (people sent back at the border are now counted as having been "deported", while they were not in the past), Obama's numbers appear larger. But the number of people residing in the US who have been deported has in fact decreased under Obama's administration. I apologize for the error.

 

 

Christmas in the Darkness

 

 

 

It feels hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year. It did last year too. In fact I’m starting to think that unless you are a small child, getting into the Christmas spirit is not an easy thing to do, and that it only gets harder with time. This year seems especially dark. In my own circle of friends, family and acquaintances, I can’t even count the number of losses and other tragedies that people are going through in this season.

I know many people who have lost a parent or even a child during the past year. A friend on FaceBook is watching his father die; another came home on Christmas Eve to find that his wife had left him, taking their children with her; a cousin who suffers from PTSD from years of service as an EMT first responder may face jail time because he waved a gun in the air at someone trying to cut him off on the freeway; and only two days ago parents of a young woman with our daughter’s genetic condition lost her to seizures and other complications. I can’t even imagine how that family is going to get through today.

I do remember our own terrible Christmas, only two months after we had lost our baby son at 39 weeks, one week before he was due, to a cord accident. I felt smashed into a million pieces, barely even present, held together only by the people around me. The thing is though, it wasn’t a terrible Christmas. We spent it at my sister’s B&B in Minnesota, our whole family, and it was actually a fun time. It was the year my husband wrote The Rules of Christmas and to this day I am astounded that he had both the presence of mind and the good humor to write it. But he did, and I somehow had the presence of mind and good humor to find it hilarious. I still look back at that Christmas with happy memories. It was a bright spot in a very dark time.

And I kind of think that’s what Christmas is about. Whether you celebrate it as a Christian or as a pagan (I’ll leave other traditions to those more familiar with them), what we are celebrating is not the fact that we have perfect lives in a flawless world and we couldn’t ask for more. What we are celebrating is the bits of light, wherever they are and however small, in a world that we know is filled with much darkness. For Christians, that “light” is the birth of Jesus and the promise of eternal salvation. But as an outsider looking in, I also believe that it is the promise of achieving the kingdom of heaven here on earth and in that sense is not so far removed from the pagan celebration of light in the material world.

Maybe, as we become adults, and as we become more intensely aware of the suffering, the loss, and the evil in the world, it does become harder to celebrate Christmas. That doesn’t make it less important to celebrate it though. It makes it more important. One of the only ways we have to fight the darkness is to recognize the light, celebrate it, and do what we can to encourage it. The light may come in the form of a massive sunburst or it may be a tiny pinpoint. This morning, for me, it was the video of another young girl with our daughter’s condition, defying the predictions of experts from long ago and reading aloud from a book.

The relentless brutality of the world isn’t going to stop for our celebrations, yet we still celebrate. That’s the whole point.

 

 

 

 

Remembering Ralph Raico

 

I met Ralph Raico at an Institute for Humane Studies conference in 1985. He took me and another student, Annie, out to lunch on the first day of the conference, before everyone else had arrived. Annie was a nurse, working in a mental hospital, and we talked about her work over lunch, and about the writing of Dr. Thomas Szasz who Professor Raico knew well.

At one point in the conversation, Annie said something about patients being wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I asked her what, exactly, schizophrenia actually meant. She gave some sort of answer that wasn’t at all satisfying and I was prepared to let it go because that’s what polite people do. But Ralph Raico wasn’t polite. He wasn’t rude or ill-mannered, certainly not to sweet young Annie. But he said, very clearly (and in fact very politely) “that’s not what she asked.”

And everything changed. When you live in a world of murky communication, of saying what seems polite, or what the other people you identify with are saying, you may not be aware of the murkiness until someone shines a light on it. That’s what Ralph did. Until that moment, I really had not been around people who cared about truth, or about clarity. That one statement, and his insistence on answering the question I had asked, opened up for me a whole new world of communication and learning, and it was beautiful.

I think he was the first person I ever heard use the term “intellectual integrity” and mean it. His worldview - and by that I mean not so much his commitment to liberty, as his commitment to truth and to clear and honest communication, his utter intolerance for bullshit - was inspiring to me. It made me believe that the world was much bigger than I knew: that it was full of people like this, people who cared about the important things, people with whom one could have challenging and enlivening discussions. He inspired me to go out and seek this world.

The restaurant where we had lunch was Chinese, and I remember being embarrassed that I couldn’t use chopsticks well. At some point, the topic of Hong Kong came up, and I was intrigued by the idea of this tiny bastion of free enterprise. A few months later, I would make the decision to spend my junior year in college there, and I ultimately ended up living there for seven years. Of course the big wide world wasn’t all I expected it to be. There was plenty of murkiness, plenty of bullshit to wade through, including a lot of my own. And the people who cared about the important things weren’t that easy to find. But I can’t imagine what my life would be like without those experiences and I am eternally grateful for the inspiration that set me off on that journey.

I met Professor Raico a few more times over the years at conferences, and in the past few years he has written to me twice to commend me for articles I have written. I will never delete those emails.

I’m sure I am not the only person to have been inspired by who he was. It was many years before I realized it, but he had a profound influence on the direction of my life and on the values I have come to embrace. I’m sure there are many others who can say the same. I know that others will remember him for his scholarship, for his unyielding defense of liberty, for his intellect and for his biting wit. I will remember him as someone who shone a light of clarity through a world swimming in bullshit. And in doing so, he showed me that clarity, intellectual honesty and the pursuit of truth were all possible. He helped to show me a world bigger than I had imagined before, and inspired me to seek out more of it.

Tonight, it feels like that world just got a little bit smaller.

Rest in peace, Professor Raico.

 

 

 

Area Man Ordered to Stop Using Word

 

 

June 20, 2007 – Jason Morandi

A federal court today ordered Buford Snatter, professor of law at Southwestern University and longtime Burbank resident, to immediately cease using the word “spontaneous” in any and all written or spoken communication.

Justice Benjamin Pettifinger of California’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld an earlier ruling against Professor Snatter, citing the general welfare clause of the Constitution. In describing the kind of word usage that got the professor into trouble, Judge Pettifinger commented “this just isn’t good for anybody.”

The trouble began when readers of Professor Snatter’s articles noticed certain words and phrases recurring at a disturbing rate. “It’s a question of when word use becomes abuse,” explained arresting officer Harris Bludger. “He definitely crossed a line. He’s gone way over the quota for the use of these words.” Asked what that quota is, Officer Bludger replied “I don’t know what the quota is, I don’t know if there is a quota, but I know he’s gone over it.”

Readers were the first to alert authorities to the problem. “I’d be reading one of his articles,” said a frequent reader of Professor Snatter’s articles who declined to give her name, “and there it would be: ‘spontaneous’, or ‘spontanaeity’, or worse, ‘spontaneous and autonomous’. When would it stop?” Another anonymous reader said she also suffered from abuse: “I’d be reading along and I always knew it was about to come up. If not in the first paragraph, then in the next. I’ll tell you, there was nothing ‘spontaneous’ about it.”

Indeed, Professor Snatter’s word use became a federal issue when it emerged that, while his prose is liberally sprinkled with the term, he is in fact not a spontaneous person.

“I was shocked when I found out,” said longtime Snatter reader Mona Eubanks.

The issue surfaced when one of Snatter’s daughters tried to introduce her father to yoga.

“He has always claimed to be interested in eastern thought, yet he refuses to even try the practices that are an integral part of those philosophies,” said daughter Brigentine Snatter. “Buddhism and the vedic philosophies aren’t just things that happen in your head. They require practice in order to integrate them into your life. When I tried to get him to go to a yoga class or an introduction to meditation, he said he’d think about getting around to putting it on a list of things to consider sometime. Is that what he means by ‘spontaneous’ behavior?”

In his appeal, Professor Snatter claimed that while he appreciated his daughter’s efforts to introduce him to the world outside of his own head, he just wasn’t interested, but that he would find his own ways of being spontaneous. However he failed to produce evidence that he was planning to engage in spontaneous behavior sometime down the line. He had promised to present the court with a list of potential spontaneous activities that he had written on a yellow senate pad, but later said he was unable to locate said pad. “It’s around here somewhere,” Snatter argued in his own defense.

Snatter’s daughter added to her charges that her father would only eat from a very small selection of food choices, citing Chinese chicken salad, spaghetti aglio oglio and BLTs as his mainstays. “Don’t even ask me about Cheez-Whiz™,” she added.

“He’ll go out to a nice restaurant, a restaurant that has its own specialties it is famous for, and he’ll ask if the chef can do a spaghetti aglio oglio,” Snatter’s daughter said. “It would be one thing if he could say it correctly, but he doesn’t even do that! This is the only thing he ever orders and he doesn’t even say it right!”

“That and Chinese chicken salad,” added Brigentine’s sister Hildegarde.

“And the BLTs,” chimed in younger sister Gvtaren.

“Yes, and the BLTs” agreed Brigentine.

“He used to eat Cheez-Whiz™, but we took it away from him,” reported Gvtaren.

Whiny civil liberties activists whined about supposed violation of free-speech, but were largely ignored.

“The first amendment was not intended to allow people to say whatever they damn well please,” commented constitutional scholar Avid Rhinegold.

In a statement issued after the verdict was read, Professor Snatter said that the ruling “is just one more indication of the collapse of Western civilization. It is an attempt,” he said, to “stifle the spontaneous free expression of peace-loving men and women spontaneously living their lives in non-hierarchical ways characterized by spontaneous order.”

The prosecution said it would not rule out going after Professor Snatter’s abuse of the phrase “peace-loving men and women”.

Highlighting the seriousness of the case, arresting officer Bludger noted “(i)t seems that, while Professor Snatter loves nothing more than to throw this word around in his prose, he doesn’t actually have a spontaneous bone in his body. This is where law enforcement needs to step in. People think they can just throw words around willy nilly. We’re here to let them know that that’s not the case.”

While Snatter’s daughters were saddened by their father’s ordeal, they expressed no regrets about turning him over to the police.

“In the end, we really had no choice but to contact the authorities,” said Brigentine Snatter.

Professor Snatter’s wife, June Snatter, admitted that her husband has never been spontaneous.

“No, he’s not,” she sighed. “But I can’t change him.”

Mrs. Snatter could face charges of aiding and abetting.

Under the court order, Professor Snatter is prohibited from using the word “spontaneous”, “spontaneously”, or any other derivative thereof. Should he violate the order he will face heavy fines and possible jail time.

Asked for further comment on the ruling, Professor Snatter said only “it’s all coming down.”

 

 

(This article originally appeared in the Burbank Bugle, June 20, 2007.)

 

 

 

 

In Case Anyone Doubted that Governments Wage War to Preserve Currency Dominion:

 

 

From the Hillary email trove over at Wikileaks:

According to sensitive information available to this these individuals, Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli.

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7  billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.

(emphasis mine)

According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:

a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

b. Increase French influence in North Africa,

c. Improve his internal political situation in.France,

d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.)

 

See the entire email here.

 

 

 

All You Need to Know About the Elections is Right Here...

 

...in the Adventures of Urban Yogini: A Superhero Who Can't Use Violence.

 

NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE!!!