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Anonymous threatens Westboro Baptist

Anonymous threatens Westboro Baptist published on No Comments on Anonymous threatens Westboro Baptist

“Aggressive proponents of free speech,” my arse.   I would wonder how it’s possible for them to claim that label while simultaneously threatening to shut down a group’s website due to ideological differences with a straight face, but they’re Anonymous– there’s no face to see.

Note: this response is not because of any love lost between me and the WBC.  That’s definitely not the case.  I just fervently believe that trying to silence a group is not the way to go about combating their ideas.

Martin Robbins at The Guardian elaborates:

Anonymous have succeeded in generating yet more publicity for an organization which thrives on attention and frankly, like the BNP in the UK, gets far more media coverage than it really merits or deserves.
Meanwhile, their actions will have little impact on a collection of people who live together, protest at real world events, and use shock value to get mainstream media attention. It is naive to believe that hacking some websites can bring down this sort of group. The best thing anyone can do is ask the media to shut the fuck up about them.
And finally there’s the sheer hypocrisy of it. Anonymous make a big deal about freedom of speech, calling themselves variously “the Voice of Free Speech”, or “aggressive proponents for the Freedom of Speech.” Which would be great, if they were, but are they?
Well no, compare and contrast with: “the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated […] we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines.” The self-appointed defenders of free speech want to shut down people’s websites. Bang goes another irony meter.

(Hat tip to Tracy King for the link)

The problem with “Jesus chicken”

The problem with “Jesus chicken” published on No Comments on The problem with “Jesus chicken”

Those familiar with the Chik-Fil-A restaurant chain have known for quite a long time that the ownership is explicitly conservative Christian, which hasn’t meant much for people who like to eat there except that they must remember it’s closed on Sundays.  But recently it has come out (pardon the expression) that the company also contributes significantly to anti-gay causes.  The New York Times says:

Nicknamed “Jesus chicken” by jaded secular fans and embraced by Evangelical Christians, Chick-fil-A is among only a handful of large American companies with conservative religion built into its corporate ethos. But recently its ethos has run smack into the gay rights movement. A Pennsylvania outlet’s sponsorship of a February marriage seminar by one of that state’s most outspoken groups against homosexuality lit up gay blogs around the country. Students at some universities have also begun trying to get the chain removed from campuses. . . Over the years, the company’s operators, its WinShape Foundation and the Cathy family have given millions of dollars to a variety of causes and programs, including scholarships that require a pledge to follow Christian values, a string of Christian-based foster homes and groups working to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives.

Hence a certain amount of outcry from gay rights groups.  Change.org has created a petition asking Chik-Fil-A to stop funding anti-gay groups such as Focus on the Family which has so far received over 25,000 signatures, and many individual gay rights supporters have decided not to patronize the restaurant chain any longer.  Alvin McEwen writes at Pam’s House Blend that “lgbts also have a right to decide where NOT to spend our money. Furthermore we and our allies have a right to make a stink in regards to a company who wants us to buy its product, but not afford us respect.”

In other words, a boycott. It’s a time-honored concept– a way for people to express their disagreement with the ethics of a company by refusing to do business with it.  Otherwise known as “voting with your wallet.”  The idea is that financial support for an institution enables it and therefore can be construed as an endorsement of its policies, therefore revoking such support while saying “Hey everybody!  I’m revoking my support!” means that you’ve both ceased enabling that institution and attempted to make others aware of your reasons and encourage them to do the same.  It’s a legal and peaceful way of making your views known.  Right?

Not to Michelle Malkin, apparently.  In these efforts the conservative columnist sees an “ugly war” waged by a “left wing mob”:

Progressive groups are gloating over Chick-fil-A’s public relations troubles exacerbated by the nation’s politicized paper of record. This is not because they care about winning hearts and minds over gay rights or marriage policy, but because their core objective is to marginalize political opponents and chill Christian philanthropy and activism. The fearsome “muscle flexing” isn’t being done by innocent job-creators selling chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. It’s being done by the hysterical bullies trying to drive them off of college grounds and out of their neighborhoods in the name of “human rights.”

Gosh, you’d think that people were crowding the streets screaming and trying to use the law to prevent Chik-Fil-A from erecting a new establishment purely out of objections to its ideology!  Oh wait, that’s what people did in reaction to the proposed so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”  What’s happening in this case is an objection to ideology, yes, but not just that.  It’s an objection to political efforts on behalf of that ideology to oppose equal rights for a segment of the American population.  And that objection is not taking place through violent means or legal enforcement– it’s taking the form of voluntary boycotts, and student efforts to encourage their universities to stop using Chik-Fil-A as a vendor.  Essentially, they are asking universities to participate in the boycott as well.

During the protests in New York at Cordoba House, many of us were asking conservatives who opposed the Islamic community center why they oppose the property rights of the building’s owners.  Now as gay rights advocates are boycotting Chik-Fil-A, I would ask Michelle Malkin why she doesn’t support the right of individuals to do business with whom they please.  It’s one thing to say that while boycotts in general are fine, this one in particular is misguided and inappropriate because of x, y, and z.  Then we could have a discussion on the merits of x, y, and z and would probably still disagree, but the basic understanding that everyone has a right to speak their mind both verbally and with their wallets would be there.

But that’s not what she wants to do.  The objections Malkin is making could be applied just as easily to any boycott by conservatives of liberal businesses.  The next time an organization like the American Family Association declares that it will boycott a automobile manufacturer or food producer for so much as advertising in a gay-friendly way, I wonder if she will call them “hysterical bullies,” or instead support them in speaking out against the fearsome left wing mob of…people who are okay with the idea that there are gays who want to do things like drive cars and eat soup.

Trying to decide who do business with can be tricky for people who care about the political involvement of companies and corporations (and trust, they will go on being involved in politics whether we care or not).  The most important part of minimizing that difficulty is freedom of expression.  We have to be able to find out, to research, to exchange ideas, to act, to let others know of our actions, and to hear about theirs.   The way to influence an entity whose primary concern is its profit margin is indisputably through our business choices– it’s the only power we as individuals have, which makes it sacred in a way.  It shouldn’t be treated lightly, and it should never be denied.

Some thoughts on “opting out.”

Some thoughts on “opting out.” published on No Comments on Some thoughts on “opting out.”

To return to a Michael Pollen note for a bit (sorry), I came across a section of Omnivore’s Dilemma today that devoted some discussion to “opting out.”  The context was home-schooling parents who also decide to buy their food from local farmers rather than from the grocery store, and Pollan described them as having “opted out once already.”  By this, Pollan meant that they had already once said “no” to a segment of American culture to which the vast majority of people say “yes.” 

I think most people underestimate the effect that opting out can have.  As much as I personally dislike being told that I’m opposed to some sort of behavior simply because it’s “different” when I think that it’s actually because I have a good reason for opposing it, it’s true that people often regard things with suspicion because they’re not normal. 

Having read Dan Savage’s sex advice column Savage Love for– gosh– fourteen years now, I would estimate that at least half of the letters submitted are from people concerned about whether their sexual proclivities are normal.  And his answer is always some variant on the same sentiment– who cares, so long as it makes you happy and it doesn’t hurt anyone?  But clearly people do care.  If they’re going to be strange and do things differently, it’s like they want permission to do it.  They want to know that their desires are legitimate, and they acknowledge that having to explain themselves to interested parties for deviating from the norm is taxing, which is why they want assurance that what they’re doing is in fact normal…even though it isn’t.

Yes, I did just compare having weird sexual kinks to home-schooling. 

Sure, the two things are different in a lot of ways, but I’d suggest that the relevant difference here is mainly about taste vs. ideology.  There’s not much you can do about taste– you can either hide it or be open about it, feel ashamed or feel confident, but it’s going to be there regardless.  With ideology, on the other hand, it’s about trying to be a different person than you would be if you were “normal.”  Some people are born into weird ideologies while others convert to them, but there’s often a moral dimension involved either way. 

Opting out is a conscious decision– it requires recognizing that one can choose not to do things the way most people are, and making that choice.  My understanding of homosexuality is that it definitely does not feel like a conscious choice, but deciding to be “out” is.  Even people who can look back and see their homosexuality written on the wall, so to speak, before they even realized it seem to have to go through a period of either going into the closet and/or (if they’re lucky enough to be in an accepting environment) make a deliberate choice to embrace that aspect of who they are and live as openly gay. 

Does having opted out in one dimension of your life make it easier to opt out in others?  Maybe.  At Skepticon 3 philosophy professor John Corvino gave a talk comparing coming out as gay to coming out as a skeptic/atheist, and it certainly sounded like the first experience made the second one a lot easier.   And it’s not necessarily a positive thing– in her book True Porn Clerk Stories, former video store clerk Ali Davis writers about certain customers who have reached the point of renting six or more porn movies per day, the people she’s no longer afraid to label “porn addicts,” having rejected society’s norms in other ways before reaching that point.  Sometimes opting out means taking control; sometimes it means giving up. 

Opting out has costs.  It might mean having fewer things to talk to your family about at Christmas.  It might mean being passed over for a job.  It might, as in the case of ethical choices, mean that people believe you are implicitly judging them for not joining them in your decision, and come to resent you for it.  It might mean that people conclude that you’re being different just for the sake of being different, and mock you because others are being different in a very similar way, as if it’s ever possibly to be truly unique.  It might, in some circumstances, mean that your rights are not acknowledged, or that life is made harder to live in some other way because most people simply do not have the same interests.  Can it suck?  Yes, very much.   It will always be mind-boggling to me to hear or read people say outright– in conversation, in letters to the editor, in debates– that they’re not concerned about the interests of minorities if their own aren’t affected.  Sure, let’s ban tattooing, ferret ownership, strip clubs, Islamic mosques, urban farming— I don’t want any part in any of those things, so screw people who do!

Back to the taste vs. ideology thing.  People who opt out for moral reasons may be offended by having their choices compared to opting out for matters of taste because it seems to negate the seriousness of their committment, but you can’t force others to take your interests as seriously as you do.  To them, it may as well be a matter of taste that you want to wear a burqa, raise your own chickens because you object to factory farming, or make sure your children receive their sex education from you and no one else.  What counts as being in the moral dimension for one person might well just look like a quirk or a hobby to someone else.   And conversely, what looks like a hobby or quirk for the person who wants to opt out to take part in it– getting tattoos, going to strip clubs, smoking marijuana– may have a moral dimension for others who are strongly opposed to it. 

Ultimately, I think that having a lot of people around who are openly “weird” in some way or another is a good thing, because it raises our level of cultural tolerance for weirdness.  The more homogeneous a society is, the more dangerous it seems (and probably is) to be different.  I have no particular desire to wear my hair in a mohawk, join a swinger’s club, or homeschool children, but am grateful to live in a culture where those things are tolerated if not warmly accepted.  It’s clear to me that the pursuit of happiness in a country can take as many different forms are there are members of its population, and it is therefore crucial that we protect each individual’s ability to pursue happiness to the maximal extent possible.  That’s clearly not to say that anything which makes a person happy must be allowed, but that the onus of proof for justifying standing in the way of such pursuit always rests on the person  who wants to do so– not one whose pursuit it is.  Diversity of species on a farm makes the organisms raised on it stronger and better defended from attacks by parasites.  Diversity of interests and lifestyles amongst the population of a society makes individuals in it stronger and better defended from attacks on their own happiness.

Who do you admire?

Who do you admire? published on 3 Comments on Who do you admire?

At The Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf contemplates the results of a recent Gallup poll asking Americans which men and women they most admire.  Barack Obama won out for men, whereas Hillary Clinton came out on top for women.  Friedersdorf thinks the fact that politicians make up the majority of people on both lists is “all about” name recognition, and I agree. He also says that “I’d never cite a living politician if asked who I admired most,” and I agree with that too.  Nor would I cite a religious leader who is heavily involved in politics, several of whom also figured highly in the ranks (Billy Graham, Pope Benedict XVI, the Dalai Lama).  In fact, the only people at the top who wouldn’t qualify for either of those two descriptions are Angelina Jolie, Oprah, and…Glenn Beck.  Dear god.

The poll asks “What man/woman have you heard or read about, living today in any part of the world, do you admire most?  And who is your second choice?”  I admit that if you called me on the phone and asked me this question impromptu, I would have some trouble coming up with my “best” answers.  I don’t keep a list of heroes in my head, because usually it’s not something important to consider unless you are asked for a Gallup poll, or, say, a job interview (why having a good answer to this question is an important quality in a receptionist, I’m not sure).  I couldn’t tell you my top five movies or bands, either.  It’s not because I’m apathetic or without preferences, just that ranking such things never really seemed that important.  But since I’m pooh-poohing the top answers given by the Americans polled, it seems like I should be able to come up with some I might actually give, at least for right now.  Such as…

Radley Balko:  Radley is a journalist.  To sum him up as a journalist, however, would be a little like summing up Norman Borlaug (someone who would absolutely be on my list, if he hadn’t died last year) as a farmer.  Radley’s work is decidedly political, but it is the kind of politics which any person with an ounce of compassion should praise, yet of which most are completely ignorant– seeking out and revealing the cases of people who have been oppressed by America’s justice system, whether by oversight or quite deliberately.   He’s written extensively about the harm caused by no-knock drug raids, prosecutorial cover-ups, asset forfeiture, the necessity of access to DNA testing for convicts, and general police malfeasance.  His work bring injustices to public attention– “My reporting helped get a guy off death row, helped win a new trial and acquittal for a 13-year-old murder suspect, and led to the firing of a corrupt medical examiner in Mississippi.”  His blog, as you can probably imagine, is frequently a depressing read.  But it’s a necessary one, and I admire him for doing this sometimes very dirty work.

Joel Salatin:  Joel is a farmer– but not a regular one.  To quote Wikipedia, he is
“a self-described ‘Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer'” who “produces high-quality ‘beyond organic’ meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture.”  To unpack that, it means that he doesn’t just farm without using pesticides or genetically modified animal foods, which is what “organic” usually implies.  Hence the ‘beyond organic’– the goal of Polyface Farms is to start with grass and build a progressive and decidedly non-industrial food chain off of it.  Cows, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and pigs, all living off and contributing to the grass and each other’s…err…products.  No pollution production, no pesticide runoff, no tight confinement of animals in dark spaces eating food that makes them sick.  No docking of tails for depressed pigs.  No government subsidies, because the government doesn’t subsidize growing grass, or cows that were fed only grass or chickens that were fed only grass and the grubs of other animals that ate grass. Just a circular, self-perpetuating cycle of food production– something you’d think was the norm until you found out otherwise.  I admire that immensely. I also admire Michael Pollan for making sure the world has the opportunity to know who Salatin is.

Eugenie Scott:  Eugenie, who sometimes goes by “Genie,” is an anthropologist who heads up the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) and is, incidentally, one of the biggest fighters against creationism in public schools and promoters of evolution in America.  See Kitzmiller v. Dover.  Eugenie generally operates behind the scenes, but she is probably the foremost authority on the evolution/creationism controversy in the country.  And it’s not just about Dover– it’s about a country-wide ongoing tireless battle to make sure that what is taught in public school science classrooms is actually science, and she’s been contributing toward that effort for more than 20 years.  I find a lot to admire in that kind of dedication. I also admire Lauri Lebo for writing about the Dover trial in a way that could make everyone understand it and feel like they know everyone involved in it, because that’s absolutely necessary if people are expected to care. 

Carol Tavris:  Carol is a social psychologist who studies human bias.  She is co-author of a very important book entitled Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, which is a lesson in intellectual humility that everyone– everyone— needs.  I could make a list of science-based books that have made my head spin with possibility…and will, at some point.  But reading this one, and hearing Carol talk about it in the interview below and this one, really punched through for me.   As often as people throw around the term “cognitive dissonance,” they don’t really seem to understand it.  It’s not the simple fact of holding contradictory views– it’s the discomfort that arises from realizing that your views are contradictory.  Intellectually honest people feel cognitive dissonance and seek to resolve it by changing their views.  Intellectually dishonest people either don’t feel it to begin with or they find a way to avoid the discomfort by rationalizing their views to make them seem consistent, which is what Mistakes Were Made is all about.  We’re all regularly intellectually dishonest– it’s the norm, not the aberration.  Bias is in our nature, and bias is, in my view, infinitely fascinating.  That willingness to brave that chasm of human folly and make it easier for the rest of us to do so as well is why I find Carol so admirable.

This makes me happy

This makes me happy published on No Comments on This makes me happy

Constitutionally protected tattoos

 “The tattoo designs that are applied by me are individual and unique creative works of visual art,” the tattoo artist Johnny Anderson claimed in a 2006 lawsuit. They are therefore constitutionally protected speech, he argued, so the courts should strike down a ban on tattoo parlors within the city limits of Hermosa Beach, California.In September a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed, holding that “the tattoo itself, the process of tattooing, and the business of tattooing are forms of pure expression fully protected by the First Amendment.” It’s the highest-profile victory yet in the tattoo trade’s long battle against the regulatory state. . . .

Unlike previous precedents on the topic of tattooed speech, the 9th Circuit’s ruling limits state action from Alaska to Arizona and is likely to influence other jurisdictions around the country.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that symbols are speech, which entails that if the meaning of an act, image, or any other form of expression is what is considered objectionable, it is a protected freedom under the First Amendment.  That’s why amendments against flag burning have always been and hopefully always will be deemed unconstitutional, as well as laws against styles of dress.  There are justifications that can be used for outlawing activities on the grounds of safety, but not on significance.  This would, I’d think, mean that obscenity laws are also unconstitutional, but it will most likely be a long time before SCOTUS agrees with me on that.  Especially since it would probably require the dissolution of the FCC.

Real-life trolls

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Westboro Baptist Church to Protest at Elizabeth Edwards’ Funeral

As Elizabeth Edwards’ family makes the final preparations for her funeral, members of a controversial church known for picketing at the memorials of fallen soldiers, says they will protest outside her funeral.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church are planning to disrupt Edwards’ funeral Saturday, saying the wife of former Senator John Edwards is “going to hell” because she admitted to doubting her faith when her oldest son died in 1996.

Edwards, a political spouse who became a staunch advocate for affordable healthcare, died of complications from breast cancer Tuesday. She was 61.
The funeral is planned for Saturday at Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C. She is then expected to be buried at Oakwood Cemetery alongside her son Wade, who died in a car accident when he was 16.

“God heard self-absorbed Elizabeth as she rode the talk show circuit spewing blasphemy,” Westboro said in a statement.

I just…these people are a joke. It’s hard to believe that they actually believe what they’re saying, the reasons they say they’re protesting, and if they do, they’re insane. Normal Christians do not protest the funerals of people they believe are going to hell, and not just because they don’t have the spare time and money for transportation.

A troll, in online parlance, is a person who says things to get a reaction.  They may be sincere or they may have adopted a false persona, but their intent is to stir people up, usually in anger.  The general understanding is that you should not feed the trolls– you shouldn’t give them what they want, because that will just encourage them.  I think that this is half true, to the same extent both online and in real life.  Ignore them if you’re inclined to take them seriously– if you are the type of person or in a frame of mind that will cause you to get stirred up by what they say and do, then pay them no mind at all.  If you are capable of mocking them, however, and desire to do so, well….go ahead.  Ridiculous ideas should be ridiculed.  That’s what the marketplace of ideas is all about– freedom of speech entails and requires the freedom of criticism, lest anyone reach the conclusion that absurd, insane beliefs should be treated as credible. 

A lurker is a person who observes an online conversation without commenting.  Sometimes people engage trolls in those conversations “for the sake of the lurkers”– not because they personally feel the need to engage the arguments of the troll, but to demonstrate for those observing why what the troll is saying is at best not worth taking seriously, and at worst actively harmful.  When people say that the proper response to hateful speech is more speech, they’re talking about speaking for the sake of the lurkers– allowing those who harbor hateful or ridiculous thoughts to voice them out loud, and then publically repudiating them for the benefit of those who might otherwise not understand why they ought to be repudiated.  I think that’s a good thing.  That’s why I am what some would call a free speech extremist, though I’m not a free speech absolutist.  There are some areas that should clearly be out-of-bounds– copyright infringement, libel, incitement to violence– but those are tightly circumscribed, pertaining to speech which causes direct harm to people, not just speech which offends, regardless of how much it does so and for what reason.  I want the people to always be the ones deciding which speech is objectionable, and voicing their objections to it loudly and clearly– not the government trying to silence it.

Disabled vet stalks WBC members, invites heckler’s veto

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A disabled Afghanistan veteran was arrested today in my hometown of Wichita Kansas on charges of stalking members of the Westboro Baptist Church:

Prosecutors charged [Ryan] Newell, 26, with five misdemeanors Thursday, including stalking and three counts of criminal use of a firearm in an incident involving the Phelps family of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church. He also was charged with false impersonation of a law enforcement officer. . .

Sedgwick County sheriff’s detectives arrested Newell mid-morning Tuesday in the Wichita City Hall parking lot after a detective saw him following a van that carried Westboro church members.

The church members were meeting in City Hall with police officials. Detectives found Newell in a vehicle backed into a parking space. In the vehicle, investigators found two handguns, a rifle and more than 90 rounds of ammunition, sources have said.

The stalking charge accuses Newell of actions targeted at Westboro members and putting them in fear for their safety.

The weapons charges accuse him of unlawfully carrying and concealing or possessing with “intent to use” an M4 rifle, .45-caliber Glock handgun and .38-caliber Smith and Wesson handgun.

“I just can’t imagine him wanting to hurt anybody,” his grandmother, Bonnie Crosby, said.

Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went to Newell’s home, and his wife turned over items — including firearms — to law enforcement, said a source close to the investigation.

Newell, who appeared in the courtroom through a video connection with the Sedgwick County Jail, was seated in a wheelchair and was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit. He was ordered to have no contact with members of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Phelps family.

Two lawyers appeared in court offering to represent Newell, who grew up in Goddard. He told Judge Ben Burgess that he had also received offers from a number of other lawyers.

Burgess quipped, “The more the merrier, I suppose.”

Newell remains in jail on $500,000 bond.

I’ve already seen sentiments along the lines that the police should’ve looked the other way and allowed him to shoot some people, that the WBC’s protests should be banned on the grounds that they will provoke this kind of reaction, even that the members of Westboro should have their children taken away because their protests are subjecting them to violence.  Probably no body of people comes as close to being universally reviled in the United States as the WBC, but even so the idea that this justifies murdering them is too insane for me to contemplate.  I can’t even giggle sarcastically about the idea, though I fully understand people’s reasons for loathing the group.

I’ve been aware of the WBC before most people outside of Kansas, probably, given that they showed up at my brother’s 1995 law school graduation at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.  Guess they thought someone gay was graduating?  I was in high school at the time and wanted to confront them, but my mom said it would be a really bad idea.  They’ve gained steadily in notoriety over the years, first rocketing into it in 1998 with their protest of Matthew Shepherd’s funeral and subsequent funerals of gays waving signs declaring that God hates fags, and then in 2005 when they started protesting funerals of soldiers who had died in Afghanistan and Iraq on the grounds that their deaths are punishments from the Lord for the country’s moral decline.  I think pretty much everyone knows who their patriarch Fred Phelps is by now.  He’s a former civil rights attorney who attended the same law school as my father (though not at the same time) but was disbarred and apparently went a bit insane.  He has thirteen children, four of whom are estranged from the family, and I believe the rest have been trained up as diligent sign-waving homophobes.  People make parties out of counter-protesting them now– they show up in crazy costumes waving signs of their own, usually vastly out-number the WBC crowd (not a big church population), and have a grand time.  But the WBC’s practice of protesting the funerals of soldiers has infuriated people to the point that the Supreme Court is currently trying to decide whether they have the right to do so. 

That being the case…with these claims that their right to protest in general should be taken away, and even that their children should be taken from them, I’m hearing “Ground Zero mosque! OMG!” all over again.  It’s the heckler’s veto— the argument that we can restrict people’s freedom of speech on the grounds that it may provoke violence.  Effectively, it allows people who are willing to be violent to restrict the rights of those whose speech they would use as justification for violence, by punishing the speech rather than the violent response.  We cannot do that, whether the speech in question is admirable or despicable.  Hecklers are people who prevent the speech of others by drowning them out.  Violence attempts to silence others by frightening them, physically incapacitating them, or in the case of a heckler’s veto by getting the government to outlaw certain kinds of speech in the name of their own protection.  It really disturbs me that, hated as the WBC is, people would leap to this conclusion upon hearing that a potential candidate has stepped up to the plate.  Contributing to this man’s defense or expressing “wry” disappointment that he didn’t actually kill anyone, to my eyes, looks like an expression of sympathy for his actions and gratitude that someone (not us, of course) was willing to show up and do the dirty work.  Rather like the remarks at various points between half-hearted condemnation and whole-hearted support that came from various pro-life activists when Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller last year, also in Wichita.

Everything about that is wrong to me.  I can’t be that kind of cheerleader, no matter who the gun is aimed at.  And I can’t use the fact that someone else is willing to aim the gun as justification for legally preventing his target from doing whatever is angering him (and maybe me) so badly.

Quote of the day

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“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. ” — H.L. Mencken

Someone quoted it in response to this case, but I see examples which fit just as well or better all of the time.