A Free Society

The Slants

The boy band, The Slants, recently won a landmark case in the Supreme Court reaffirming their fundamental rights granted by the First Amendment. For eight years, the Portland based rock group has been trying to trademark their band name which was ruled a racial slur by the Patent and Trademark Office, in accordance with the 1946 Lanham Act which prevents trademarking "scandalous, immoral or disparaging" language. The odd part in this saga is that the word "slant"  has been trademarked millions of times. The reason the band couldn't use the word was because they were Asian.

Band founder, Simon Tam, chose the name to usurp a derogatory word for Asians in attempts to change the meaning like the colonists did with the song, Yankee Doodle. British troops sang the tune to disparage American soldiers as macaronies, which were men who dressed fashionably and spoke in an effeminate manner in an attempt to appear noble. The colonists took the song as their own and sang it with pride, turning the tables on dandy shaming. In fact, the tune is the Connecticut state song.

Some people feel institutions have a responsibility to provide protections against hate speech while others think that the government should not censure any language. The Washington Redskins have been battling groups, opposed to their name, logo and mascot, who feel the label denigrates Native Americans. A recent poll by the Washington Post indicated that nine out of ten Native Americans are not offended by the football team's name. The results mirrored the same conclusions obtained in a 2004 poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Institutionalized censorship is most widespread in public schools which often site the safety of the students as justification. The courts feel that minors are not capable of absorbing differing opinions so they censure students across the board. Recently, the valedictorian of a high school in Pennsylvania, Peter Butera, was stifled during his commencement speech when he got off script. Butera said,

"Despite some of the outstanding people in our school, a lack of real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have prevented students from truly developing as true leaders."

Butera's microphone was shut off, cutting short his speech. This was not censorship rooted in safety. It was suppression based on disagreement. According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, forty percent of millennials believe that offensive speech about minorities should be prevented by law. The First Amendment specifically protects speech that people might find offensive. It's not the job of the government to protect us from what we might not want to hear or see. This is why Saint Patrick Day Parades are forced to admit a Gay Pride or a Nazi themed float. It's up to us to decide how we will react to the words we hear and the images we see, not the government.

Recently, the attorney general of California blocked state funded travel to Kentucky, Texas, Alabama and South Dakota in response to what he considers laws enacted in each state that he feels disparage LGBT groups. There are many exceptions to the ban, mainly affecting "non essential travel." One person in the California government is deciding that all state workers will be denied funding for their "boondoggle" out of office trip to Texas. This in California, a state that voted against gay marriage in 2008 on a state wide referendum known as Proposition 8.

We're seemingly always at a divide in this country. Political parties will never find common ground due to diametrically opposing fundamentals. The left believes the rich should pay more taxes. They say that the "one percenters" need to fork over their "fair share," implying that these people are somehow avoiding income tax. Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance for the University of Michigan, siting 2010 IRS data, stated,

 "The top 1% of taxpayers pay almost as much in federal income tax as the entire bottom 95%, and half of that bottom group paid no taxes at all."

Upwards to 40% of tax payers get more money back from the government than they pay in through the Earned Income Credit (EIC) program. The rich who are avoiding taxes are the 0.01 percenters, that is, Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney, who realize most of their income as capitol gains which is taxed at far lower rates.

The right believes in smaller government with less regulations except when it comes to what consenting adults do in their bedroom or women do with their bodies. They believe the government should let market forces guide corporations even though in the past children worked in factories six days a week, companies broke up strikes with armed mercenaries, offered no sick nor vacation time, and often provided places of work that were so dangerous that worker died on a regular basis.

What we need is a new political philosophy not rooted in either party, but one based on the Constitution. While the cornerstone of our system of government is the First Amendment, the foundation is based on freedom. My political philosophy is,

A free society is a permissible society.

Any time legislation is purposed to restrict behavior, it should be rejected on the basis that a free society is an unfettered society. The government allowing abortion is not supporting killing unborn children. It's supporting freedom of choice. The job of preventing abortions should be left to religious organizations and activists. Access to guns should not be restricted. Reducing the clip size of a weapon supports the notion that a few deaths is better than many. If someone kills people with a screwdriver, should we ban that too? What we need is real commitment to paying for sound mental health in this country instead of letting HMOs criminalize psychological disorders because it's cheaper for them to let the prison system deal with the mentally ill.

Politicians often seek binary issues like flag burning to help bifurcate the vote. If we adopt a stance that most of what our legislators are debating about is none of their business, maybe the country can move onto more important and difficult issues. For example, same sex marriage provides a means to clarify the law and in a free society, what people do with whom is essentially none of the government's business. Local governments tie revenue to property taxes vesting them in the upkeep of your property. This has resulted in town statutes concerning lawn mowing and house repair. Fundamentally, this has removed your right to maintain your property to your own standard. A free society should not evaluate restrictions based on utilitarian aspects, but instead allow you to do what you choose. You think the house you live in is yours. Try not cutting your lawn and see what happens.

Some countries allow drug use and prostitution, but these governments don't promote these activities. Instead, they allow them while making them inconvenient to access. We should do the same with cigarettes. It shouldn't be illegal to smoke, just illegal to profit from the sale of cigarettes. If you want to smoke, you would have to join a farmer's co-op that grew tobacco and manufactured cigarettes for its members. By making cigarette's available, but inconvenient, the number of new smokers would be dramatically curtailed. The tobacco companies would never let this happen. They have too much money and power to let anything disrupt their business model.

The attorney general in California has no business refusing funds to state workers traveling to places that he perceives as unfriendly to a particular community. Not only is this not a law, it is likely that most Californians would not support this overreaching advocacy policy if it was put on referendum. This should never happen in a free society.

Sometimes, I hear people talk about liberty as if it's something tangible as in,

 "We have a lot of freedoms here."

In general, we enjoy freedom of movement, although Arizona inland border patrol are stopping people at the state border and asking them if they are citizens. Such immigration checkpoints depend heavily on people not understanding their basic constitutional rights. Most of our "freedoms" are being quietly eroded by restrictive legislation established by overreaching government entities. It's not the job of the government to protect ourselves from ourselves. In 1961 during his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy famously said,

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Today, with celebrities talking about blowing up the White House and assassinating the president, we should say,

"Ask not what you should do to the government. Ask what the government should not do to you."

Natural Selection

Thrice Wolves and Moon

My namesake uncle hates dogs. He also boycotts Wal-Mart for being on the top of the Fortune 500 heap all while historically providing limited benefits to their workforce. This has led to my favorite "blue moon" line frequently recited at family gatherings,

"I'll do that when Uncle Bob buys a dog at Wal-Mart."

Just when you'd think the country's love affair with canines couldn't get any stranger, I read an article in a local newspaper which suggested that on Mother's Day we should recognize dogs that gave birth. As a society, we're against cruelty to animals, but are we really? We swipe their children at birth, rip the testicles out of the males, perform hysterectomies on the females, then leave a pack animal alone in a crate while we go to work. All this by people who claim to be dog lovers?

Oprah took a picture with a woman and her two dogs in a stroller on Mother's Day. She uploaded it to Instagram with the comments,

"Jill and her fur children. #Happy Mothers day to Mothers of all varieties of children!"

Now, I'm not one to equate children and pets, and I especially don't like it when the childless do so. Pets are not children. First off, if the cost of treatment becomes excessive, no one ever suggests putting down a child. It's not normal to chain a child to a tree, leaving a metal bowl full of water while we go off to work all day. We also don't queue up another child when the eldest gets old. A lot of people employ this "dog on deck" strategy when their main pooch is ready to check out. You also don't get worms or giardia from your children. Some people believe that dogs suffer from ADHD, but I believe that dogs just don't have a long attention span because, well, they're dogs.

Dog's bark all day because as pack animals they don't want to be alone. I think it's cruel to crate a dog indoors or chain it to a tree. Just because your dog is happy to see you at the end of the day doesn't mean it's not affected by solitary confinement. I find barking dogs both sad and irritating. Nature has lent me a hand with noisy, unattended dogs. People who tie their dog to a tree then go to work for the day have found that this is not a safe practice when living close to nature. The problem is when you live up against a nature preserve, nature sometimes pays you a visit, and nature can be heartless. Some nature found its way into my neighbor's yard and ate Dinkles the Dog for dinner. My neighbors came home to a skeleton tied to a tree.

Once a neighbor introduced himself to us with a dog in tow, a friendly lab who in the middle of the introduction squatted to take a dump on my lawn. When he finished his business, he did that cat scratch thing to cover his tracks, but all he managed to do is mess up my grass. I thought as a human I should try this. You know, go over to someone's house to introduce my family,

"Hi, I'm Bob. This is my wife, Chris. Our boys, Aidan and William. I'm gonna shit on your lawn now."

Then bring out the Nutella fun factory. First impressions are so important.

After the dog finished pinching, he got bored and started to clean himself. Dogs have no shame. They groom their bits and pieces. They ride your leg. They indiscriminately crap. Anything goes for a dog. Nature is a big party in which the strongest gets to shit on the weakest and everyone just plays along, you know, kind of like middle school. In the wild, one animal is always taking advantage of another. They even play it safe by going after the young, the weak, the sick, the old. Nature always seeks an advantage, an opportunity to exploit the unwary.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

"The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members."

In nature, the weakest members are treated as lunch, and that works for them, but it doesn't work for us so stop referring to a pet as your child.