Conservatives and President Obama

Long time no post, but I've been musing on something lately. Writing helps me order my thoughts, and as long as I'm writing on this topic, it might as well go on the ol' blog. This is much in the same vein as my post on conservative opposition to John McCain four years ago.

I've noticed something about the Obama administration since 2009. Republicans in general tend to hate the man (see my point on party loyalty being the ultimate factor in the post on McCain), of course, but at least the neoconservative wing of the party, marginalized as it is presently, really shouldn't.

Why? They (we, I would have said a few years ago, though I've changed ever so slightly since) are basically getting what they want out of him. Osama bin Laden is dead at the hands of the American military, the Iraq war is being honorably ended according to the schedule President Bush agreed to with the Iraqis without a precipitous withdrawal, the Afghanistan campaign has been robustly supported (more so than it was under Bush, I might add) with substantial measurable progress, the United States is standing up to Iranian threats regarding the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear program, democracy is indeed sweeping across the Middle East, and American and NATO assistance has helped to overthrow one of the most noxious dictators of Northern Africa in the person of Muammar Gaddafi without having to put a single boot on the ground. In short, the neoconservative position, that American power should be used in furtherance of liberty throughout the world, is being more or less obliged by this President, and good on him for that. (As I said, slightly.) Since neoconservative philosophy properly referred to is a foreign policy philosophy, without regard to domestic issues, this should be making that part of the Republican establishment essentially headed by Dick Cheney and the (now largely defunct) Project for the New American Century extremely happy; I daresay that Obama has been more effective at implementing their policies than Bush, who it must be said did a deeply flawed if enthusiastic job of it.

It won't, though, because Obama is a Democrat. Party loyalty, you see. This is why I've been a lifelong independent; I don't have to feel obligated to anybody's tribe over the issues. But that's another rant.

Thought Reform at the University of Delaware

I could write a big ol' post about this, but I think I'll let the students tell their own story.



"We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him...You must love BIG BROTHER. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him." - O'Brien to Winston in 1984, by George Orwell

Spread this far and wide. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this malignancy at the heart of our university system needs disinfecting.

Breaking: Supreme Court strikes down D.C. handgun ban

MSNBC, CNN

Today the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Washington, D.C. ban on firearms, issuing a definitive ruling on the meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution for the first time in the court's history.

Justice Scalia's opinion written for the majority affirms that the Second Amendment outlines an individual right to keep and bear arms, unrelated to service in a government militia.

The court's ruling still permits what they call reasonable restrictions, such as banning concealed carry, but trigger lock requirements, disassembly requirements, and general bans on weapons ownership are now effectively over, and none too soon.

Speech Code of the Month widget

Just throwing this up to note that I've decided to add the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's Speech Code of the Month widget to the site sidebar.

The Speech Code of the Month is selected at the start of each month by FIRE, and is intended to highlight particularly egregious offenses against individual liberty and the rights of students by universities, in the hopes that they will remove or revise their rules; for several schools this has been successful. See the Speech Code of the Month archive for more information.

Civil Rights Making Progress

No, it's not what you think. No, really.

The state assemblies of South Dakota and Arizona are currently considering bills that would make it legal to carry firearms on public university campuses. I expect much whining from the anti-gun lobby in the days to come as the bills go to votes before their respective assembly houses. They'll say how it places our children in danger, how there will be deadly shootings by students who are legally carrying weapons, and other such nonsense.

And it's just that. Nonsense. If someone wants to shoot up the University of South Dakota, then he will attempt to do so. A would-be murderer is already setting out to break one of the most serious crimes on the books; he is not going to care about whether or not a campus is a "gun-free zone."

I don't usually cite other bloggers' work, but as a college professor I feel that Glenn Reynolds has some insight into this particular issue. That op-ed was written in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings. I encourage you to read it; he raised the obvious points, but it's worth seeing.

Here's to these bills passing. University students are legal adults, and if they can show themselves competent to carry a firearm, there's no reason why their college campuses should be any different than the rest of the country.

And to quote Freud:





:p

Hail Xenu!

Well, it's been a long time, but recent events have conspired to jolt me out of blogging "retirement," as it were.

For years, the Church of Scientology has been engaging in litigious behavior towards their critics, and now a lot of people have had enough. February 10 is a national day of protest against Scientology.

Event locations may be found here.

Why do this, you ask? For one very simple reason: The Church of Scientology is an oppressive, fascistic, brutal organization that suppresses, extorts, controls, and sometimes even kills its members. A good overview of Scientology's dangers may be found here. If you don't have time to spend an hour or so reading the Operation Clambake site, watch this. Don't believe those critics? How about a court brief?

In addition to this, the "church" has engaged in espionage, perpetrating the largest infiltration of the United States government by any organization in history, foreign intelligence agencies included, during their "Operation Snow White."

Still not enough? According to Scientologist doctrine, L. Ron Hubbard described himself as the Antichrist and charged that Jesus was a child molester and prone to violent fits of rage. From the OTVIII Scientology document:

"No doubt you are familiar with the Revelations section of the Bible where various events are predicted. Also mentioned Is a brief period of time in which an arch-enemy of Christ. reforred to as the anti-Christ, will reign and his opinions will have sway. All this makes for very fantastic, entertaining reading but there is truth in it. This anti-Christ represents the forces of Lucifer (literally, the "light bearers" or "light bringer"), Lucifer being a mythical representation of the forces of enlightenment, the Galactic Confederacy. My mission could be said to fulfill the Biblical promise represented by this brief anti-Christ period. During this period there is a fleeting opportunity for the whole scenario to be. effectively derailed. which would make it impossible for the mass Marcabian landing (Second Coming) to take place. The Second Coming is designed, among other things, to trigger a rapid series of destructive events.

With the exception of the original Buddhism, virtually all religions of any consequence on this planet, mono- and pantheistic alike. have been instruments to speed the progress of this "evolution of consciousness" and bring about the eventual enslavement of mankind. As you know, Siddhartha Gautama never claimed to be anything more than a man. Having caught on to this operation, he postulated his own return as Metteyya, part of which prophecy will have been fulfilled upon the passing of L. Ron Hubbard.

For those of you whose Christian toes I may have stepped on. let me take the opportunity to disabuse you of some lovely myths. For instance, the historic Jesus was not nearly the sainted figure has been made out to be. In addition to being a lover of young boys and men. he was given to uncontrollable bursts of temper and hatred that belied the general message of love, understanding and other typical Marcab PR. You have only to look at the history his teachings inspired to see where it all inevitably leads. It Is historic fact and yet man still clings to the ideal. so deep and insidious is the biologic implanting."

A word of warning, though: The Church of Scientology is utterly ruthless to its critics. Their Fair Game doctrine specifically says that "Suppressive Persons" (their term for their enemies), quote, "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." Those who wish to participate in this should know that they are taking a risk. Scientology will use and abuse the legal system in any way they can to shut their critics up. They have in the past intentionally provoked picketers at their churches to attack them by getting up in their faces and then had their critics jailed. If they find out who you are, they will attempt to sue you if they can find any recourse at all, including the use of any of their symbols. I, for one, intend to stand up anyway, because it has to be done, but I don't want to bring anyone into this unaware of the risks.

If you do decide to go, stay together with fellow protesters (unless they're about to do something stupid), do not give out your name, do not allow yourself to be tempted to physically engage a Scientologist or even give the appearance of doing so. See you in the field.

Addendum: I am aware of the current DDoS attacks against the Church of Scientology's websites. While I detest Scientology for the brainwashing cult that it is, I do not condone illegal actions of this sort or any other. Scientology should be opposed within the legal system and with peaceful demonstrations, not hacking or vandalism.

Washington, D.C. gun ban struck down

I've missed a lot of things that I wanted to post about over the past month or so, but I might as well start here now that I'm back rather than inundate everyone with my take on old news. So instead, here's a story that just broke today.

Washington Compost, text of the court decision. (Warning: 195 kilobyte PDF.)

Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (how's that for a mouthful?) overturned the decision of the District Court for D.C. (the full title of which is a similar mouthful) in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia, in which the plaintiffs were denied their Constitutional right to bear firearms by the lower court. The appeals court overturned the district court's decision, declaring Washington, D.C.'s 30 year old, near-total ban on firearms to be unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, the D.C. Circuit covers only Washington itself, not any of the states. (If Chicago's gun ban had been struck down in this manner instead, gun bans would be illegal throughout the entire 7th Circuit, but this covers only the capital city.) I don't really see the point of a circuit court that covers only one city (where do they circulate between? Courthouses on opposite sides of the District?), but there it is. Nobody ever expected government to make sense.

The city is likely to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court, but I don't know whether or not they'll agree to hear it. The Court has more conservative justices now, but to quote a friend of mine, "the Country Club Republicans especially tend to have a certain elegant disdain for the rabble bearing arms." We'll just have to wait this out and see.

In the meantime, I feel like celebrating a little. Party time.

Germany to jail gamers

Like I said in my introductory posts on this blog, I am, among many other things, a gamer; that is to say, I play tabletop and video games as a hobby. I consider this a normal, non-harmful thing and an enjoyable social activity.

Which is why stuff like this really pisses me off.

Evidently, we did too good a job of pacifying Germany after the Second World War. The Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, their ratings board, is evidently so emasculated that they won't rate games that feature violence of any kind, even violence against zombies. While not giving a rating doesn't officially ban a game, it does mean it cannot be sold in most stores in the country.

But evidently, that's not enough. Noooooooo, now the states of Lower Saxony and Bavaria want to toss people who commit "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters," along with the developers who make the games that let them do so, directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

This is a disgrace. Such restrictions on the freedoms of expression and association should not be perpetrated by any government, and a Western democratic government has no excuse.

In response to this treatment of their industry, the German game developer Crytek is threatening to relocate to a different nation. Good luck with that, Crytek. Far Cry isn't exactly my favorite game, but you guys deserve better.

Chinese Communist Party members take censors to task

Well, a friend of mine asked me to render my opinion on this a couple weeks ago, and I suppose late is better than never. (Sorry about the lack of updates; this is directly due to my current lack of reliable Internet.)

New York Times (registration required to view)

Several members of China's Communist Party, including a former propaganda chief and a former secretary to Mao, have circulated a joint letter condemning the recent forced shutdown of the popular Chinese newspaper Freezing Point by the party's Propaganda Department. (Yes, the government agency is actually called that.) The letter did not reference the recent censorship of Google China or Beijing's other online censorship campaigns.

This is significant not because of the protest itself (Chinese editors and reformists have been protesting censorship for years, sometimes at the cost of their own freedom), but because it is in fact senior Party men who are doing the protesting. This could indicate that the winds are changing in China; if Party officials are attempting to curry favor with the reform movements, then it could mean that they feel threatened by them, which is wildly significant. If my (admittedly cynical) interpretation is correct, and they're doing this out of what they perceive as their self-interest rather than a sudden libertarian change of heart, then it means that Communist control is seriously weakening in China to the point where several of the Party's core members feel that their chances are better opposing the Party than standing silent.

Let's all hope so.