Arguing vs. Venting Emotions

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024

Arguing vs. Venting Emotions

Screaming your emotions at somebody is NOT arguing. How many times have you found yourself in an argument or discussion and realized that either the other person, or you, are arguing/commenting from a place of fact-free, analysis-free, and logic-free emotion? I know I’ve done it, and I catch myself doing it still (less often, but it creeps in there). You’d think I’d know better by now, but emotions can overtake before you really realize what’s going on. Emotions are also the strings activists and politicians pull or pluck to get you to fall in line with their side of the issue.

August 9, 2024August 9, 2024

Freedom of Speech and “Misinformation”

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the First Amendment and its relationship to the idea of “misinformation.” There’s a reason the Anti-Federalists put it at the top of their list of amendments to the original U.S. Constitution. When the Founders wrote the constitution, they left out specifics in a number of areas. They reasoned that restrictions on government action in certain areas should be obvious, and didn’t need to be spelled out. The Anti-Federalists (so named by Madison because they objected to an overarching federal government – they felt it could be used to put undesirable restrictions on individual liberties) insisted on including the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, because they wanted the inalienable rights to be in writing and thus beyond questioning. Well before Louis B. Mayer, the Anti-Federalists knew that an oral agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

August 1, 2024August 1, 2024

Anointing and Appointing and Problems With It All

I haven’t done a politics screed in a while and that’s mostly because there’s just been so much going on that by the time I find or make the time to write about it, something else has come along. So, I’m just going to note and comment on a few things that have pinged my radar in the last week or so.