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.
Continue reading “Freedom of Speech and “Misinformation””Friday Thoughts: What Rights Are You Missing?
The other day I ran across an FB post with the hashtag “LGBTQ rights are human rights” and it got me thinking. What rights, exactly, do people who use that hashtag believe are not recognized for LGBTQ folks or what rights are LGBTQ people unable to exercise due to government or social restrictions? Seriously, what are they missing? Marriage? Got it. Speech? Got it. Access to healthcare? Got it. Religion? Got it. Housing? Got it. Jobs? Got ‘em. What are they missing?
Continue reading “Friday Thoughts: What Rights Are You Missing?”Friday Thoughts: A Right to Privacy?
Writing the post the other day got me thinking about the right to privacy. There is no explicitly stated right to privacy in the Constitution. What is in there are several amendments that have been used in landmark (and less than landmark) cases to define a right to privacy for U.S. citizens against government intrusion. And each of these amendments and cases are where we can find the Constitutional protections against mandatory vaccination and vaccine passports.
Continue reading “Friday Thoughts: A Right to Privacy?”Freedoms and Rights
Rights and freedoms might get hidden at times, but they’re always there. There is a lot of talk these days from government entities and media about “giving back” or “getting back” freedoms if the hoi polloi would just get vaccinated. The government in New South Wales (Australia) just announced that vaccinated people would “be given new freedoms” starting September 13. Be good little boys and girls, and we’ll let you go outside for an extra hour! Won’t that be fun! As I said elsewhere, Dear Aussies – Y’all need to take your country back.
Continue reading “Freedoms and Rights”Women at Home and Abroad
Who has it better?
The on-going indoctrination of young women in the United States has them believing that this is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. What kind of messed up perspectives are they being sold?
Continue reading “Women at Home and Abroad”Freedom vs. killer diseases
Lately I’ve seen a lot of snark towards people who dare to express concerns regarding the rapid erosion of our civil liberties and freedoms during the Wuhan flu* lockdown. A college friend even started a Facebook post the other day with “but muh muh freedoms” and then proceeded to rant that people concerned with freedoms obviously wanted to kill of a third to half of the US population in exchange for those freedoms. I was appalled. No disease mitigation is worth the loss of our fundamental freedoms.
This is not about trading lives for freedom. It’s about maintaining our freedoms so that government overreach does NOT result in the clusterfuck we’re seeing here and now. Our privacy, our ability to provide for ourselves and our families, our ability to learn and grow…all of these things are in jeopardy from the current level of restrictions and overreach practiced by many states and counties. I’m not really sure if those individuals inveighing against the respect for and restoration of our freedoms have given any thought to how the country will move forward and recover without these freedoms.
Where do they expect to get basic necessities like toilet paper or food if manufacturers and farmers are subject to random, yet mandatory shut downs? How do they expect to educate their children? And, yes, how do they expect to take care of their ill and/or elderly family members when governments (see PA and NY for example) are requiring that assisted living facilities and nursing homes admit residents who have tested positive for Wuhan flu? Roughly 70% of all cases in the US (massively tilted by NYC) are in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. So, please tell me, how is locking the rest of us up helping when your government is locking up healthy elderly with those who are ill? And then depriving us of the means to support ourselves and take care of those ill/elderly relatives? That’s also part of your freedoms…information. And that has been severely restricted by state governments…all in the name of keeping us safe.
The government cannot and more importantly should not take care of everything for us. I don’t know about you but being infantilized by politicians is guaranteed to make me angry and act in a most contrarian manner. And, being told by useful idiots that “it’s for our own good” and that we should support every authoritarian whim of politicians as long as they claim it’s for safety reasons, is guaranteed to piss me off even more. I’m capable of discovering the dangers for myself. And, if you’re going to tell me that there are people out there who “don’t know” well, that’s on them. Or, if you’re so concerned, go tell them yourself. Governments function best when they acknowledge they are governing adults, when those adults take responsibility for their own actions, and when the rest of you don’t expect or allow the government to do everything. In my intro American politics classes I’ve always asked my students what happens if you allow the government to give you something? The answer is, it can, and often does, take it away.
Right now, we are experiencing a loss of freedoms and there is a fairly large chunk of our population that is OK with that for some strange reason. They seem to feel that since the “experts” are putting these ideas out there, those ideas must be perfect. It’s already been revealed that the “expert” model created by Neil Ferguson, MD in the UK, for example, is deeply flawed and relies on ancient FORTRAN code (seriously? Even I know that FORTRAN is the computer code equivalent of stone tablets). Ask any techie friend you have what is meant by spaghetti code. That’s what the “experts” are relying on and expecting you to take at face value. Don’t give up your ability to question everything.
Take the precautions you feel most comfortable with. Don’t let others, family or friends or experts, panic you into doing something or not doing something that your rational mind knows is not rational. Remember, fear and panic crowd out rational thinking. And, note that fear and panic are what’s being encouraged. To borrow from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…Don’t Panic.
Demand that your government recognize and respect your natural rights and freedoms. We are better than this.
*Yes, I’m using Wuhan flu to describe this thing. It’s not racist to name a disease after the city where it was first identified. Lyme Disease anyone?