The EU Court of Human Rights Kills Baby Charlie

Terminally ill baby Charlie Gard's parents 'utterly distraught' after losing final appeal in European court - meaning their son's life support WILL be switched off

Chris Gard and Connie Yates wanted their son to undergo treatment in America

Their baby Charlie suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children wanted Charlie to 'die with dignity'

The European Court of Human Rights today rejected his parents' final appeal

Movement to Normalize Abnormality Targets Judge Roy Moore

It might have been funny when Tom Hanks did it on TV. That was then. But nowadays a cross-dressing homosexual is not funny. Take the case of "drag queen Ambrosia Starling", who is focusing his/her sights onto Judge Roy Moore.

Alabama drag queen is suspended chief justice's nightmare

"Wearing big hair, loads of makeup and high heels, small-town drag queen Ambrosia Starling is the new worst nightmare of suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Moore has called out Starling twice by name in recent days while defending himself against allegations of violating judicial canons with his opposition to same-sex marriage. During a news conference and in a written statement, Moore cited the cross-dressing entertainer as a reason he's at risk of losing his job for the second time since 2003.

That's fine with Starling, who helped lead an anti-Moore rally on the steps of the Alabama Supreme Court building in January. Opponents that day filled out more than 40 complaints against Moore, who already was the subject of other complaints and now faces removal from office if convicted of violating judicial ethics.

"If it takes a drag queen to remind you that liberty and justice is for all, here I am," Starling said Tuesday between sips of coffee.

Moore contends the effort to oust him is unfounded and politically motivated.

Born and raised in the southeast Alabama city of Dothan, Starling is a gay man who dresses up like a woman to perform drag shows. Most days, the 43-year-old Starling dresses like a male and goes to a regular job, referring to himself as "he."

But the entertainer prefers the pronoun "she" when dressed as Ambrosia Starling, a stage name for drag shows. Fearful of losing his day job or endangering others in a Deep South state where many gays still fear violence or discrimination, Starling agreed to an interview on the condition that only the stage name was used.

"I have a 71-year-old mother who lives with me that I have to worry about," Starling said. "Her well-being and safety is No. 1 for me."

Starling wore her drag outfit to that demonstration against Moore outside the Supreme Court five months ago. In a long blue dress and light-colored coat, Starling referred to Moore as a bigot and asked crowd members to submit complaints against Moore to the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission, which accused the Republican Moore of wrongdoing on Friday, resulting in his suspension.

The complaint filed by the Judicial Inquiry Commission accuses Moore of willfully failing to respect the authority of federal court decisions that cleared the way for gay marriage, which Moore opposes on the basis of faith and the law. He issued an administrative order to state probate judges in January that said state laws against gay marriage remained in place months after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized gay marriage nationwide."

This, like all of the Leftist assaults on western civilization, asks the question: "what sort of emotional abnormality does NOT supercede a state's right not to recognize it as having unlimited rights of behaviors and access?" There currently is no limit on the rights of abnormalities, except the hated religious rights of those hated religious people, who are now the minority abnormals (yet still the Oppressor Class) in the eyes of the messiahs of the Left. Those fundamental constitutional rights are eagerly abrogated at every turn of the Left's imagination. The First and Tenth Amendments mean nothing to those pimping the ascent of the perverse.

Chimp Rights

Is it time that chimps are given legal rights? What about elephants, dolphins and whales?


" This morning New York’s Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether chimpanzees deserve to be given legal rights - specifically two chimps named Hercules and Leo being held in captivity by Stony Brook University in New York State for use in an anatomical research programme.

For the sake of posterity, the case is “Nonhuman Rights Project v. Stanley, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 152736-2015”.

That’s a joke, right?

No. The Nonhuman Rights Project, a group founded by Steven Wise, an attorney and animal rights activist, is deadly serious. And the question of whether the most intelligent non-human animals should have a legal status beyond mere objects has generated significant legal debate in recent years.

But how can a chimp have rights if it can’t even speak?

Nor can some mentally ill people, or unborn children for that matter. But they still have legal rights.

So which “right” do they want chimps to be granted?

Specifically, the right to liberty – or “bodily freedom” – ie not to be stuck in a cage, or a science lab.

So if the court decides in their favour do the chimps simply walk off into Manhattan?

No. But they do get to go to a sanctuary in Florida to live out their days in as much freedom as is practically possible. "

This will be interesting to watch. I suspect that most, if not all, venues have animal cruelty prohibitions. And the US Constitution refers to humans with no intent of referring to animals. Still, in today's anti-intellectual atmosphere anything can happen. You can deprive life to your fetus but animals must have lives that are free of intervention? Of course.

Same Script; Different Stage; New Actors

Protesting tyranny in the USA - Selma and Geller: John Nolte makes the necessary comparison.

Read the entire article for the details and photos, and the original insight from Nolte.
The similarities in the situations are striking, as I summarize here:

1. Tyrannical terrorists are suppressors of human rights:

Selma: KKK and Democrat demogogue racists
Geller: Islamic totalitarians and Democrat Islamic apologists

2. Removal of Constitutional Rights

Selma: Democrat Jim Crow Laws
Geller: Islamic and Democrat refusal of First Amendment Rights

3. Necessary protest venue determined by the nature of the terrorists:

Selma: march on the KKK iconic bridge.
Geller: Using the First Amendment Rights denied by Islamists and Democrats.

4. Righteous Cause:

Selma: human freedom under the U.S. Constitution
Geller: human freedom under the U.S. Constitution

5. Peaceful Protest

Selma: nonviolent protestors
Geller: nonviolent protestors

6. Democrat Bigots Victim-Blame

Selma: Democrats blamed "upstart" (black protestors)
Geller: Democrats blamed "intolerant and Islamophobic (racist)" protestors.

7. Protestors Risk Lives For Freedom

Selma: Irritating the KKK and Democrat local authorities
Geller: Irritating the worldwide Islamic terror community

8. Democrat hypocrisy

Selma: Democrats ignore and provoke blacks; defend and protect Jim Crow human rights violations.
Geller: Democrats ignore and provoke Christians and Christianity; defend and protect Islam.

To this I add that the Democrats have always, since their inception as a political party, been the center of suppression of human rights by class warfare; the Democrat party attracts those who are of a totalitarian bent and are determined to suppress others for the benefit of themselves. History is rife with their abuse of basic human rights in one form or another, primarily by creating and maintaining class standards which benefit themselves and handicap the Other.

Obama: Constitution Provides "Privileges"

United Liberty:

Obama marks Constitution Day by referring to our constitutional rights as “privileges”

This is hardly "news"; Obama has always claimed to believe in Positive Rights only: The only rights are those which are "positively" allowed by the government. Anyone paying attention back in '08 knows that. He is a dictator in his own mind.

"In his presidential proclamation marking Constitution Day, President Barack Obama offered some insight into how he views the Bill of Rights. “Our Constitution reflects the values we cherish as a people and the ideals we strive for as a society,” Obama said in the release. “It secures the privileges we enjoy as citizens, but also demands participation, responsibility, and service to our country and to one another.”

Given that this White House is known for its expansive view of executive power, the assertion that the rights guaranteed and protected under the Bill of Rights, the fact that President Obama views these fundamental liberties to be “privileges” isn’t too terribly surprising. After all, President Obama treats the legislative branch — which, again, is supposed to be a co-equal branch of the federal government — as an afterthought as it arbitrarily changes statues and even refuses to enforce laws."

...

While Obama is the first president (and he won’t be the last) to try to run roughshod over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, his comments are dangerous. They offer much insight into how progressives view your rights, which is to say they’re just privileges that can be revoked at any time some purported emergency arises.

If Obama gets away with his Constitutional abuses, future presidents will, too.

Humanist Petition For Subversion of the Sovereign Integrity of the USA

Title:

Atheists and Humanists Condemn Human Rights Crisis at the U.S. Border and Nativist Attacks against Undocumented Immigrants

"The influx of Central American families and unaccompanied minors at the U.S. border has escalated into a human rights crisis which some have exploited to make xenophobic, racist and nativist attacks against undocumented immigrants and refugees. Over the past few months, thousands of underage youth fleeing violence and instability in their native countries have been warehoused in substandard Homeland Security facilities. According to the ACLU some have suffered abuse at the hands of border officials. This week, angry protestors stormed and turned away buses full of predominantly women and children detainees in Murrieta, California. These attacks will only increase, as they are part of a national climate of hatred, hostility and discrimination against undocumented individuals and their families (which are often of mixed citizenship status) and communities. These attacks have been encouraged by the Republican-controlled House’s refusal to pass a comprehensive humane immigration bill that is informed by the progressive legacy of civil and human rights resistance forged by disenfranchised communities in this country.

As humanists and atheists of conscience, we find this climate of demonization morally and politically reprehensible. We categorically condemn the anti “illegal” immigrant and anti-human rights vitriol promoted by Republicans like California Congressman Darrell Issa who has called for the Obama administration to rescind its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. We fundamentally oppose the Obama administration’s escalation of deportation on the grounds that it is inhumane, breaks up families, and exposes both undocumented and citizen youth to sexual exploitation, foster care placement, homelessness and incarceration.

As humanists and atheists of conscience, we strongly support the administration’s DACA policy, as well as regional efforts to ensure equity, access and opportunity for undocumented youth in education and employment. We support humane efforts to resolve the refugee crisis at the border peacefully—including providing unaccompanied youth with just legal representation, immigration relief and humanitarian protection—while respecting the dignity and human rights of unaccompanied youth and their families.

Recently, the Obama administration expressed a willingness to bypass the obstructionists of the House on immigration reform. As humanists and atheists of conscience we believe that the administration’s commitment must address the climate of racist demonization that prevails in this country, as well as equitably uphold democratic rights for undocumented and other disenfranchised communities.

Signatories:

Maggie Ardiente, The American Humanist Association

Toni Achebe Bell, Black Skeptics Group

Richard Carrier, Author

Greta Christina, Author/Activist

Rebecca Hensler, Grief Beyond Belief

Sikivu Hutchinson, Black Skeptics Los Angeles

Yvonne Divans Hutchinson, Educator

Anthony Pinn, Professor and author

Amy Roth, Los Angeles Atheist Women’s Group & Skepchick

Secular Woman

Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Spiritualist in Solidarity & Filmmaker/Activist

Hilaire Sobers, Skeptically Speaking

Frederick Sparks, Black Skeptics Group

Kimberly Veal, Black Freethinkers Network/POCBF

Donald Wright, Houston Black Non-Believers"
[emphasis added]

Treason-Chic. Demonize the Other; Clothe it in "morality" (Saul Alinsky)

Michelle Malkin: Nail Meet Head

According to Michelle:

GLAAD has worked tirelessly to marginalize and suppress the free speech of Christian leaders, Christian businesses and conservative talk-radio hosts dating back to their infamous Dr. Laura boycott 13 years ago. The group’s mission is not about equality or defending against “defamation.” It’s about silencing critics, making open debate radioactive, demonizing people of faith and making even the slightest perceived slight a hate crime.

Last year, GLAAD speech-squelchers issued a blacklist of 34 Christian commentators they wanted networks to ban from their air for “extreme” views (read: opposing gay marriage). Earlier this year, GLAAD attacked the National Geographic Channel for partnering with the traditional values-promoting Boy Scouts on a reality TV program. GLAAD is free to start its own Gay Scouts, but instead chose to harangue NatGeo for refusing to run a “disclaimer” at the beginning of each show condemning the Boy Scouts’ leadership policies.

It’s not enough to live and let live. You must repent and genuflect before the self-serving gods of selective progressivism. That’s why GLAAD forgave Hollywood director Brett Ratner for using the word “fag.” He was allowed back into the protected Hollywood club after submitting to GLAAD reeducation camp and appearing in GLAAD public service announcements. Bill Clinton, who authored both the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policies so reviled by the homosexual lobby, ended up receiving a GLAAD “Advocate for Change” award earlier this year — for changing his mind when politically expedient.

For the civility police, the operational motto is always: “Do as we say, not as we do, in the name of social justice. Amen.”

In the 1960s, radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse popularized the “repressive tolerance” theory of modern progressives. “Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left,” Marcuse pontificated. “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”

The tolerance mob’s insatiable quest for power and control has led to such unhinged witch-hunting that many of its own erstwhile allies are balking. Novelist Bret Easton Ellis called GLAAD the “gatekeepers of politically correct gayness.” He was attacked as a “self-loathing gay man,” but unlike A&E, he didn’t give in. “An organization holding an awards ceremony that they think represents all gays and also feels they can choose which gays can and cannot be a member of the party is, on the face of it, ridiculous.”

The liberal The Atlantic magazine recounted how GLAAD invited Fox News anchors Kimberly Guilfoyle and Jamie Colby to a New York event and then issued a press release condemning them and their employer after the network failed to cough up big donations for gala tables. Wrote the Atlantic’s James Kirchick: “Aside from raising money to perpetuate its own existence and throwing swanky parties (the event feting Bill Clinton was one of three different media-award ceremonies, with others in New York and San Francisco), GLAAD has no purpose. That is, unless one views it not as a gay-rights organization but rather a partisan liberal one.”

Nail, meet head. GLAAD’s counterculture warriors know full well: It’s a small leap from forcing Phil Robertson, the Boy Scouts and Rush Limbaugh out of the public square to forcing wedding photographers and cake bakers to serve gay customers against their will and mandating that Catholic medical providers and Hobby Lobby violate their religious conscience and cover abortion pills in order to stay in business.

These GLAAD tidings have everything to do with repression and nothing to do with rights.

Pimping Racism, Top Down

The narrative is always the same: It's all your fault, racist. But Detroit is the poster child for Leftist blacks taking an industrial giant and destroying it, all on their own.

And Obama now IS Trayvon. So he says. Or was several decades ago. Sort of. Not really. Obama is as white as he is black, and he never was a ghetto youth. Except now he is/was/coulda been, or something. Black anguish must be created and then exploited. Never waste a (created) crisis.

The excusability of Victims for their antisocial behaviors is a standard trope in the narrative of the Left. Blacks shooting blacks are not an issue for the narrative except to be excused due to racism. The shooters are Victims, to be pitied as much or more than their real victims. All parties are Victims, then, of racism.

In his book, Intellectuals and Race, Thomas Sowell quotes James Baldwin:

"Baldwin, for example, claimed that blacks took the building of a subsidized housing project in Harlem as "additional proof of how thoroughly the white world despised them" because "People in Harlem know they are living there because white people do not think they are good enough to live anywhere else." Therefore, "they had scarcely moved in" to the new housing project, before "naturally" they began smashing windows, defacing walls, urinating in the elevators, and fornicating in the playgrounds."

From this perspective, anything negative that blacks do is the fault of whites. But however much Baldwin's picture might fit the prevailing vision of the 1960s, anyone who is serious about whether it also fits the facts have to ask such questions as : (1) Was there a time before the 1960s when it was common for blacks to urinate in public areas of buildings where they lived? and if not, (2) was that because they felt that whites had higher regard for them in earlier times?

To ask such questions is to answer them, and the answer in both cases is clearly NO!

Sowell again, on the Myrdal book, An American Dilemma, which set the leftist intellectual stage:

"If heredity was the reigning orthodoxy in the Progressive era, environment became the reigning orthodoxy of the liberal era. Moreover, "environment" usually meant the external contemporary environment, rather than including the internal cultural environment of minorities themselves. If minorities were seen as the problem before, the majority was seen as the problem now."

And,

"To the intelligentsia of this later period, racial problems could be reduced to problems inside people's minds, and especially to racism, not only simplifying problems but enabling intellectuals to assume their familiar stance of being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil - and morally superior to the society in which they lived".

It is the condescending moral superiority which drives the Leftist narrative, not rational observation or deduction.

”Apparently people are to think and behave as they have in the past and yet somehow get better results in the future – and if they don’t get better results, that is considered societies fault.”

The idea is promulgated that the blacks have a right to hate whites because their black behaviors are traceable to whites somehow. If blacks riot, it’s because whites don’t trust them not to riot. If gangs of black youth shoot up a neighborhood, it’s because whites don’t think that they are any better than that. If blacks approach you and you somehow flinch, it is definitely NOT because blacks have a general history of violence, it is definitely because you are a racist and have caused black violence.

Put a different way, apparently when a certain class of youths behaves in manner X, it is racism to expect members of that class to behave in manner X, regardless of their history of behavior in manner X. Further it is racial profiling for one to actually look for behavior X in members of that class.

Moreover, it is racism that induces behavior X in a certain class of youth; they are not responsible for their behaviors because their behaviors are due to the racism of whites. And they cannot be faulted because they are Victims, a part of a protected class, a class of which very little is expected due to their Victimhood.

Therefore, it is racism if a non-class member assaults (or defends himself from assault by) a member of a protected Victim class.

_______

Trayvon Martin was killed while beating a "white Hispanic’s" head into the concrete. We don't really know why. But. That was due to the racism of the "white Hispanic". That is the narrative. Trayvon was the Victim, being the black one who got shot during his attack.

Now, Obama IS Trayvon. If Obama must discriminate and abuse citizens, it's because of their racism. He has no choice in the matter; he IS the Victim.

Actually, Obama is closer to white than Zimmerman is. But as Glenn Reynolds predicted, the more Obama fails, the blacker he chooses to appear. He, the half-black leader of the free world, is the star Victim. He must be protected. The professional Victim. Due to racism. It's no doubt that it is purely racism that is causing the failure of ObamaCare and the demand of the unions to stop it. It probably was racism that lost the Middle East to sectarian radicals, and caused the death of American diplomats in Benghazi. Undoubtedly it is racism that is keeping unemployment so high. And it has been claimed all along that to criticize Obama is purely racist. There could be no other reason.

Just like there could be no other reason for shooting the person who is bashing your head into the concrete. Skull cracking is excusable due to the Victimization of the Victim Class by racists.

_____

I took the concept of Messiah/Victim/Oppressor as a consequence of several books, which included Paul Berman’s “Flight of the Intellectuals”, Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals”, Julien Benda’s “the Treason of the Intellectuals”, Hayek’s “the Road to Serfdom” and “the Fatal Conceit”, as well as Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society”, and “The Vision of the Anointed”, as well as "Intellectuals and Race".

The self-endowed moral superiority of the “intelligentsia” comes from the rejection of all standard, fixed moralities and replacing those relics of oppression with personally derived moral principles of which one is very proud and attached (even if they are relativistic). That attachment comes with the conceit (Hayek) that one is specially anointed (Sowell) due to the intellectual superiority of having rejected all other morality and logic (Johnson). Hence, considering their massive superiority and innate morality, the intellectuals are destined to save mankind. I.e., they are Messiahs. And they need, must have, Victims and their Oppressors, classes to be defined for salvation and to be controlled.

In the George Zimmerman case, the Left went berserk in creating a universal model Victim and a standard Oppressor. They even lied about Zimmerman’s race (actually Hispanic with ¼ black) and created a brand new designation: white Hispanic, a fiction still being used. Trayvon fit the narrative quite slickly as a picturesque young Victim, being unarmed at the time of his demise – except for his tendency to love fighting, a trait probably attributable to white racism, of course.

The narrative failed, at least the racism part failed under FBI scrutiny (they didn't get the memo with the narrative spelled out apparently), and the Left has gone ballistic. Zimmerman must be punished, even if it takes the rest of his life to do it. Zimmerman was force fit into the Oppressor category, and the narrative reigns high and mighty over and above judicial process.

But these people are not Messiahs, they are blood-thirsty ideocrats looking for cannon fodder to bolster their next agenda (elections next year). If the judicial process must be sacrificed at the Leftist altar, so be it. If a human gets sacrificed, so be it. If Zimmerman gets assassinated, so be it.

So the concept of being "Messiahs" is constrained to describing their personal self-image, not their actual actions. Now there is a better description of the Left.

In his recent book, “Bullies”, Ben Shapiro makes an incisive observation: The self-styled Messiahs are in fact, bullies. It works like this. The Left went out of its way to decry “bullying”, with Obama at the fore. What could be wrong with that? Here’s what’s wrong: the Left has defined all of its detractors as “bullies”, which means that they are (a) immoral, and (b) must be stopped. That allows the Left to bully its enemies because it is a highly moral cause – to stop bullies.

Says Shapiro,

”Their twisted logic was deceptively easy. Liberals [now they’re back to being called Progressives, of course] claim that they are all about protecting victim classes from bullies. Conservatives oppose liberals. Therefore, by definition, conservatives must be bullies. And bullies must be stopped.”

By bullying, of course. Don’t like me? I will have the IRS audit you, Obama “joked” time and again. We must take a gun to a knife fight; we must hit back twice as hard. We’ll show those bullies who is boss of this place.

Shapiro:

”It’s not a new tactic. Victims hold a cherished place in the liberal heart. With victimhood comes moral power, and the power to extort the supposed victimizers.”

This double mindedness is perfectly consistent with the Left redefining all terms which it wishes not to confront and have to deal with publicly. It's Pro-Choice and Pro-women's healthcare, not Pro-killing your progeny. And the anti-bullying bullying was implemented early on in Obama’s administration when the HHS’s Sebelius defined the tea party and other constitutionally oriented groups as “terrorists”, then submitting that list to state law enforcement to be on the lookout for. Anti-bullying bullying has now been found to exist not only in the IRS and Justice Departments but also in ICE, the EPA, the FCC, and so on. The entire US government has been rallied to attack the narrative's Oppressor Class, defined as "bullies".

The concept of defining “bullies” and then bullying them renders the Left not so much as Messiahs, but more as Avenging Angels of Highest Morals and Moral Authority. As such, they have no constraints on either their thought process or the morality of their avenging actions. All that matters is that the narrative be brought to life, to fruition, and collateral damage be damned. Especially if it is only damaging to white, gun owning, religious clingers who lose some of their Amendments to the constitution – an antiquated document written by privileged, premodern or modern, white men. All of those – privileged, premodern or modern, and white – are categories of Oppressors, which must be stopped because they are immoral. The Avenging Angels of Highest Morals and Moral Authority will let the defeated opponents know what their new, positive rights are. Those are the rights of which Obama has said he approves: liberty is too messy. It gets in the way of governing.

Addendum:



This is the face of one of the teenagers killed by Obama, who approves drone strikes on Americans. The face belongs to 16 year old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, who, along with Samir Khan, both American citizens, were killed by drone "(along with a teenage cousin and five others at an open-air restaurant in Yemen)". This was done, of course, in the name of SELF DEFENSE, where Obama stands his ground to kill certain people even while allowing hordes of other foreigners to invade from the south with impunity.

Where is the hysterical outrage? Where are the Bash mobs? Where are the boycotts? Where is the constant media coverage? Well, there is no opportunity to further the Leftist narrative attached to this cold murder, and it was accomplished by an Avenging Angel under Messiahism; therefore it is a morally acceptable brutality.

Rape of the Female Fetus: Profit From Abortion

Not only is abortion a good and and moral blessing according to its fans, it also is a resource for human parts. The debate now turns to the taking of eggs (ovary follicles actually) from dead female preborns. The issue of ethics is no barrier here, it appears. Why? The dead preborn human follicles have the capability of 7 million eggs, reduced to 250,000 at puberty. If researchers can harvest all 7 million, think of the cash (always follow the money - and the presumptive power it gives).

It has been claimed that requiring ultrasounds before an abortion is tantamount to raping the woman with a medical procedure. This hysterical claim is hardly radical compared to what is really happening.

Like a true rape, the surgeon would violate the human female, now dead at the hands of the surgeon of course, open up her sex organs and take her egg-producing follicles - for profit, no doubt (the AtheoLeft enjoys captitalism differentially). This is reported in the Daily Mail

Of course the reasoning is shrouded with moral overtones to cover the actual macabre post-abortion corpse rape. There is a shortage of human eggs in the world; this is a crisis of course, because there are women who must wait to get eggs.

Somehow, a crisis must be created, if one does not already exist to cover for the assault on human rights and dignity by the AtheoLeft. A waiting list justifies the plundering of human parts.

Those on the AtheoLeft who claim indignantly that there is no slippery slope are not just wrong, they are liars. This is the standard Leftist use of the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis approach to eugenics and to all Leftist totalitarian power. In the Atheist VOID there is no moral compunction available to either guide or restrict the faux-ethic which the Atheist will derive for himself.

Yet they still cannot understand why they cannot be and are not trusted; it's because they are not deserving of it.

PS: As Avey pointed out, this fully exposes the lie that the fetus is not human: what other entity in the universe has human reproductive faculties?

New Rights And The Demands Of Homosexuals

[This is part 1]

When it comes to homosexuality, there are two opposing underlying worldviews in play. The views are diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. A person cannot choose both worldviews without logical fracture in the resulting worldview. And once a person chooses one of the worldviews, the other worldview becomes not only morally defective, it becomes onerous under the moral principles of the chosen viewpoint. However, only one worldview remains rational.

What I hope to do in this part is to lay out the origins of the underlying worldviews of both sides, and then to illuminate the issue as seen from the Right. This might surprise those on the Left who have characterized the Right in manners to suit their own prejudices.

Rights; Their Source and Moral Authority

The source of human Rights is a basic point of contention. How are Rights derived? What is the foundation which gives Rights a meaning which is absolute and inviolable, even “unalienable”? Or is there any such absolute and inviolable source in the first place?

The political Right is largely coincident with religious beliefs for a reason: the concept that humans have intrinsic value beyond that of an assemblage of quarks and leptons, and that this value is due to an external source which has provided humans with non-physical capacities such as intellect, will, and agency, these faculties being outside the abilities of subatomic particles to provide. The intrinsic value of each human, including the faculties each human possesses, leads to the basic human Rights, which include the Right to exist (life), the Right to pursue the necessities for existence, the Right to protect one’s existence, the Right to procreate, and the Right to freely use one’s faculties.

The existence of these special Rights leads to the further concept of the existence of absolute morality, a code of behavior which is not the product of human convention or manufacture, but which also is from an external source, as are the faculties which humans possess, as well as life itself. Within this concept is embedded the idea that discrimination is necessary in order to select behaviors for oneself which conform to the moral code, and that there exists such things as decency and good character, without which a person is not decent or good. Accomplishing decency and good character requires self-restraint and self-discipline in their pursuit. They are not awarded as a necessary trait of being human.

There is a difference between human Rights and permissions. Many of the “New Rights” which are currently being “discovered” are actually merely permissions. The spectrum of acceptable behaviors which is endorsed by the political Left does not exist, except as a non-valid concept, for the political Right. Rights are not negotiable according to the political Right. Permissions are negotiable, but they cannot refute the non-negotiable Rights, nor interfere with the absolute morality which is externally provided.


New Rights, New Morals: Rights Endowed By The Left, As Seen From the Right

The Left has a different concept of humans. Humans are animals, and are not special in any specific manner. All human attributes are physical including the intellect and agency. All Human Rights are permissions which are seized and maintained with the use of power. Power is the determinate factor in human relationships (Note 2): not only must Rights and permissions be seized with power, those humans who possess power can and likely will deny human Rights to other humans with less power. The brokering of power, then, is essential, and that is the focus of the progressive movement: to change the power structure to a top-down control of utopian objectives for the benefit of all mankind. This requires a very strong government which determines the Rights (actually permissions and faux entitlements) as it sees fit. In other words, the Left favors a “Positive Rights” system, where ordinary humans have only the permissions which are allocated to them by the government – a government which is benign and humanistic by definition if not fact, and is manned by humanist elitists who are guided only by their emotion of empathy, in order to install perfect Equality. Equality is a holy tenet (holy in the sense of absolute and untouchable). Nothing else is “fair” except Equality. (More on this in a bit).

Further, the permissions favored by the Left are based on a spectrum of acceptable behaviors, wherein no behavior is actually immoral unless it contradicts the UberMoral of Equality. The spectrum of acceptable behaviors goes back at least to the Kinsey report on sexuality, which promoted the idea that any and every sexual behavior is not just normal, but exists along a spectrum of sexual preferences, all of which are valid and normal. Within this concept, discrimination of certain behaviors as good vs. other behaviors as bad is a violation of the ideology: it is immoral in the Leftist world. This produces a basic conflict with traditional Rights which encourages discrimination against undesirable behaviors, a conflict which seems irresolvable.

The Logical Non-Coherence of Non-Discrimination

And yet, the behavior of discriminating against immorality is exactly that which the Left is engaged in, all the while claiming that discrimination against immorality is intolerant and thus immoral. They discriminate against the immorality of discrimination. This logical non-coherence of the Leftist moral position is either not perceived by its Leftist adherents, or else is studiously ignored. Thus the Leftist position is seen as dogmatic, self-endowed, and irrational by those on the Right. Intolerance of dissent while claiming tolerance as a necessary moral precept is irrational.

The ideal for the Left, then, is that human Rights are self-endowed by humanist elites who have (or wish to have) seized power over both the prior governing principles and the human masses, and who apportion permissions called Rights to the masses as their empathy dictates, along a spectrum of acceptable behaviors. Power is to be maintained by and for the elites in order to maintain Equality in the masses, regardless of their desires otherwise. It can’t be otherwise, or Equality will not occur. This ideal is not in place now, and the power currently wielded is not absolute (more on this below).

Leftist morality then, at least to the extent that they assert morality, is based on Equality of every human (under the elites) (regardless of behaviors). Equality is the moral standard. Inequality is immoral. (Except for the elites, who are morally and intellectually superior, hence, more deserving). (Note 1). Inequality amongst the masses is cause for great moral outrage amongst the Left. The solution is always force, inasmuch as is actually available. Judicial forcing has worked for the Left. Emotional and psychological forcing via the media has also been productive.

The New Morality and the New Rights are in direct opposition to traditional morality and rights, which are now despised and derided by the Left. The moral inversion is a direct result of the Kinsey type of claim that behaviors exist along a continuum of acceptable behaviors, none of which should be discriminated against, certainly not by traditional morality which is immoral due to its non-congruence with the New Morality. The inversion has some readily identifiable characteristics:

Inversion of Moral Values By the Left

(a) Truth is not objective and does not actually exist. Truth becomes the servant of the ideology, and whatever premise supports the ideology is considered to be true. Thus any premise which does not support the ideology is false. This logical error of rationalization is one of the basic underlayments for the Leftist ideology. It is irrational. And ironically it is achieved by discriminating against actual facts which do not conform to the desired conclusion.

(b) Equality is the ultimate Moral Truth; however, it does not mean the traditional “equality of opportunity” coupled with responsibility for the consequences of actions and of potential failure. The New Morality is Equality of Outcome (everyone gets a blue ribbon and homosexuality is morally equal to any and all other behaviors). And it is coupled with the Equality of behaviors to the degree that no behavior must suffer the consequences which that behavior entails. This is based in the concept of Fairness which is determined emotionally, based on the emotion of empathy rather than on considerations such as prior ownership, individual contribution, market valuation of one pursuit vs another pursuit, or any other consideration outside of Equality of outcome. No outcome which is not equal to other outcomes can be considered Fair. Hence any Right held by straights must also be held by homosexuals: that is Fair and Equal and therefore Moral. Thus same-sex marriage automatically becomes a Right.

(c) Family is not valued, and traditional family values are denigrated (Note 2). Homosexuality is valued more highly than traditional family values which are said to be in place in order to persecute homosexuals. Further, casual sex is promoted in all possible venues from media and movies to schools where sexual adventurism is encouraged and condoms are supplied, and access to abortion without parental knowledge is pursued – all in the service of impersonal, consequence-free sexual encounters outside of marriage. Abstinence and personal responsibility such as chastity are not valued, and is ridiculed. Self-control is too hard for modern generations.

(d) All fixed values are rejected in favor of spot values which are Relativist and Consequentialist. All behaviors are valid, so there are no actual good/bad values to be had, except for dissent from the basic concept of the continuum and Relativism; dissent is counter to the accepted morality and is therefore evil, despite there being no objective or absolute evil.

(e) Moral source: the self; moral theories including Equality are thought up for personal use. It is moral because I say so. Still, not accepting the tenet of Moral Equality is difficult to do, when there is such forcing pressure to accept it.

Moral authority: the self; one can and must decide for himself what is right; there is no absolute or objective moral guidance, and anyone who claims otherwise is evil, and is attempting to use that for domination. Except that Equality, the Father Moral, is always valid.

(f) Accountability: Since all behaviors are equally valid along the spectral continuum of behaviors, there is no need for accountability.

(g) Moral consistency: Consistency of Equality is demanded of others; consistency of personal behavior is eschewed as a discriminatory requirement. Trust is to be demanded, not produced by consistent behaviors.

(h) Character (and decency): Character is not an existing human trait; this proceeds from behaviors being valid regardless of any consideration of character. And character, along with the demand for “decency” as a product of “good” character, are too difficult for some people and are therefore discriminatory. Assertion of character as a valid or desirable trait is evil.

(i) Humility is rejected, including humility in intellectual pursuit as well as dogmatic elitism. What is favored is the Will To Power, using whatever power is available, and disguised as empathy, a la Alinsky. However, humility of the masses would be convenient in the pursuit of Equality.

(j) Justice is definable as Equality in outcomes; this is claimed to be motivated by empathy for fairness, and fairness demands equality. This justice, however, is asserted from a position of Will To Power, an elitist, top-down allocation of fairness and equality from a position of obvious inequality (known as “more equal”).

(k) Fairness cannot exist if the parties are only partly equal. Hence, total equality rather than partial equality is the natural process to produce fairness. Since people cannot accomplish this on their own (after all they do not have equal starting positions or equal capabilities) they must be forced into equal outcomes in the pursuit of Fairness. This forcing is necessary due to the Left’s massive Love of Humanity.

Force

The forcing functions of the past half-century have been via the seizure of psychiatric and education associations, the media and Hollywood, and the government, especially the judiciary, followed by the Senate, the Justice Dept and the Education Dept.

Here is where permissions are forced undemocratically onto the social fabric by a tiny minority of activists. For example, male-female marriage is defended successfully in every instance where it is brought to a citizen’s vote, whereas it is defeated in venues where judges unconstitutionally legislate it as a new “Right”. Another example is the installation of abortion as a “Right”, by activist judiciaries following the spectrum theory. This contrasts to civil rights for blacks, which was legislated by a largely Republican majority, with much dissent from the party of slavery, Jim Crow, Separate But Equal and the welfare plantation which was originated as the War On Poverty.

Even more influential in the culture is the accusation of hate and intolerance whenever the Left is insulted by the existence of dissent to their moral creation. The creation of Leftist moral correctness, tolerated speech and proper thought alignment has intimidated and indoctrinated several generations into the ideology of Moral Equality, the Spectral Continuum of Totally Acceptable Behaviors and Unreckoning Tolerance, and the evilness of dissent along with the subhumanness of dissenters. One such tactic is the constant cry of “racism” whenever a black politician is confronted with uncomfortable questions from a white, or even a black who is not “black enough”. The comparable cry of “homophobic bigot” accompanies challenges to the homosexual community. The psychological forcing function has been quite successful amongst the semi-educated generations. Righteous intimidation is a staple of the Left.

Conflict

The political Right has no concept that all behaviors are acceptable and exist along a spectral continuum of totally acceptable behaviors. The continuum concept is in direct conflict with the concept of specific good and decent behaviors, vs. bad and indecent behaviors as determined by an absolute moral code.

Even the Left violates their own premise when it comes to behaviors such as pedophilia, even though Kinsey supported that behavior as part of the normal sexual behavior spectrum. This internal conflict is countered with denialism.

Further, the claim of the existence of a spectral continuum of totally acceptable behaviors leads to the destruction of all social restraints (what’s to restrain if all behaviors are OK?), and enables social chaos. This is empirically observable in the younger generations which have been brought up under the influence of the spectrum. And the spectral continuum is couched in terms of complete Tolerance of all behaviors as acceptable, and yet includes the demonization of “intolerance” of certain behaviors as unacceptable. The resulting confusion in the under-educated is highly visible to (probably) anyone who has actually taught high school in the past decade.

This confusion is beginning to be implemented into thought-crime laws, in the form of “hate” legislation, where crimes which are perceived to be based on “intolerance” are more severely punished. This adds discrimination to the list of Leftist institutions, and illuminates yet another non-coherence, that of anti-discrimination screamed at the Right while institutionalizing it from the Left.

The view from the Right is that the Left has seized control of the institutions which influence generations of humans, and has proceeded to eliminate the education of disciplined thought and historical knowledge, which are replaced with irrational Leftist ideology and barely literate job training. The culture is driven by faulty news coverage which is poisoned with embedded Leftist-elitist dogma; televised social corruption in prime time; and legal attacks on the Right from a self-empowered government with corrupt views of justice and a view merely to its own power and that of its financial cronies.

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is merely a single battle in the conflict between the Traditional Right and the intended hegemony of the amoral Left which is bent on implementing social amorality and top-down control (despite the lessons of those same experiments in the bloody 20th Century). Homosexuality was declared “normative” behavior not by scientific conclusion but by the attacks on the APA by homosexuals who succeeded in getting sanctioned permission for their behaviors by the removal of the homosexual disorder from the DSM. This was accomplished by just one individual, who ignored actual science and unilaterally removed homosexual disorder from the DSM due to his personal sympathy for homosexuals.( Note 3) They further secured their position by successfully implementing the banishment of any treatment for homosexuality reversal, and in some places any attempt at treating homosexuality is a crime punishable with imprisonment (Britain for example). The idea that homosexuality might be reversible is now virtually a thought crime, despite the numerous cases of actual reversals. Further still, homosexuals now must be portrayed in student’s textbooks as always positive role models with never a negative reference, at least in California.

Special Pleading For Limits To The Spectrum

Again, the case for normalizing homosexual behavior was made on the basis of the theory of the spectrum of totally acceptable behaviors and the Kinsey report, plus the power of the APA takeover. But the homosexuals now claim homosexuality not to be comparable to other behaviors such as pedophilia. In fact, they become agitated at the suggestion that if homosexuality is normalized using the theory of the Spectral Continuum of Totally Acceptable Behaviors, then other behaviors can and will use the same tactic, including pedophilia. But after all, Kinsey and now subsequent psychologists claim that pedophilia is normative behavior, even beneficial to the child/infant. So it is Special Pleading for homosexuals to claim the spectral continuum theory for themselves and then deny it to others. That places the denial of the moral equivalence of homosexuality with pedophilia into a position of irrationality. And that, of course, violates and negates their own raison d’etre If homosexuality is normative because all behaviors are normative along the continuum, then there can be no discrimination, even by homosexuals, even of pedophilia, under the system which they chose for their own justification. But they apparently don’t realize this non-coherence. If they did, or if they were forced to admit it, it would be extremely inconvenient to their cause.

False Analogy Failures

Homosexual defenders frequently compare LGBT’s to the blacks in the hopes of co-opting the black civil rights movement for themselves. Many if not most blacks find this comparison both onerous and invalid. (Note 4) Many blacks inhabit the political Left simultaneously with the religious Right, and where the political Left conflicts with the religious Right, the Left loses.

Straw Man Failures

And finally, homosexual defenders apparently cannot conceive of any rational reason to oppose their self-conceived moral position. So they suppose that any/all opposition is due to stupidity and/or hatred, and they promote that vision as their rallying cry. They thus create caricatures which they apply to a huge population which they then vilify, and they create the very environment of hate which they accuse the Other as having created. They then start to believe their own cartoons, and thus, being totally enmeshed in their own warped views and hate mongering they are intellectually unavailable for discussion of the actual root problem which their non-coherent position presents. The entire homosexual movement has thus descended into petulance and childish tantrums, couched in conceit and contemptuousness.

Conclusion: What This Is Really About

At bottom, the defense of man-woman marriage is not even about homosexuality, although that is where the battle line is drawn. It is really about the adoption of amoral spectral continuums of presupposed acceptable behaviors and false moralities such as mindless Equality which are dictated as social standards. It is about social engineering outside the auspices of democratic control. Further it is about resisting the Will To Power which is being exhibited by the Faux Moral Left, as they attempt to install top-down permissions for radical factions which then in return support the Leftist drive to hegemonic power. This includes not just homosexual permissions to defile matrimony; it also includes the continuing persecution of poor minorities by the implementation of Leftist plantation enslavement programs, even by Leftist blacks who profit by it. It also includes, contrary to Leftist propaganda, the elimination of crony government and the domination of the economy by banks and the Fed, as well as the world financial institutions. And like it or not, it includes male-female marriage as beneficial to children. It includes fighting the domination of culture by Leftist control of media, education and government, with irrational and false morals. It includes the defense of rational thought, disciplined logic and due diligence in the pursuit of actual facts concerning every situation.

I Predict…
…that despite the lack of caricaturization of the Left or homosexuals in this article, and the lack of any hate speech directed their way, and despite the attempt to merely describe the rational differentials between the positions and the perception of the destruction which will come from the concept of spectrums of acceptable behaviors, that this will result in charges of bigotry, hatred, subhuman stupidity and worse. Merely critiquing the moral precepts of the amoral Left is a moral attack on them: they do not tolerate any deviation from their position well (without retaliation). And the “not tolerate” translates to complete Intolerance. The objective of Holy Equality in all things seems to be an inviolable tenet of Leftism, and any violation is met with extremism in their response. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, “extremism in the pursuit of Holy Equality is not extremism, it is Holy behavior”. The self-endowed self-righteous are also self-justified for any behaviors; after all there are no non-valid behaviors under the continuum theory.

I predict that the Left will produce defenders who, rather than refute the above, will claim that they don’t know anyone who matches this description; that the claims above are bigoted and ignorant of actual Leftist positions – which they will fail to establish; and that this is bigoted hate speech of which they are quite self-righteously intolerant. And mostly they will create insults rather than create a dialog in their defense. I’ve been through this before.

Part 2 will appear in a few days.

Notes:

Note 1. The self-perception of moral eliteness is endemic to the Left, who condemn those who violate the Left’s morality of Equality as subhumans: mouth-breathers; knuckle-draggers; morons; death wishes are common. But when asked to elaborate on their moral system and its moral authority, few – very few - actually respond. The existence of an actual moral system violates the concept which protects the homosexual: there cannot be such a system on the Left because such systems are discriminatory, yet they have this self-endowed and self-righteous moral superiority anyway. This logical non-congruence also commonly eludes the Left.

Note 2. One homosexual Leftist characterized traditional family values thus: Family values are where a man goes home and beats his wife. Feminists have called marriage “legalized rape” and marriage has been described as the slavery of women, destroying their self-worth. Lesbianism has been offered as an antidote; Catharine MacKinnon, professor of law at U of Michigan claims that prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment are “indistinguishable”. “We have to abolish and reform the institution of marriage”… Gloria Steinem. “Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution”…journalist Jill Johnson.

Note 3.The individual who unilaterally removed homosexuality from the APA DSMII is Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, a junior member who somehow got into control of the DSM after a turbulence which removed senior members. Barely 40 years old and with no discernible experience with homosexuality, Spitzer unilaterally removed homosexuality from the DSM, not for scientific reasons, but out of sympathy for homosexuals who wanted to be considered normal. In fact, a current report from the NY workgroup on homosexuality which reported that homosexuality was, indeed, a disorder was rejected. So actual science (now deemed heretical) was and is trumped by homosexual activism.

http://pfox.org/Removal_of_homosexuality.html

Note 4. Prop 8 was defeated in California by the contribution of the votes of both the black and Hispanic communities.

Leftist Governmental Morality Enforcement & Homosexuals

The newspapers in this area are woefully behind the times. Both of the regional papers, one in our small town and that one in the city several counties to the left of here, still refer to the First Amendment on their editorial pages. That might not be the only Amendment to the Constitution which they care about, but it’s the one they care about the most.

The American Left however, has left that behind them and is taking the reverse stance these days. Back in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, of course, the Left was not in charge of much of anything, so their mantra was free speech, which included flag burning, defecation art, protest posters calling for the death of various officials, and so on.

These days things are different. Free speech is allowed only if it is in support of the new orthodoxy which the Left thinks it has in place. Speech which supports things like a nuclear family which sports a blood-related father is considered too evil to allow into the carefully morally-controlled culture. Hence, the officials who protect the morals of the culture must prevent the likes of Chik-fil-A from entering their moral cloister. Free speech is like free thought, then: only certain ideas are acceptable and deviations must be condemned and abolished. The problem is that the moral condemnation is governmental, and the punishment is banishment from economic enterprise. The heretics are removed from the society which the Leftist government thinks it owns.

To make things even more interesting, the moral guardians have loop-holes for certain like-minded groups, “like-minded” meaning having the ambition to unilaterally dictate the morals and behaviors of their citizen-subjects. Here the reference is to Islam and the creation of Islamic centers in the same city that refuses to accommodate Chik-fil-A. The Islamists actually think similar thoughts concerning the nuclear family, but in draconian and non-voluntary terms. Homosexuals are to be terminated under Islam, and the only internal debate is the method of termination, be it by fire or by tossing off of high buildings.

This doesn’t faze the moral guardians, however, who will no doubt claim freedom of speech for their Islamic pals. So it is apparent that freedom of speech is not for those who advocate voluntary moral character as an approach to social issues, it is only for those who advocate dictatorship over moral behaviors, and consequently access to business opportunity as well.

In the minds of the Leftists who finally have a little control, free speech is a tool of the state, and morality in thought and speech is a dictate of the state which is punishable if the thought and speech are not dogmatically Correct.

The lesson here for homosexuals is that they are pawns in this Leftist game. If they think they are actually protected by the Left, they are not paying attention. Their freedom of speech is as volatile as anyone else’s, unless they join the diktat class. And many have, as demonstrated in the morality laws of California. But historically, under real Leftist rule homosexuals have not fared all that well. The Left is never favorably disposed to anything except control, and all of the Leftist interim feints are temporary; the Hegelian antithesis is always in play and the Left will not stop at the current synthesis with homosexuals. Aggressive Alinsky Consequentialism considers everything and everyone to be a tool to be used, and that includes faux attachments to moral positions and the people who hold them. And that is exactly what is being seen in the great Chik-fil-A caper.

I Might Have to Make a Donation To the ACLU

According to Wired on-line, there is a massive NSA facility being built in the middle of Utah’s desert. The facility, which is near Bluffdale and just off Beef Hollow Road, will be five times the size of the US Capitol, and will house the most intrusive capability of spying on Americans devised to date.

”Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: ‘Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.’”

Even though they can’t legally access any more than the addresses and IP numbers, they can store information in the messages. How could this possibly go wrong?

Well, Wired supplies that for us to consider, too. Were you aware, as I was not, that there is such a thing as a secret court ruling? Or that spies are granted secret powers by these secret court rulings?

” Two Democratic senators urged the Obama administration Thursday to declassify secret court rulings that give the government far wider domestic spying powers under the Patriot Act than intended. The 10-year-old measure, hastily adopted in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks, grants the government broad surveillance powers with little oversight that can be used domestically. While much has been written and debated about the bill’s powers and efficacy, there’s evidently much more going on than the public knows. A secret tribunal known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court has issued classified rulings about the Patriot Act that U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) say expand the government’s surveillance powers even more.

At issue, the lawmakers said, is section 215 of the Patriot Act. The sweeping power, one of the most controversial in the law, allows the secret FISA court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of record, including those held by banks, internet companies, libraries and doctors. The government does not have to show a connection between the items sought under a section 215 warrant and a suspected terrorist or spy: the authorities must assert the documents would be relevant to an investigation.”

To put this in some sort of perspective, if that is at all possible, Wired provides a third puzzle piece. The FBI issues National Security Letters, NSLs, in which they demand from communications providers such as ISPs data on their communications customers. The NSLs demand not only the data but also that the demand be kept secret. In 2010, some 24,000 NSLs were sent, seeking information on 14,000 persons.

14,000 terrorists running around this country? Only 14,000? Remember that Big Sister issued warnings which covered all conservatives, gun owners and Southerners (just for a start). I think the FBI is running behind.

More seriously, I think that the FBI, NSA and the Federal Government in general is running amuck. Oops, someone’s at the door with AR’s and flash bangs…

Gotta git.

Do They Ever Listen To What They Are Saying?

I have backed off commenting on political stupidities (I hate election years), but some things are just too rich...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had a clear and unified message coming out of their meeting in Washington, D.C. Monday: They are looking for a political solution in Syria and won't consider putting international troops there unless the Syrian regime agrees.

She wants to avoid a civil war, she says, ignoring the civil war that is currently underway, with Assad's troops shooting and shelling civilians daily. She explains that her concept of Smart Diplomacy is to buy Assad a burger and talk it over.

Let's see. If a peace-keeping military force were allowed in, who would they shoot at? Certainly not at Assad's troops: that would be impolite to the gracious host. So they would be restricted to shooting at civilians, acting as extensions of Assad's forces.

And in the meantime they are requesting politely, and maybe offering fries with that burger, that Assad just quit. Yes, that should work. It always works with dictators.

That is their clear and unified message, a marvel of Smart Diplomacy.

Secular Morality Controls the Narrative

Not long ago, Obama removed the ability of health providers who object to certain procedures to be exempted form providing those procedures. At issue was the government’s power to force doctors and nurses to provide abortion, regardless of the consciences of those providers. In the past few weeks tens of thousands of signatures have been gathered on a document asking Obama to reverse that decision, and the document has been delivered to the president. Obama’s decision is one of many that seem to enable the power of the governing to force moral and/or economic decisions that are contrary to those made by individuals.

In Britain a similar battle is being waged, this one between the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the British Humanist Association. At issue are four cases, two of which are discrimination against the wearing of the cross at work, one of a counselor who declined to advise homosexuals, and one of a “registrar” who refused to marry homosexuals.

The EHRC claims that the British legal system is biased against Christians. The BHA claims that the EHRC is biased toward Christians.

”The BHA has an ongoing complaint lodged with the EHRC over recent comments by its chair Trevor Phillips in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, that the EHRC’s ‘business is defending the believer’. The first response by the EHRC to the complaint and request for the remedy of an apology was that Mr Phillips ‘[stood] by’ his comments and no apology would be made. The BHA is appealing that decision.”

EHRC; BHA

Back in the USA, California Governor Jerry Brown has just signed into law a dictate that all school children be taught that homosexuals are good role models. Apparently, parents are not to be consulted or given notice.

”Sacramento --
“Public schools in California will be required to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans starting Jan. 1 after Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a controversial bill to add the topic to the social sciences curriculum.

“Textbooks now must include information on the role of LGBT Americans, as well as Americans with disabilities, though California's budget crisis has delayed the purchasing of new books until at least 2015.

"History should be honest," Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. "This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books."

(…)

“Leno said the mandates apply broadly, though, telling reporters it would affect kindergarten through high school curriculum, "and, of course, in an age-appropriate way."

“Gay rights advocates said they will be vigilant about making sure schools across California comply.

“Carolyn Laub, the founder and executive director of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, which works to establish gay-straight clubs in schools, said such clubs exist in 55 percent of California's high schools.

"We'll certainly be letting all of our constituents know about this bill, and when it goes into effect I can assure you there will be thousands of students" watching to see how it is implemented, she said.”

SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle)

And,

“Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, a conservative family group, said under the new law parents will have no choice but to take their children out of public school and homeschool them to avoid what he said was "immoral indoctrination." The new law applies only to public schools, not private schools or families who homeschool.

"Jerry Brown has trampled the parental rights of the overwhelming majority of California fathers and mothers who don't want their children to be sexually brainwashed at school," Thomasson said. "This new law will prohibit textbooks and teachers from telling children the facts that homosexuality is neither healthy nor biological."

“The bill was supported by gay rights organizations including Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network. Teacher groups also said the bill would help students prepare for a diverse and evolving society.

"There is no room for discrimination of any kind in our classrooms, our communities or our state," said Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association. “

ABC Channel 7, San Francisco

Traditional logic does discriminate, though: 0 is not 1; false is not true; bad is not good; abnormal is not normal. Under the new logic of total nondiscrimination, there is no non-valid worldview or personal predilection, except to claim that some worldviews or personal predilections are not valid: to say that would be discrimination, a hate crime, which is discrimination against certain speech. The internal contradiction and paradox is obvious.

Moreover, the schools do discriminate. They allow no non-secular teachings, which means that Humanism and Materialism are promoted and rigidly protected as the only acceptable worldviews in the government schools. That discrimination is A-OK with Humanist Homosexual Materialists, i.e. Secularists. Unfortunately, that is a basic internal contradiction to the entire Secular theory of education, rendering it irrational at best, immoral at worst.

Homeschooled students perform better in every classification of knowledge and ability: this is proven. Check the studies for yourself.

The Atheist Alliance International Declaration On Religion in Public Life

The recent Gods and Politics conference in Copenhagen adopted the following Declaration on Religion in Public Life. The conference was the first European event of Atheist Alliance International, and was co-hosted by AAI and the Danish Atheist Society.

We, at the World Atheist Conference: “Gods and Politics”, held in Copenhagen from 18 to 20 June 2010, hereby declare as follows:

1. We recognize the unlimited right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, and that freedom to practice one’s religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.

2. We submit that public policy should be informed by evidence and reason, not by dogma.

3. We assert the need for a society based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. History has shown that the most successful societies are the most secular.

4. We assert that the only equitable system of government in a democratic society is based on secularism: state neutrality in matters of religion or belief, favoring none and discriminating against none.

5. We assert that private conduct, which respects the rights of others should not be the subject of legal sanction or government concern.

6. We affirm the right of believers and non-believers alike to participate in public life and their right to equality of treatment in the democratic process.

7. We affirm the right to freedom of expression for all, subject to limitations only as prescribed in international law – laws which all governments should respect and enforce. We reject all blasphemy laws and restrictions on the right to criticize religion or nonreligious life stances.

8. We assert the principle of one law for all, with no special treatment for minority communities, and no jurisdiction for religious courts for the settlement of civil matters or family disputes.

9. We reject all discrimination in employment (other than for religious leaders) and the provision of social services on the grounds of race, religion or belief, gender, class, caste or sexual orientation.

10. We reject any special consideration for religion in politics and public life, and oppose charitable, tax-free status and state grants for the promotion of any religion as inimical to the interests of non-believers and those of other faiths. We oppose state funding for faith schools.

11. We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs. We support the spirit of free inquiry and the teaching of science free from religious interference, and are opposed to indoctrination, religious or otherwise.

Adopted by the conference, Copenhagen, 20 June 2010.
[Statements have been numbered for reference].

What is most interesting is the lack of any statement about the underlying philosophy driving this position paper. For example, the source of the stated “rights”. Although not explicit, these are positive rights for the most part, to be allowed by the State. Exceptions to those rights which explicitly discriminate against religion are also called out in items 8, 9, 10. The State is the source and arbiter of these rights, as allowed by the Atheists, who are explicitly solely in charge under paragraph 9. State Atheist education is the only education that can receive taxpayer funding – called “state funding” in the text. Presumably then, the state owns your funds under solely Atheist auspices, for dispersal to solely Atheist enterprises.

These stated rights are those allowed under this particular group of Atheists. Who knows what the next group will allow. History, however, (not typically a favored subject for the Atheists, who call for science education, aka evolution, but are silent on other subjects) demonstrates that once Atheists are in power (Lenin for example), the rights statements change drastically to suit the needs of the Atheist state. The state has all the rights, first; it might or might not dole them to the public, depending on the Consequentialist needs of the moment.

The idea of submission to international law [item 7] on the one hand (One Worldism), and yet invoking these “rights” on the other, is self-defeating and internally inconsistent – unless these Atheists are in charge of international law, too. That implication is built into the unstated fundamentals underlying this paper. But if the international law is Sharia, this statement is without value. So in actuality the statement is without value regardless of the international law at the moment. The intent of the statement seems to be the levelling of all nations under Atheism.

The ever present Atheist call for critical thinking, evidence and reason, contra dogma, illuminates one of the most obvious self-contradictions of Atheist “reasoning”: The Philosophical Materialism underlying Atheism cannot be demonstrated with either evidence or with reason. The Atheistic definition (de facto, never explicit) of critical thinking is a) scientism; b) rigid Materialist dogma. Never does Atheist “critical thinking” subject itself to the rigor of the First Principles, nor does it reveal its axioms despite their blatant obviousness. So the type of thinking referred to as “critical” by Atheists is actually dogmatic adherence to a religious principle: there is no non-material reality available to hold a non-material deity, despite the total lack of empirical evidence to support that claim, or the ability to falsify it. For Atheist Materialists, it is critical to seek friendly premises in order to support the conclusion. Atheism is a religious metaphysic, not a scientific result based on empirical, scientific data.

The declaration of reason as the path to knowledge is valid (item 11); yet this is not congruent with Atheistic Materialism, which is not based on reason, but on emotional rejection of unwanted reality, and hubristic intellectual rebellion. The entire basis is non-coherent, a self-contradictory, non-rational, completely religious position. Again, this paper is a statement of intended domination by a religious group: Philosophical Materialist Atheists.

Moreover, the claim that material evidence is the only path to knowledge is unsupportable, empirically, and is on its face, not valid, in light of abstract knowledge which is deduced, but not mechanically provable with empirical, experimental evidence. In fact all of evolutionary claims seem to be so based, yet are not considered problematic for Atheist Materialists, yet another non-coherence of Atheism and Materialism.

Placing faith in a group of non-absolutists that they will, once in power, accord me with any rights is a complete abandonment of rationality. Non-absolutism speaks for itself: it deserves no respect, intellectually or morally. It has been shown historically to be a fearful master, never mind what their position papers declare.

The faith placed in such a document by PZ and others seems misplaced, given that historically, secularists feed off of other secularists just as much as they do dissenters.

ADDENDUM: I should have stated at the top that item 2 is an explicit position for relativism and Consequentialism, and against virtue-type absolutist morality. These are the choices of every elitist totalitarian. It sets the tone for the rest of the "rights" statements.

And in item 3, which successful "secular democracies" are they referring to? Perhaps ours, which is now suffering under secular seizure?

Justice and Victimhood

Traditionally justice meant responsibility for your own actions. A person justly received the benefit of his legitimate works, and conversely, a person justly received punishment for his misdeeds. Laws were intended to define and protect justice, and a justice system grew out of that.

Of course there are always ways to tread along the edges of the law, to abuse the intent of justice while remaining barely legal. But the original spirit of justice remains in the hearts of most citizens. The spirit intended to reward integrity, self-discipline, and personal responsibility, while punishing only the proven transgressors.

There is now a new “justice”, a political justice that is contrary to the spirit of the original meaning of justice. When we hear of justice these days, as often as not we hear that we are responsible for denying justice to the oppressed. We receive a sense that the great masses of impoverished and politically endangered peoples that exist in the world today are situated that way because of our actions or our inactions, our intentions or our inattentions, as a favored and dominant group.

The new call for justice is not for a personal justice, it is not the traditional justice, it is a political justice for an identity group, one that has been identified as being oppressed. The history of the world is awash with such groups, and oppressed groups like this have created other oppressed groups in great domino effects.

One example is the USA itself. Oppressed by the church in Britain, colonists came to America. Oppressed further by King George, America created a nation in a land inhabited previously by native Americans. The native Americans were oppressed by the Americans. And going the other direction in time, native American groups oppressed each other.

In our own culture, workers were oppressed so they formed unions. Now unions are powerful oppressors in their own right. It is difficult to be born into an identity group that has not, somehow and in someway, oppressed another identity group at some point in their history.

Class is the oppressed identity focus of communism. Race and wealth are the focus of our modern western rulers. In much of the world it is religion which is the focus, only much of the time without the justice part.

This new call for justice - political justice - morally convicts entire groups without trials. It is now easy to condemn an entire race, based on perceptions alone, especially when facts are difficult to come by and even more difficult to verify. An entire generation can be condemned for actions (not proven) attributed to their demographic group that existed generations ago; the sins of the forefathers visited upon the descendents.

But more egregious than having a political justice that condemns entire groups without trials as designated oppressors, is the effect that this new justice has on the victims.

Because the new justice demands material reparations on the one hand and an overweening pity on the other hand, the usual balance expected of traditional justice is overturned. The group designated as “victims” is given the expectation that because of this designation of victimhood status it will receive, without the duress of earning it, material goods and an increased wealth. It is owed to them they are told.

In addition, the pity they receive along with the expectation of increased wealth leads them to believe that this status, victimhood, is valuable and even profitable. The incentive toward personal responsibility is broken.

There is another, more sinister aspect to the new justice. There are those who invest themselves into this process for their own benefit. These are the crusaders for political justice, those who derive a sense of self-righteousness, an inflation of self-importance and ego, by identifying groups that qualify for victimhood (there are plenty from which to choose), and then campaigning loudly and brashly on their behalf.

Now, who can criticize someone who selflessly fights for justice? But that is not what is going on here. The ultimate product of political justice is not integrity, self-discipline and personal responsibility, nor is it independent, self-sustaining, mature members of society.

What actually happens with the crusade for political justice is the dark inverse of traditional justice. The crusader needs victims in order to sate his ego, his need for self-righteousness, even the public intellectual’s need for recognition as an anti-cultural rebel.

The designated victims need the crusader to keep the largesse flowing their direction. It becomes self-sustaining, a system of co-dependent oscillation.

The situation with American black ghettos is an example of this sort of self-sustaining, mutual benefit. Those residents that escape the parasitic political justice system into the traditional, integrity / self-discipline / personal responsibility system, do well there at the expense of being called uncle toms, oreos, and other derogations by those who prefer to remain in the victimhood system. The “victims” come to resent those who they see as traitors to the system of victimhood. There is social pressure to remain, not to upset the system.

The parasitic systems engendered by political justice are not isolated to the USA. But they are encouraged by western crusaders for political justice, those intellectuals and activists wearing mantles of moral superiority on their heads like halos.

Is it transparent to these crusaders that the people they champion with their inverted justice are in fact entrapped by it? Or are perpetual victims an actual known objective of these folks and their negative justice? It’s hard to discern the difference, since the crusaders never, ever admit to failure in their wars, instead finding scapegoats for the failure of political justice ever to produce anything other than the stasis of victimhood. Well, it does produce one other thing; it produces the loud and self-righteous condemnation of western society by western activists living in western comfort.

The new victimhood justice is finding its way into the legal system, usurping the domain of traditional justice. When “society” is declared at fault, or a “group” is declared oppressed, there is a good chance that self-righteous crusaders for political justice are embedded within those declarations. Political justice is a hazard to civilization.

A Non-Coherent Culture: America as the Great Satan

Eugene Volokh raises a dispute over the writing of a Catholic cleric who maintains that the Muslims have a point about the moral deterioration in the USA justifying the label of “Great Satan”. The article was specific in mentioning homosexuality, and took the position that, “One, however, does not have to agree with the gruesome ways that the fundamentalists use to curb the forces that undermine their culture to admit that the Islamic fundamentalist charge that Western Civilization in general and the U.S.A. in particular is the “Great Satan” is not without an element of truth.” And that at least the Muslims were willing to die for their religion.

Volokh’s response was one word: “Appalling”; however, many commenters took to their keyboards with interesting points of view, including those of a couple of avowed homosexuals.

One of the more interesting arguments in the comments to the Volokh post maintains that, because the Catholic Church in Massachusetts shut down its adoption program rather than be forced by the state to place children in gay households, the Catholics are violating one of their standards (adoption) in order to preserve another (man/woman monogamy). And, the arguer maintains, this is, paradoxically, moral relativism, a tenet of the Right, not of the Left.

But the argument fails to consider that the program was stopped in order to prevent its usurpation by government decree into violation of the church’s standards. That of course is the opposite of what the arguer maintains. It was a coherent decision based on complying with the church’s internal standards. Not to take action to prevent violation of its standards would have been non-coherent. The action was not self-contradictory or paradoxical. So the argument is false.

Another interesting argument is that the Muslim suicide bombers might be motivated by more than just religious fervor. The male bombers are rewarded in heaven with 72 houri “perpetual virgins” for their sexual pleasure; their earthly families receive a large monetary compensation for the martyring of their children. So is it the religion or the compensation package that motivates the brutality? Likely it is somewhat both, coupled with a culture of hate that is inculcated from early childhood.

In fact, Islam itself is far from coherent, in the sense that first, the Qur’an was compiled not by Muhammad, but by a disciple who reconciled differing texts, then destroyed the originals; second, there are numerous conflicts and contradictions in the Islamic text(s), which are decided by either superceding later writings or by interpretations of the local imam.

But this is a digression from the point Volokh makes in a second post, that freedom dictates tolerance. In this case, the tolerance refers to tolerating homosexuality.

So, the argument of “complete tolerance” comes into play here: Should a free culture tolerate abominable behavior? What if the abominable behavior is pederasty? What if the abominable behavior is “honor killing”? Clearly there is no point to declaring total tolerance of every behavior. So there is a line to be drawn and the questions arise, what behaviors will be discriminated against, and who will decide that those behaviors are abominable?

The battle is Nietzschean when it veers from absolute standards into the mud of relativist variabilities. Only the most powerful will dominate, and the standards of abomination will be their personal proclivities. Refusing to acknowledge that homosexuality is aberrant behavior is a prime example. The battle front moves from non-discrimination, to special legal categorization (hate crimes), to teaching that homosexuality is a valid lifestyle choice in government schools, complete with instructions and implements for safe sex. And other aggrieved schools of behavior are heartened, and fight for their own ultimate legitimization.

In complete tolerance, there is no standard remaining, save the standard of complete tolerance itself. It is another definition of incoherence, of chaos or even anarchy. It is a direct and specific result of the drive for secularism, the concept that there are no absolute morals to be considered in public life.

Allowing any and all behaviors to be tolerated is prelude to cultural destruction due to non-coherence. If there are no standards to defend, there will be no defense. Degenerating standards are as bad, because this gives support to those defending current “abominable behaviors”, in their fight to liberate their particular abomination.

And the Will To Power will in fact surface to assert control: the presumed drive toward moral libertarianism or anarchism will actually breed totalitarians and the culture will be too feckless to stop them. It has happened before. Lessons of history for those who will learn.

But is that, valid as that argument might be, the real motivation for designating the USA as the “Great Satan”?

If the “Great Satan” is a psuedonym for a nation without fixed (absolute) values, then the USA increasingly qualifies, although so do most European nations, Britain, Russia and China. And these are all under attack by Muslim killers.

And the USA would also qualify for the “Great Satan” appellation even if it were exclusively Christian, both culturally and governmentally. Islam does not tolerate non-Muslims. So the term, from an Islamic perspective, is tautological for any culture or belief system that is not contained fully within the Islamic world, and even there the Sunnis and Shias would likely designate each other as Satans. So it makes no difference from the perspective of ”so what… we are defined as such no matter what we do”. We are the enemies of Islam by their very definition, just as we are becoming the enemies as defined by our own state.

Conclusion: Let it go and oil your guns... which enemy will we be forced to engage first?

War on the Internet, Part 2

Rep. Linda Sanchez has floated the following bill, H.R.1966, under the aegis of cyberbullying. It matters not that cyberbullying is rarely, if ever, an interstate commerce issue, the feds have taken it on as a specific hate crime. And not just a crime that adults practice on children. Anyone and everyone is covered.

Here is the full text of the provision paragraph:

SEC. 3. CYBERBULLYING.

(a) In General- Chapter 41 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

`Sec. 881. Cyberbullying

`(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

`(b) As used in this section--

`(1) the term `communication' means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; and

`(2) the term `electronic means' means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.'.

(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of sections at the beginning of chapter 41 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new item:

`881. Cyberbullying.'.

[emphasis added].

It will be presumed that the internet is "interstate commerce" from the git-go, and therefore that any email or blog will be subject to this new hate crime law. Even Leftist bloggers see the danger in this.

It will also be presumed that testimony from the "victim" is sufficient proof of "emotional distress".

This is a blatant misuse of the powers of Congress toward the elimination of unwanted speech from unwanted quarters. It is clear that much internet speech would cause the thin-skinned Obama considerable "emotional distress". The good news is that the punishment is only two years in prison plus bankruptcy for each offense.

It is a direct violation of the First Amendment. But that will not in any way influence the statists to reject this bill. Because it will be touted as "for the children", the statists will rally behind this. I expect its quick passage and implementation.