Thursday, December 29, 2005

FREEDOM WATCH article from Boston Phoenix

This from a good friend and civil libertarian attorney, Harvey Silverglate, in Boston.

Five minutes to read Harvey's take on the Intelligent Design battle in Dover, PA.


Also, I've recently blogged about my observations of Body World, the exhibit of plasticized cadavers currently on display at the Ontario Science Center. Want to know more?

2 days, 8 hours and 28 minutes until 2006 hits Texas.

In other news, Tom Delay registered for re-election in Sugar Land, last week.

Your man in district 22,

Roman

Monday, December 19, 2005

No bets for the girls?

I didn't know who else to turn to.

My cousin made the Olympic Hockey team today. The "Miracle" game this winter is going to be Team USA (Women's) vs. Canada in the final. If you watch only two hours of the 2006 Winter Olympics, watch the Women's Hockey final. It will be dramatic and beautiful and for the women's Red Army of Canada, devestating. It's everything we look for in sports.

So why can't I put a few bucks on my team to win?

Because Vegas bookies "don't know enough about women's sports."

Where's the outrage?

Thursday, December 08, 2005

To Communitarians of All Colors

There are many things you don't like about life. And there are more things that you hate about America. That's too bad, and I truly feel for you, mainly because I feel for me. You see, I fear what you'll do when you and your friends gain power, the only power you think matters in life: government. In a way you're right. Government is the one universal thing among us; it is the one evil we all submit to, because we have to. Despite the staggering grotesqueness of every government in history, even the good ones, the idea that government shall be our earthly god seems to pervade everywhere of late, especially among you socialists. Why you think this I'll never know. This belief in the supreme worth of government and statism comes to be your uniform, as pervasive and universal as government itself. Like the punk movement that ridiculed everyone else for wearing their corporate uniforms, and yet was (and still is) characterised by a more stringent uniformity than existed in almost any other social group, you communitarians, who hate this government, would have the total state.

This won't work, because it can't. Not for humans. But for less-than-humans it might. And the one good thing about the total state, as seen from the perspective of the total statist, is that the total state creates less-than-humans. But some people, no matter how invasive a "wellfare" state might become, will always have a human element that will fight against collectivism. However soft the coercion is at first, it shall end brutally hard. But the ruined men and women of your total regime won't quickly build a new and better one, if ever they do. Indeed, what you'll have is a recurring cycle of dependency and depredation, now this false idol now this populist general.

One thing to consider: the United States has been steadily moving toward the statist end of whatever a mixed economy is. It has managed so far to maintain such a high level of wealth and well-being, truly accessible to more people here than anywhere else in the world, that the demands for well- and wealth-fare have been steadily answered, year after year, decade after decade, since the implementation of the New Deal. This is as close to workable socialism as you'll ever get. And trust me, since your thinking now of Canada and France and Britain and the Scandinavian states, the grass isn't greener my friend. But if you disagree I heartily invite you to vote with your feet. But certainly you aren't thinking of China or the Soviet Union. You may as well wish for a return of the socialist German state. Certainly these could never be idealized! And yet, the idea of a total state is so beguiling for so many. Intellectuals and laymen alike fantasize for that concretization of what has been impossible until recently: a true Big Brother.

I hope that in time your hate for what you think capitalism is may infect what you confuse in the chimera of communism. Otherwise, we'll all get what you have coming for us.

Looking forward to tomorrow.
Looking forward to nothing forever.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Murals of Evil

I have wondered why some images provoke such public disgust while others, in many ways no different, are acceptable for public consumption. In what passes for a student center located on a campus in Anymetropolitan City, USA I now sit with a cup of coffee and lots of work before me. Behind me, however, hang six framed artistic representations among which are Lenin and Stalin. The other four I'm not so sure of, but I believe they all represent communist leaders. One bears a striking resemblance to a small, but deadly North Korean like Kim Jong Il (or perhaps his father Kim Il Sung); another has a prominent mole on his chin, like Mao Tse Tung. The last two are harder to get a clear idea of. One is obviously lighter skinned and is probably a Spaniard, the other dressed in full military garb, portly, and resembling someone from South America. Whoever these last may be, you might say that among them they've killed hundreds of millions of people, literally.

The surprising thing is this. Put a picture of Hitler up on the wall and a media firestorm is guaranteed.

I have been asking around for the reason that these pictures adorn the walls, believing that someone has a point to make about the evil represented in them. I have been rebuffed a few times by various people for nozing around in a subject that will certainly cause tension. I guess that most people would rather ignore a problem than get involved in it.

But I have also been told there is "nothing wrong with an ideal...."

And now the real heart of the problem is manifest. The pictures on the wall apparently aren't a problem at all.