Tuesday, April 06, 2010
WTFork Geeking Out
WTFork Geeking Out: I uploaded a YouTube video: I go on and on about Quartz Composer, CamTwist and other stuff...
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The War on Fat
In an alternate reality, when obesity had reached epidemic proportions, annual deaths from obesity-related illnesses surpassed the yearly rate of tobacco-related deaths, and diabetes mellitus type 2 was presenting in ever younger patients as more and more children became overweight, a war on fat was declared.
Foods deemed as fattening and/or unhealthy were formally classified as "junk foods", and outlawed. Harsh penalties were instituted for those convicted of trafficking in poisons like saturated fat, high-fructose corn syrup, and monosodium glutamate. Random body mass index (BMI) checks were implemented by schools and employers, and those whose BMIs were greater than 30 could be expelled from school or lose their jobs.
Obese people were suddenly considered to be one of those burdens upon society that costs taxpayers billions of dollars per year in health care, property damage, lost productivity, law enforcement, etc. The media depicted overweight people as blundering, oafish monsters who broke furniture and floors, as weaklings who could not control themselves around food, and as criminals who sold unhealthy foods containing banned ingredients to unsuspecting youth who would become hooked and doomed to a life of gluttony and corpulence.
(There was a brief outcry and movement toward providing some form of government intervention for people whose BMIs fell below 18, but the politics of thinness was an ugly -- yet fortunately short-lived due to its effects upon the entertainment and fashion industries -- business with opposing factions battling over the tyranny or socially responsible moral imperative, depending upon one's place upon the BMI chart.)
It was a brilliant idea, a plan so simple and foolproof, it could not possibly have failed. A nasty human weakness would finally be eradicated, obesity and all of the miseries and maladies that go with it would become a thing of the past, and all the children would be safe and healthy. It should have worked like magic upon a deadly vice, which brought nothing but disease, despair, and doom to the many who overindulged. And just maybe it might have, if only.
If only the punishments had been more severe. If only the laws had been more strictly enforced. If only more was done to curb the insatiable demand for fatty and sweet foods. If only more was done to interdict the neverending supply of cakes, cookies, chips, candies, and all manner of greasy unwholesome (and uninspected for germs and parasites) meat and dairy products that flowed endlessly from the underground factories, to the back street "fryhouses," and straight down into the expanding bellies of our youth. If only we hadn't given up. If only we had dared to keep dreaming the impossible dream for just a little longer.
Toward the end of the War on Fat, as the crime rate skyrocketed, when our streets were filling with the heavy dispossessed, and more and more people were falling ill from having eaten black market food, a last ditch effort was made to win. The supply of so-called "precursor ingredients," such as sugar, cooking oil, potatoes, and corn, was strictly regulated and rationed in order to prevent any of it from falling into the hands of the underground junk food pushers who would turn them into dangerous, and sometimes deadly, feasts. But that didn't work, either. The big cartels, like the infamous "Munchies Mafia," the notorious "Grub Gangstas," or the mysterious "Fat Inc." were already growing their own on clandestine farms all across the nation.
The “Compassionate Experiment" did not really fail, however, it simply didn't produce the intended results. Perhaps it was because people have a natural right to consume whatever foods they please, and that rights can only be temporarily denied, never eradicated. Or it could be that attempting to legislate nature itself, instead of legislating humanity's responsibilities to itself in the face and presence of it, is not a rational endeavor, but rather one of the many mad notions of vainglorious creatures who often get so drunk on pride that we lose the ability to determine what is and is not within humanity's control.
Scrotum! Scrotum! Scrotum!
Right now, the most popular news story on Technorati is a February 18 New York Times article entitled, "With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar." The "uproar" is about the use of the word, "scrotum" in a children's book called, “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron. The book is this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature.
Some school librarians are shocked that the word "scrotum" was used in award-winning children's literature and they aim to ban the book from elementary schools. The book has already been banished from school libraries in a few states in the South, West, and Northeast.
“This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope, but they didn’t have the children in mind,” Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colorado, wrote on LM_Net, a mailing list that reaches more than 16,000 school librarians. “How very sad.”
“I don’t want to start an issue about censorship," Ms. Nilsson told the New York Times, "but you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature -- at least not for children.”
The "scrotum" controversy has reignited the tiresome debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books, the role school librarians should or should not play in selecting/censoring books, and whether unexpurgated knowledge of human anatomy is harmful or helpful to kids.
According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, "scrotum" is defined as "the external sac of skin enclosing the testes in most mammals." As far as I know, "scrotum" is the proper, scientific terminology for the body part in question and is not generally considered a vulgar term, unlike the numerous well-known colloquialisms that mean the very same thing.
Why shouldn't children learn what the word "scrotum" means? What about words like "testicles," "perineum," "vas deferens," "epididymis," and "urethra?"
Is it just the word "scrotum" or is it the concept of "the external sac of skin enclosing the testes" that is so offensive? Is it a matter of the context in which the word "scrotum" was used or is it just that silly old genitalia fixation rearing its ugly glans once again?
Some school librarians are shocked that the word "scrotum" was used in award-winning children's literature and they aim to ban the book from elementary schools. The book has already been banished from school libraries in a few states in the South, West, and Northeast.
“This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope, but they didn’t have the children in mind,” Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colorado, wrote on LM_Net, a mailing list that reaches more than 16,000 school librarians. “How very sad.”
“I don’t want to start an issue about censorship," Ms. Nilsson told the New York Times, "but you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature -- at least not for children.”
The "scrotum" controversy has reignited the tiresome debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books, the role school librarians should or should not play in selecting/censoring books, and whether unexpurgated knowledge of human anatomy is harmful or helpful to kids.
According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, "scrotum" is defined as "the external sac of skin enclosing the testes in most mammals." As far as I know, "scrotum" is the proper, scientific terminology for the body part in question and is not generally considered a vulgar term, unlike the numerous well-known colloquialisms that mean the very same thing.
Why shouldn't children learn what the word "scrotum" means? What about words like "testicles," "perineum," "vas deferens," "epididymis," and "urethra?"
Is it just the word "scrotum" or is it the concept of "the external sac of skin enclosing the testes" that is so offensive? Is it a matter of the context in which the word "scrotum" was used or is it just that silly old genitalia fixation rearing its ugly glans once again?
The Ultimate De-regulation Policy
People who want to see tighter enforcement of our drug laws are unwittingly in league with the gangsters who profit from drug prohibition, the ultimate de-regulation policy.
Drug dealers do not see our drug policies as deterrents to their underground enterprises, but rather as incentives. Those who manufacture and sell outlawed drugs are among the staunchest of prohibitionists. The notion of "legalization" is as much an anathema to them as it is to the families and friends of people whose lives have been lost or ruined by drug abuse and/or addiction.
Without drug prohibition, there would be no unregulated, unlimited, and untaxed underground drug market and potentially destructive psychoactive substances would be far less accessible to children.
Drug policy reform advocates do not actually wish to see illegal drugs "legalized," we want to see unregulated drugs regulated because our nation's drug problem is far too complex to be dealt with via an oversimplified policy of prohibition. If we are to ever have any hope of re-gaining control of the market in certain psychoactive drugs, that market must be brought out of the shadows and into the light.
Drug policy reform is not a matter of some "right" to recreational drug use; it is a matter of wresting the control of a multi-billion dollar enterprise away from gangsters and placing it into the hands of responsible businesspeople.
My question is: Will society continue to be duped, by the false promises of drug war rhetoric, into sacrificing the lives and futures of its children in order to protect and defend the special privileges that drug prohibition affords to gangsters?
Drug dealers do not see our drug policies as deterrents to their underground enterprises, but rather as incentives. Those who manufacture and sell outlawed drugs are among the staunchest of prohibitionists. The notion of "legalization" is as much an anathema to them as it is to the families and friends of people whose lives have been lost or ruined by drug abuse and/or addiction.
Without drug prohibition, there would be no unregulated, unlimited, and untaxed underground drug market and potentially destructive psychoactive substances would be far less accessible to children.
Drug policy reform advocates do not actually wish to see illegal drugs "legalized," we want to see unregulated drugs regulated because our nation's drug problem is far too complex to be dealt with via an oversimplified policy of prohibition. If we are to ever have any hope of re-gaining control of the market in certain psychoactive drugs, that market must be brought out of the shadows and into the light.
Drug policy reform is not a matter of some "right" to recreational drug use; it is a matter of wresting the control of a multi-billion dollar enterprise away from gangsters and placing it into the hands of responsible businesspeople.
My question is: Will society continue to be duped, by the false promises of drug war rhetoric, into sacrificing the lives and futures of its children in order to protect and defend the special privileges that drug prohibition affords to gangsters?
The Great Ganja Debate: Heads vs. Feds
Because prohibitionists are usually rather averse to participating in any sort of debate in which the untenability of the drug war -- a.k.a. Prohibition II, the sequel with a much bigger budget, a lot more hype, and a far higher body count -- might be exposed, I thought I was onto something interesting when I ran across an Orlando Sentinel article entitled, "Should Marijuana be Legalized?" The September 8, 2006 report heralded the news of "The Great Debate: Heads vs. Feds," in which Steven Hager, editor-in-chief of High Times magazine, and Bob Stutman, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent, discuss both sides of the issue of whether marijuana should be "legalized."
I was soon disappointed, however, when I learned that this "Great Debate" is not really a debate at all. High Times has some exclusive video highlights of "Heads vs. Feds" and, if they are an example of what transpires at these events, then they are not truly debates, but rather exhibition matches between two gentlemen who have been, for a number of years, performing a very popular routine before standing-room-only crowds.
It’s a road show, an intellectual “concert” tour that can be booked through a company called Wolfman Productions, which has in its roster a wide variety of speakers and debaters who are available to perform discussions of numerous topics.
Now, entertainment is all well and fine, and fun is a Good Thing, but it does not truly raise awareness about just how deadly and destructive our prohibitionist drug policy really is, no matter how many thoughts this "Heads vs. Feds" production might promote in the minds of its audiences.
Of course, the "Heads vs. Feds" show would likely not be nearly as entertaining if it was presented as an honest debate about the principles of prohibition, instead of as a tiresome litany of the same questionable science and skewed statistics of which drug war propaganda has consisted for decades being "refuted" with anachronistic "hippie" rhetoric and an impassioned defense of the "counterculture."
Clearly, this "Great Debate" is not intended to produce a "winner" as that would likely diminish its amusement value as a thought-provoking spectacle for its largely "pro-legalization" audiences – not to mention that Mr. Stutman might not care to play his "Fed" role opposite a "Head" who exposes the preposterousness of the boondoggle known as the "war on drugs," instead of pulling punches and leveling the playing field with weak and uninspired arguments that are even more feckless today than they were back in the 1970s.
Mr. Hager’s best one-sentence arguments for “legalizing” marijuana are:
The medical marijuana and industrial hemp issues are important and they are related to the larger goals of drug policy reform, but they should be left out of a debate about the merits of interdicting certain human behaviors and habits as they cloud the issue with facts and ideas that distract listeners from the core argument against drug prohibition, which is that it is, in fact, the "drug problem," and it has been masquerading as a solution to itself for almost a century.
I believe it is a given that adults have the right to ingest whatever substances they may find relaxing and/or enjoyable, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. But this assertion does not win friends or influence people, it is proselytization that is usually aimed, as a rallying cry, toward the already converted.
Nobody who has been taught by decades of drug war propaganda to fear the potential consequences of drug policy reform really cares that potheads feel oppressed because they might go to jail for breaking laws that are currently on the books in all 50 states.
Marijuana laws might not pass the old "laugh test" for those of us who know better, but most people don't know better and their attitudes toward those dark and frightening things of which they wish to remain ignorant are deeply ingrained. Plus, they don't want to touch anything called "counterculture" with one of those proverbial ten-foot poles, let alone make an effort to understand it, or to attempt to cultivate some sort of grudging respect for it.
Indeed, we should stop expanding and privatizing prisons. We should also stop funding corruption with the artificial inflation and price supports that prohibitionist policies unintentionally provide to the criminal element.
These are the issues with which reformers should go on the offensive because the only way to be perceived as winning a debate is to put your opponents on the defensive and keep them there for the duration.
Harsh on the drug warriors! Don't let them back you into a corner, in which you become obliged to defend recreational drug use, the counterculture, and all manner of scary crime and overdose statistics that are laid squarely at the feet of your opposing viewpoint as the consequence of your failure to conform to the fears, uncertainties, and doubts of teeming masses of brainwashed asses!
Make the drug prohibitionists defend drug prohibition!
A few choice harshing points for the thoughtful reformer's arsenal:
Don't let drug warriors get away with that "soft on crime" routine that frightens so many of our politicians. Prohibition is not just soft on crime, it creates it and it's helpful to it because the "war on drugs" is the ultimate de-regulation policy.
To the proprietors of an underground economy that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, interdiction is nothing but a small line item in their loss columns, part of the cost of doing business, which barely affects their huge, tax-free, bottom lines.
Don't fall into the "alcohol trap" in which the prohibitionist agrees that perfectly legal alcohol is, by far, the most widely abused drug whose irresponsible use causes much death and destruction, but then follows up with rhetoric about how this is the best example of "why we don't need another legal drug," as if millions of people are not already using the illegal drug, and as if the drug laws are all that stand between a sober, productive society and a nation of "stoned-out zombies."
Don’t be intimidated by the alcohol death statistics, for not only do they include a wide array of alcohol-related illnesses, accidents, and crimes, they are not representative of the vast majority of alcohol users who enjoy alcohol responsibly and moderately, and without incident. It’s the two-percenters who get all the attention, especially when they die of alcohol poisoning, which is a euphemism for an overdose.
(While we’re on the subject of overdoses, this seems a fit place to mention that, during the course of over 5000 years of recorded history, there has never been a single overdose death attributed to marijuana alone – and that is most decidedly not due to the lack of an honest effort.)
Comparisons of the modern drug war with Prohibition (1920-1933) can be a drug warrior’s worst nightmare because, when they are effectively and accurately applied, they become very convincing arguments that render any and all possible defenses of modern drug prohibition baseless and vulnerable.
Nevermind whether or not Prohibition reduced alcohol use, there is no way to tell anyway because, just like it is with the modern "drug war," nobody knew who was selling what to whom, or for how much. The Prohibition era statistic that matters most is the murder rate, which began to climb steadily with the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1920, and did not begin to fall again until several years after the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933.
Ask a drug warrior to describe the difference between Al Capone and Pablo Escobar and see how he or she changes the subject, dismisses the question as irrelevant, or tries to dance around the obvious similarities with arbitrary rhetoric about "nowadays."
Try to avoid using the words "legalize" and "decriminalize" as not only have these terms become propagandized, they never really made any logical sense at all because the solution is not to "legalize" illegal drugs, but rather to regulate unregulated drugs.
Advocates of drug policy reform — whom prohibitionists sometimes refer to as "drug legalizers" — understand the true intent behind those words, but the larger society has been well-trained to equate them with chaos and anarchy.
A large, but shrinking, majority still believes that drug prohibition acts as a deterrent to the black market. In order to dispel this drug war myth that is so deeply ingrained into the public sentiment, reformers will need to clearly demonstrate how drug prohibition created and continues to enable the black market.
Simply demonizing the black market is not enough; prohibitionists already do that when they defend the drug war as "the solution" to it when the fact of the matter is that the black market in unregulated drugs became a low-risk, high profit business because of — not in spite of — the "war on drugs."
Drug prohibition prevents the regulation of the drug business, but not the manufacture, sale and use of drugs. No authority or agency really knows who is selling what to whom, where they are selling it, or for how much.
Prohibitionist policies have never produced results that justify their cost to taxpayers, but they did create and continue to support a wealthy class of tax-exempt black market profiteers.
The black market drug business has no consumer advocacy agencies or fair business practice and pricing associations. Black market drug dealers, growers, manufacturers, and consumers who have grievances cannot go to a court of law to settle their differences or turn to law enforcement in the event of theft or fraud, so they settle their disputes with violence, which is the primary reason why we must regulate these currently unregulated drugs.
In a contest of "Heads vs. Feds," the "Heads" should always win, not so much because we are entitled as citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave, but because history and pragmatism are on our side.
References:
"Heads vs. Feds: Drug War Another Regulatory Failure," by Ralph Shnelvar, May 1, 2003, The Colorado Freedom Report.
"Heads vs. Feds Misses the Point," by Brian Schwartz, May 1, 2003, The Colorado Freedom Report.
"Board Finds Success with Heads vs. Feds Debate," by Shawn Rice, November 19, 2004, LOQUITUR, The Weekly Student Newspaper of Cabrini College, Pennsylvania.
"The Greatest Debate: Heads vs. Feds," posted by CN Staff (source: BG News), December 11, 2002, Cannabis News.
"Wednesday 'Heads vs. Feds' Debate at MCC," submitted by jmw, April 2, 2005, Rochester Cannabis Coalition (NORML).
"Marijuana Debated by Speakers," by Lena Acheson, April 1, 2005, The Online Rocket, Slippery Rock University.
"Pot Talk: Student (sic) Flock to 'Smoking' Debate," by Matt Perkins, March 28, 2006, The New Hampshire, The Student Publication of the University of New Hampshire.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Homicide Rate, 1900-2002. Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics.
I was soon disappointed, however, when I learned that this "Great Debate" is not really a debate at all. High Times has some exclusive video highlights of "Heads vs. Feds" and, if they are an example of what transpires at these events, then they are not truly debates, but rather exhibition matches between two gentlemen who have been, for a number of years, performing a very popular routine before standing-room-only crowds.
It’s a road show, an intellectual “concert” tour that can be booked through a company called Wolfman Productions, which has in its roster a wide variety of speakers and debaters who are available to perform discussions of numerous topics.
Now, entertainment is all well and fine, and fun is a Good Thing, but it does not truly raise awareness about just how deadly and destructive our prohibitionist drug policy really is, no matter how many thoughts this "Heads vs. Feds" production might promote in the minds of its audiences.
Of course, the "Heads vs. Feds" show would likely not be nearly as entertaining if it was presented as an honest debate about the principles of prohibition, instead of as a tiresome litany of the same questionable science and skewed statistics of which drug war propaganda has consisted for decades being "refuted" with anachronistic "hippie" rhetoric and an impassioned defense of the "counterculture."
Clearly, this "Great Debate" is not intended to produce a "winner" as that would likely diminish its amusement value as a thought-provoking spectacle for its largely "pro-legalization" audiences – not to mention that Mr. Stutman might not care to play his "Fed" role opposite a "Head" who exposes the preposterousness of the boondoggle known as the "war on drugs," instead of pulling punches and leveling the playing field with weak and uninspired arguments that are even more feckless today than they were back in the 1970s.
Mr. Hager’s best one-sentence arguments for “legalizing” marijuana are:
- "It's good medicine"
- "Hemp is good for the environment"
- "We need to stop expanding and privatizing prisons"
- "We need to stop funding corruption with prohibition prices"
- "It's the sacrament of my culture"
The medical marijuana and industrial hemp issues are important and they are related to the larger goals of drug policy reform, but they should be left out of a debate about the merits of interdicting certain human behaviors and habits as they cloud the issue with facts and ideas that distract listeners from the core argument against drug prohibition, which is that it is, in fact, the "drug problem," and it has been masquerading as a solution to itself for almost a century.
I believe it is a given that adults have the right to ingest whatever substances they may find relaxing and/or enjoyable, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. But this assertion does not win friends or influence people, it is proselytization that is usually aimed, as a rallying cry, toward the already converted.
Nobody who has been taught by decades of drug war propaganda to fear the potential consequences of drug policy reform really cares that potheads feel oppressed because they might go to jail for breaking laws that are currently on the books in all 50 states.
Marijuana laws might not pass the old "laugh test" for those of us who know better, but most people don't know better and their attitudes toward those dark and frightening things of which they wish to remain ignorant are deeply ingrained. Plus, they don't want to touch anything called "counterculture" with one of those proverbial ten-foot poles, let alone make an effort to understand it, or to attempt to cultivate some sort of grudging respect for it.
Indeed, we should stop expanding and privatizing prisons. We should also stop funding corruption with the artificial inflation and price supports that prohibitionist policies unintentionally provide to the criminal element.
These are the issues with which reformers should go on the offensive because the only way to be perceived as winning a debate is to put your opponents on the defensive and keep them there for the duration.
Harsh on the drug warriors! Don't let them back you into a corner, in which you become obliged to defend recreational drug use, the counterculture, and all manner of scary crime and overdose statistics that are laid squarely at the feet of your opposing viewpoint as the consequence of your failure to conform to the fears, uncertainties, and doubts of teeming masses of brainwashed asses!
Make the drug prohibitionists defend drug prohibition!
A few choice harshing points for the thoughtful reformer's arsenal:
- If you support the war on drugs, you are in favor of our children having easy access (black market dealers do not ask for I.D.) to drugs that have gotten steadily purer, cheaper and more plentiful since the 1970s.
- If you support the war on drugs, you also support the cartels, kingpins, mobsters and gangs. Politics making for strange bedfellows, those whose livelihoods depend upon the protections and benefits of prohibitionist policies, are among the staunchest prohibitionists.
- If you support the war on drugs, you must want yet another generation of our inner city youth to grow up fast and die young in an atmosphere of crime, degradation and fear, for the benefits of the long-established retail drug trade far outweigh any possible risks to those who are born into circumstances of limited opportunity.
- If you support the war on drugs, you also support organized crime and all the violence of gangsterism, which prohibition has enabled to become a highly diversified, multicultural enterprise.
Don't let drug warriors get away with that "soft on crime" routine that frightens so many of our politicians. Prohibition is not just soft on crime, it creates it and it's helpful to it because the "war on drugs" is the ultimate de-regulation policy.
To the proprietors of an underground economy that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, interdiction is nothing but a small line item in their loss columns, part of the cost of doing business, which barely affects their huge, tax-free, bottom lines.
Don't fall into the "alcohol trap" in which the prohibitionist agrees that perfectly legal alcohol is, by far, the most widely abused drug whose irresponsible use causes much death and destruction, but then follows up with rhetoric about how this is the best example of "why we don't need another legal drug," as if millions of people are not already using the illegal drug, and as if the drug laws are all that stand between a sober, productive society and a nation of "stoned-out zombies."
Don’t be intimidated by the alcohol death statistics, for not only do they include a wide array of alcohol-related illnesses, accidents, and crimes, they are not representative of the vast majority of alcohol users who enjoy alcohol responsibly and moderately, and without incident. It’s the two-percenters who get all the attention, especially when they die of alcohol poisoning, which is a euphemism for an overdose.
(While we’re on the subject of overdoses, this seems a fit place to mention that, during the course of over 5000 years of recorded history, there has never been a single overdose death attributed to marijuana alone – and that is most decidedly not due to the lack of an honest effort.)
Comparisons of the modern drug war with Prohibition (1920-1933) can be a drug warrior’s worst nightmare because, when they are effectively and accurately applied, they become very convincing arguments that render any and all possible defenses of modern drug prohibition baseless and vulnerable.
Nevermind whether or not Prohibition reduced alcohol use, there is no way to tell anyway because, just like it is with the modern "drug war," nobody knew who was selling what to whom, or for how much. The Prohibition era statistic that matters most is the murder rate, which began to climb steadily with the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1920, and did not begin to fall again until several years after the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933.
Ask a drug warrior to describe the difference between Al Capone and Pablo Escobar and see how he or she changes the subject, dismisses the question as irrelevant, or tries to dance around the obvious similarities with arbitrary rhetoric about "nowadays."
Try to avoid using the words "legalize" and "decriminalize" as not only have these terms become propagandized, they never really made any logical sense at all because the solution is not to "legalize" illegal drugs, but rather to regulate unregulated drugs.
Advocates of drug policy reform — whom prohibitionists sometimes refer to as "drug legalizers" — understand the true intent behind those words, but the larger society has been well-trained to equate them with chaos and anarchy.
A large, but shrinking, majority still believes that drug prohibition acts as a deterrent to the black market. In order to dispel this drug war myth that is so deeply ingrained into the public sentiment, reformers will need to clearly demonstrate how drug prohibition created and continues to enable the black market.
Simply demonizing the black market is not enough; prohibitionists already do that when they defend the drug war as "the solution" to it when the fact of the matter is that the black market in unregulated drugs became a low-risk, high profit business because of — not in spite of — the "war on drugs."
Drug prohibition prevents the regulation of the drug business, but not the manufacture, sale and use of drugs. No authority or agency really knows who is selling what to whom, where they are selling it, or for how much.
Prohibitionist policies have never produced results that justify their cost to taxpayers, but they did create and continue to support a wealthy class of tax-exempt black market profiteers.
- The black market drug business thrives without taxes, regulations or restrictions.
- The black market considers interdiction mere "spillage," which can be easily minimized by producing and moving more product. (And so what if quality and purity might suffer in the process? It is not as if any recalls would be imposed.)
- The black market does not have to comply with any labeling or packaging requirements. Unregulated drugs usually come packaged in plain plastic bags, but millions of people buy them anyway.
- The black market is not subject to zoning restrictions or licensing or regulatory inspections.
- Black market businesses do not collect sales taxes or pay income or property taxes.
- Black market drug dealers sell drugs to anyone, regardless of age, making it easier for kids to buy drugs.
The black market drug business has no consumer advocacy agencies or fair business practice and pricing associations. Black market drug dealers, growers, manufacturers, and consumers who have grievances cannot go to a court of law to settle their differences or turn to law enforcement in the event of theft or fraud, so they settle their disputes with violence, which is the primary reason why we must regulate these currently unregulated drugs.
In a contest of "Heads vs. Feds," the "Heads" should always win, not so much because we are entitled as citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave, but because history and pragmatism are on our side.
References:
"Heads vs. Feds: Drug War Another Regulatory Failure," by Ralph Shnelvar, May 1, 2003, The Colorado Freedom Report.
"Heads vs. Feds Misses the Point," by Brian Schwartz, May 1, 2003, The Colorado Freedom Report.
"Board Finds Success with Heads vs. Feds Debate," by Shawn Rice, November 19, 2004, LOQUITUR, The Weekly Student Newspaper of Cabrini College, Pennsylvania.
"The Greatest Debate: Heads vs. Feds," posted by CN Staff (source: BG News), December 11, 2002, Cannabis News.
"Wednesday 'Heads vs. Feds' Debate at MCC," submitted by jmw, April 2, 2005, Rochester Cannabis Coalition (NORML).
"Marijuana Debated by Speakers," by Lena Acheson, April 1, 2005, The Online Rocket, Slippery Rock University.
"Pot Talk: Student (sic) Flock to 'Smoking' Debate," by Matt Perkins, March 28, 2006, The New Hampshire, The Student Publication of the University of New Hampshire.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Homicide Rate, 1900-2002. Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics.
300 Million American Souls
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the land of the free and the home of the brave officially hit 300 million at 7:46 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, October 16, 2006.
The Census Bureau, which uses administrative records and surveys to estimate monthly averages for the births, deaths, and net immigration that occur between its decennial surveys, has a "population clock" that estimates a birth every 7 seconds, a death every 13 seconds, and a new immigrant every 31 seconds, for a total of one new American every 11 seconds.
The growth rate of the United States is less than one percent, with the population increasing by about 2.8 million people per year. Around 40 percent of our growth comes from immigration -- the Census Bureau includes illegal immigrants in its official population estimates -- while the rest comes from births outnumbering deaths.
America's population reached 100 million in 1915, and 200 million in 1967. During the last 39 years in which the U.S. population increased by 100 million souls, the entire world population grew from 3.5 billion to 6.5 billion.
In its population growth, the U.S.A. stands alone among industrialized nations, having grown by 13% during the 1990s, which is five times the average of other developed countries.
We are the world's third most populous nation, behind the burgeoning economic superpowers of China (1.31 billion) and India (1.09 billion).
According to Census Bureau estimates, the U.S. population is expected to reach 400 million by 2043.
Celebration
When America's population reached 100 million in 1915, the milestone was celebrated as a sign of the nation's economic and geopolitical might in the world.
When our population surpassed 200 million in 1967, cheers rang through the lobby of the Commerce Department, and President Lyndon B. Johnson's celebratory speech was interrupted by many bursts of enthusiastic applause. Life magazine found a baby boy born in Atlanta at the exact moment, and dispatched photographers and reporters to anoint him as the 200 millionth American.
Now that we've reached the 300 million mark, Census Bureau employees observed the occasion with cake and punch.
Today's population growth is driven by immigration almost as much as by births and many are speculating that the 300 millionth American did not arrive in a maternity ward, but from across the Mexican border.
In light of the past year's controversy over how to handle the estimated 11 to 12 million immigrants here illegally, and the midterm elections being only weeks away, the lack of government-sponsored hoopla is somewhat understandable.
Doomsayers
Environmentalist and anti-immigration groups do not see America as a robust and flourishing nation, but rather as one whose growth and consumption are spiraling out of control, threatening the purity of our air, water, and food -- and the complexion of our demographics.
The environmentalists lament that our wildernesses are being paved over to make room for "urban sprawl." They are concerned that more traffic burning fossil fuels will cause an increase of greenhouse gas emissions that are widely believed to be a cause of global warming.
Anti-immigration groups complain that many of our communities appear to be changing almost overnight as schools and roads become increasingly crowded with Spanish-speaking people. They are worried because immigrants, legal and illegal, account for about 40% of our population growth, and that Hispanics from Latin America account for the largest share of immigrants. Some fear that these trends could result in "Anglos" becoming a minority here -- as if that would be a Bad Thing.
Internecine Immigration Incongruence
The ongoing immigration controversy is a product of politics, not economic pragmatism, which is why there are between 11 and 12 million illegal immigrants working here, regardless of immigration policies that serve the ambitions of politicians whose constituencies are not quite ready to embrace the ethnic and cultural and plurality that is America.
Few people will argue that illegal immigration isn't a problem that needs to be reduced, not only for the sake of the rule of law, but for the welfare of the workers who are exploited by unscrupulous businesses looking for cheap labor that is unregulated, undocumented, and unprotected.
Dealing with the 11-12 million illegal immigrants who are already here filling 11-12 million jobs should, in theory, be a manageable problem, considering the basic laws of supply and demand, and the fact that when America absorbed large waves of immigrants in the past, our economy and culture were enriched.
However, the notion of granting some form of amnesty to illegal immigrants -- no matter how economically beneficial that could be -- presents a moral conundrum. Is it fair and just to show clemency toward those who broke the law to enter America after so many other people immigrated here via the proper, legal channels?
Of course it isn't fair! But that doesn't solve the actual economic problem at hand, which is that our immigration policies are in need of realistic and practical reform so that jobs that need to be filled can be filled legally, and with workers who enjoy the protections and benefits of documented work.
A workable compromise would be a system in which illegal immigrants and the businesses that hire them are fined, and then given a chance to comply with the law or face increasingly severe penalties for repeat offenses.
But that idea is unappealing to those whose pride, prejudice, and pretentiousness make them more concerned with demographics than current economic realities. For such people, the ingredients in America's melting pot have taken on too much of a Latino flavor.
Thus the ongoing immigration controversy that actually has very little to do with securing our borders against a surplus of labor, and more to do with fear of the minority-majority state.
Environmental Efficiency
The hand-wringing pessimism of environmentalists and city dwellers who complain that humanity is crowding out and paving over Mother Nature belies the fact that America still has plenty of wide-open spaces.
A mere 84 people per square mile means we have a lot of room left for growth inside our 3,537,438.44 square miles of land area. Considering that there are about 300 people per square mile in the European Union, and almost 900 people per square mile in Japan, the U.S. is comparatively under populated.
It's not the actual size of our population that causes environmental problems, but rather how people are distributed. A little more than half of the U.S. population is clustered in cities and along the coasts, while large swaths of the country are struggling to keep their populations from shrinking. For example, there are 6 million people living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, which is nearly twice the entire population of the nearby state of Oklahoma.
As more people move away from crowded cities and into the suburbs, land use is becoming less efficient. Single-use zoning and low-density land use have created car dependent communities, which have lead to more traffic and emissions.
The solution to the environmental impact of our increasing population is not the limitation of growth, but more efficient planning, such as the implementation of "smart growth," policies that encourage compact land use patterns, optimal access to public transportation, pedestrian-friendly and bicycle-friendly roads, and mixed-use development.
Smart growth principles are focused upon the total long-term economics of development, rather than the short term profits of improving individual parcels of land, so they are a hard sell to developers whose priorities are minimizing costs and maximizing revenues for their investors, not preparing environmental impact assessments that may oblige them to cover the potentially high expense of mitigating the environmental impact of their development projects.
Policy-makers, in their efforts to challenge obsolete ideas of urban planning (such as the need for more single-family homes that necessitate more prevalent automobile usage), must provide financial incentives to developers in order to negate any perceived need for authoritarian restrictions on free enterprise.
If smart growth is profitable to developers, they will not only implement those techniques in their future projects, they will promote the idea in their marketing collaterals.
Auspicious Abundance
Contrary to popular pessimism, America's growth is a Good Thing. Many demographers believe that our reaching the 300 million milestone shows that America, in spite of our image around the world being momentarily tarnished by the inconsistent progress of the war in Iraq, is an economically powerful republic that is admired in most of the world.
"As almost nothing else can, immigration-led growth signals the attractiveness of the American economy and polity," says Kenneth Prewitt, a former head of the Census Bureau and now professor of public affairs at Columbia University. "You don't see large numbers of immigrants clamoring to move to China."
Stagnant populations, such as those of Japan and some European countries, will face severe retirement crises in the future. Sub-replacement fertility rates are leading to a situation in which there will not be enough young workers to support retirees. It should also be noted that their populations are not growing as fast as ours through immigration because they are not creating as many jobs.
The fact that the U.S. population is growing faster via immigration than other developed nations will allow us to better deal with the financial pressures of an aging population whose life expectancy has climbed from 71 to 78 years since 1967. Immigrants and their children will help reduce funding shortfalls for Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs that benefit older people.
In the past 80 years, America has experienced both explosive population growth and unprecedented prosperity, in spite of major wars and a decade-long economic depression. In more recent times, our resilient economy has survived the September 11 attacks, rising oil and commodity prices, increased global competition, corporate scandals, and the geopolitical risks associated with the war in Iraq and nuclear proliferation.
On Wednesday October 18, 2006 the Dow Jones industrial average rose above 12,000 for the first time in its 110-year history. And if history is any indication, the stock market will continue to grow at a significantly faster rate than the population because businesses and workers are steadily becoming more productive due to the accelerating rate of our technological progress.
American innovation, a product of our ever-expanding diversity, has brought us prosperity, even through the toughest of times. Our technology has improved our overall quality of life, with advances in medical science that have increased our longevity while decreasing our infant mortality rate, and exponential progress in transportation and telecommunications that has made us smarter and more efficient and productive.
In the future, it will be our inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit that will see us through to the 400 million milestone, and beyond -- regardless of the foreboding exhortations of doomsayers, crepehangers, defeatists, and cynics who think pessimism is synonymous with realism.
So here's to 300-plus American souls, among whom could be the doctors who will discover the cures for cancer, diabetes, and AIDS; the engineers who will negate our need for fossil fuels, and the national leaders who will diplomatically and peacefully spread the American vision of freedom and prosperity throughout the world.
The Census Bureau, which uses administrative records and surveys to estimate monthly averages for the births, deaths, and net immigration that occur between its decennial surveys, has a "population clock" that estimates a birth every 7 seconds, a death every 13 seconds, and a new immigrant every 31 seconds, for a total of one new American every 11 seconds.
The growth rate of the United States is less than one percent, with the population increasing by about 2.8 million people per year. Around 40 percent of our growth comes from immigration -- the Census Bureau includes illegal immigrants in its official population estimates -- while the rest comes from births outnumbering deaths.
America's population reached 100 million in 1915, and 200 million in 1967. During the last 39 years in which the U.S. population increased by 100 million souls, the entire world population grew from 3.5 billion to 6.5 billion.
In its population growth, the U.S.A. stands alone among industrialized nations, having grown by 13% during the 1990s, which is five times the average of other developed countries.
We are the world's third most populous nation, behind the burgeoning economic superpowers of China (1.31 billion) and India (1.09 billion).
According to Census Bureau estimates, the U.S. population is expected to reach 400 million by 2043.
Celebration
When America's population reached 100 million in 1915, the milestone was celebrated as a sign of the nation's economic and geopolitical might in the world.
When our population surpassed 200 million in 1967, cheers rang through the lobby of the Commerce Department, and President Lyndon B. Johnson's celebratory speech was interrupted by many bursts of enthusiastic applause. Life magazine found a baby boy born in Atlanta at the exact moment, and dispatched photographers and reporters to anoint him as the 200 millionth American.
Now that we've reached the 300 million mark, Census Bureau employees observed the occasion with cake and punch.
Today's population growth is driven by immigration almost as much as by births and many are speculating that the 300 millionth American did not arrive in a maternity ward, but from across the Mexican border.
In light of the past year's controversy over how to handle the estimated 11 to 12 million immigrants here illegally, and the midterm elections being only weeks away, the lack of government-sponsored hoopla is somewhat understandable.
Doomsayers
Environmentalist and anti-immigration groups do not see America as a robust and flourishing nation, but rather as one whose growth and consumption are spiraling out of control, threatening the purity of our air, water, and food -- and the complexion of our demographics.
The environmentalists lament that our wildernesses are being paved over to make room for "urban sprawl." They are concerned that more traffic burning fossil fuels will cause an increase of greenhouse gas emissions that are widely believed to be a cause of global warming.
Anti-immigration groups complain that many of our communities appear to be changing almost overnight as schools and roads become increasingly crowded with Spanish-speaking people. They are worried because immigrants, legal and illegal, account for about 40% of our population growth, and that Hispanics from Latin America account for the largest share of immigrants. Some fear that these trends could result in "Anglos" becoming a minority here -- as if that would be a Bad Thing.
Internecine Immigration Incongruence
The ongoing immigration controversy is a product of politics, not economic pragmatism, which is why there are between 11 and 12 million illegal immigrants working here, regardless of immigration policies that serve the ambitions of politicians whose constituencies are not quite ready to embrace the ethnic and cultural and plurality that is America.
Few people will argue that illegal immigration isn't a problem that needs to be reduced, not only for the sake of the rule of law, but for the welfare of the workers who are exploited by unscrupulous businesses looking for cheap labor that is unregulated, undocumented, and unprotected.
Dealing with the 11-12 million illegal immigrants who are already here filling 11-12 million jobs should, in theory, be a manageable problem, considering the basic laws of supply and demand, and the fact that when America absorbed large waves of immigrants in the past, our economy and culture were enriched.
However, the notion of granting some form of amnesty to illegal immigrants -- no matter how economically beneficial that could be -- presents a moral conundrum. Is it fair and just to show clemency toward those who broke the law to enter America after so many other people immigrated here via the proper, legal channels?
Of course it isn't fair! But that doesn't solve the actual economic problem at hand, which is that our immigration policies are in need of realistic and practical reform so that jobs that need to be filled can be filled legally, and with workers who enjoy the protections and benefits of documented work.
A workable compromise would be a system in which illegal immigrants and the businesses that hire them are fined, and then given a chance to comply with the law or face increasingly severe penalties for repeat offenses.
But that idea is unappealing to those whose pride, prejudice, and pretentiousness make them more concerned with demographics than current economic realities. For such people, the ingredients in America's melting pot have taken on too much of a Latino flavor.
Thus the ongoing immigration controversy that actually has very little to do with securing our borders against a surplus of labor, and more to do with fear of the minority-majority state.
Environmental Efficiency
The hand-wringing pessimism of environmentalists and city dwellers who complain that humanity is crowding out and paving over Mother Nature belies the fact that America still has plenty of wide-open spaces.
A mere 84 people per square mile means we have a lot of room left for growth inside our 3,537,438.44 square miles of land area. Considering that there are about 300 people per square mile in the European Union, and almost 900 people per square mile in Japan, the U.S. is comparatively under populated.
It's not the actual size of our population that causes environmental problems, but rather how people are distributed. A little more than half of the U.S. population is clustered in cities and along the coasts, while large swaths of the country are struggling to keep their populations from shrinking. For example, there are 6 million people living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, which is nearly twice the entire population of the nearby state of Oklahoma.
As more people move away from crowded cities and into the suburbs, land use is becoming less efficient. Single-use zoning and low-density land use have created car dependent communities, which have lead to more traffic and emissions.
The solution to the environmental impact of our increasing population is not the limitation of growth, but more efficient planning, such as the implementation of "smart growth," policies that encourage compact land use patterns, optimal access to public transportation, pedestrian-friendly and bicycle-friendly roads, and mixed-use development.
Smart growth principles are focused upon the total long-term economics of development, rather than the short term profits of improving individual parcels of land, so they are a hard sell to developers whose priorities are minimizing costs and maximizing revenues for their investors, not preparing environmental impact assessments that may oblige them to cover the potentially high expense of mitigating the environmental impact of their development projects.
Policy-makers, in their efforts to challenge obsolete ideas of urban planning (such as the need for more single-family homes that necessitate more prevalent automobile usage), must provide financial incentives to developers in order to negate any perceived need for authoritarian restrictions on free enterprise.
If smart growth is profitable to developers, they will not only implement those techniques in their future projects, they will promote the idea in their marketing collaterals.
Auspicious Abundance
Contrary to popular pessimism, America's growth is a Good Thing. Many demographers believe that our reaching the 300 million milestone shows that America, in spite of our image around the world being momentarily tarnished by the inconsistent progress of the war in Iraq, is an economically powerful republic that is admired in most of the world.
"As almost nothing else can, immigration-led growth signals the attractiveness of the American economy and polity," says Kenneth Prewitt, a former head of the Census Bureau and now professor of public affairs at Columbia University. "You don't see large numbers of immigrants clamoring to move to China."
Stagnant populations, such as those of Japan and some European countries, will face severe retirement crises in the future. Sub-replacement fertility rates are leading to a situation in which there will not be enough young workers to support retirees. It should also be noted that their populations are not growing as fast as ours through immigration because they are not creating as many jobs.
The fact that the U.S. population is growing faster via immigration than other developed nations will allow us to better deal with the financial pressures of an aging population whose life expectancy has climbed from 71 to 78 years since 1967. Immigrants and their children will help reduce funding shortfalls for Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs that benefit older people.
In the past 80 years, America has experienced both explosive population growth and unprecedented prosperity, in spite of major wars and a decade-long economic depression. In more recent times, our resilient economy has survived the September 11 attacks, rising oil and commodity prices, increased global competition, corporate scandals, and the geopolitical risks associated with the war in Iraq and nuclear proliferation.
On Wednesday October 18, 2006 the Dow Jones industrial average rose above 12,000 for the first time in its 110-year history. And if history is any indication, the stock market will continue to grow at a significantly faster rate than the population because businesses and workers are steadily becoming more productive due to the accelerating rate of our technological progress.
American innovation, a product of our ever-expanding diversity, has brought us prosperity, even through the toughest of times. Our technology has improved our overall quality of life, with advances in medical science that have increased our longevity while decreasing our infant mortality rate, and exponential progress in transportation and telecommunications that has made us smarter and more efficient and productive.
In the future, it will be our inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit that will see us through to the 400 million milestone, and beyond -- regardless of the foreboding exhortations of doomsayers, crepehangers, defeatists, and cynics who think pessimism is synonymous with realism.
So here's to 300-plus American souls, among whom could be the doctors who will discover the cures for cancer, diabetes, and AIDS; the engineers who will negate our need for fossil fuels, and the national leaders who will diplomatically and peacefully spread the American vision of freedom and prosperity throughout the world.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Looking for Me?
This is just my Blogger site. I update it from time to time by pasting articles from my official website.
If you're looking for my latest (and perhaps greatest), go to Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
If you're looking for my latest (and perhaps greatest), go to Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
Balancing Liberty and Security with The Patriot Act
On Friday, December 16, 2005, despite increasing pressure from the White House and its allies, 47 Senators from both parties rejected a cloture motion to limit debate on legislation to reauthorize the Patriot Act, which means that efforts to "fix" the Patriot Act can continue.
Many of the Senators talked about the need to protect ordinary Americans from the misuse of the broad powers of the Patriot Act. Both Democrats and Republicans pointed to evidence that the Patriot Act is being used to gather financial and Internet transaction records of Americans when there is no link between the records and suspected foreign terrorists. The lawmakers also said that they want to renew negotiations so that they can try to find a way to ensure that anti-terrorism efforts are not wasted on Americans who are not connected to suspected terrorists.
The most controversial government powers granted by the Patriot Act include the authorizing of law enforcement agencies to access, in secret, library and medical records, and other personal information during investigations into suspected terrorist activities. The law also allows the government to conduct roving wiretaps involving multiple telephone lines and to wiretap suspected terrorists who may be operating outside of the control of foreign agents or powers.
Opponents of renewing the Patriot Act argue that it is a threat to the civil liberties of the American people, while supporters say that the law is essential to protecting the American people from terrorists.
If the Patriot Act is not renewed, its powers will expire on December 31, 2005, but only for new investigations. After December 31, the Patriot Act will still apply to those who were under investigation before that date.
Lawmakers from both parties said that they did not want the Patriot Act to expire, noting that a temporary extension is possible while the debate with regard to the balance of national security with civil liberties continues. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada urged a three-month extension to allow time for a resolution. Thus far, Republican leaders in Congress and the White House have rejected such a move.
The cloture motion failed just a few hours after the New York Times revealed that President Bush had, without first obtaining permission from the courts, secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on people in the United States.
In his Saturday, December 17, 2005 radio address, Mr. Bush defended his decision to authorize the NSA to conduct the secret investigations and fought for the renewal of the Patriot Act, saying both had saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks.
The president said he has reauthorized the NSA eavesdropping program 30 times since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and that he intends to continue it, "for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."
Defending the Patriot Act, Mr. Bush said, "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."
Of the failed cloture motion, the president said, "That decision is irresponsible and it endangers the lives of our citizens. The senators who are filibustering must stop their delaying tactics and the Senate must reauthorize the Patriot Act."
Noting the looming expiration of key provisions of the Patriot Act, Mr. Bush said, "The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks. The terrorists want to attack America again, and inflict even greater damage than they did on September the 11th."
In a statement made after Mr. Bush's radio address, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who supported the original Patriot Act, said that the reauthorization of the Patriot Act was written in ways that fell short of protecting our civil liberties. "Fear mongering and false choices do little to advance either the security or liberty of Americans," Senator Leahy said, "Instead of playing partisan politics and setting up false attack ads, they should join in trying to improve the law."
Safe and Free?
Lisa Graves, ACLU Senior Counsel for Legislative Strategy said, "Today’s vote is a beacon of hope for the continuing vitality of our Bill of Rights. As Congress continues its examination of the Patriot Act, it must add common sense protections to preserve our privacy. Americans from across the political spectrum insist that this law be reformed so America will both be safe and free."
Safe and free? Is that rational? Doesn't safe or free make more sense? Or is this concept of safety and freedom co-existing just another of the ACLU's idealistic notions?
Apparently not.
In a December 17, 2005 blog post entitled, Life Vs. Liberty, RealTeen of Stop the ACLU writes, "There’s a delicate balance between our National Security and our Civil Liberties, that must be preserved."
Clearly, the idea that America can be a free country that is also safe from terrorists is not exclusive to the ACLU and its supporters.
RealTeen valiantly attempts to explain this alleged balancing of national security with civil liberties:
Can there ever really be a practical balancing of national security and civil liberties? What sort of scale is it that measures this supposed delicate balance between freedom and safety? Who is, or should be, minding that scale?
In the same article quoted above, RealTeen asks an interesting question: "What’s more important- inconveniencing people as they walk into the subway, or saving lives?"
This question lead me to wonder if merely inconveniencing people with these small infractions against their civil liberties is really enough to stop terrorists who are willing to kill themselves in order to make a point.
Perhaps the mere illusion of having a balance between liberty and security is enough for most people to feel both safe and free. So we try to strike some sort of wishy-washy balance between security and freedom, hoping that a minimum of tyranny will provide a maximum of safety.
However, pragmatism dictates that if we want to be truly safe from terrorist attacks, then we must not have any concerns about civil liberties getting in the way of those efforts. Half-measures, special exceptions and other less-than-iron-clad policies make the fight against terrorism ineffective because they leave too many holes in the net that is supposed to be catching terrorists before they strike.
If terrorist enemies are so determined that they are willing to die, then they are more than adequately determined to find and exploit any holes that were intended to preserve some mythical balancing of civil liberties with public safety.
Then, logically speaking, what are we left with? A really tough choice between tyranny and fear because we cannot realistically have both.
Of course neither one of those options is terribly appealing to the masses who, in varying degrees, value their civil liberties about as much as they value their safety. Thus the cognitive dissonance that is symptomatic of all people, regardless of their political ideologies, who want to have their proverbial cake and eat it, too.
The Choices are Freedom or Safety. Decide.
Think about the choices. If we choose a policy of safety and tyranny, it cannot be realistically limited to preserve civil liberties. The many, very real threats to our national security cannot be stopped with mere inconveniences like pat-downs at football games and bag searches on subways because, to terrorists who are suicidally dedicated to their causes, such weak "security measures" are nothing but minor stumbling blocks that can be easily avoided.
If, however, we choose the policy of freedom and fear instead, we will have to live every day with the possibility of all those very real threats and dangers becoming extremely real, in-your-face catastrophes.
Since we're already in grave danger because we want to balance freedom with security instead of going all the way and closing all of the security holes that preserve our civil liberties, then we might as well just suck it up and scrap any and all anti-terrorism measures that threaten to curtail our civil liberties.
America is the "land of the free and the home of the brave" because we must be very brave to live in this free country. We must have the fortitude to risk the lesser threat of terrorism in order to stop the greater threat of tyranny. We have to have the courage to fight the scourge of tyranny whenever it threatens our freedom, which means rejecting the false sense of security provided by laws like the Patriot Act.
Many Americans have sacrificed their comfort and safety, and even their lives, for the sake of our civil liberties and the American people should be willing to do the same now, even in the face of very real danger.
Many of the Senators talked about the need to protect ordinary Americans from the misuse of the broad powers of the Patriot Act. Both Democrats and Republicans pointed to evidence that the Patriot Act is being used to gather financial and Internet transaction records of Americans when there is no link between the records and suspected foreign terrorists. The lawmakers also said that they want to renew negotiations so that they can try to find a way to ensure that anti-terrorism efforts are not wasted on Americans who are not connected to suspected terrorists.
The most controversial government powers granted by the Patriot Act include the authorizing of law enforcement agencies to access, in secret, library and medical records, and other personal information during investigations into suspected terrorist activities. The law also allows the government to conduct roving wiretaps involving multiple telephone lines and to wiretap suspected terrorists who may be operating outside of the control of foreign agents or powers.
Opponents of renewing the Patriot Act argue that it is a threat to the civil liberties of the American people, while supporters say that the law is essential to protecting the American people from terrorists.
If the Patriot Act is not renewed, its powers will expire on December 31, 2005, but only for new investigations. After December 31, the Patriot Act will still apply to those who were under investigation before that date.
Lawmakers from both parties said that they did not want the Patriot Act to expire, noting that a temporary extension is possible while the debate with regard to the balance of national security with civil liberties continues. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada urged a three-month extension to allow time for a resolution. Thus far, Republican leaders in Congress and the White House have rejected such a move.
The cloture motion failed just a few hours after the New York Times revealed that President Bush had, without first obtaining permission from the courts, secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on people in the United States.
In his Saturday, December 17, 2005 radio address, Mr. Bush defended his decision to authorize the NSA to conduct the secret investigations and fought for the renewal of the Patriot Act, saying both had saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks.
The president said he has reauthorized the NSA eavesdropping program 30 times since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and that he intends to continue it, "for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."
Defending the Patriot Act, Mr. Bush said, "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."
Of the failed cloture motion, the president said, "That decision is irresponsible and it endangers the lives of our citizens. The senators who are filibustering must stop their delaying tactics and the Senate must reauthorize the Patriot Act."
Noting the looming expiration of key provisions of the Patriot Act, Mr. Bush said, "The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks. The terrorists want to attack America again, and inflict even greater damage than they did on September the 11th."
In a statement made after Mr. Bush's radio address, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who supported the original Patriot Act, said that the reauthorization of the Patriot Act was written in ways that fell short of protecting our civil liberties. "Fear mongering and false choices do little to advance either the security or liberty of Americans," Senator Leahy said, "Instead of playing partisan politics and setting up false attack ads, they should join in trying to improve the law."
Safe and Free?
Lisa Graves, ACLU Senior Counsel for Legislative Strategy said, "Today’s vote is a beacon of hope for the continuing vitality of our Bill of Rights. As Congress continues its examination of the Patriot Act, it must add common sense protections to preserve our privacy. Americans from across the political spectrum insist that this law be reformed so America will both be safe and free."
Safe and free? Is that rational? Doesn't safe or free make more sense? Or is this concept of safety and freedom co-existing just another of the ACLU's idealistic notions?
Apparently not.
In a December 17, 2005 blog post entitled, Life Vs. Liberty, RealTeen of Stop the ACLU writes, "There’s a delicate balance between our National Security and our Civil Liberties, that must be preserved."
Clearly, the idea that America can be a free country that is also safe from terrorists is not exclusive to the ACLU and its supporters.
RealTeen valiantly attempts to explain this alleged balancing of national security with civil liberties:
"Simply put, our Civil Liberties need to be upheld, but not at the expense of security. If someone can not handle a pat down at a football game, then do they care about the security of others? I would rather be searched and feel safe, than have to worry about a terrorist attack. In the wake of the London bombings, the law enforcement agencies decided to step in in New York and do bag searches, which the ACLU opposed. That was just an example of how Civil Liberties can be adjusted to meet the security needs of the time, without being destroyed."
Can there ever really be a practical balancing of national security and civil liberties? What sort of scale is it that measures this supposed delicate balance between freedom and safety? Who is, or should be, minding that scale?
In the same article quoted above, RealTeen asks an interesting question: "What’s more important- inconveniencing people as they walk into the subway, or saving lives?"
This question lead me to wonder if merely inconveniencing people with these small infractions against their civil liberties is really enough to stop terrorists who are willing to kill themselves in order to make a point.
Perhaps the mere illusion of having a balance between liberty and security is enough for most people to feel both safe and free. So we try to strike some sort of wishy-washy balance between security and freedom, hoping that a minimum of tyranny will provide a maximum of safety.
However, pragmatism dictates that if we want to be truly safe from terrorist attacks, then we must not have any concerns about civil liberties getting in the way of those efforts. Half-measures, special exceptions and other less-than-iron-clad policies make the fight against terrorism ineffective because they leave too many holes in the net that is supposed to be catching terrorists before they strike.
If terrorist enemies are so determined that they are willing to die, then they are more than adequately determined to find and exploit any holes that were intended to preserve some mythical balancing of civil liberties with public safety.
Then, logically speaking, what are we left with? A really tough choice between tyranny and fear because we cannot realistically have both.
Of course neither one of those options is terribly appealing to the masses who, in varying degrees, value their civil liberties about as much as they value their safety. Thus the cognitive dissonance that is symptomatic of all people, regardless of their political ideologies, who want to have their proverbial cake and eat it, too.
The Choices are Freedom or Safety. Decide.
Think about the choices. If we choose a policy of safety and tyranny, it cannot be realistically limited to preserve civil liberties. The many, very real threats to our national security cannot be stopped with mere inconveniences like pat-downs at football games and bag searches on subways because, to terrorists who are suicidally dedicated to their causes, such weak "security measures" are nothing but minor stumbling blocks that can be easily avoided.
If, however, we choose the policy of freedom and fear instead, we will have to live every day with the possibility of all those very real threats and dangers becoming extremely real, in-your-face catastrophes.
Since we're already in grave danger because we want to balance freedom with security instead of going all the way and closing all of the security holes that preserve our civil liberties, then we might as well just suck it up and scrap any and all anti-terrorism measures that threaten to curtail our civil liberties.
America is the "land of the free and the home of the brave" because we must be very brave to live in this free country. We must have the fortitude to risk the lesser threat of terrorism in order to stop the greater threat of tyranny. We have to have the courage to fight the scourge of tyranny whenever it threatens our freedom, which means rejecting the false sense of security provided by laws like the Patriot Act.
Many Americans have sacrificed their comfort and safety, and even their lives, for the sake of our civil liberties and the American people should be willing to do the same now, even in the face of very real danger.
Winter Solstice Evergreens and The History of the Christmas Tree
Historic Evergreens
In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year (falling sometime between December 20 and 23) is called the Winter solstice. When ancient peoples observed the air becoming colder, the days getting shorter and the deciduous trees, bushes, and crops dying or hibernating for the winter, many became afraid that the sun was disappearing and that the Earth would eventually freeze. They also noticed that some plants and trees remained green all year long and believed that such trees and plants had magical powers that allowed them to withstand the cold of winter.
Evergreen trees and other plants that stay green all year round have always carried a special meaning for the various peoples of the world. Long before the advent of Christianity, peoples of many ancient civilizations decorated their homes with pine, spruce, and fir trees. In many of these cultures, it was believed that evergreen boughs, hung over doors and windows, would fend off witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and diseases.
Ancient peoples who worshiped the sun as a god believed that winter came when the sun god became sick and weak. The celebration of the winter solstice marked the time when the sun god would begin to regain his strength and evergreens served as reminders of the coming spring when the land would be green again.
Not having evergreen trees, the ancient Egyptians filled their homes with green date palm leaves to celebrate that their god, Ra, who was depicted as having the sun in his crown, was beginning to recover from his illness. The palm leaves symbolized the triumph of life over death.
To mark the occasion when their farms and orchards would once again be green and fruitful, the early Romans honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, with a winter solstice feast called the Saturnalia. They decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs and lights and exchanged symbolic gifts; coins for prosperity, pastries for happiness, and lamps for lighting the journey of life.
In Great Britain, the woods priests of the ancient Celts, the Druids, used evergreens, holly and mistletoe as symbols of everlasting life during mysterious winter solstice rituals. They also placed evergreen boughs over their doors and windows to ward off evil spirits.
The Vikings of Scandinavia believed evergreens to be the special plant of their sun god, Balder. In the late Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians put evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope for the coming spring.
The modern Christmas tree, which is often mistakenly referred to as a "Pagan symbol," (the Pagans believed that cutting down whole evergreen trees was destructive to nature) evolved from all of these early superstitions, customs and traditions.
The Legendary Origins of the Christmas Tree
Many of our modern Christmas customs, songs and traditions came from Germany, such as illustrations of Santa Claus, Christmas markets, shaped gingerbreads, tinsel, glass ornaments, and of course, Christmas trees.
The tradition of decorating a tree in celebration of Christmas originated in 16th century Germany. Legend has it that it Martin Luther, the German theologian and reformer who influenced Lutheran and Protestant doctrines, was the first to decorate an evergreen tree with lighted candles.
It is said that one night while walking through the woods and composing a sermon, he was awestruck by the beauty of evergreens shimmering in the snow under the stars. When he got home, he wanted to share his story with his children, so he brought in a small evergreen tree and decorated it with candles, which he lit in honor of the birth of Christ.
Although the first actual written record of a Christmas tree in 1604 dates well after Martin Luther's death in 1564, this old story of the first Christmas tree is still widely believed and very popular.
Another Christmas tree legend, also from Germany and dating back to the 7th century, tells the story of St. Boniface, a monk from Devonshire who went to Germany to convert the German people to Christianity. It is said that when he found a group of Pagans worshiping an oak tree, he cut the oak down and a young evergreen began to grow from its roots. Taking this as a sign, St Boniface used the triangular shape of the fir tree to describe the Holy Trinity; God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. After that, the converts then revered the fir tree as God's tree, just as they had previously revered the oak.
Christmas Trees in Early American History
The Christmas tree tradition as we know it today was most likely brought to the United States by Hessian troops during the American Revolution. According to a legend, a celebration around a Christmas tree in Trenton, New Jersey helped to turn the tide for Colonial forces in 1776. Hessian mercenaries, apparently feeling homesick after seeing a candlelit evergreen tree in the snow, left their guard posts to engage in merrymaking, which gave General Washington the opportunity to attack their position and defeat them.
The first actual record of Christmas trees being on display in America dates back to the 1830s, although the Pennsylvania German settlements had put up community evergreens in winter as early as 1747. But Christmas trees were not widely accepted in America until some time later. As recently as the 1840s, many Americans still thought of decorated evergreens as Pagan symbols.
To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. They condemned many customs associated with Christmas, such as the Yule log, holly, mistletoe, Christmas carols and Christmas trees, as "heathen traditions." The Puritans believed that any joyful expression desecrated the sacred event of the birth of Christ.
William Bradford, the pilgrim's second governor, tried to stamp out what he called the "Pagan mockery" of Christmas. In 1659, a law was enacted that made any observances of December 25, other than attending church services, illegal. Christmas "frivolity" was penalized and anyone, Puritan or not, caught hanging decorations or otherwise celebrating Christmas was fined 15 cents.
This joyless Christmas tradition of solemnity continued into the 19th century. Until 1870, Boston schools remained open on Christmas Day and students who stayed home could be expelled. As recently as 1851, Pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland, Ohio nearly lost his job when he decorated a Christmas tree in his church and his parishioners condemned it as a "pagan practice."
The Modern American Christmas Tree
Christmas trees were first introduced in England by King George III's German Queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and by German merchants who lived in England. A few British families had Christmas trees but they were likely influenced by their German neighbors rather than the Royal Court. At the time, the German Monarchy was unpopular with the British public, so the Royal Court did not copy the Christmas tree, which is why they did not become widely fashionable in Britain.
In 1846, The Illustrated London News carried a sketch of Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Unlike the previous Royal family, Queen Victoria was very popular with her subjects and whatever the trendsetting Royals did at Court quickly became stylish in Britain as well as in the fashion-conscious cliques of Eastern American society.
By the 1890s, the popularity of Christmas trees was on the rise around America. Whereas the Europeans used small trees, the Americans preferred their Christmas trees tall enough to reach the ceiling. Most decorations were homemade. Young women spent hours quilling stars and snowflakes and sewing little pouches to hold secret gifts and treats, such as sugared almonds. They strung garlands with brightly dyed popcorn, interspersed with with nuts and berries. Wooden hoops were used to hold candles until the advent of electricity, which made it possible for Christmas trees to be lit continuously -- and far more safely.
Silver tinsel, which tarnished easily, was invented in 1878. By the 1920s, however, it was made from lead because lead was cheaper and did not tarnish. Due to the danger of lead poisoning to children, lead tinsel was banned in the 1960s. Today's tinsel is made exclusively from plastic.
In 1851, when a Catskill farmer named Mark Carr took two ox sleds filled with evergreen trees to New York City and promptly sold them all, the Christmas tree market was born. In 1890, F.W. Woolworth brought glass Christmas tree ornaments from Germany to the United States. The Christmas tree was beginning to catch on.
Christmas trees began appearing in town squares across the nation and having a Christmas tree in the home would soon become an American tradition. In the year 1900, one in five American homes had a Christmas tree. By the year 1920, they had become nearly universal.
President Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) had the first Christmas tree in the White House in the 1850's. The National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn was started by President Calvin Coolidge (1885-1933) in 1923.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, nurseries were unable to sell evergreen trees for landscaping, so they cut them for Christmas trees. Because they were more symmetrical than trees growing in the wild, cultivated trees became preferred and the impromptu Christmas tree farms of the depression-era eventually became full-fledged businesses.
Artificial Christmas trees were first marketed in 1885 when a thirty-three limb tree, priced at 50 cents, could be ordered from Sears, Roebuck and Company. They were produced by brush manufacturers that employed the same techniques used in making brushes. Bristles of animal hair or plastic were dyed pine-green and inserted between twisted wires to form branches in graduated sizes, each with a color-coded tag at the base. The customer assembled the tree by inserting the color-coded branches into a wooden pole that acted as the trunk.
To prevent deforestation, tabletop feather trees made of dyed goose feathers originated in Germany in the 19th century. The Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog sold the first feather trees in America in 1913.
Artificial trees are very popular in the United States where synthetic Christmas trees can be found in 70% of homes. They are considered more convenient and hygienic (especially for those with allergies), and if they are used a number of times, they are less expensive over the long term. In most of Europe, however, artificial trees are considered tacky.
In the 1950s and 60s, metallic trees with all the same shape and color ornaments became the rage. The trees were made of aluminum-coated paper, which posed a fire hazard when Christmas lights were placed directly on them, so they were instead lit by a spotlight with a motorized color wheel in front of it.
The late 1970s saw a return to classic Victorian nostalgia, which was a refreshing change from the "space age" Christmas trees of the previous decades. Green trees were once again in demand and manufacturers created replicas of antique-style German glass ornaments, real silver tinsel and pressed foil decorations.
Today's indoor artificial trees are often sold pre-strung with lights, which not only provide a consistent display of color and light, but also allow people to avoid the most unpleasant yearly task of untangling Christmas lights. Some pre-lit trees contain fiber optics, which are lighted by a single lamp at the base. Most fiber optic trees come with a rotating color wheel that creates a shimmering multicolored lighting effect.
Other modern Christmas tree gimmicks include talking or singing trees, trees that blow their own "snow" (Styrofoam beads) and inverted trees. Inverted Christmas trees were originally used in stores by merchants who wanted their customers to get a closer look at the ornaments and other decorations being sold. The idea caught on with some customers who thought that the inverted trees would allow larger presents to be placed underneath them.
The Multicultural Holiday Evergreen
Today, decorated evergreen trees are often the subject of political controversy. In recent years, as America has progressed toward greater religious tolerance and freedom, the governments of some cities and towns have declined to put up lighted and decorated evergreens because they fear that they might be in violation of the First Amendment. Other localities simply call their decorated evergreens "Holiday Trees" in order to be inclusive and respectful of their community's diversity.
Some Christians object to the idea of calling a decorated evergreen a "Holiday Tree," believing that such a generic name is marginalizing to the Christian faith. But as their history demonstrates, decorated evergreens, which pre-date Christianity by thousands of years, were never exclusively Christian. Rather, the idea of decorating an evergreen tree in December is an ancient, multicultural notion whose meaning is as diverse as the variety of Christmas/Holiday tree styles available in stores today.
In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year (falling sometime between December 20 and 23) is called the Winter solstice. When ancient peoples observed the air becoming colder, the days getting shorter and the deciduous trees, bushes, and crops dying or hibernating for the winter, many became afraid that the sun was disappearing and that the Earth would eventually freeze. They also noticed that some plants and trees remained green all year long and believed that such trees and plants had magical powers that allowed them to withstand the cold of winter.
Evergreen trees and other plants that stay green all year round have always carried a special meaning for the various peoples of the world. Long before the advent of Christianity, peoples of many ancient civilizations decorated their homes with pine, spruce, and fir trees. In many of these cultures, it was believed that evergreen boughs, hung over doors and windows, would fend off witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and diseases.
Ancient peoples who worshiped the sun as a god believed that winter came when the sun god became sick and weak. The celebration of the winter solstice marked the time when the sun god would begin to regain his strength and evergreens served as reminders of the coming spring when the land would be green again.
Not having evergreen trees, the ancient Egyptians filled their homes with green date palm leaves to celebrate that their god, Ra, who was depicted as having the sun in his crown, was beginning to recover from his illness. The palm leaves symbolized the triumph of life over death.
To mark the occasion when their farms and orchards would once again be green and fruitful, the early Romans honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, with a winter solstice feast called the Saturnalia. They decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs and lights and exchanged symbolic gifts; coins for prosperity, pastries for happiness, and lamps for lighting the journey of life.
In Great Britain, the woods priests of the ancient Celts, the Druids, used evergreens, holly and mistletoe as symbols of everlasting life during mysterious winter solstice rituals. They also placed evergreen boughs over their doors and windows to ward off evil spirits.
The Vikings of Scandinavia believed evergreens to be the special plant of their sun god, Balder. In the late Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians put evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope for the coming spring.
The modern Christmas tree, which is often mistakenly referred to as a "Pagan symbol," (the Pagans believed that cutting down whole evergreen trees was destructive to nature) evolved from all of these early superstitions, customs and traditions.
The Legendary Origins of the Christmas Tree
Many of our modern Christmas customs, songs and traditions came from Germany, such as illustrations of Santa Claus, Christmas markets, shaped gingerbreads, tinsel, glass ornaments, and of course, Christmas trees.
The tradition of decorating a tree in celebration of Christmas originated in 16th century Germany. Legend has it that it Martin Luther, the German theologian and reformer who influenced Lutheran and Protestant doctrines, was the first to decorate an evergreen tree with lighted candles.
It is said that one night while walking through the woods and composing a sermon, he was awestruck by the beauty of evergreens shimmering in the snow under the stars. When he got home, he wanted to share his story with his children, so he brought in a small evergreen tree and decorated it with candles, which he lit in honor of the birth of Christ.
Although the first actual written record of a Christmas tree in 1604 dates well after Martin Luther's death in 1564, this old story of the first Christmas tree is still widely believed and very popular.
Another Christmas tree legend, also from Germany and dating back to the 7th century, tells the story of St. Boniface, a monk from Devonshire who went to Germany to convert the German people to Christianity. It is said that when he found a group of Pagans worshiping an oak tree, he cut the oak down and a young evergreen began to grow from its roots. Taking this as a sign, St Boniface used the triangular shape of the fir tree to describe the Holy Trinity; God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. After that, the converts then revered the fir tree as God's tree, just as they had previously revered the oak.
Christmas Trees in Early American History
The Christmas tree tradition as we know it today was most likely brought to the United States by Hessian troops during the American Revolution. According to a legend, a celebration around a Christmas tree in Trenton, New Jersey helped to turn the tide for Colonial forces in 1776. Hessian mercenaries, apparently feeling homesick after seeing a candlelit evergreen tree in the snow, left their guard posts to engage in merrymaking, which gave General Washington the opportunity to attack their position and defeat them.
The first actual record of Christmas trees being on display in America dates back to the 1830s, although the Pennsylvania German settlements had put up community evergreens in winter as early as 1747. But Christmas trees were not widely accepted in America until some time later. As recently as the 1840s, many Americans still thought of decorated evergreens as Pagan symbols.
To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. They condemned many customs associated with Christmas, such as the Yule log, holly, mistletoe, Christmas carols and Christmas trees, as "heathen traditions." The Puritans believed that any joyful expression desecrated the sacred event of the birth of Christ.
William Bradford, the pilgrim's second governor, tried to stamp out what he called the "Pagan mockery" of Christmas. In 1659, a law was enacted that made any observances of December 25, other than attending church services, illegal. Christmas "frivolity" was penalized and anyone, Puritan or not, caught hanging decorations or otherwise celebrating Christmas was fined 15 cents.
This joyless Christmas tradition of solemnity continued into the 19th century. Until 1870, Boston schools remained open on Christmas Day and students who stayed home could be expelled. As recently as 1851, Pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland, Ohio nearly lost his job when he decorated a Christmas tree in his church and his parishioners condemned it as a "pagan practice."
The Modern American Christmas Tree
Christmas trees were first introduced in England by King George III's German Queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and by German merchants who lived in England. A few British families had Christmas trees but they were likely influenced by their German neighbors rather than the Royal Court. At the time, the German Monarchy was unpopular with the British public, so the Royal Court did not copy the Christmas tree, which is why they did not become widely fashionable in Britain.
In 1846, The Illustrated London News carried a sketch of Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Unlike the previous Royal family, Queen Victoria was very popular with her subjects and whatever the trendsetting Royals did at Court quickly became stylish in Britain as well as in the fashion-conscious cliques of Eastern American society.
By the 1890s, the popularity of Christmas trees was on the rise around America. Whereas the Europeans used small trees, the Americans preferred their Christmas trees tall enough to reach the ceiling. Most decorations were homemade. Young women spent hours quilling stars and snowflakes and sewing little pouches to hold secret gifts and treats, such as sugared almonds. They strung garlands with brightly dyed popcorn, interspersed with with nuts and berries. Wooden hoops were used to hold candles until the advent of electricity, which made it possible for Christmas trees to be lit continuously -- and far more safely.
Silver tinsel, which tarnished easily, was invented in 1878. By the 1920s, however, it was made from lead because lead was cheaper and did not tarnish. Due to the danger of lead poisoning to children, lead tinsel was banned in the 1960s. Today's tinsel is made exclusively from plastic.
In 1851, when a Catskill farmer named Mark Carr took two ox sleds filled with evergreen trees to New York City and promptly sold them all, the Christmas tree market was born. In 1890, F.W. Woolworth brought glass Christmas tree ornaments from Germany to the United States. The Christmas tree was beginning to catch on.
Christmas trees began appearing in town squares across the nation and having a Christmas tree in the home would soon become an American tradition. In the year 1900, one in five American homes had a Christmas tree. By the year 1920, they had become nearly universal.
President Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) had the first Christmas tree in the White House in the 1850's. The National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn was started by President Calvin Coolidge (1885-1933) in 1923.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, nurseries were unable to sell evergreen trees for landscaping, so they cut them for Christmas trees. Because they were more symmetrical than trees growing in the wild, cultivated trees became preferred and the impromptu Christmas tree farms of the depression-era eventually became full-fledged businesses.
Artificial Christmas trees were first marketed in 1885 when a thirty-three limb tree, priced at 50 cents, could be ordered from Sears, Roebuck and Company. They were produced by brush manufacturers that employed the same techniques used in making brushes. Bristles of animal hair or plastic were dyed pine-green and inserted between twisted wires to form branches in graduated sizes, each with a color-coded tag at the base. The customer assembled the tree by inserting the color-coded branches into a wooden pole that acted as the trunk.
To prevent deforestation, tabletop feather trees made of dyed goose feathers originated in Germany in the 19th century. The Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog sold the first feather trees in America in 1913.
Artificial trees are very popular in the United States where synthetic Christmas trees can be found in 70% of homes. They are considered more convenient and hygienic (especially for those with allergies), and if they are used a number of times, they are less expensive over the long term. In most of Europe, however, artificial trees are considered tacky.
In the 1950s and 60s, metallic trees with all the same shape and color ornaments became the rage. The trees were made of aluminum-coated paper, which posed a fire hazard when Christmas lights were placed directly on them, so they were instead lit by a spotlight with a motorized color wheel in front of it.
The late 1970s saw a return to classic Victorian nostalgia, which was a refreshing change from the "space age" Christmas trees of the previous decades. Green trees were once again in demand and manufacturers created replicas of antique-style German glass ornaments, real silver tinsel and pressed foil decorations.
Today's indoor artificial trees are often sold pre-strung with lights, which not only provide a consistent display of color and light, but also allow people to avoid the most unpleasant yearly task of untangling Christmas lights. Some pre-lit trees contain fiber optics, which are lighted by a single lamp at the base. Most fiber optic trees come with a rotating color wheel that creates a shimmering multicolored lighting effect.
Other modern Christmas tree gimmicks include talking or singing trees, trees that blow their own "snow" (Styrofoam beads) and inverted trees. Inverted Christmas trees were originally used in stores by merchants who wanted their customers to get a closer look at the ornaments and other decorations being sold. The idea caught on with some customers who thought that the inverted trees would allow larger presents to be placed underneath them.
The Multicultural Holiday Evergreen
Today, decorated evergreen trees are often the subject of political controversy. In recent years, as America has progressed toward greater religious tolerance and freedom, the governments of some cities and towns have declined to put up lighted and decorated evergreens because they fear that they might be in violation of the First Amendment. Other localities simply call their decorated evergreens "Holiday Trees" in order to be inclusive and respectful of their community's diversity.
Some Christians object to the idea of calling a decorated evergreen a "Holiday Tree," believing that such a generic name is marginalizing to the Christian faith. But as their history demonstrates, decorated evergreens, which pre-date Christianity by thousands of years, were never exclusively Christian. Rather, the idea of decorating an evergreen tree in December is an ancient, multicultural notion whose meaning is as diverse as the variety of Christmas/Holiday tree styles available in stores today.
Why I Love the ACLU in Spite of its Warts -- With Hugs and Kisses to the NRA
Principles are easy to maintain when we feel safe and secure, but they mean nothing when we cast them aside the moment some aspect of them makes us uncomfortable.
The ACLU is often misunderstood because of the odd bedfellows it has kept. When some people learn how the ACLU has stood up for the rights of NAMBLA and Neo-Nazis, they just don't get it. How could an organization that claims to be "our nation's guardian of liberty" champion for such horrible people? Why should anyone even care about the civil rights of pedophiles and hatemongers? Should people like that even be entitled to civil rights?
Some people criticize the ACLU's neutral stance with regard to our Second Amendment. They say that since the ACLU aims to conserve America's original civic values, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that they should protect and defend all of them.
While that position is somewhat difficult to defend in principle, it makes sense in actual practice because there exists a rather large and powerful organization that is devoted to the protection and defense of our Second Amendment rights. The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) are "committed to preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
Since the NRA, which has 10 times as many members (4 million) as the ACLU (400,000), exclusively defends our right to keep and bear arms, there is no need for the ACLU to take on that fight, too. That there could be a tacit agreement between those two organizations is not beyond the pale of reasonable speculation -- not only within the realm of the loathsome practice of partisanship, but as a matter of pragmatism as well.
I am a card-carrying member of both the ACLU and the NRA.
When the ACLU takes on unpopular and controversial causes, the limits of our American principles are tested and some people simply do not have the stomach for those tests because they are, quite understandably, afraid of the possible negative effects that "too much" freedom -- as if there is such a thing -- might have upon the bestial side of our (and perhaps their own) human nature.
But America is called the "land of the free and the home of the brave" because living in freedom requires an awesome amount of courage. We must have the fortitude to resist any temptation to curtail civil liberties because freedom, by its very definition, cannot be arbitrarily limited or rationalized away for the purpose of expediency or convenience.
Much to the consternation of civil authoritarians, the ACLU has, on many occasions, successfully argued that even the most vile and disgusting barely-human beings are entitled to due process and equal protection under the law, and that our First Amendment protects all speech1 -- not just popular speech.
The recognition of NAMBLA's and the Neo-Nazis' rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly is a crucial test precisely because their respective messages are so repulsive. If the rights of the likes of NAMBLA and the Ne0-Nazis can be secured, recognized, guaranteed and protected, then we can rest assured that the forces of tyranny and oppression have been kept in check.
However, we must never falter when it comes to the protection and defense of our civil liberties, even when they are perceived as getting in the way of fighting our worst fears. No exceptions can be made when it comes to our civil and human rights because the only crimes to which a "zero tolerance" policy can be rationally and logically applied are tyranny and oppression.
There can be no prisoners taken in the fight against tyranny and oppression for they are the most heinous crimes of all, often committed by perpetrators whose reactionary intentions seem benevolent, noble and even necessary for the common good. Well-intentioned tyrants and oppressors play upon our worst fears and tempt us with a false sense of security that will supposedly protect us from the specter of lesser crimes.
The fights against child molestation and bigotry are indeed noble causes, but we must never forget that freedom is noblest cause of all. Sacrifices must be made for the cause of freedom and the most important sacrifice we make toward that cause is the lack of personal comfort that appears to come from the false sense of security that tyranny provides for the cowardly.
The ACLU is on the cutting edge of testing the limits of our Constitution and Bill of Rights and discovering that there really aren't many left. In the wake of the historic recognitions of our rights to privacy2, the expansion of freedom, as it was laid out by our Founders a little over 2 centuries ago, is becoming more important than quelling the anxieties of vainglorious cowards who are quite willing to sacrifice freedom for all of us just to fill their own selfish need for solace.
The ACLU is often misunderstood because of the odd bedfellows it has kept. When some people learn how the ACLU has stood up for the rights of NAMBLA and Neo-Nazis, they just don't get it. How could an organization that claims to be "our nation's guardian of liberty" champion for such horrible people? Why should anyone even care about the civil rights of pedophiles and hatemongers? Should people like that even be entitled to civil rights?
The ACLU and our "1st Freedom"
Some people criticize the ACLU's neutral stance with regard to our Second Amendment. They say that since the ACLU aims to conserve America's original civic values, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that they should protect and defend all of them.
While that position is somewhat difficult to defend in principle, it makes sense in actual practice because there exists a rather large and powerful organization that is devoted to the protection and defense of our Second Amendment rights. The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) are "committed to preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
Since the NRA, which has 10 times as many members (4 million) as the ACLU (400,000), exclusively defends our right to keep and bear arms, there is no need for the ACLU to take on that fight, too. That there could be a tacit agreement between those two organizations is not beyond the pale of reasonable speculation -- not only within the realm of the loathsome practice of partisanship, but as a matter of pragmatism as well.
I am a card-carrying member of both the ACLU and the NRA.
When the ACLU takes on unpopular and controversial causes, the limits of our American principles are tested and some people simply do not have the stomach for those tests because they are, quite understandably, afraid of the possible negative effects that "too much" freedom -- as if there is such a thing -- might have upon the bestial side of our (and perhaps their own) human nature.
But America is called the "land of the free and the home of the brave" because living in freedom requires an awesome amount of courage. We must have the fortitude to resist any temptation to curtail civil liberties because freedom, by its very definition, cannot be arbitrarily limited or rationalized away for the purpose of expediency or convenience.
Much to the consternation of civil authoritarians, the ACLU has, on many occasions, successfully argued that even the most vile and disgusting barely-human beings are entitled to due process and equal protection under the law, and that our First Amendment protects all speech1 -- not just popular speech.
The recognition of NAMBLA's and the Neo-Nazis' rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly is a crucial test precisely because their respective messages are so repulsive. If the rights of the likes of NAMBLA and the Ne0-Nazis can be secured, recognized, guaranteed and protected, then we can rest assured that the forces of tyranny and oppression have been kept in check.
However, we must never falter when it comes to the protection and defense of our civil liberties, even when they are perceived as getting in the way of fighting our worst fears. No exceptions can be made when it comes to our civil and human rights because the only crimes to which a "zero tolerance" policy can be rationally and logically applied are tyranny and oppression.
There can be no prisoners taken in the fight against tyranny and oppression for they are the most heinous crimes of all, often committed by perpetrators whose reactionary intentions seem benevolent, noble and even necessary for the common good. Well-intentioned tyrants and oppressors play upon our worst fears and tempt us with a false sense of security that will supposedly protect us from the specter of lesser crimes.
The fights against child molestation and bigotry are indeed noble causes, but we must never forget that freedom is noblest cause of all. Sacrifices must be made for the cause of freedom and the most important sacrifice we make toward that cause is the lack of personal comfort that appears to come from the false sense of security that tyranny provides for the cowardly.
The ACLU is on the cutting edge of testing the limits of our Constitution and Bill of Rights and discovering that there really aren't many left. In the wake of the historic recognitions of our rights to privacy2, the expansion of freedom, as it was laid out by our Founders a little over 2 centuries ago, is becoming more important than quelling the anxieties of vainglorious cowards who are quite willing to sacrifice freedom for all of us just to fill their own selfish need for solace.
1 Except for the sort of speech that causes civil unrest that could lead to injury, such as the ubiquitous example of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
2 Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
Almost forgot the wink to Stop The ACLU
2 Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
Almost forgot the wink to Stop The ACLU
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Marc Emery: Drug Kingpin or Political Prisoner?
In an August 5, 2005, article for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, columnist Joel Connely quoted D.E.A. administrator Karen Tandy on the arrest of Canadian marijuana activist Marc Emery:
"Today's arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."
But according to US attorney Todd Greenberg, this arrest was not supposed to about Mr. Emery's politics, "The focus of this case is on the drug trafficking of Marc Emery. It is not about his political activities, nor his campaigns for office. Nor is it focused on his magazine."
Mr. Emery has been selling marijuana seeds over the Internet since 1994. For over a decade Emery Seeds has operated out in the open, in the full view of the Canadian authorities and was considered to be the largest marijuana seed distributor in the world.
Mr. Emery is also a well known political activist in the fight against marijuana prohibition. The media calls him "The Prince of Pot." He is the leader of the BC Marijuana Party, the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the host of The Prince of Pot on POT-TV, which he also owns.
According to Special Agent in Charge Rodney G. Benson of the D.E.A., “The tentacles of the Mark Emery criminal enterprise reached out across North America to include all 50 United States and Canada,” he said in a July 29, 2005 D.E.A. news release, “Mr. Emery utilized the Internet to sell his marijuana seeds throughout this country to customers no matter their age. He directed his business with efficiency, was motivated by greed, and will now be prosecuted for this illegal activity.”
Selling pot seeds is not considered to be an "arrestable" offense in Canada.
At a news conference held after Mr. Emery was granted bail, Mr. Emery's lawyer, John Conroy said, "For nine years he's been doing this quite openly. They've known about it, the local authorities haven't done anything about it." Mr Conroy also said that Mr. Emery has long had tacit permission from Canadian authorities to sell seeds, adding that even Health Canada has told people who have been prescribed medical marijuana to buy seeds on the Internet.
The US Marijuana Party has called for the Resignation of D.E.A. Administrator Karen Tandy. Loretta Nall, President of the U.S. Marijuana Party writes in an August 5, 2005 blog entry , "Tandy needs to clarify her remarks and state publicly that the DEA is not targeting protected political activity. If she cannot or will not do that, she should resign. Targeting political opponents is not Tandy's job."
Ms. Nall's article opens with the words, "Please distribute far and wide."
I now pass this news along in the blogosphere, hoping that this story will spread far and wide.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Protecting and Defending Marriage in the 21st Century
Margaret Romao Toigo
Some gay and lesbian people seem to feel that their somewhat ambiguous social and cultural status requires them to tread lightly, unpresumptuously defending the validity of their families and values while humbly requesting the recognition of their basic human and civil rights. And this attitude is quite understandable in members of an oppressed minority that has been legally marginalized, demonized by political propaganda and religious dogma and victimized by hateful people who think that their anti-homosexual prejudices are justified by religious and cultural traditions. However, the people who should be on the defensive are those who support DOMAs and other oppressive policies like the Federal Marriage Amendment, for the tenability of their collective positions rests solely upon the vast majority's uneasiness with regard to homosexuality -- either as it pertains to others or to its own tendencies and temptations.
Advocates of gay rights who are also members of the recognized majority of heterosexuals feel no such obligation to exercise political humility, which leaves us free to go on the offensive and demand that same-sex marriage be recognized as a civil and human right. And the case in favor of those demands is an excellent one filled with pragmatic arguments that are guaranteed to leave the bigoted and homophobic self-described "protectors" and "defenders" of marriage positively speechless -- or at least flailing about, muttering passages from The Book of Leviticus as they desperately rummage through their well-worn talking points playbook of red herrings, straw men and slippery slopes in vain attempts to re-gain the upper hand they never really had, save for the vast majority's discomfort with regard to the natural variations of human sexuality.
However, going on the offensive and making demands for human and civil rights that should already be recognized in a free and secular society does not address how the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is imperative to defending its meaningfulness as a social institution and how the redefinition of marriage is essential to protecting it from the unavoidable implications of changing cultural mores with regard to the significance of gender in contemporary marriage and society.
Family Values
To treat marriage as if it is nothing more than a license for two people to have sex and reproduce (as if one is required in the first place) diminishes the idea that loving commitment, trust, loyalty, mutual respect and cooperation are the basic moral values that are essential to maintaining successful marriages and building strong families. If we keep prioritizing the basic biological function of procreation as a value in marriage, we will eventually lose sight of how the moral values commitment, trust, loyalty, mutual respect and cooperation help married couples and their children to better deal with the challenges of family life in the modern world.
Defining families according to a conventional model of demographic composition is especially cynical in these days when families are perceived by so many as being in a state of decay. The suggestion that the foundations of successful marriages and strong families are biological connections and specific configurations of people demeans the true purpose of families and diminishes the value of the bonds of love, commitment, trust and loyalty that are the most significant factors needed to keep families stable and healthy. The recognition of a diversity of family configurations will strengthen these worthwhile family values because moral emphasis of marriage will shift from a clinical demographic prescription to a model in which people make serious commitments to work toward meaningful and purposeful relationships.
The notion that children are better off being raised in a home with a mother and a father (or the equivalent) distracts us from the fact that biology and demographics have never been guaranteed to provide a good and loving home for children. Effective childrearing requires a moral character that is not relevant to genetics or statistical designs. Children learn about how a good marriage works by seeing two loving people treating one another with consideration and respect and doing their level best to communicate and cooperate with one another (especially as this pertains to productive conflict resolution), not by merely observing an example of traditional gender identification within a specific demography.
When family composition and gender roles are seen as a priority over the coping skills that are conducive to productive human interactions and relationships there is a danger that children will get the mistaken impression that the foundations of successful marriages and strong families are simple and automatic as long as the demographic and biological requirements are in place, which devalues the importance of the moral character they must develop in order to someday have successful marriages and strong families of their own.
The "Culture War" is a Bad Influence upon our Children
We should all be worried about how the children will be affected by the adults battling with one another over sexual and gender issues rather than getting together on the practical issues in order to help make a better world for children and families.
The combative climate of a "culture war" over the recognition of same-sex marriage is not only politically divisive but also diverts attention away from the practical problems and goals of families in today's society. The controversies surrounding family demographics, gender roles and sexual orientation keep traditional and non-traditional families from the realizing that they have more commonalities than differences when it comes to the challenges and objectives of people who hope to have successful marriages and strong families in these uncertain times.
Issues such as family finances, insurance, taxes and parents' work schedules affect all families, despite their individual configurations. And all good parents, notwithstanding their marital status or other personal circumstances, are concerned about their children's safety and health care and how extra-curricular activities, youth sports and the entertainment industry might negatively or positively affect their children. There are over 1000 federal and state laws regarding the protections, benefits, responsibilities and obligations of marriage and all manner of families should be working together to ensure that our state and federal marriage legislation protects the basic, pragmatic interests of families and children.
Averting the Grave Threats to Marriage in 21st Century Society
In these tumultuous days of casual sexual relationships, no-fault and "quickie" divorces and cavalier attitudes toward marital fidelity, the institution of marriage is under siege from the continuing shifts in social and cultural mores of the last half-century. As a result, these changes in our modern society could cause marriage to become obsolete, which is a grave threat to the basic foundations of society and civilization itself.
Since there has never been a practical way to turn back the tide of social change, we must now reinvent marriage to preserve its viability as an institution that brings people together in love, commitment, loyalty, trust, mutual respect and cooperation to form the essential building blocks of civilized society known as families. In order to strengthen the social institutions of marriage and family, we must expand their definitions to include more people so that we can prevent the moral values that make successful marriages and strong families from being lost and forgotten in the midst of the pointless battles of a senseless culture war over the relatively trivial issues of sexual orientation and gender identification.
The gender roles and sexual preferences of loving people who possess the moral values and courage to actually want to make a real commitment in these confusing days of moral turbulence should be the least of our worries. In fact, such people -- be they gay or straight -- should be applauded for their fortitude and encouraged in their committed and loving relationships no matter the conventionality of the demographic configuration they believe will be most conducive to the success of their marriages and the strength of their families.
Tales of the Coming Media Powershift
Margaret Romao Toigo
There is something in the virtual air and the winds of change seem to be blowing harder out of that growing division of cyberspace known as the blogosphere. I am, of course, referring to the MSM (mainstream media) scandal known as "Easongate" (will that "-gate" suffix ever be excised from the national vocabulary?), which has lead to the resignation of CNN chief news executive, Eason Jordan, who fell victim to not only his own misstatements but also to what has come to be known as either a blogswarm or a blogstorm (there is some dispute as the font of blogmemes is overflowing these days), after he said, during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been "targeted."
Although Mr. Jordan quickly backed away from his remarks, saying that he had misspoken and that he never believed that coalition troops in Iraq had targeted jounalists, his clarifications came too late to prevent the controversey. Blogger Rony Abovitz was in attendance at the January 27, 2005 World Economic Forum panel discussion entitled, "Will Democracy Survive the News?" when Mr. Jordan leveled his accusations, "Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park." Mr. Abovitz reported in a blog entry dated January 28, 2005, "Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real 'sh--storm.' What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military."
Bloggers Spring into Action
The events that followed were nothing short of amazing. A few bloggers picked up on Mr. Abovitz's story and refused to let it die, which got the attention of hundreds of other bloggers who began pounding away at their keyboards. Soon after, Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail created the group blog Easongate to collect information related to Mr. Jordan's statements, provide analysis of the developing story, advocate that CNN take disciplinary action against Mr. Jordan, offer an online petition for the public to express its displeasure and gather information about CNN's advertising clients. N.Z. Bear of The Truth Laid Bear also pitched in with an Easongate tracker. All of this ultimately lead to Mr. Jordan's resignation from CNN after 23 years at the network, "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq." Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter to collegues.
Was Easongate another "Rathergate" (what is so appealing about that -gate meme)? On the surface, it might appear as such because this was indeed another case of bloggers causing enough of a stir in cyberspace to get the attention of the MSM. However, there are some troubling dissimilarities. Rathergate was a scandal that involved journalists using forged documents as supporting "evidence" in a television newsmagazine story which was broadcast over the public airwaves -- a grave violation of journalistic ethics and public trust. Contrast that with the fact that Mr. Jordan did not fabricate proof and admitted that he didn't have any. While it is clearly unethical to make accusations without proof, that same lack of evidence relegates such accusations to the far less credible status of conjecture. It is also important to note that Mr. Jordan did not broadcast his specualtions over the public airwaves and that there is currently no definitive account of what Mr. Jordan said at the World Economic Forum that has been made public, including the videotape of the forum's off-the-record session. This is significant not because it calls into question what Mr. Jordan might have said or not said, but because whatever he said was clearly not intended as a news report produced for mass public consumption.
Was Easongate "Blog Storm Troopers or Pack Journalism at its Best," as Jay Rosen of PressThink asks in his February 10, 2005 article? That seems to depend upon the points-of-view of the people making those evaluations. Steve Lovelady, managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily emailed Jay Rosen, "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail. (Where is Jimmy Stewart when we need him ?) This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only -- caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back. Like Gulliver, he was consumed by Lilliputians." On the other hand, Hugh Hewitt wrote, in a February 11, 2005 blog entry, on HughHewitt.com, "The trouble was the cover-up --which continues-- and the pattern of innuendo and reckless charges which Eason Jordan and CNN had laid down vis-a-vis the military, especially the charge Jordan made about the American military torturing journalists from last fall. The press is now fully alerted to the story. Perhaps they will ask the still relevant tough questions of Jordan and CNN."
Has the blogosphere imposed accountability on the mainstream media, as "Captain Ed" of Captain's Quarters submitted in his congratulatory post-Eason-resignation article entitled, "The Moral Of Eason's Fables?" Perhaps, to some extent, it has. In a February 12, 2005 blog entry called, "The End of Honest Mistakes?" Garrett Graff of FishbowlDC writes, "We now (sic) entering an age where journalists are so closely scrutinized by thousands of people with almost limitless time and limitless research power that the slightest misstep can end a distinguished career."
But others are not so certain. Jim Geraghty of National Review Online wrote in his February 11, 2005 blog entry, "A Shocking, Sudden End to Eason Jordan Story," "I would have preferred the tape come out, and that the public's reaction to what Jordan said and didn't say determine just what consequences, if any, he deserved. But he did not escape accountability, which is what I was expecting the past couple days. And we learned that a lot of people in major media institutions thought this was a tempest in a teacup, unworthy of even a paragraph of coverage." And Jude Nagurney Camwell of The American Street offered this assesment, "The �Right-wing mouth machine� would like us all to think that Eason Jordan was 'bad' and 'unAmerican' for saying what he said. CNN has been complicit by their reticence to talk about tough issues. They wound up to be the biggest loser. They lost Eason Jordan. Eason was guilty before being proven innocent by no other process except one: the blog-trial."
"Gannongate"
Of course, any discussion of partisan conspiracies must also include a reference to "Gannongate" (again with the -gate thing). James Dale Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, is the reporter who became the target of online scrutiny by a group of bloggers who were suspicious of the "softball" questions he asked at White House press conferences.
Further investigation revealed Mr. Gannon's (Guckert's) real name and the address where his Internet domain was registered. Also discovered was that the domain names, hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescort.com, and militaryescortm4m.com (which are either inactive or require a password to access), web sites apparently devoted to gay pornography, were registered through Mr. Guckert's domain. Soon after these allegations and revelations came to the light of the blogosphere and subsequently the MSM, Mr. Gannon abruptly quit TalonNews.com, a conservative web site that has published articles referring to ''the homosexual agenda."
Has the blogosphere changed the shape of "reporting," setting a precedent for anyone, informed or not, to publish for the world, as Abigail Tucker and Stephen Kiehl wrote in a February 10, 2005 Baltimore Sun article? Apparently, the answer to that question depends upon the political leanings of both the subject of the controversey and those investigating it.
In his February 10, 2005 column entitled "The Destruction of Jeff Gannon," Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media writes, "Left-wing bloggers have now made a name for themselves, and it is not pretty. They have taken the scalp of an on-line conservative journalist by the name of Jeff Gannon, who was virtually unknown until about three weeks ago. His crimes were that he was too pro-Republican, attended White House briefings, and asked questions unfair to Democrats." However, Meteor Blades writes in a February 12, 2005 DailyKOS diary entry called "Of muckrakers, blograkers, and future investigations," "As with so much in the blogworld, the investigation by Daily Kos Diarists and Media Matters that just popped Mr. Guckert out of his propaganda post as Karl Rove's pull-string doll arose and evolved and came to spectacular fruition at warp speed."
An Assessment
In order to make a "fair and balanced" assessment of how bloggers figured into these controversies, it is important to evaluate each example without consideration for partisanship, even if the motivations of many of the parties involved appear to be partisan. If political bias is allowed to color our perceptions of the seekers of truth and justice, then our perceptions of truth and justice will be likewise colored in the same fashion, which leaves all of us -- regardless of politics -- lost and confused about where to look for truth and justice.
There is still some specualtion about what Mr. Jordan actually said at the World Economic Forum as no tapes or transcripts have been made public. However, there were plenty of eyewitnesses -- including U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) and U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) -- to corroborate the general context of Mr. Jordan's assertions with regard to the deaths of journalists covering the war in Iraq. And they can't all have been blinded by partisanship.
Some might call Easongate a case of partisans smelling enemy blood in the water, and to some extent that appears to have been one of the motivating factors which caused that group of bloggers to stay on the story until they could affect what they perceived to be their delivery of truth and justice (we will never be certain of how hard those bloggers might have looked for evidence that Mr. Jordan was telling the truth). However, the ethical implications of making accusations without proof have nothing to do with partisanship and everything to do with truth and justice.
Mr. Jordan's allegations vis-a-vis U.S. and coalition troops targeting journalists were quite serious and it was irresponsible for him to make them without proof because it cost him not only his own personal credibility, but some of CNN's as well. Although Mr. Jordan has resigned from CNN, his former collegues and other journalists will have to endure even more scrutiny, especially when they file reports about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of journalists killed while covering Iraq.
The efforts of the bloggers covering Easongate were truly impressive. They were well-organized and very efficient in their tracking of the developing story and they served the truth with effective reporting. But I am failing to understand how justice was served because while Easongate was ignited by Mr. Jordan's submission of allegations without proof, it was the bloggers' coverage of Easongate that provided the fuel to keep the controversey going and growing. And to what end? Mr. Jordan resigned from CNN and, with his experience and expertise, will likely find another job soon (and probably write a book too). Meanwhile, the Easongate bloggers took the credit for that development, putting themselves into the roles of central characters in the story, which makes that part of the Easongate saga seem more like a tale of vigilantism than one of justice served.
The blogger coverage of Gannongate appears to have fallen victim to partisan spin that spun out of control. In their zeal to discredit Mr. Guckert/Gannon, the bloggers covering him got caught up in a salacious sidestory and lost sight of the most important issue which was suspicion that the White House might be engaging in the manipulation of the press -- a most grave breech of our founding principles, if it is true -- not that Mr. Guckert/Gannon used a pseudonym (Gannon does roll off the tongue easier than Guckert) or registered domains for gay pornography sites after having written anti-gay articles.
Certainly, the charge of hypocrisy is quite serious, but it really only affects Mr. Guckert/Gannon's credibility and conscience and Mr. Guckert/Gannon will likely disappear into oblivion (perhaps to write a book about his experiences) while the question of possible White House manipulation of the press -- which could affect all of us -- remains unanswered due to an apparent lack of interest. Meanwhile, if the allegations against the White House are true, there are likely dozens of other James Guckerts/Jeff Gannons lining up to take his place right now and bloggers and other jounalists who are still interested in that story will have to start gathering data and examining press conference transcripts all over again.
The Future
These events could portend an explosive upheaval of the mainstream media and journalism as we know it and only time will tell if the MSM, keenly aware of how closely they are being monitored by the blogosphere, will be inspired to produce more focused and thorough news coverage or be intimidated into narrowing their coverage in order to reduce the risk of controversey. Blogs could possibly become biggest thing to happen to journalism since the invention of television, but only if we bloggers hold ourselves up to the same standards of credibility and accountability that we currently expect of the MSM, which means that we must do our level best to remain unbiased and to report the facts fairly and accurately -- even if we do not care for what they might reveal or the controversies they may cause -- and reserve the partisanship for op/ed articles.
With the convergence of communications technologies causing the media sands to shift inside and outside of cyberspace, the awsome power of the blogosphere has the potential to change the way we view the news and the world, for better or worse. We can build bridges and communities and through cooperation become more effective at seeking truth and justice or we can isolate ourselves into cynical partisan clusters in which we preach to our own little choirs and trash anyone and anything we do not like without ever being challeged by opposing viewpoints. The choice is ours.
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