Archives for October 2005

America, "home of the free," actively destroys more of its citizens’ lives, per capita, through imprisonment, than any other country in the world. It puts people in jail at a higher rate than even communist China.

Based on the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Drug War Chronicle estimates
that more than 530,000 people were behind bars for drug offenses in the
U.S. at the end of last year. Drug offenders accounted for about 25
percent of jail inmates, 21 percent of state prison inmates, and 55
percent of federal prison inmates. The total number of people behind
bars was about 2.3 million, an all-time record, giving the U.S. an
incarceration rate of 724 per 100,000–the highest in the world,
according to the Chronicle, which says we even beat out China this time.

If you have any fondness for the government of this country; federal, state, or local, then you’re a fucking moron. I’m serious. Take it to heart; quote me.

…always protect their turf and income stream.

Well, given no choice for actual freedom, I’ll take a judicial conservative any day over a commie activist. I’ll curse them for their damnable meddling in the private consensual affairs of adults; I’ll poke fun of their primitive and childish beliefs in fairy tales; and I’ll pray for their early and painful deaths when they conflate their religious moral values and American culture (all conservatives deserve 50 lashes in the public square for that one). But, I’ll take them over the utterly contemptible evil represented by the communist / democrat party any day.

Look, as regards politicians, I really hate them all: top-to-bottom and wall-to-wall, as I like to say. But, many conservatives truly hold values of which even they don’t grasp the fundamental magnitude. They are so woefully misguided, mixing their silly religious beliefs with objective ethical considerations — too ignorant to understand that the strength of their values comes not from unverifiable, superstitious assertions, but from the observable, factual, objective nature of man and his inviolable requirements for living a human life.

But I can’t have everything, so I take what I can get, sometimes.

Michelle Malkin is probably the best source for running commentary from around the net and assemblage of "important" views on all matters "Supreme."

Update: Frequent commenter Kyle Bennett has a very optimistic take on all of this. I’m not so optimistic, but it was pleasant engaging the fantasy for a while.

This just out, in email:

Me? I just can’t and have never been able to muster any energy for this event. From day one, over two years ago. Not a single word on my blog about it, ever.

My view? This is a bit different than Martha Stewart in that she was a private citizen just trying to save her own ass; and what do you expect anyone to do when prosecutors come knocking? It’s like asking someone what they’d do if, you know, both children fell in a swift river and you can only save one, etc., etc..

Libby is near the top of the top. It’s hardball, there. Those who choose that sort of thing for their lives know and understand that it’s fast, furious, and unforgiving.

He knew the stakes, took his chances, and came up short.

I got no tears.

That said, I just have a problem with this chickenshit way of prosecutorily leaning hard on someone until you can catch ’em in a lie, and then gettin’ ’em for that — and not the "crime" you were investigating in the first place.

My book? There’s a big difference between crime (i.e., doing unjustifiable harm to people), and lying about crime.

Here’s how it is, objectively: should someone go to prison for lying to me? To you? If your answer is no, then there is not a moral justification in the world for imprisoning someone for lying to the government. Do you grasp all the implications of that?

From John Stossel’s weekly email forwarded by my dad:

By the way, I’m writing another book. It will be called "Myths." Do you have any
myths you want me to research and write about?

[email protected]

And dad’s follow-up email:

Hey, why don’t you come up with some myth’s for
J.S.’s new book, Myths.

Hey, it’s not a bad idea, though judging from Stossel’s first book, there’s probably nothing I can come up with in the political / philosophical sphere that he doesn’t already know about. Besides, the myths that most concern me are the most fundamental ones, i.e., those that the logic of the current macro human culture all reduce to.

For example, isn’t it like 95%+ people who believe in a God of some sort? That being the case, it seems to me rather futile to chase around a whole lot of derivative myths (and that emphasized word has implications). The problem isn’t the facts of the matter as much as it is mythology, as such.

The core problem and issue is that the "best" mythology is pernicious. That is, it’s viral, meaning: it contains within itself all the properties necessary to defend and propagate itself. Forgive my anthropomorphizing, but I hope you get the point.

And the point — the point that I try to make each and every day — is that human freedom is about humanity — man qua man. And, there is nothing in humanity, in and of itself, that requires any sort of external authority, be it the state, the church, your favorite political party, or any or those organizations that send you mailers predicting disaster in our times and begging donations. To accept any such authority is to compromise your ability to discern reality as it really is, no matter your innate cleverness (cleverness only arbitrates winners and losers). Any compromise in that ability, your natural ability, leads to diminished lives — if not outright destruction.

Much as he might actually sympathize, I doubt John could find much use in what I have to say about myth. He does, after all, have to sell his book.