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Thread 3635

Thread ID: 3635 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2002-11-21

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Happy Hacker [OP]

2002-11-21 18:59 | User Profile

Townhall.com is a good place to find conservative columns. But, this column has to be one of the most twisted columns I've ever seen there: [url=http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20021120.shtml]http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgo...g20021120.shtml[/url]

"Americans enjoy more freedom today than ever ... When I say this to conservatives and liberals alike, they tend to roll their eyes or pound the table, but it's true. First, there's the obvious stuff. Women and blacks, to name two obvious examples, are no longer the subject of legal discrimination in any meaningful sense."

There are about three things wrong with that. First, anti-discrimination laws are anti-freedom because they're the government telling us how we can and cannot use our property. Notice how Goldberg turns enslavement into freedom. Second, anti-discrimination laws do not prohibit discrimination but are used to force discrimination against "non-minorities." Third, anti-discrimination laws are beginning to go well beyond the concerns that they were created for. Anti-discrimination laws are putting people in jail for thinking the wrong thoughts, even when those thoughts are about the behavior of others on your own property. Indeed, anti-discrimination laws as part of multi-culturalism has become one of the biggest anti-freedom forces in this country.

"Technology makes it possible for Americans to do what they please, when they please, and how they please to an extent never before seen. The birth control..." Notice how Goldberg redefines freedom not as being unrestrained by the government but freedom is technological ability. Anyways, technology makes it easier for the feds to monitor us. A hundred years ago the feds knew essentually nothing about Joe Average... now they know a lot and in short time they'll know more about you than you do. To know you is to control you.

Americans are less free than ever. People are going to jail or facing court judgements for mere words/beliefs. Government regulators are telling us how to run our business and live our lives. The government forces us to work for them for nearly half the year before we can work for ourselves. Our culture and traditions are forcefully being destroyed so that we won't offend illegal aliens or some other group. The best I can tell is that this totalitarian Jew, Jonah Goldberg, is trying to do his part to get us to drop our resistance to being enslaved. Why is his leftist column hosted by the conservative Townhall?

Texas Dissident

2002-11-22 08:31 | User Profile

[url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein6.html]Jonah Goldberg's View of Freedom[/url]

by Marcus Epstein

Jonah Goldberg, now relieved from his editorial duties at National Review Online, has gone further over the edge into absurdity in his latest syndicated column. Goldberg makes the incomprehensible assertion that "Americans enjoy more freedom today than ever."

One of the great examples of our new freedom is that women and blacks "are no longer the subject of legal discrimination." Any real libertarian or conservative would tell you that there is no such thing as "freedom from discrimination." As Albert Jay Nock said, "freedom either is or isn’t," and the massive bureaucracy created to protect women, homosexuals, minorities, and various other designated victim groups clearly isn’t freedom. Sure, blacks may have the freedom to work in a job that an employer does not want to give them. But in terms of real freedom, that is freedom grounded in private property rights, civil rights laws have greatly eroded liberty in this country. Businessmen are deprived of the freedom to hire or serve who they wish. Even if they are not racist, with dozens of court cases changing what discrimination and equal opportunity really mean, anyone can end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit or injunction.

Goldberg goes on to say that we now enjoy more freedom of speech than ever. To prove this, he shows that now we are even arguing whether child pornography is protected by the First Amendment. Unfortunately, this simply shows how the courts get indignant over issues like child porn, while ignoring much more serious violations of our freedom. Joe Sobran notes that Alan Dershowitz, who supports National ID cards and torturing suspected terrorists, is called a civil libertarian because he defends pornographers. In reality, freedom of speech is not protected for many in this country. Take the case of Lonny Rae who was arrested for "malicious harassment" for using politically incorrect words when confronting a man who assaulted his wife. Another example is Janice Barton, who was charged with disturbing the peace when an off duty police officer overheard her suggest, also using a politically incorrect vocabulary, that immigrants should learn to speak English. Both of these cases ended up being overturned, though neither on free speech grounds, but considering what is taking place in England and other European countries, we are not far behind.

It is important to note that I am only using cases where action is taken by the government to illustrate these violations of freedom. Universities, corporations, and the media have created an even worse atmosphere that stifles dissent (and this is largely due to fear of lawsuits or harassment from various regulatory agencies). I do not mention them, because no matter how silly they can be, they are not infringing on anyone’s rights by doing these things to their own students or employees on their own property. Nonetheless, thanks to the A.C.L.U., and their neoconservative counterparts like the misnamed Center for Individual Rights, freedom of speech has been used to curtail the genuine rights of private property. These people have successfully argued in court that a college that imposes a speech code or a shopping mall that prohibits pamphleteers is violating the First Amendment, when in actuality they are simply exercising their right to tell people how to act on their own property.

Goldberg makes an even more absurd claim that we are freer today because we are have more "material freedom." He claims that the Internet gives more people the means to exercise their freedom of speech that was once only available to the very wealthy. This of course is based on the leftist assumption that rights are meaningless unless you have the means (preferably given by the government) to exercise them. He then goes on to say that laptops, cars, and cell-phones free us from our homes and offices. By this logic, citizens of Nazi Germany were freer than America’s founders because they had more consumer goods.

Admittedly, as Goldberg notes, the Bush administration has not taken away as many civil liberties as other presidents have. Under the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt, even greater usurpation of our freedom took place. Of course neocons hail these men as great heroes and defenders of liberty and, contrary to Goldberg’s claim, do use their actions as a precedent for what the government can do in face of the latest crisis.

There are plenty of other examples of how we have less freedom than we had in the past. The advent of the income tax, environmental regulations, gun control, anti-trust laws, and a giant bureaucracy that takes 40% of the nations’ wealth immediately come to mind. Anyone on the Right doesn’t need to be told this. What is more important is to realize what Goldberg associates with freedom: special rights to woman and minorities, child porn, and birth control. You don’t have to be a paleo to recognize that what Jonah Goldberg espouses can in no way be considered even remotely conservative.

*November 22, 2002

Marcus Epstein [send him mail] is an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, where he is president of the college libertarians and editor of the conservative newspaper, The Remnant. A selection of his articles can be seen here.

Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com*

PENN

2002-11-22 13:10 | User Profile

This is the only kind of "freedom" we should expect from the likes of Goldberg and his ilk:

Pro-hunting writer held in cell after race claims By Neil Tweedie

Robin Page, a columnist for The Telegraph, has been arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred after making a speech at a pro-hunting rally.

Mr Page, 61, was detained in a police cell after being interviewed about remarks made by him at a country fair at Frampton-upon-Severn, Glos, on Sept 6.

[...]

[url=http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/20/npage20.xml]http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtm.../20/npage20.xml[/url]

il ragno

2002-11-22 22:14 | User Profile

Here it is! The Offending Column so rife with heresy it got publicly denounced by OTHER Jews (Gottfried, Epstein)! If that don't earmark it as an OD Special...heavens to Murgatroid, what will it take?

Alas, 9/11 came and hit these guys like an Israeli draft notice. Expensively-tailored slackers like Goldberg, whose entire career had been testimony to the power of phone calls by his mother, suddenly had to "toughen up", wipe the silly grin off their faces and drill the troops with the kind of egghead-jingoism the post-9/11 Neo Press became especially adept at.....except that Jonah'd been a kid on a police ridealong from the beginning, he had no real measurable depth to plumb, and his every word since reads like it. He's performing for Mama, for wifey and Unca John, and to win back Unca Billy's favor, and I doubt he believes a word of this doggerel. Why does he even bother, when he'll be writing for television anyway within a year once he discovers when Unca Billy takes you out of the inner circle, he doesn't change or even justify his mind....he just makes that weird guppy-faced expression Jonah grew up laughing at on FIRING LINE.

[url=http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20021120.shtml]http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgo...g20021120.shtml[/url]

Jonah Goldberg November 20, 2002

Americans enjoy more freedom today than ever

The Justice Department has won a few court cases lately, and the media are reacting as if the American people have lost. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post are once again invoking Orwell's "1984" to describe John Ashcroft's assault on our liberties.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal for the umpteenth time that my dear wife works for the attorney general as his chief speechwriter. Many times she's had me rolling on the floor with laughter as we've combed through the medical files and secret dossiers of average citizens. "Did you see this one!" she's shrieked with laughter. "You'd think Alec Baldwin would get an ointment for that!"

Actually, I'm kidding. It drives me nuts, but the missus doesn't share anything cool with me because, believe it or not, they take civil liberties and security very seriously over in the Justice Department.

Every society, it's been said, tends to worry about those things it has least cause to worry about. Queen Victoria probably worried about lax sexual attitudes, even though Victorian England was bound tighter than a corset. Today, we worry desperately about our personal and political freedom even though we are more free today than at any time in our history.

When I say this to conservatives and liberals alike, they tend to roll their eyes or pound the table, but it's true. First, there's the obvious stuff. Women and blacks, to name two obvious examples, are no longer the subject of legal discrimination in any meaningful sense. And speech is less restricted today than at any other time in American history. Just look at the arguments we have about free speech today - banning child porn on the Web is controversial!

But it's not just our political or legal freedoms that are more secure. There's material freedom. Technology makes it possible for Americans to do what they please, when they please, and how they please to an extent never before seen. The birth control pill alone - for good and for ill - did more to liberate women than all bra-burning protestors of the 1960s combined. The Internet affords more opportunities for free speech and inquiry than was available to all but the wealthiest Americans half a century ago. And cell phones and laptops, never mind cars, make us less bound to our homes or offices.

I bring this all up because civil libertarians on the right and left talk as if the federal government is closing in on them, like guys in ill-fitting black suits are parked in their driveways listening to their phone calls. They talk about the measures taken in the war on terrorism as if these policies have a direct and tangible impact on their lives. Though they do have an impact, it's just not the ominous and Orwellian one the ACLU conjures: These policies help keep you safe and free.

I'm not saying the government has done - or will do - everything perfectly when it comes to balancing freedom and security. But Americans have an extremely sensitive early warning system when it comes to lost liberties, real and imagined, which is why the U.S. government has been remarkably careful about infringing on civil rights.

Consider the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This is constantly cited - and rightly so - as an injustice that must never be repeated. But what worrywarts don't seem to get is the fact that it's (BEGIN ITAL) not being repeated. The United States hasn't rounded up whole communities of American citizens and put them in military camps. In fact, the number of American citizens held in military custody is a whopping two. All of the other few hundred citizens detained for terrorism-related reasons in the United States have access to lawyers. And as for the fellas at Guantanamo, well, they were captured fighting for the enemy during a war. And, well, this is a war, you know?

Now, one could certainly argue that the internment of large numbers of Muslims makes more sense than the internment of Japanese during World War II. We know al-Qaida has sleeper cells here and that the battlefield is on our own soil. But we're not doing it for two simple reasons. First, it's not necessary. Thanks to better technologies, we can use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer to defend our liberties here at home. And, second, it would be wrong. We simply don't want to live in a country that would do such a thing.

If the slippery slope to tyranny were real, we wouldn't see the internment of the Japanese as a cautionary tale - we'd see it as a precedent for similar action today. Instead we've been sliding toward ever-greater freedom for the last century - and even our government's actions reflect that.

Faust

2002-11-23 00:51 | User Profile

"What is more important is to realize what Goldberg associates with freedom: special rights to woman and minorities, child porn, and birth control."

Sometimes one thinks Fornication is all "Liberals" care about!