Archive for the 'Civil Rights' Category
A More Perfect Union
January 19th, 2009
Today, in honor of Martin Luther King day, I’m not going to post one of Dr. King’s famous speeches, because I’d like to honor not just Dr. King himself but his legacy—and, considering that tomorrow America’s first black President, Barack Obama, will be officially sworn into the office, I’d like to present to you the video and transcript of Obama’s masterful speech on the current (and, hopefully, future) state of African-Americans in the United States. Let’s keep moving forward, people. And remember: Dr. King may have been one of the first to get the ball rolling, but it’s up to us to keep it rolling.
So here’s the video of Soon-to-Be-President Obama’s speech given at the Consititution Center in Philadelphia. And if this man doesn’t go down in history as one of the greatest American orators, I’ll be shocked.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Technorati Tags: martin luther king day,barack obama,obama,speech,race,america
Offensive Content Warning! OH NOES!
April 24th, 2007
Well, shit the bed!–looks like 80% of blogs contain “offensive” content! As Ars Technica fuckin’ reports,
Blogs are known to be a free-for-all for “expressive” content, but according to a new report by ScanSafe, a vast majority of blogs host content that is considered “offensive” and potentially “unwanted.” ScanSafe’s Monthly “Global Threat Report” for March 2007 says that up to 80 percent of blogs host offensive content, ranging from “adult language” to pornographic images. The company suggests that businesses should be aggressive about preventing users from accessing some or all of this material. And of course, they’d hope that you’d use their products to do so.
Naturally, this “report” is no doubt little more than a fuckin’ baiting tactic that ScanSafe, “The World’s Leading Provider of Web Security-as-a-Service,” hopes to use to lure in more corporate customers–but that doesn’t mean that the fuckin’ data they’ve accrued is necessarily fuckin’ suspect. After all, it’s simple enough to draw up a list of naughty fuckin’ keywords and compile a list of how many fuckin’ times those words appear on various motherfuckers’ blogs. And, judging from my experiences in the blogosphere, I’d have to say they’ve got a fuckin’ point: some of these motherfuckers can’t seem to say five fuckin’ words without tossing some manner of fuckin’ expletive into the mix.
But…what’s the problem here?
Ars Technica quotes:
ScanSafe’s larger focus is not necessarily on single instances of offensive content, but overall security and liability for employees who might get caught with undesirable content on their computers while at work. “The content on blogs and other sites powered by user contributed content is constantly changing. As a result, Web security solutions that rely on Web crawling—or periodically scouring the Web for threats—rather than actually scanning the URL each time it is requested, can leave users exposed to malware and unwanted content,” Nadir [ScanSafe’s Vice President of Product Strategy] said.
In simpler terms, let’s protect employees from getting nabbed for reading naughty material at work and from accidentally exposing corporate intranets to various forms of malware. I can understand implementing a defense against malware that could potentially damage a company’s systems or expose private data to the World At Large…but protecting against bad fuckin’ language? Gimme a fuckin’ break.
Here’s the deal, folks: I rarely use expletives in my general writings, simply because they’re usually unnecessary, nothing more than “the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter.” I’ve often found those who overuse expletives of various sorts to be gauche and clearly lacking in solid material to discuss–yet it’s their right to write whatever they like in the sanctity of their own blogs. Furthermore, sometimes it’s necessary to throw in a good ol’ “fuck” or a “shit” of two–especially when quoting someone accurately, when using them for humor’s sake, or for rare instances of shocking emphasis.
And who’s to say what words are ultimately offensive or not? I certainly don’t have an attack of the vapors should my eyes come upon the word “cocksucker” in a text; nor do many in the contemporary world. Issues of obscenity have caused more pointless legal troubles than anything else…simply because “offensiveness” or “obscenity” is so incredibly difficult to define.
Which is why I find wanting to block or otherwise restrict anyone’s access to the Web based on something as mutable and as vague as a blog’s “offensive” word content to be ludicrous at best, and a waste of time and effort at most. Sure, most companies wouldn’t want their employees reading Fleshbot or pr0n reviews, but what about…say, Pegritz.com? I routinely post stories of an amusing and occasionally edifying nature whose only subject matter that could be considered “offensive” is the use of expletives here and there when spoken by characters. What about blogs that reference “offensive” words such as “nigger”, “ho”, “bitch” and so forth when discussing the pathetic state of popular hiphop? Would ScanSafe’s software block a website concerning mammograms and women’s health because it used that awful, dirty, pornomographic word “breast”?
Filtering content for malware and potentially deleterious code is admirable, and these days even necessary…but filtering content for a handful of fuckin’ words that some fuckers consider fuckin’ obscene is just stupid, because you’ll end up blocking not only 80% of the blogs Out There, you’ll end up blocking 80% of the entire fuckin’ Internet.
In short: FUCK DAT!
John McCain Can Kiss My Ass
December 18th, 2006
Oh, humanity, pity out poor beleaguered children! The Internet is nothing but one gigantic seething pit of sex-offenders, child molesters, and NAMBLA phishing sites just lying in wait for some poor, poor little tyke to log on so they may all pounce and RAPE AWAY! How can we possibly sanitize the Internet to make it a safe and wholesome place for our kids?
John McCain has an idea how to do it. Recently, he floated a bill before Congress that would–get this, folks–make blogs just like this hyar PEGRITZ(.com)! circus equivalent to ISPs and hold them responsible for all activity in their comments sections and user profiles! Think Progress, one of my alltime favorite progressive-though websites, has a nifty little breakdown of Herr McCain’s lovely little piece of patriarchal bullshit. Under the law, should it be passed:
– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
— Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.
PEGRITZ(.com)! is, primarily, a personal blog–my personal blog–but I do welcome comments to any and all entries, and anyone on earth is free to leave said comments. Sooooo…let’s say one of the people registered on my site were a–dun-dun-DUNNNN!–wicked, disgusting, thoroughly evil sex offender. If that person posted in a comment a picture of a naked five-year-old being “bathed” in a thoroughly inappropriate manner, I would be legally obligated to report that person to The Government or face fines that would put me and my descendants in hock trying to pay ‘em off. Would I immediately delete such a comment and ban that person from ever posting on my blog again? You’d better damn well believe I would! Hell, I’d probably report the jackass to the Feds on principle! But Herr McCain doesn’t trust me, a responsible citizen, to report such egregious behavior on my own, so legislation must be introduced requiring me to do so under threat of crushing fines.
But, quite frankly, I’m not too worried about that eventuality coming to pass. What particularly bothers me about this legislation is Item 3 above: the responsibility it places on social-networking sites to police their boundaries for the dreaded scourge of the Internet sex offender. It is basically stating that, under Federal law, anyone registered as a sex offender would be barred from taking part in almost any form of social interaction on the Internet–including being banned from creating a user profile on a commerce site like Amazon.com.
Do I think that sex offenders’ activities shouldn’t be monitored? Of course not. But first of all, what indeed is a sex offender? Obviously, someone with a history of sexual crimes–particularly against children–matches the definition. But so does the sixteen-year-old boy convicted of statutory rape because he had 100% consensual sex with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, whose parents found out that Daddy’s Little Girl was more than old enough to give up skins on her own accord and decided to prosecute the boy who made off with her virginity. At present, the definition of “sex offender” is far too broad and far too legally unstable in the United States to require individual websites to accept responsibility for policing themselves based on it.
And, more importantly, why require it in the first place? Republicans constantly rattle on about the evils of Big Government and the fundamental rights of American citizens to go about their lives with as little interference from Washington or state governments as possible…yet they are always the first to push such “Big Daddy” legislation that tacitly declares American citizens unable to properly monitor themselves. Oh, in many cases, American citizens can’t be trusted to govern themselves: if they were allowed to do so, in many parts of the country gay citizens would be hounded like Jews in Nazi Germany and African-Americans would probably still be suffering under Jim Crow laws. However, the aim of federal social legislation should be to protect the liberties of ALL its citizens from the prejudices and idiocy of certain others, not to restrict or otherwise oversee liberties–and such laws as McCain’s ludicrous blogosphere regulations do just that.
People…it’s simple: if you want to protect your children on the Internet, you as parents and individual citizens have to keep an eye on what your kids are doing. Of course, that won’t always work, especially if you have older kids who can easily hide their activities from you. But rather than expecting the government to do your job of providing your children with the necessary knowledge to protect themselves, why don’t you step to the plate and actually do it yourselves? Then the Senator McCain’s of the nation wouldn’t have any reason to trouble our nation with these kind of overbearing laws.
Sedition
September 29th, 2006
Readers of this blog have noticed that I rarely address politics here–and when I do, the political issues lining up to get holed in my shooting gallery are most often related to technological matters. I don’t really like discussing politics, for two reasons: 1) there are much better political news and discussion outlets than this one-man virtual donkey show; and 2) politics generally bores me blind. But the Bush administration’s ridiculous “War on Terror” and the horrendous, almost McCarthyite domestic policies it has lately been stirring up have finally loosened my lips.
Brace yourself, people. This is not going to be pretty–and, ohhhhhh yes, there will be foul language. Send the kids out of the room now before my invective scars their fragile little minds for life.
George W. Bush is a goddamned moron. Nay, not a moron, which Answers.com defines in turn-of-the-century psychological terms as “A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.” A true “moron”, following this definition (which has not actually been used in psychological parlance since the early part of the Twentieth Century), at least can be a valuable member of society by serving some kind of positive function. But George W. Bush serves no function whatsoever save to dig a deeper and deeper hold for this nation to slip into.
Let’s, for the moment, forget the fact that he suckered Congress into redefining the definition of “torture”, as well as permitting warrantless wiretapping. That stuff is heinous in its own right, but the straw that final broke the blogger’s back was his pronouncement, earlier today (29 September 2006) that “critics who believe that fighting the war in Iraq has made America less safe are ‘buying into enemy propaganda.’”
WHAT enemy propaganda?! The only propaganda I have been exposed to lately are statements from the Bush Administration attempting to prop up our public opinion concerning the miserable, unwinnable “war” they marched us into by way of getting some good ol’ red-blooded American payback against them filthy towel-heads what blew up all our buildings. Consider the following statement quoted by USAToday.com:
Some of them [Bush’s critics] selectively quoted from the document to make the case that by fighting terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making people less secure here at home….This argument buys into the enemy propaganda that the enemies attacked up [sic] because we are fighting them.
The “document” in question is a leaked National Intelligence Estimate whose pertinent data appeared recently in the New York Times. Bushy claims that his critics “selectively quoted” from this document to support their perfectly common-sense thesis that “extremists were using the Iraq war to recruit more terrorists.”
Honestly…no one needs a leaked NIE report to realize this. The United States military invaded an Islamic country (that, incidentally, had one of the few truly secular, non-religious governments in the entire region) and destroyed the law-enforcement infrastructure in that country, which allowed a fullscale religious war between Sunni and Shiite factions to boil up on top of the perfectly natural anti-American sentiment that brewed among the Iraqis because we invaded their country. Whether our actions were justified or not on an international, or even a merely social, level is irrelevant: we, a very large, and very powerful military power invaded them…and, come on, people - NO ONE likes their lands and homes being invaded, whatever the reason. Especially when that invasion topples a regime that, yes, was certainly tyrannical…yet managed to keep sectarian religious violence under control. Now, the stabilizing influence of the Hussein regime is gone, and what’s left? An American “peacekeeping” force and a “new Iraqi parliament” that are so ineffectual and so confused that they are, for all intents and purposes, worthless. The religious wackos are having a field day. And anti-American sentiment is running wild.
And guess what? Al-Qaeda really likes to recruit religious wackos who have a thing against Americans.
Even if there weren’t data Out There that obviously supports this thesis, a simple, high-school-level Social-Studies-class understanding of the situation in Iraq would lead even a moron - ”A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years” - to conclude that it would be VERY likely that Al-Qaeda recruiters would be having a bloody field day swelling their ranks in Iraq.
“But,” Bush said (to long applause, USAToday.com notes), “I want to remind American citizens that we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001.”
Well, DUH. The Al-Qaeda bastards who got the drop on us on 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. But the Al-Qaeda bastards who are someday going to attempt - and, who knows, maybe even succeed! - at topping their 9/11 stunt with another sweeps-week attack on the Great Satan are probably going to come from Iraq. Why? Because we stirred them up - we poked our stick into that ant’s nest of Medieval religious insanity.
Mr. Bush, dig the shit out of your ears for one fucking second and listen to what the entire world is telling you: THE WAR ON TERROR IS PRODUCING TERROR. It’s a vicious cycle of truly Orwellian proportions. Witness:
- Al-Qaeda terrorists representing militant Islam…oh, I mean, Islamic fascism (as opposed to, what, Bush/Blair PseudoDemocratic Fascism?) attack America. We respond by attacking the nation and regime (Afghanistan) that initially harbored them - an attack which I still believe to be justified - but then attack a nation which had NO roll in 9/11 whatsoever.
- Islamic radicals see the US’s invasion of Iraq as fulfillment of their beliefs that the US and the Western Powers have some kind of crazy grudge against Islam - which has been one of their recruiting messages for years. Way to go, Bushy: you just confirmed (in their minds) one of their primary doctrines.
- By pursuing “anti-terrorist” measures abroad, you have, in effect, stirred up even more anti-American sentiment…especially by “liberating” the Iraqi people from the stabilizing influence of a truly fascistic, but nonthreatening (to our nation), regime. Al-Qaeda recruiters would be stupider than you are if they DIDN’T flock to Iraq and any other Islamic nation feeling angered or threatened by US aggression.
- This will eventually, and inevitably, spur another Al-Qaeda attack on the US. Then what? Another invasion? Another “liberation”?
Lather, rinse, repeat.
And you have the gall to accuse American citizens who point out your obvious failings of succumbing to “enemy propaganda”? I ask again: WHAT PROPAGANDA? Do you honestly think we, your critics, are visiting www.al-qaeda.com and reading their convenient online FAQs? Or do you think we’re getting our news and information from - GASP! - overseas sources via the Internet?
Oh, you do? Well, I guess that does explain the warrantless wiretapping and revised “enemy combatant” laws you just railroaded through our equally-idiotic Congress.
Well, here - let me make it easy on you. I’m sure the NSA or CIA or some other intelligence-gathering organization will red-flag the following text and it may very well appear in the next “domestic terrorism” newsbrief to land on your desk:
Dear Mr. Bush:
I, Derek C. F. Pegritz, am entirely opposed to everything your administration stands for in regard to the so-called “War on Terror”. My views on this subject, and all of the information that I required to support them, was gleaned from the publication George W. Bush: Rapist of the Prophet which I received by anonymous courier after I used my PayPal account to donate a “love gift” of $3.25 (USD) to the Al-Qaeda Missionary Fund. Upon reading this three-page, photocopied pamphlet, I have decided that there is no God but God (that is, Allah, not the Christian or the Jewish “God”), Muhammad is His Prophet, and the United States is the Agent of Shaitan - by whom, I believe, they mean you. Al-Qaeda mail-order propaganda has now permanently influenced my views and, I believe, I am now what you would consider Un-American.
Oh, yeah - while we’re at it, I might as well tell you that I am a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, an Anarchist, a “Hippie”, a supporter of Iberian Expansion in the Philippines and the Caribbean, a “white indian” riding with the Apaches, a Confederate sympathizer, a Tory (God…I mean, Allah Save The King!), an Abolitionist, a Black Panther, a Branch Davidian, and a supporter of Universal Suffrage (yes, even for Negroes).
Before sending an NSA “extraction team” to my house, please call ahead and inform me of their dispatch so I may properly barricade my house for a proper fourteen-day-siege and prepare enough Plutonium for a minimum of seven dirty bombs.
Sincerely,
DCFP.
PS: I shall, in the future, refrain from calling you a moron out of respect for actual morons, who have informed me that they take offense at being lumped into the same category as yourself.
A Dream We Should All Still Seek.
January 16th, 2006
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I present to you the complete text of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech as given at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
