It’s often
said that there are silly seasons in politics.
Well, right now we seem to be in a stupid season.
Let’s start
with the Democrats and their latest stupid gun control proposal.
Now, stupidity
and gun control go together like peanut butter and chocolate. For instance, the same people who want open
borders very often want strict gun control, as though the same people moving
people and drugs across our borders freely would hesitate to move guns if there
was sufficient profit in it. Indeed,
often we see single-city gun control. Liberals
in Washington, D.C., for instance, apparently think that no one will to
Northern Virginia, buy a gun, and drive back.
If you are talking gun control without talking border control you are
just a fool—or a cynic hoping to manipulate fools.
Why is
that? In this country all you need to
arrest a person is probable cause, which is a pretty low standard. So one of two possibilities exist.
The first is
we don’t even have probable cause to arrest the people on the no-fly list. In that case, how do we know they are
terrorists?
The second
possibility is that we do have probable cause to arrest them, but we are
choosing not to for some unfathomable reason.
So either the
list sucks or the Obama administration is letting terrorists run free. Take your pick.
(And don’t say
“maybe we are waiting to arrest them until we have a stronger case and we don’t
want to alert them” because being on the no-fly list would tend to alert them,
too. So if that is the reason, it is
also stupid.)
And as you
consider the question of whether it is a dumb list, or Obama is letting
terrorists run free, consider this: 72
Department of Homeland Security Employees are also on the list. And you know who isn’t? The Speedway Bomber, Brett Kimberlin. I mean, seriously, if you bomb a whole town
for nearly a week, shouldn’t that instantly disqualify you from flying ever
again? Oh, and remember the San
Bernardino shooters? Do you remember how Syed Faroook went to Saudi Arabia to
marry Tashfeen Malik, before coming back here to be a sleeper cell? Well, they apparently weren’t on the no-fly
list, either:
Farook
and his wife Tashfeen Malik were married in California in August 2014. But before
the wedding, he traveled to Saudi Arabia to bring her back to this country,
specifically to Chicago. On July 16, 2014, he flew from Chicago to Heathrow to
Jedda, Saudi Arabia. He then flew back in reverse order, with his fiance on
July 27, arriving back in Chicago.
And even then,
they (illegally) used a straw
purchaser, anyway, something that is impossible to prevent—you can only punish
after the fact. And I am not opposed to
punishing the man who helped them get their guns, but none of these measures
are truly preventative.
You see, on
the bigger picture, when you regulate something, you have to plan on people
trying to evade the regulation. For
instance, one of the dumbest tax proposals in recent memory was Maryland’s “millionaire”
tax. Even if you like the idea of
soaking the rich, it is stupid in that context.
The vast majority of the millionaires in Maryland are in the greater
Washington, D.C. area, and generally work in Washington itself. Because they are rich, they have the least
trouble moving, so they can easily just find a house on the Virginia side of
the Washington Area, where pretty much everything is cheaper and crime is under
better control. About one third of
Maryland’s millionaires did exactly that, and this in turn cost Maryland $1.7 billion in tax
revenue. I mean I don’t care where
you fall on the issue of how much the rich should pay, that is just stupid.
The same goes
for gun regulation. A gun regulation
that 1) doesn’t account for the possibility of people evading the regulation or
2) doesn’t even try seriously to stop them, is worse than useless. It means the most upstanding people who don’t
break laws will be disarmed, while the criminals will continue to have the
guns.
A liberal
parry to that thrust is to say something like, “so you’re saying we shouldn’t
have laws because people break them?
Then I guess prostitution should be legal, too?”
Well, there is
an obvious difference between the two issues.
If one illegally obtains the services of a prostitute, one generally
cannot use that prostitute to kill lots of other people. And naturally, a prostitute can’t be used to
facilitate self-defense. The president
of the NRA is never going to say “the only person who can stop a bad guy with a
ho, is a good guy with a ho.” Whatever
you think of the laws prohibiting prostitution, those laws don’t work like
that.
The point I am
jokingly getting at is that the gun control fanatics literally can’t get it
through their head that guns can be validly used in self-defense. I mean if you really force them to focus on
it, if you say, “well, what if a woman gets a restraining order on her abusive
ex, and he shows up anyway, and she has to shoot the bastard?” they’ll suddenly
remember that self-defense is an actual thing and occasionally justified. But the rest of the time they forget, so they
lament about our number of “gun deaths” or “gun violence” even though both
categories include valid instances of self-defense.
Or take the
comparison to automobiles. Like guns,
the broad ownership of cars has a death toll and so it is common for second
amendment supporters to say, “well, cars kill x thousand people a year, why
aren’t you calling for that to be banned.”
And the response from liberals is usually, “but cars have other uses
than killing. All guns do is kill.” Some
conservatives try to deny this, but, no, that is pretty much right. Guns only kill or wound. It is not wise to use a gun to bang nails
into your wall, or something like that: they are primarily designed to kill or
at least seriously wound. But that
assumes, again, that all killing (or wounding) is bad, and that is the flaw in
their logic.
(It is also
worth noting that it is generally believed that in most instances self-defense
with guns is accomplished merely by threat—that is, without killing or even
wounding, but merely making the other person aware you are armed. Many people report, for instance, that when a
person is caught trying to steal from them, that all they have to do is pump a
shotgun and the criminal flees.)
So any
intelligent gun control policy, to the extent that is not a contradiction in
terms, accounts for 1) the fact that bad people try to find ways around the
law, and 2) good people can validly use guns for self-protection.
This by far is
not the only stupidity going around these days.
There is also Donald Trump’s stupid proposal to ban Muslims from
entering the country. Now, since I am a
legal geek, I will mention that this is dubious constitutionally. There are many precedents by the Supreme
Court saying that Congress has plenary authority over immigration, suggesting
that they can do anything they want on immigration. On the other hand, I suspect if such a law
was passed, the Supreme Court would suddenly discover limits on that power.
And yes, I
find it morally reprehensible. The vast
majority of, say, the Muslims leaving Iran are good Muslims who have had enough
of that regime’s idiocy. Some of the
best Americans alive are first-generation immigrants who fled some tyrannical hellhole
and therefore knows exactly what Americans are missing. Some of the worst Americans alive are useful
idiots who have decided that freedom of speech or democracy is a tool of the
oppressor, because they have never experienced life in a dictatorship.
The real way
to deal with the problem of terrorists sneaking across our border in the
huddled masses genuinely yearning to be free, is to aggressively kill the
terrorists where they live. I mean
that’s Warfare 101; kill your enemy at the source, instead of trying to play
defense. I’ve said this from the
beginning of the war on terror: better to be aggressive internationally than
play defense, not the least of which because “playing defense” often involves
the violation of Americans’ civil
liberties.
But that’s not
why the policy is stupid. The reason why
it is stupid is it is logistically unworkable.
For instance,
how do you find out who is a Muslim? I
mean it’s not like you can tell who is a Muslim just by looking at him or
her. There are certain countries that
are dominated by Muslims, but it doesn’t follow that every immigrant from that
country is a Muslim. In fact, when you
are talking about Islamofascist countries (like Saudi Arabia and Iran), you
figure the non-Muslims are disproportionately represented among those fleeing
those countries, because they tend to be intolerant toward Christians, Jews and
so on. Those are people ready to be those
great Americans I was talking about who appreciate the freedoms we have here
because they have been deprived elsewhere.
In any case, Trump’s proposal was to stop Muslims from immigrating, not
people from Muslim-dominated or Islamofascist-dominated countries.
So what you
are talking about, practically speaking, is simply asking a person whether or
not they are Muslim. Which can be evaded
by lying, duh. Furthermore, what kind of
Muslim is most comfortable with lying to accomplish their goals? Oh, right, the Islamofascist terrorist type,
whose aforementioned goals include terrorist attacks. Who is least likely to be willing to
lie? The good Muslims.
So it would be
a policy perfectly designed to block only the Muslims we want most and not the
ones we don’t. Which makes it stupid. It might help Trump politically, but that
doesn’t make the idea less stupid; it just makes me more depressed.
And don’t tell
me that they will investigate these people to see if they went to a mosque
recently and so on. Again, if you think
killing the “infidel” will automatically get into heaven you could avoid the
mosque for a few months—because they think that all their “sins” will be
forgiven by martyrdom. It’s the good
Muslims who don’t think they are going to do anything so dramatic who won’t
stay away from the mosques. And, really,
when has the government ever been good at vetting people? They supposedly vetted Tashfeen Malik for her
visa—how did that work?
No, this is a
stupid idea on a mechanical reason. It
won’t actually work.
And in another
case of stupidity, we have the offense du jour on relation to the current
affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, which is Fisher v. the
University of Texas. Here we have people
misrepresenting a transcript available to the public to try to paint Justice
Scalia as racist.
For instance,
here’s Adam Liptak from the New
York Times:
In
a remark that drew muted gasps in the courtroom, Justice Antonin Scalia said
that minority students with inferior academic credentials may be better off at
“a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.”
“I
don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of
Texas to admit as many blacks as possible,” he added....
Justice
Scalia’s questions were particularly hostile to racial preferences, which he
said could leave minority students worse off. “Most of the black scientists in
this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas,” he said.
“They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed
ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”
Talking
Points Memo gives the headline “Scalia: Affirmative Action Sends Blacks to
Schools Too Advanced for Them” and ThinkRegress
gave the headline “Scalia: Black Students Don’t Need Affirmative Action Because
They Benefit From A ‘Slower Track,’” breathlessly hinting that Scalia was like
super racist or something.
What Liptak is
not acknowledging and TPM and ThinkRegress is barely acknowledging is that
Scalia was summarizing one of the arguments of the other side. You can read the full transcript, here,
but let me pull out the relevant passage:
JUSTICE
SCALIA: There are there are those who contend that it does not benefit
African-Americans
to to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as
opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less a slower-track
school where they do well. One of one of the briefs pointed out that that most
of the most of the black scientists in this country don't come from schools
like the University of Texas.
MR.
GARRE: So this Court--
JUSTICE
SCALIA: They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they're that
they're being pushed ahead in in classes that are too too fast for them.
MR.
GARRE: This Court--
JUSTICE
SCALIA: I'm just not impressed by the fact that that the University of Texas
may have fewer. Maybe it ought to have fewer. And maybe some you know, when you
take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser
schools, turns out to be less. And and I I don't think it it it stands to
reason that it's a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many
blacks as possible.
So the first
thing you notice is that he is citing other people—either unnamed others or one
of the briefs—that made this argument.
And by the way, it is a serious argument. There are some who contend that giving a
person an unfair advantage—for any reason, whether it is because of race,
family wealth, family alumni status and so on—doesn’t do the student any favors. The idea is that by putting them in a school
where they can’t handle the curriculum, they end up flunking out and giving up
entirely, when if they went to a school that was more their “speed” they would
excel.
(By the way, MSNBC
admitted he was crediting someone else, but he must agree with that, because
he didn’t say he disagreed, ignoring that it really isn’t his job to say that he
disagreed at that point—his job was to see how the attorneys handle good
arguments against their position.)
Now, I am not
sure I agree with all of what these other people contended in Scalia’s recitation.
I am not sure the differences between universities are as great as supposed, so
a student being a little mismatched is as disastrous as they imagine. I think we give the schools too much credit,
pretending their admissions are much more scientific than it is. And I am not convinced that some of the lower
scores African Americans have isn’t due to racial discrimination, as I said here. I am more inclined to support affirmative
action when we are in the “developing potential” stage of life, rather than out
in the workforce. But while I am not
sure I agree with that view, I don’t think it is automatically racist.
Another thing
he is saying is that the goal shouldn’t simply be to get the maximum number of
African-American students. That is what
the politicians typically want to see, but that goal is forbidden by the
constitution because it is a simple race preference.
And by the way
in all that controversy, no one paid too much attention to Justice Ginsberg’s
remarks, which also suggested that black people benefitted from racial
segregation.
As a little
background, after one of UT’s affirmative action programs was struck down, they
enacted the so-called 10% plan. As I
understand it, it guaranteed admission to the University of Texas by the top
10% of every high school in Texas. If
you read the opinion
in the Fifth Circuit that is being appealed, you will see it has had a very
strong effect on admissions. The
controversial element about it is that it was pretty explicitly designed to
boost minority admissions, just not by explicitly referencing race. So in essence it was like a grandfather
clause, but designed to help minorities.
So that led
Justice Ginsberg to make this comment:
But
let let me ask you about the percent plan itself, because it seems to me that
that is so obviously driven by one thing only, and that thing is race. It's
totally dependent upon having racially segregated neighborhoods, racially
segregated schools, and it operates as a disincentive for a minority student to
step out of that segregated community and attempt to get an integrated
education.
Sorry, wait,
did she just say she thought that black people wouldn’t do very well in
integrated schools?
Now part of
what she said was not offensive. The 10%
plan was pretty explicitly about increasing minority enrollment at UT, and that
seems to be premised on the idea that there were still minority-dominated high
schools in Texas.
But still, the
very premise of her question was that segregation was actually desirable for
black people and that they would actually do much worse in white schools. Which is actually closer to what liberals
think Scalia is saying than what Scalia actually said. So why isn’t that making headlines?
Oh right,
because liberals like Ginsberg.
And what this
really is, is a stupid clickbait game where liberals are waiting with baited
breath to hear confirmation of all of their biases. Oh my
God, conservatives are such racists!
And lost in all of this breathlessness is the opportunity to have a
serious discussion about the merits of this form of racial discrimination. I don’t believe the argument is meritless,
but it is equally wrong to smear Scalia as simply a racist, especially when it
wasn’t even his argument.
Of course, the
other thing brought out by these debates is the sheer unreality of the debate
in the Courtroom. From Liptak’s article:
Justice
Sonia Sotomayor said race was not the predominant factor in the university’s
race-conscious admissions decisions. “I thought that what they’re looking for
is leaders in diversity, not just of race, but of experiences generally,” she
said
This was
reflecting the tie-breaking opinion upholding affirmative action in University
of California v. Bakke, where Justice Powell wrote that the First Amendment
allowed for affirmative action:
The
atmosphere of "speculation, experiment and creation"—so essential to
the quality of higher education—is widely believed to be promoted by a diverse
student body. As the Court noted in Keyishian, it is not too much to say that the "nation's
future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure" to the ideas
and mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples.
Thus,
in arguing that its universities must be accorded the right to select those
students who will contribute the most to the "robust exchange of
ideas," petitioner invokes a countervailing constitutional interest, that
of the First Amendment. In this light, petitioner must be viewed as seeking to
achieve a goal that is of paramount importance in the fulfillment of its
mission.
(Footnote
omitted). So the basic idea is that
universities want a great wealth of viewpoints, life experiences and so on and
that includes the life experience of growing up black, white, Hispanic, Asian,
mixed, or what have you. But that
wouldn’t just be racial diversity, but geographic diversity—in this case all
parts of Texas, and to a lesser extent all parts of America and the world—as
well as diversity in religion, politics, work background.
All of which
might seem more plausible if we had actual, you know, ideological diversity in
the faculties. Instead the schools come
off like that woman in the cowboy bar in the Blues Brothers who told the lead characters what kind of music they
normally play: “oh, we got both kinds.
Country and western!” University faculties entertain all
viewpoints, from Marxism to Stalinism. They
are diverse, that way. So, hey, they end
up with a rainbow of colors, all saying the same liberal platitudes.
I would go as
far as to say that a clever lawyer might seek to undermine affirmative action
by using that lack of ideological diversity, but so far no one has tried that. In any case, that doesn’t make Sotomayor and
the other justices stupid, just badly separated from reality.
---------------------------------------
My wife and I have
lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist (and adjudicated
pedophile) Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame
me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim
sounds fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims
using documentary and video evidence. If you would like to help in the
fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the donation link on the
right. And thank you.
Follow me at
Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And
you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime),
Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here. And you can read a little more about
my novel, here.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused
some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice
I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice
system. I do not want to see vigilante
violence against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the
particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that
matter, don’t go on his property. Don’t
sneak around and try to photograph him.
Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision. Your behavior could quickly cross the line
into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not
contact his organizations, either. And
most of all, leave his family alone.
The only
exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course
nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any
stories you might report. And even then
if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request. That this is a key element in making out a
harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you
refuse.
And let me say
something else. In my heart of hearts, I
don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
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