They hate us for our freedoms

I spent the weekend in Harvard Square, bastion of freedom and tolerance.  In more than one restaurant, same sex couples were openly kissing on each other.

Why this should offend people, I have no idea - people should love who they love - and no one was offended in Cambridge.

But fundamentalists believe they should be free to keep others unfree, so they fear Massachusetts and its fearlessness.

They should fear us.  We can persevere through winters that would kill them.

Yet we keep sending them subsidies via federal spending, we keep trying to convince them that the Enlightenment beat the Dark Ages for good reason (not to mention the Union defeating the Confederacy), and we keep failing to help them find the joys of the liberal democracy that we, not they, happily inherit from the Founders.

So strange that the one lesson they learned from the Civil War was never to be outgunned.  Tsk-tsk, always fighting the last war...

We hold these truths - not those

Click image for full Nate Beeler/Washington Examiner cartoon.

Glass half full

In my personal life, I have much to be thankful for, but I'm not going to get into the details here. That posting would go on too long for anyone to read all the way to the end.

So, to my political thankfulness:

I'm thankful to live in a democracy, which for all its problems, is still functioning. I'm thankful not to suffer the fate of Cassandra, that the country has caught up and thrown off the scourge of Bushism, by a mandate-creating margin, although not by the deserved landslide. I'm thankful for the freedom to make all the noise I want about the things that are wrong or even those that should be better.

I'm thankful that Barack Obama appeared at just this moment in history. It is exceptionally rare that someone who is at once both insane and self-confident enough to want to be President is also so even and calm and brilliant as he is. Even more rare is that he appears to be able to assess his own weaknesses, which is why I think he's surrounding himself with all the old and experienced hands, even if they represent gradual change, rather than something more sudden and bracing.

I'm thankful that every single mark I put on my ballot this election was a vote that won. My head is still dizzy with that one. I put my strongest grassroots efforts into a local state rep race, and the very impressive candidate I helped won. She could have done it without me even though it was close, but she's the kind of person who sustains my belief in self-government.

I'm thankful that, despite growing trouble in every sector, the economy still employs me. I can still afford to live in and heat my home. I still eat well. I still have heath care.

There is a lot to be thankful for.

A moment's pause

There's a lot more history than you and I learned in high school:

Our history is littered with bleak tableaus that show what happens when righteous certitude is mixed with fearful ignorance. Which is why this Thanksgiving, as we express gratitude for America’s bounty and promise, we would do well to reflect on all our histories, including a forgotten French one that began on Florida’s shores so many years ago.

This is another example of why we need separation of church and state. Even so, the present frequent mix of righteous certitude and fearful ignorance needs more than just the First Amendment.

Shorter Brad Hirschfeld

When Saudi King Abdullah speaks about religious liberty, which he is manifestly opposed to, he's probably trying to ban blasphemy, which is an attack on religious liberty, but it's still a good thing because it's dialog.

My problem with this happy talk? I'm looking for more than lip service. Hiding legal mandates against certain thoughts in the dressy rhetoric of freedom doesn't seem like a positive under any circumstances.

Update: Philosoraptor provides a link to the Christian Science Monitor piece that started the conversation.

First Amendment

The Bill of Rights gets free speech right. Unlike Canadians and Europeans, I fear government regulation of speech more than all the jerks who are offensive with it. It's only a matter of time before an administration or a bureaucracy chooses self-protection over liberty. Given a third term, the Bushists might well trim the edges of free speech further than free speech zones and Ari Fleischer warnings.

I'm not interested in restricting robust dialog because it might hurt the feelings of someone who needs a thicker skin. We've seen hypersensitivity from just about everyone at one time or another from fundie Christians to Muslims, from feminists to conservative men who are tired of having their penis-centrism mocked, from Confederate sympathizers to respect-hungry rappers.

Adapted from a comment on this Philosoraptor thread.

You were serious about that?

Jeff Jacoby can't understand what happened to the Bush Doctrine. Hey, it was a marketing tool, born of no conviction whatsoever. Does that clear things up for you?

Freedom to offend

Click image for full Signe Wilkinson cartoon.

American Christian fundies often don't understand this either, though they're not killing people over it.

Freedom ain't free

While Ronald Taylor has been in prison for a crime that DNA says he didn't commit, O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, and Phil Spector have beaten open and shut cases. And Duhbya and his doughty band of war criminals remain in unimpeached power, while Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job.

Taylor's take on justice for the poor:

"They don't have the finances. They don't have nobody to help them," he said. "I think something needs to be done about that."