Being Pro-Life

Being Pro-Life starts with you, as an individual, and the choices you make. From there it spreads out to your friends and family, to your church, and to your community. It has always been about community activism and giving people information and options to make choices. Being Pro-Life is about loving other human beings and respecting not only their innate and biological life, but the metaphysical workings of their agency. 

When life begins isn't important to these beliefs, only what we do is important. If we are allowing others full access to their agency with the knowledge to use it properly, we are being true to the cause. When we stray from that notion, we stumble and fail. 

The moment we believe the Federal Government can do a better job of taking care of our friends and neighbors than we can, is the moment we can no longer lay claim to being Pro-Life. I think John Koster, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and others are probably having to give their anti-choice notions some thought now. Indeed, I hope the entire Republican Party is thinking about it. 

I personally believe it played a role in them losing the Senate and the White House. 

You can't be anti-choice and a fiscal conservative. It takes money to shake down dealers holding black market oral contraceptives and to kick in the door of every benevolent doctor giving a 12-year-old incest victim an abortion. Worse, this is the last way most police officer want to spend their time. Think! Do you want your community, your church leaders, and yourself responsible for spreading the Pro-Life message? People that really want to be there? Or men with guns that don't? 

Do we really want the Federal Government interfering with a pregnant cancer patient's agency, while she decides whether to fight for her life for her other two kids, or risk all and carry to term? Would you rather have benevolent friends, family, church/community leaders involved, or the Federal Government? 

Hint: The Federal Government tend to deploy heavily armed law enforcement professionals and lawyers with political ambitions to enforce the law. 

The Federal Government can't even balance a checkbook, do we really want them playing doctor with our wives, daughters, aunts, mothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens? I think the message to the GOP and the Anti-Choice movement this election cycle was clear. These "Sanctity of Life" and "Personhood" pieces of legislation that have been pushed unsuccessfully since 1995 need to just stop. Put simply, we're wise to it, and we don't want it, push your radical views to your constituency some other way. 

If you want to be Pro-Life, just do it, don't try to legislate it, quantify it, or put it into a legal context. Anyone with a true devotion to their fellow human, derived from their maker or otherwise, knows that doing so is to invite folley and to see one's beliefs cheapened by a soul-blackening political machine. 

If we don't support and love our fellow humans in spite of the choices they make, we are cheapening the significance of having a choice in the first place. Do not erode the greatest gift that comes with life by supporting people who would foster Federal control over the lives of others. These people are not true advocates of the Pro-Life movement, not true fiscal conservatives, and have utterly lost their way. 

My Political Stance, Illustrated

I didn't go anywhere, they did. I drew this mostly out of frustration, but also to put my feelings into some sort of context.

Washington Post Social Reader = Evil

For those of you who still insist on using the Washington Post Social Reader on Facebook as a means to consume news - I present the following for you to consider. Yes, things like this can end up in the newsfeed of your friends, family and coworkers who currently have you subscribed.

Friends don't let friends use the WPSR!

I submit that linking the article in your status update is dumb and messy because Facebook made it that way, but at least you are in control of what people subscribed to your feed see!

The Captains Of Finance

If any of the Captains of Finance are wondering why the OWS movement has gotten all sorts of traction and international attention... they need look no further than the Mayors and Governors playing into the OWS's hands. Bloomberg should have just thrown a press conference and had the NYPD beat the heck out of kid clutching an American flag. It would've been cheaper and had the same results. Like I needed more proof the world has lost its mind.

Reuter's take.

Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the Police

Photo via Flickr and probably from these folks. (Still trying to find out who took it.)

I don't troll the internet looking for video of police beating, shooting or otherwise harming protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. You don't have to, it's starting to get common enough that it's everywhere. I'm beginning to think that US policy makers, mayors and police chiefs don't think this will spiral out of control; that something like the LA Riots can't happen again in the United States.

As more people drop below the poverty line and European countries continue to engage in the same financial brinksmanship we have, the situation gets even more dire. People are getting desperate, and they are tired of not being heard. I don't even agree with half of what the Occupy Wall Street movement espouses, but I 100% sympathize with them now that police departments are acting outside the confines of the law to suppress these people.

Full disclosure: My father's been a member of Law Enforcement virtually my whole life, so I'm not making these comments out of any bias for or against the Police. I've seen what the average police officer is capable of... the same thing any other human being. The problem is that they don't have room to make mistakes in a world where one in five people have a smart phone capable of shooting high definition video and sending it to the internet in two taps of the touch screen.

I doubt the police officers responsible will ever be held accountable. Right now, something like that would make the national news, and that's something no town or police department wants. The Police have already put the movement into the mainstream and are threatening to give it a sort of legitimacy that get's attention without solving any of the larger problems.

Click this...

...and this...

While people are looking at disgruntled college kids getting kicked around by the police, kids that might be their own, focus shifts from the real problem. I believe that many people that bought a house without putting 20% down, bought things they didn't need on credit, and took out student loans instead of looking for work outside their home town, are just as much to blame as the banking industry for what's happening in the US. That said, I believe that the Americans who engaged in these unwise financial decisions have suffered, and dearly, for those choices.

The Banking Industry hasn't paid the price for their participation, suffered crippling regulation, or been seriously investigated by any government entity responsible for protecting the public from those actions. On the contrary, they've been rewarded and given a pass by our government and allowed to continue on using the same tactics they used before. The US Government has passed new legislation, but none of it has any teeth or means of enforcement.

The banks can pretty much just ignore it.

I feel badly that the Police are left to bear the brunt of the people's anger over this. Protecting a populace from themselves and a criminal element is at least a noble pursuit most of the time. Getting paid overtime to protect the interests of soulless corporations and policy makers too blinded by the money flowing into their reelection campaign funds? Yeah, that would make me question what my oath and my badge stood for if I were a member of Law Enforcement.

As a citizen I don't know what I'd do if our own tiny Occupy movement came under attack in this way. It'd get pretty personal, and I don't think I'd sit by and watch the police take those kinds of actions in my town. I can only imagine how the people in Oakland must feel, and that's really the crux of the problem with the police taking violent action against the protesters.

The flip side is that the protesters need to make sure what they are doing is as legal as possible and that any laws they disobey be done in a civil manner. Using the cause as a front to traffic illegal substances, provoking the police needlessly, or causing local businesses to suffer will hurt the Occupy movement. So far, this has been a battle for public opinion, and if the Occupy folks continue to be merely civilly disobedient, they might have a chance.

Fighting with the Police

Indiana Supreme Court Decision Indiana vs. Barnes

Last week, the Indiana State's high court ruled that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes -- eliminating a common law right dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215. The Tea Party and several other folks are moving quickly to fight against the ruling stating that they believe their Fourth Amendment Rights have been gutted. I've seen this issue pop up in several online forums of late with angry voices and gnashing of teeth.

I'm weighing in on this because I have a different perspective than most.

Common Sense

That common law is extremely dated and doesn't take into account certain modern elements of law enforcement that did not exist back in the day. Resisting police action back then was a completely different matter than it is now. There may have been a chance of preventing an unlawful arrest back in 1215. Modern law enforcement agencies are trained to meet violence with greater force until they prevail.

The entire police department and adjoining LEO agencies will come to your house if necessary to take you down.

If the police unlawfully enter your home and you surrender, there is a chance you'll get roughed up. If you resist, you'll turn that chance into a certitude that includes being beaten, tazed or shot. I don't know about anyone else, but those things seriously harsh my mellow.

Civil Rights

Choosing when to resist the police in this fashion puts the burden of determining legality of such action squarely on you. If you're wrong and the search is deemed legal, you've just committed a felony. It's not worth going to prison over. It's basic economics, exercising one right at the cost of all your freedom is simply a bad plan.

I agree with the Indiana Supreme Court. People have numerous opportunities to defend themselves in both civil and criminal court. I've heard people say they don't trust the court system or the police and believe a person's 6th and 7th amendment rights are infringed before they step into the court. I'm a paranoid guy, but if I believed any of that I would be arranging to live elsewhere.

President Obama's predilection for detaining or ordering the deaths of US Citizens without the benefit of a trial are far more concerning to me. I hear Sweden is nice.

If you are going to fight the police, do it in a courtroom with a lawyer. Even if the system is broken, it's a far better outcome than fighting with the police in your living room. There is no point in having a right that you can neither defend or enforce when you've others at your disposal that make a lot more sense. Making changes to our Police Departments to make that right defensible would aid criminals far more than it would the common person.

Police Officers

Most of Law Enforcement are regular people with just enough true sheepdogs (natural born protectors) among them to keep things real. Like a garbage man, accountant or burger clerk, Police Officers just want to go home at the end of their shift. Regular people doing an extraordinarily difficult job.

Most folks when attacked, will do what they can to flee the situation or defend themselves without hurting their attacker. They just want out of those unpleasant circumstances as quickly as possible. Police Officers rely on their training to survive those situations and will fight harder and seek no retreat as a consequence.

Police Officers are trained to believe that there are innocent people behind them and that getting taken out gives a bad guy access to the weapons they carry on duty. Their fellow Officers and innocent members of the public are counting on them to make sure that doesn't happen. Sun Tzu figured out the subtleties of this in every word he wrote about armed conflict.

"Nothing is harder than armed struggle."

If you attack someone with weapons, even seemingly unarmed yourself, be prepared for that person to fight you to the death. Ever wonder why unarmed crowds who charge dangerously close to armed police or military personnel are fired upon? Often, I think it is the fear of losing control of their weapons.

This is the risk any government takes fielding armed personnel on the ground to control their own populations. Does this excuse firing on unarmed civilians? Sun Tzu didn't think so, and neither do I. He states many times that military forces should receive orders from a civilian authority and never be deployed against their own people. I don't consider peace officers a "deployment" in that capacity.

"Using order to deal with the disorderly, using calm to deal with the clamorous, is mastering the heart."

Final Words

Given Indiana's track record, it'll be interesting to see if the ruling stays in place. Yes, I understand that for many people this is about principles, but I'd like to see them put those principles into practice. In the end it won't change anything. When the police unlawfully enter a domicile, smart folks will get a lawyer and their day in court. Mouth-breathers will fight the police and acquire dire consequences.

This isn't about rights, it's about reality.

Pajamas Media's Take

Trolls, Spam, Anonymity and Censorship

There was a pretty decent editorial on Engadget about anonymity on the internet. They seemed to be trying to find a way to combat the excessive amount of trolling in their comments sections and made a thinly-veiled suggestion that maybe things would be better if people had to sign in under a verified real name. I'd link the article but it got pulled right after I commented beneath it. If it is still there somewhere, darned if I can find it.

My response to the editorial was shorter... but here's the expanded version:

I've been pretty hard on the US Government for their inability to find proper ways of regulating the internet that didn't amount to stupidity or censorship. If heavyweights like the folks at Engadget are struggling with the moderating the comments sections beneath articles, maybe it really is a problem. I was just spinning through Boing-Boing and saw a similar post about using mini URLs in the comments section to combat spammers and advert-bots.

I went ahead and committed some of my not-so-considerable brainpower to the problem and did a quick look around at the various sites I read and contribute to. Other than taking the Daring Fireball road and just not having a comments section at all there are three things I see to being key to preventing spam, trolls and so forth. None of those things have a thing to do with depriving people of what I see as their right to privacy online.

1. Hire professional writers who have a college level vocabulary.

Articles and content that are written well, by professionals, will deter a portion of the sub-human population that assuredly makes up a percentage of online trolls. I believe that an article written by someone who knows how, sans 1337speak/slang/etc, should act as a natural deterrent to certain types of trolls. It's clear from the way many trolls use language, words with more than two-syllables are pretty tough.

You can't fix stupid. Trolls are almost universally ignorant and will generally seek to verbally spar with people they consider their near equal intellectually. I find that whenever I engage or confront trolls in the comments section a few well placed ten cent words take the wind right out of their sails. Where pointing out how ignorant or irrational they are fails, illuminating their stupidity sometimes succeeds.

Read an article at Gizmodo (if you can figure out their cockamamie new format) and then read one from Ars Technica. Look at the threads beneath the articles on both sites and draw your own conclusion. From my perspective the comment sections on Ars Technica are far less painful and sport fewer trolls*.

2. Exercise Editorial Control

Sites that act as thinly-veiled mouthpieces for controversial corporate entities are going to be targets by trolls and regular folks alike. People crave objectivity most of the time and innately sense when you're faking it. If you're going to play that game with your readers, expect them to give you crap. When it's clear you're doing whatever you have to just to get hits and/or sell advertising anyone with a brain can generally tell.

If you don't seem to care about your content, no one else will either. It's common sense.

I rarely see someone giving the folks at Mac Rumors crap for their content. It's clear which team they are rooting for. They don't prevaricate with their audience in the slightest and to that end seem to suffer fewer trolls* than sites who aren't up front about who they think is a good and who they think is crap.

EDIT: Ask your readers within the textual portion of the article or content what you want to see in the comments section. Give them a clear option to participate in a positive way.

3. Forums

Having a separate place where people can discuss and moderate themselves is always a good thing. Generally they can find others of a similar mindset, commiserate in an area designated for the purpose and move on. The trolls, spammers and advert-bots will continue to do what they do, but they'll be easier to spot and kick without accidentally alienating someone who was just having a bad day.

Setting up a forum is easier than dodging around two dozen comments sections a day hunting trolls.

Why is anonymity important?

The internet is a wondrous resource, but there are many times when people need to be anonymous. To that end I think a lot of people would or could be barred from contributing to the online community if they had to shed that buffer.

Folks with general anxiety disorder come to mind. The folks who are related to a member of law enforcement, a federal judge or celebrity probably find anonymity a necessity every once in a while. Then there are all the other occasions when having the option to be anonymous is important.

Example: Your mom/brother/spouse/gerbil is dying of AIDS. You want to find a support group to help you cope with everything going on without compromising your own or your mom/brother/spouse/gerbil's identities online. It's an extreme example, but I can think of plenty others.

The moral of the story?

You can't get people to make good choices (for the right reasons) by reducing the number choices available to them.

*Maybe these sites do suffer the same amount of trolls and have found an efficient way of weeding them. It speaks to their perseverance and the pride they take in the content they provide regardless.

Wikileaks vs. US Government

Let me say this out front. I think that Wikileak's unfiltered release of US Diplomatic Cables was deplorable, irresponsible and incredibly damaging to the country in which I live. I don't condone what they did in any sense. I think the power of the written word and the internet should always be used for good, and what Wikileaks did could be described as anything but.

That being said, I think the US Government response has been exactly what you'd expect from a group of people largely populated by old, out-of-touch white guys. Congressman Peter King (New York Republican), the guy supposed to be heading up Homeland Security has suggested we make Wikileaks a Terrorist Organization. Senator Joe Lieberman (Independent Democrat, CT) thinks we should look into prosecuting (for espionage?) the New York Times for publishing some of the same Diplomatic Cables.

I don't have to look at the pseudo-legalese behind what these two Government Officials are suggesting. What the New York Times and Wikileaks did is, like it or not, protected by the First Amendment. Read the Constitution, it couldn't be more clear. Neither organization conspired to acquire these documents, paid to have others do so, or were involved in the commission of the crime committed by whoever did leak those documents. If they did, let's see the proof.

(Update: Yes I'm aware Julian Assange is not a US Citizen and may not be privy to the same protections. I just don't think depriving him of what we consider basic rights is a good plan, legal or not.)

I understand that because Congressman King and Senator Lieberman head up committees responsible for Homeland security, they probably think they're just doing their jobs. That fact isn't lost on me, and I'll bet the pressure for them to act is unreal. Sarah Palin using those same Cables to criticize President Obama has probably lit a fire under everyone with anything to do with making sure such leaks don't happen.

Wikileaks was cooperating with many news affiliates, national and international when it leaked those documents. I wouldn't be surprised if a great deal of their funding came from the Associated Press and other high profile news agencies. Given the aggressive stance the US has taken, legitimate news organizations would certainly fund and foster proxy (not-for-profit) media outlets like Wikileaks for the purpose of generating news.

How much money and traction have international news agencies gotten out of this debacle? What's the phrase here? "Field day"?

The US Government needs to appeal to the people who elected it for accountability for those guilty of irresponsible journalism and make those same people "below" the diplomatic level understand why these leaks were bad. Most people, I don't think, fully understand what's at stake here. To that end, they should appeal to the common man's patriotism instead of acting like Big Brother. Finally, they should completely stop using words like "Terrorist" and "Espionage Act" in reference to organizations designed to protect and preserve the First Amendment. Deserved or not.

What would be more embarrassing than having those Diplomatic Cables leaked? Getting Julian Assange extradited to the US for trial on espionage crimes and giving him a win on a landmark First Amendment Case. The outcome for the US, according to diplomatic sources and anyone with a third grade reading level is uncertain. Prosecuting either the New York Times or Wikileak's Figure Head for terrorism or espionage is far from a sure thing. Given the way our own highest law is written, they could win by hiding behind the First Amendment.

Those are big dice I don't think our Government should even roll.

Obama and Friends should start acting like leaders instead of petty bureaucrats and appeal to the American people's patriotism and sense of right and wrong. Do I think my friends and family operating overseas on behalf of my Government were possibly endangered by what Wikileaks did?

Yes, I do. If I ever saw Julian Assange, I wouldn't say a word. A punch to the face would more accurately express my feelings for him and his actions.

Do I see a US Politician, at any level of governance, willing to represent my voice relative to the matter that isn't currently in full ass-covering mode? Someone who would appeal to me and my patriotism to take action and boycott those news agencies that supported Wikileaks?

No, I don't. I can't even hear them over all the sabre rattling.

Update:

Did some more thinking about it in the shower. The thing to do might be waiting to see if Sweden can extradite Julian Assange and see how that plays out. If he's a convicted sex offender, it at least precludes him from being a very good martyr for various anti-US causes, individuals, etc.

If Sweden can put a smudge on that worthless reprobate, I'd feel better about pulling him on charges in the US.