Quick Hitts

I visit the Free Thought Blogs network from time to time, mostly to read one blog I like. While there, I usually click on another blog or two. Most of the writers are very long-winded.  They fill pages and pages without presenting any new ideas or expressing old ideas in new or interesting ways. Their writing isn’t horribly bad; it’s just not very good.

But for the past year I’ve watched the overall tone of the place deteriorate into an ever expanding hissy fit, a perpetual competition over who can be more politically correct. I’ve seen more restraint and less drama among hyperactive twelve-year-olds. It has become more amusing and appalling with each visit.

And as far as I can determine, it started with someone offering someone else a cup of coffee.

Late one night, in an elevator at skeptics convention, someone asked Rebecca Watson if she’d like to come up to his room for a coffee. She blogged about it, and it blew up into a shit storm, much to her delight.

Later, at a different convention, a swinger couple propositioned another woman, asking her to join them for a threesome, giving her a card with their contact information, and leaving.

This resulted in a protracted debate/argument/brawl about sexual harassment of women in the skeptic/atheist movement. D. J. Grothe, who (up until then) was widely respected in the atheist movement, came up with a simple, perfect solution – report it. If someone is really being harassed, report it to the security people at the convention. They take such things very seriously, and they’d deal with it.

This resulted in D. J. becoming the target of attacks, despite the fact that he also used this as an opportunity to encourage more women to get involved in the movement.

Here’s a free clue for anyone, of any sex, going to any convention, anywhere. Among the thousands of people there, there will be a subset who want to get laid. A subset of them will go about it in a gross and sloppy way. This has nothing to do with the fact that it’s a skeptic and/or atheist convention. It happens at Sci-Fi conventions, automotive conventions, comic-book conventions, Real Estate conventions, Star Trek conventions and even (or perhaps, especially) at religious conventions. Yes, it’s a problem, but it’s not unique to skeptic or atheist themed gatherings. It doesn’t justify the ham-fisted response of trying to create a whole new movement.

***

Many years ago I set out to learn about Humanism. I read their manifestos and agreed with quite a few of their ideas, although I was put off by their disdain for capitalism. Since what people say is often different from what they do, I visited a few Humanist forums to get a better idea of where they were really coming from.

It wasn’t at all what I expected. The majority of people in the forums were truly, madly, deeply in love with Big Brother. The idea that society and government were two different things wasn’t just foreign to them; it was a concept they were incapable of even considering. Any suggestion that was even slightly liberty-minded was met with a vehement response, compete with tiresome flinging of inaccurate labels. (Randian, Faux News Watcher, Dittohead, etc.) Most were hard-core socialists who were extremely hostile to anything outside their political ideology. They had given up their belief in an all knowing, all loving, benevolent Deity and replaced it with blind obeisance to The State. All we need to do, they argued, is get The State to stop doing the horrible things it does and we’ll be left with an entity that will dispense justice and equality for all.

It was a religion I wanted no part of, so I didn’t hang around very long.

***

Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have earned the nickname “The Four Horsemen.” They are regarded, and rightly so, as the primary movers and shakers of the atheist movement. Yet over at FtB they’re being condemned for being old, white men. In the world of Political Correctness being old is bad, being white is horrible, and being male is the ultimate sin. Put the three together and you’ve got evil raised to the power of three.

Of the four, Hitchens is my personal favorite. (Now he’s dead, making him a “dead white European male”, the epitome of evil among PC Perfectionists.) He was smart and witty and smooth and one of the best writers of my generation. Even when you disagreed with him, you had to admire his class and style and his way with words. Reading anything he wrote, even on the most trivial and unimportant subject, is a sublime pleasure.

And…cut to just about any article over at FtB.  You can easily imagine the writer wiping the spittle from his or her bearded chin as they tap out their latest juvenile screed. It’s not exactly impressive. Compared to anything crafted by any of The Four Horsemen, it’s downright embarrassing.

***

I wouldn’t have bothered writing about any of this if it hadn’t boiled over into something that could have a detrimental affect on the entire atheist movement: the A+ label, an attempt to intentionally create a rift among atheists.

Atheism is all-inclusive. You don’t believe in a god? Cool, you’re an atheist, let’s have a beer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican or a Libertarian or a Green. Your race and gender are not important.  Your sexuality is not an issue. Your taste in music or movies or art are immaterial. Your stance on specific political issues is something we can have fun discussing, especially if we disagree. The only requirement for joining the club is not believing in a god.

Atheism Plus attempts to change that by creating a sub-group that demands everyone adhere to several morals clauses. If you disagree with any of them (or just disagree with their version of them) you don’t measure up.  You’re despicable and we will shun you.

Lest I be accused of misinterpretation, here’s a verbatim quote from one of the FtB authors:

 There is a new atheism brewing, and it’s the rift we need, to cut free the dead weight so we can kick the C.H.U.D.’s back into the sewers and finally disown them, once and for all…I was already mulling a way to do this back in June when discussion in the comments on my post On Sexual Harassment generated an idea (inspired by Anne C. Hanna) to start a blog series building a system of shared values that separates the light side of the force from the dark side within the atheism movement, so we could start marginalizing the evil in our midst, and grooming the next generation more consistently and clearly into a system of more enlightened humanist values.

Impressed? Me neither. I don’t like the religion of Humanism. I consider the religion of Star Wars entertainment, not enlightenment. “Grooming the next generation” and “evil in our midst” are creepy phrases that belong in a fundamentalist tract, not an atheist’s column. If you read other articles on the site you’ll see the inclusion of progressivism (i.e. socialism) in the mix. Any atheist who disagrees with any of this dogma is should be disowned and “kicked back into the sewer.”

Very few political issues are also atheist issues: the separation of church and state (including the plethora of religiously inspired laws), preferential government treatment of religious institutions, governmental discrimination against atheists, and…that’s pretty much it.

Hang with any gang ‘o atheists and you’ll find most of us agree on most political and moral issues – but that doesn’t make them atheist issues. Gay rights are not an atheist issue. Women’s rights are not an atheist issue. The man-hating version of feminism is not an atheist issue. Racism is not an atheist issue. Foreign policy, drug policy, immigration, capitalism, corporatism, capital punishment, the Federal Reserve and gun control are not atheist issues. Atheists discus and debate and argue these (and other) political issues without ever mistaking them for atheist issues. A+ intends to change that. Although they only include a few of these issues now, mission creep is inevitable, especially among people as pompous and self-righteous as the A+ gang.

Use the big red atheist “A” to spell “atheism” and it’s still “Atheism.” Do it with the modified A+ logo and it comes out “A+theism,” the very opposite of atheism. This is the birth of a new religion, and that’s never something to celebrate.

When theists claim Atheism is a religion, we enjoy pointing out their error, noting that there is no dogma, no creed, no central authority, no founding documents and perhaps most importantly, no punishment for anyone who disagrees with beliefs that are common among atheists. But with the birth of this new movement, they can counter with “What about A+” and we’ll have to kick at the ground and say, “yeah, well…um.”

How should rational atheists react to this nonsense? Should we shun the shunners?  Should we try to enlighten them?  Should we hope they grow a brain cell and realize how silly they’ve become? Should we point out that this really isn’t atheism, and then listen to their inevitable retort about the No True Scotsman logical fallacy? Should we just ignore them and wait for their movement’s inevitable collapse?

I’m not sure.  My gut instinct is to treat them the way I treat other religious extremists – point and giggle and make fun of their ignorance – but that’s not a good solution either.

Suggestions are welcome.

Additional Commentary

A+ (atheism plus), For A Third Glorious Age of Total Agreement

If You Are Tired of the Free Thought Blogs Drama…

Atheism Plus: We’re Atheists… But We Behave Like Christians! (Lots of Links that prove the point.)

Kyria Abrams, a very funny writer and performer, posted a FB link to this article from a blog I hadn’t seen before. The author was dealing with something all artists experience – harsh negative criticism about his art – in this case an album he had released.

In theory, we should be able to adopt the position that critics who hate your stuff are wrong and critics who like your stuff are brilliant geniuses. We also know that some critics are talentless, frustrated artists themselves. They are unable to create anything worthwhile so they build their own self-esteem by putting down those who can.

But whenever we create something we do so with at least a bit of fear.  Deep in our hearts we fear that what we’ve created, that thing we’ve spent countless hours pouring our soul and our heart into, using talents we’ve cultivated and honed for years…sucks. And when a stranger tells us it does it confirms that fear.  We believe them, and it makes us miserable.

Any artist worth being called an artist should be plagued by self-doubt. We should be our own harshest critics, refusing to release anything to the public until we’ve honed it and shaped it and fixed it and edited it and fixed it some more. Creative people know the truth of the saying “No art is finished, only abandoned.” We get to the point where further futzing with it will not make it better, just different, and by then we’re tired of it anyway and eager to move on to something else.

On the flip side, have you ever met a musician or writer or painter who had no self-doubt or humility and thought their stuff was the greatest stuff on the planet? They really did suck, didn’t they?

There are critics you should listen to and whose advice and reactions you should take to heart: your audience. I’m specifically referring to your audience, the audience of fans that you’ve earned over time.

Artists are usually lousy judges of their own work. Quite often your fans will praise something you just tossed out there, something you don’t think is all that great. They will express disappointment (or respond with polite silence) to something you slaved over and think is brilliant.

Thirty years ago I was doing novelty songs in coffee houses and bars. I once wrote two songs within a week (a major accomplishment for me). One was “A Modern Major Pseudo-Intellectual,” written to the tune of “A Modern Major-General.” It was brilliant and clever and full of obscure historical references that would make the audience feel smart just for getting the jokes. (The only line I remember is “We’ll wonder if Bram Stoker enjoyed Modigliani.”) The other was a throw-away piece called “I Want To Be a Nerd.” The chorus was “I want to be a nerd, a geek, a wimp a gimp a pencil-necked geek. I know it sounds absurd but I want to be a nerd.” I polished them, practiced them, and headed to the open mike I frequented to try them out.  I figured “Modern Major..” would be part of my repertoire forever and “Nerd” one would be something I did a few times and then discarded.

The oh-so-smart oh-so-clever song got polite golf claps. The Nerd song got belly laughs and enthusiastic applause.

I tried again, in front of a different audience, and got the same results. Fans requested the Nerd song, and never ever requested “Modern Major…”   I waited a few weeks and gave “Modern Major” one more try.  Again, it got the kind of polite applause that’s more disappointing that booing and heckling.  I decided to listen to my audience and discarded “Modern Major…” I performed “I Want To Be A Nerd” for years afterward.

Ignore the critics. Trust your fans. They’re the only critics who matter.

Recently Michelle Obama visited Mars Inc. and bitched about the size of their candy bars. She insisted that they reduce their standard size bars, which contain 280 calories, to 250 calories, a number she pulled out of her first-lady butt. She also asked them to stop making king size candy bars.

What they should have done: Say, “Thank you Mrs. Obama. Now please enjoy this goody bag full of delicious candy and our security men will walk you to the exit.”

What they did: Bowed down and kissed her feet. They are going to reduce the size of their candy bars and eliminate king size bars.

When government makes “suggestions” most business comply very quickly. Their compliance is often used as an excuse to turn those suggestions into laws. (“XYZ Inc. did it, and they’re still in business, so we should make it a law.”) When Big Brother makes “suggestions” or concocts rules, regulations or laws very few businesses will resist them, even if it means closing their doors. Those rare business that do resist deserve our respect, support, and money.

Like all government agencies The Consumer Products Safety Commission has laudable sounding job description. They are in charge of making sure unsafe products are pulled from the market. When you see notices that “Bottle Rockets for Babies” has been recalled, that’s the CPSC in action. And to be fair, most of their product recalls are justifiable.

But like all government agencies they like to overstep their authority, make stupid decisions, and destroy businesses based on those stupid decisions.

Buckyballs are small rare earth magnets designed to be an adult desktop toy. Their packaging clearly indicates they are designed for adults and is covered with warnings that boil down to “keep these out of the reach of children” and “don’t eat these, idiots.” The company worked with the CPSC to design the warnings, even going so far as to recall 175,000 sets that labeled for ages 13 and up and replacing the warnings to…14 and up. Maxfield & Oberton, the manufacturer, has steadfastly refused to sell them to retailers who only cater to children, like Toys R Us. The balls sell for about thirty bucks a set, not something a kid is likely to purchase on their own.

Despite their ethical behavior and their cooperation with the CPSC, the CSPC has decided to put them out of business.

Eating magnets is a very bad idea. They stick together and can pinch off areas of the stomach or colon, causing perforation and other nasty effects that require surgery to resolve. So….don’t eat magnets. And don’t leave them around where little kids can eat them either.

But stupid parents will be stupid, and some have left these adult toys in the reach of children, who then ate them and suffered the ill effects. This has happened to twenty-two kids – out of two and a half million sets of Buckyballs sold. Many of them were teenagers. Eleven of them required surgery.

The CSPC started by going after sellers, asking them to “voluntarily” remove them from their stores. Most have complied – a search on “Buckyballs” on Amazon, for instance, only returns a book about how to play with them. But you can still get them from Maxfield & Oberton, who refuses to shut down their business to placate the idiot bureaucrats at CSPC. They are selling them directly at their website and report a 50-fold increase in orders. This ridiculous ban has not only given them gobs of publicity via the Streisand Effect, it’s also prompted people to buy them now out of fear they may not be available in the near future.

One set is fun, two sets is even more fun. They’re available in a variety of colors, and recently the company has introduced BuckyCubes, which creates a whole new bevy of possibilities.

You should buy some, not just because they are such a cool toy, not just because the CSPC may succeed in shutting down this business, but to support the company and their principles. The only thing that will slow down Big Brother is companies (and people) who stand up and say, “No, you’re rules/laws/regulations are stupid, and we will not comply.”

More Info:

Here’s one of many videos of the balls in action:

Related Quick Hitts article: Bad Cop, No Donut.

The Onion’s perspective.

When some of your ideas and opinions are out of the mainstream one of the biggest impediments to presenting them can be people who are on your side.

For instance, you’re Smartenizing someone on the issue of Second Hand Smoke. You’re talking to an otherwise intelligent person who has succumbed to the endless hype and believes that a whiff of SHS can be deadly. You explain the limits of epidemiology. You talk about the principles of toxicology. You point out a few of the carefully engineered frauds that have been used to “prove” the dangers. You highlight some of the nasty characters promoting the fraud and explain the role of pharmaceutical companies in funding and perpetuating it. And just as he’s considering adjusting his bullshit meter on the subject someone joins the conversation and spews, “Yes, it’s pure junk science, just like the theory of evolution!”

Damn. Now what? Should you get sidetracked on this completely different subject? Should you ignore Mr. Helpful? Should you do something, anything, to distance yourself from him? There are no good options. The effort you’ve spent making your points and laying out your decision has been derailed by a well-meaning moron.

Or you’re having a friendly debate about liberty v. Government. You point out how most government services could be done better, faster and cheaper in a free enterprise system. You seem to be making some headway in getting your opponent to admit that all taxes are taken at the point of a gun, and as that rarest of things happens – he starts to make a concession – someone who has been agreeing with you chirps something about Obama being a commie Kenyan with a phony birth certificate.

Interrupters fall into two camps – strangers you’d rather not have anything to do with, and friends who happen to cling to a stupid idea or two. The strangers can usually be brushed away, dismissed as idiots. They’ll still do some damage simply by associating their ideas with yours, but not much (usually). Friends, though, are a different problem. Your friend may be a super-genius (i.e. agrees with you) on most other subjects. You don’t want to make him look stupid even if he’s making a silly argument at the moment. The best you can do is ask to stay on the subject at hand.

It’s not an easy situation, but ultimately it’s not all that important. Maintaining a friendship is more important that winning an argument with someone else (usually a stranger or a slight acquaintance). But remember this when you’re tempted to jump in and help someone making an argument. Stay on point and don’t get sidetracked on your pet issue, or you may be doing more damage than you realize.

Hank Fox, The Blue Collar Atheist, took offence to my reference to Obama as LMO – Lord Messiah Obama. He crafted this blog post about it. Please read it before continuing with this article, which is my response.

LMO is not really a reference to Obama; it refers to his more rabid followers, people who believe he is the second coming of {insert their favorite-person-in-all-of mankind’s-history here}.

We agree on many things, the most important of which is that we really only have one party in this country. Virtually every member of the party believes, deeply and to the very core of their bones, that Government is Good, and that every problem, no matter how large or small, must be immediately addressed and fixed by Big Brother. Their solutions make things worse approximately 96.45% of the time, and their response is always the same: we need more government to fix the problems that more government created when we tried to fix the problem that more government created.

Here’s where we differ: I don’t see the government as good. I see it as a necessary evil, and the less evil we have the better off we all are.

Let’s just take one example: The War on Some Drugs. Any thinking person can easily see that it’s a complete failure in every measurable way. The response to that failure, since the days of Nixon, has been to ramp it up. As a direct result drugs have become cheaper, more widely available, have provided a huge revenue stream for violent criminals and corrupt cops and politicians. It has given us the world’s largest prison population (in both sheer numbers and percentage of the population). It continues to finance and provide an excuse for the militarization and increasing violence of the police. It has destroyed (and in some cases ended) the lives of tens of millions of citizens who never hurt anyone else. It has nullified the fourth amendment. The War on Some Drugs has cased far, far more damage than drugs would have on their own.

We now know Obama a huge stoner as a young man. If he had been caught back then he’d now be some unknown guy working in a department store. One would think that would make him a bit more companionate toward his fellow citizens who like to break that particular law. Nope. Not even a little. He continues to support ruining the lives of people who have done exactly what he did. After boldly lying about stopping federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, he stepped them up. He’s closed over 500 shops in CA alone. Hypocrisy is common in politics, but it seldom reaches this level.

Obama wants to continue this unwinnable war. Mitt has said he’ll do the same thing. This is one of the biggest problems facing our country and their solution is to make it worse by increasing the level of attacks on Americans and their rights and their property.

You briefly mention my opposition to the War on Smokers. If you understand my stance on that issue you’ll understand nearly all of my politics.

The war on smokers is a perfect example of government run amuck, interfering with everyone’s lives “for our own good” and causeing damage too great to measure.

There is no doubt that smoking is bad for you. It increases your risk of many diseases, and is generally unhealthy. You know that. I know that. Every knowledgeable person on the planet knows that. Making everyone aware of that resulted in reducing smoking from about 40% of the population to about 20% today. But that wasn’t enough for the Nicotine Nazis. They will not be happy until everyone bends to their will, so they needed something else to scare everyone into quitting. The government gleefully provided it – a myth, a piece of pure junk science – that claimed the slightest whiff of second hand smoke was deadly. This inspired draconian smoking bans and campaigns of pure hate against smokers. First they went after private businesses that allowed their customers to smoke. This resulted in tens of thousands of businesses shutting down. After driving smokers to the streets they banned smoking on the streets. Now they’re going after people in their own homes.

This makes the smoking issue a perfect example of government ruining lives for our own good. It is also a perfect example of pure junk science in action. And it is providing a template for every other nanny group to advance their agenda. Anyone who has supported smoking restrictions on private property has no right to complain about bans on large drinks, full size candy bars (thank you, Mrs. Obama), foie gras, or anything else. The Food Fascists using the exact same action plan the NNs perfected against smokers: Exaggerate (or fabricate) a problem, generate junk science, instill baseless fear in the general population and use Big Brother to force people to live the way you want them to.

It’s also worth nothing that after promising to never raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250k, the very first law Obama signed in office raised the tax on roll-your-own tobacco by an astounding 2,100%! I don’t think too many people earning more than a quarter million a year are rolling their own smokes. I don’t think too many people earning more than $20k a year are. It was a direct attack on the wallets of the poorest of the poor.

(BTW, is Obama still sneaking cigarettes?)

The final straw, for me, was Obama assassinating an American citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki was pure evil. He preached and promoted pure evil. But we never saw any evidence that he was directly involved in any attacks on US interests.

A law abiding president would have conducted a trail in absentia and presented solid evidence of guilt before handing down a death sentence. Obama couldn’t be bothered. He simply murdered him with a robot drone. Two weeks later he murdered Anwar’s sixteen year old son, just for good measure.

The reaction from his fans was what inspired me to start using the LMO sobriquet more frequently. If G.W. Bush had done the exact same thing the clamor from the left would have been deafening, and rightly so. But when their guy did it they heaped praise on him. Obama is a hero, dontcha know, for the remote assassination of an American citizen. America, Fuck Yeah!

You’re right about the rabid right going bat-shit crazy over anything LMO does. He could hand out free puppies that he’d raised at his own expense and they’d find something evil about it. But you completely ignore the equally bat-shit left who slobber with excitement over everything LMO does, the same bat-shit battalion who automatically lapsed into hysteria over everything Bush did. They portrayed Bush as a chimp, then screamed “racist!” when the same thing was done to Obama. They decry big business, writing their screeds on cheap, powerful laptops created by big business, then sending them out over complex networks carefully built and maintained by big business, blind to their own hypocrisy. When Republicans hand out money to their friends they scream about corporatism.  When Obama does it they cheer.  And when LMO murders a citizen they look at the pretty fireworks and say “aaaaaaaaawww-some.”

The rabid right continues to attack basic human rights, especially reproductive rights and equal rights for lifestyles they despise. But the loony left is even more dangerous. Their anti-vax, anti-GMO, anti-development, anti-nuke and anti-science stance threatens our very survival as a species.

I honestly see very little difference between Mittens and LMO, with the exception of how well they treat their pets. They both insist they want the best for the country while handing out huge payouts to their friends, ignoring the citizens whose lives they damage with every stroke of the pen. They are both deeply hypocritical and dishonest. And both of them believe big huge monster government is the only solution to problems which were mostly created by big huge monster government.

The fact that intelligent, thinking people believe there’s a real difference between the two illustrates how well their professional spin doctors get past most people’s bullshit meters. It’s time to tweak and tune up yours, Hank, because neither of these two clowns give a rat’s rectum about you, or me, or any of the 300 million of us who can’t afford travel in their rarified, extremely wealthy circles of friends and cronies.

Time for a break from the heavy stuff:  Here’s something to brighten your day.

I stumbled on this while checking out the videos of Linda Dachtyl.  As of this post it has less than 500 views, which is a shame.

It’s great fun music, but what really makes this version shine is the attitude of the performers.  Watch it full screen for the best effect.

So the Supremes have ruled that Big Brother can force us to buy things. Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that new power? And in forums and other discussion areas, when we point out that there is nothing in the constitution that allows that, the responses from the Big Brother fanboys would be amusing if their love of BB’s boot wasn’t so depressing. And predictable.

This is providing fertile grounds for pundits of all political stripes. Some will argue that it’s a wonderful thing. Tyrants always have an army of sycophants cheering them on. Others will argue that it is an unprecedented expansion of federal power. It’s not; the Supremes have a long history of justifying unconstitutional expansions of federal power. Self styled experts will proclaim that it’s a correct decision because the constitution’s commerce clause makes it constitutional. It doesn’t. Some will even argue that it’s constitutional because the Supremes said it is. Nope. It’s now legal, but that doesn’t make it constitutional.

Anyone discussing how this or any other horrible SC decision is clearly unconstitutional is almost guaranteed to hear the most common, lamest, and tiresome retort from the sycophants: “You’re not a constitutional scholar. So there. Nyah nyah nyah.” This usually comes from people who, just a few conversations ago, were pontificating about Citizens United or some other decision they disagreed with. Their personal equation is simple: When they disagree with a SC decision they are constitutional experts. When they agree with a decision those who point out the flaws in it are unqualified, and therefore their opinion is meaningless. They manage to blend Cognitive Bias and Argument From Authority into a refreshingly chilled blend of logical fallacies, flavored with a heaping dose of smug. They gulp it down so quickly brain freeze is inevitable.

There are many subjects that require a lifetime of study to master. The Constitution isn’t one of them. It is a very simple document. It’s less than 5,000 words and can be read, slowly and carefully, in about a half hour. It fits neatly into a pocket sized pamphlet. (I have one distributed by the Girl Scouts – it’s very handy.) There are only a few places where the meaning might be unclear, and they can be resolved with a bit more research. For instance, the meanings of the words “militia” and “well-regulated” have changed since the BOR was written, so you need a bit of research to discover what the Founding Fathers meant. It will take you about ten minutes on the internet.

You need to do a bit more than that, though. You have to spend some time on other writings of the FFs. They knew they were making history, and most of them preserved their writings, letters, and articles for posterity. The Federalist Papers are a good start. There are tens of thousands of pages of other writings as well, but it’s not necessary to read them all, or even most of them, to get a good understanding of their motives and beliefs. Yes, you could spend a lifetime studying them, (and they all were fascinating people) but that’s not necessary. You can develop a great deal of expertise on the constitution and the intent of the FFs with just a few weeks of study.  Study it for a few months and you’ll know more about it than 98% of your fellow Americans.

You’ll learn that the whole purpose of the constitution was to limit federal power. It lists about a dozen and a half things the feds can do, and the tenth amendment says they can’t do anything that’s not on the list.

Once you have a good understanding of what the FFs wanted, what they felt was the right and proper role of the federal government in the lives of American citizens, you can start looking through Supreme Court decisions. Prepare to be appalled. Pick a time period, any time period, and so some research. Go back ten years and you’ll find plenty of appalling decisions. Go back fifty years and you’ll more appalling decisions. Go back to just a few years after the country was founded and you’ll find appalling decisions.

Throughout its entire history the Supreme Court has made it a policy to twist and subvert the very clear intent of the FFs into rulings that allow for expansion of federal power. Their most common excuse is the Commerce Clause, which was intended to let the feds mediate disputes between the states. Almost immediately after we became a country the Supremes ruled that the CC allowed the government to regulate everything that ever crossed state lines, which was not at all the original intent.

But regulating everything that crossed state lines wasn’t good enough for them. In Wickard v. Filburn  they ruled that growing food for your own use could be prevented by the feds, even though there was no commerce and nothing crossed state lines. They affirmed that in Gonzales v. Raich in 2005.  You don’t need a law degree to recognize just how completely wrong and unconstitutional those decisions were. You just have to be able to read.

You do need an intense legal education to be able to subvert the constitution, to ignore its clear meanings, and to twist the words into supporting unconstitutional laws and policies. That’s what the Supreme Court does, routinely, and has through its entire history. Big Government presidents from “both” parties appoint judges who love their particular flavor of Big Government and those appointees justify most of the garbage legislation that’s passed. They do like the first amendment, and usually (but not always) make the correct interpretation of it, but that’s where it ends.

It is obvious they’re not sitting down and asking, “is this law/rule/regulation in keeping with what the constitution actually says?” Instead they’re thinking “I like this law” or “I don’t like this law.”  Then they twist those very clear words to justify what they’ve already decided. It doesn’t matter what the document really says, or what the FFs intentions were. If there were no commerce clause to misinterpret, they’d twist the general welfare clause. If that wasn’t in there they’d find some other part of the constitution to subvert. They don’t discriminate; they’ve twisted every part of the constitution to suit their will, with the exception of the third amendment.  And we can be certain that if the feds wanted to force us to allow solders to live with us, they’d find a way around that one too.

They are experts at it. They obviously delight in doing it. And they are constitutional scholars. They went to school for a long time, and practiced law for a long time after that, to develop the expertise necessary take something written that clearly and twist it to mean something else, sometimes the exact opposite of what it actually says.

People like you (the Smartenized reader) and me, who have merely studied the constitution on our own, are used to the scorn we get from the sycophants. “Pfft,” they say, “you aren’t legal scholars.”

“Perhaps not,” we reply. “But we don’t have to be. We can read. We can educate ourselves. You should give it a try sometime.”