A thread at Experts Exchange led to the assertion that people had a “right to eat pork.” This was later clarified as “a right to do whatever you please within the law.”

I’m not at all sure that I believe that there IS such a right, but in order to decide that, I needed to know exactly what a “right” is. My first instinct is to define it as a basic freedom so inalienable that the government has no legitimate reason to restrict it. However, I believe very strongly in the right to “freedom of speech”, and yet believe that the government has a very good cause to punish those who yell “fire” in a crowded theater or reveal extremely private details of another person’s life, so think I need to revise that definition.

From “The Smallest Minority” (a site that will likely be added to my sidebar soon. I’ll give it a few days, though.), I found a post dedicated to just this topic: What is a “Right”? (You may have to scroll down for it. It’s about 3/4 of the way down the page.)

The conclusion of that essay is that “A ‘right’ is what the majority of a society believes it is.”

While I understand what he’s getting at — a legal right is indeed what the majority of society believes it to be — I think the ideal of a right is something different. The more I think about it, I think that we need to go back and re-examine the definition of right I used above.

A right is a freedom so basic that the government has no ground to stand on when it tries to remove it from you. Invariably, the government will try to remove your rights. By its very nature, government will eventually begin to pass laws that infringe on rights, and it is the duty of the people to stop it from doing so.

What are your rights? Not the rights listed in the Bill of Rights, but truly unalienable rights? Well, in my opinion, there are only two rights:

1. The right to live (and its corollaries, which involve protecting one’s self, one’s loved ones, and one’s property)
2. The right to form one’s own ideas and share them with others. (Instead of a base “freedom of speech”, which implies you can say anything you want anywhere and anytime you want)

All other “rights” are corollaries to those two. However, neither the “right to eat pork” nor the “right to do whatever you please within the law” fits the bill. In fact, there are a lot of “rights” that, quite simply, aren’t. The right to marry is the first that comes to mind. While it’s a MUCH better soundbite to say that gays are being denied a Right than to say they’re being denied a privilege, it’s simply not true. (As I’ve stated before here, I do think that, if the government is going to give certain benefits to a union of two people, it shouldn’t care what the genders of those two people are. I think that homosexual acts are immoral, but, really, it’s none of my business (nor the government’s business) what two (or more) people do in the privacy of their own homes.
——–

Someone over at Experts Exchange mentioned the Retro Vs. Metro thing.

I really believe that the websites descriptions are unbalanced, but then, it’s not like they have any cause to be fair to both groups. I’m disgusted at those who comment that the “retro” population “…favor[s] limitations on the First Amendment…” when the First Amendment also guarantees us a right to freedom of religion. The general anti-religion (or anti-Christian, which is, of course, the only religion that’s okay to be bashed) tone of the entire article is disgusting.

“Retro Representatives support subsidies to oil, mining and agriculture, but they are opposed to women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, affirmative action, welfare, organized labor, and taxes of any kind.”

There’s so much wrong in that sentence alone that I can’t see anyone taking the book’s author seriously.

While I don’t particularly care much for the ideas of subsidies in general, I kind of think it’s a bit hypocritical to condemn people who want to help out the industries that produce raw materials to help fight our dependence on foriegn oil when one wants to subsidize the poor. (Especially when I see people getting welfare checks and using them to buy drugs — how is helping out a farmer whose crop was destroyed by a flood worse than that?!)

Which “women’s rights” are people against? I don’t know of anyone who wants to go back to the days when women weren’t allowed to vote, or speak, or whatever other rights we may be infringing upon. Gay rights? Read the Bill of Rights. Tell me which of those rights are being infringed upon, and I’ll happily stand beside you and fight for them.

Affirmative Action? We oppose telling minorities “You’ll never make it on your own, so we’ll just give you a job,” and we’re the racists?

Finally, I wanted to comment on the “God, Family, and Flag” comment by saying this:

Do I believe in God? Am I a Christian? Yes. Do I believe that strong family values are good forthis country? Yes. Am I proud to be an American, where I can stand up and complain when I think the government is doing something wrong (see: The Patriot Act)? YES.

And for all three of those things, I say: …AND PROUD OF IT.
——–

You know what? I don’t give a crap! Honestly, I imagine that there’s some seed of truth in most of the things that’re being said by MoveOn.org and by the Swift Boat Veterans. Unless someone has some hard proof, I really don’t care all that much. I’d really, really, really rather the candidates discussed… oh, I don’t know… how about… THE ISSUES?

I know they’re doing that to some extent, but I’d really like to get past the rhetoric and find out what Kerry’s plans are. He says he’ll rebuild our alliances to help with the cleanup in Iraq. How? He says he’ll be prepared for any terrorist attacks, and that he’ll retaliate quickly. How? We’ve had four years to see how Bush will run things — he’s not as obligated to explain how he’s going to do things, because we have a good feel for it. Kerry’s not been President; it’s different from being a senator. He needs to come out and elaborate on his plans. Is he afraid Bush is going to steal them?

This is made doubly important since Kerry’s Senate record doesn’t quite back up the moderate stance he’s trying to put forward on most issues. He’s been pretty well steeped at the extreme left of the political spectrum, and no matter what he says, I have trouble believing him. I have issues with Bush; I won’t lie about that. Still, at least when Bush tells us that he’ll be strong on terror, I believe it. I may not approve of some of his decisions, but I don’t get the impression he’s lying. (No, I don’t think he lied about the WMDs. I think he told us the evidence that supported what he wanted, and ignored the rest, but most people do that sort of thing, and all politicians do.)

In other news, it looks like a sequel to Freddy Vs. Jason is in the works. Honestly, while the original Freddy Vs. Jason and Aliens Vs. Predator had stupid names, I really liked both of them. And, if they could get the third character they’re talking about for the FvJ sequel, I’d be there to see it opening night even if I had to fight an army of the dead to get there.

I really wish Kerry Vs. Bush was half as entertaining. Maybe we should get Paul W. S. Anderson to direct it.
——–

Because I know it’s too dangerous to get your information from one source (or even multiple sources, if they’re all on the same general end of the political spectrum), I decided to read what other people had to say about Tammy Bruce today. What I found shocked me.

I found, as I expected, a lot of websites maintained by people who didn’t like Ms. Bruce, but several of these had attacks that had nothing to do with her political views. For example, one included, in its criticisms that she “wasn’t easy to look at.” Nevermind that every picture I’ve seen of her shows that she’s not in the least unattractive, the comment has nothing to do with her arguments.

After I considered it a bit more, though, I realized that it shouldn’t shock me. I wish I could say it only happened on “that” side of the fence, but look at the name of the new Anti-Michael Moore book: Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, by David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke. Michael Moore disgusts me for his politics and his tendency to twist the truth to make it completely unrecognizable. Hardy and Clarke maintain anti-Moore websites, both of which I’ve read and enjoyed. So, if they have the material to attack Moore’s work and not Moore himself, why bother with the stupid title (I realize it’s a play on his Stupid White Men title, but if nothing else, did they not ask why they must stoop to his level?

How many times have you heard Bush’s policies attacked without someone making a snide comment that he’s stupid? How often have you heard his policies defended without someone being called unpatriotic, or even “evil”?

The truth is, two intelligent people can look at the same facts and come up with entirely different conclusions on a lot of topics. Why? Because these things are complex, a lot more so than a lot of the pundits of the day would have you believe.

We should strive to keep political discussions out of the gutter — these topics are important, and to allow ourselves to be dragged into a mud slinging match (or, worse, to dive headlong into a mud slinging match willingly) is just disgusting. We should know better.
——–

I finished reading the book by Tammy Bruce, who raised several other issues (some of which I agreed with, others I didn’t) that I wanted to talk about. After finishing the book, I started reading The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America, by Larry Elder.

So far, I’ve only finished the first chapter, “Blacks are more racist than whites“, and I’ve started on the second. Just typing the name of that first chapter made me feel more than a bit uneasy. That’s actually something I think may be touched on in the second chapter, but I’ve not gotten through it, and it’s not what I wanted to write about anyway.

At least one of these books (possibly both, but I can’t find a reference in the Elder book now) have mentioned a name that I was once relatively familiar with that had fallen “off the radar,” so to speak. Mumia Abu-Jamal.

You’ve probably heard Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook), who was convicted of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal’s supporters are numerous (though, not as numerous as the many websites I’ve found supporting him would have you believe) — these are people who believe that Abu-Jamal is innocent, the victim of a massive conspiracy by the legal system.

In case you’re not familiar with the case, here are two websites. The first, FreeMumia.org, is pretty standard fare for what I found around the web on this topic. The second, Justice for Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, is the first site I found that supported the conviction (that’s not to say it’s the only one — I got tired of looking, though).

I’ve read more than a bit about this case, and, honestly, Abu-Jamal’s supporters come across as being almost as rational as those who think that AIDS is actually a man-made bioweapon designed to kill the black race. Do I think it’s possible that the man’s innocent, and that his being found guilty is related to his race? Sure, it’s possible. Do I think that his being found guilty was because of a massive conspiracy, that everyone involved in his conviction (the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the police) knew he was innocent, and conspired to convict him anyway? Not for a second.

The first thing that turns me against any idea of a big conspiracy isn’t really evidence, but it’s always convincing. Occam’s Razor, which says (when boiled down) that the simplest sufficient explanation is usually the most logical. The second thing is that conspiracies, while they work well in movies and television, don’t work all that well in practice. Human beings are social animals. We like to talk. The more people involved, the more likely it is that there will be leaks, and I’ve seen no evidence supporting that. Finally, let’s assume that all these people do know that Abu-Jamal is innocent. Not one of them is concerned about the fact that the real murderer is still out there? They’re more concerned with getting Abu-Jamal than with getting a cop-killer? I don’t buy it.

I’ll admit fairly readily that our legal system isn’t perfect, and that I don’t know whether Abu-Jamal is guilty or not. Why don’t I know? Because I don’t know the facts. All I have are the writings of political pundits and internet sites, and while that may be sufficient for some people, it’s not sufficient for me. When the facts are known and undisputed, I’m willing to stand up and say that I think a court decision is wrong. If the facts are questionable, and I have no real means of seeking out the truth (other than relying upon reports from other people), I have to trust in the justice system. Our system, while not perfect, is designed with a number of redundancies to help weed out the wrongful convictions, both due to maliciousness and mistakes. I know it’s never going to be perfect, but I have faith that it’s very good.

I simply don’t believe that I, or any of the actors, singers, or ubiquitous internet supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, are in a better place to judge than the twelve jurors who were presented with the facts during the original trial.

(Incidentally, just before I completed writing this, I stumbled across this 1998 article (updated in 2001) that supports the idea that Abu-Jamal is guilty, so I guess that the Faulkner site above isn’t the only one.)
——–