How on EARTH did it come to pass that liberalism was associated with supporting and being aligned with Big Government?

It makes no sense. It’s NEVER made any sense. Liberals were and are and have always been the people fighting against the government. Their crusades of popular organization were always intended to force the government to make changes it didn’t want to make, to grant people more freedom and more opportunities than they otherwise would have. Liberals wanted to fight “the Man” and by “the Man” they certainly meant not just big business, but big Government as well. It was people who had power that were the target. The people who are indoctrinated into treating individuals like pawns for their big game with the goals of achieving wealth and power for themselves.

If you look at the history of Liberalism it becomes clear right away that it has nothing to do with building up government. Indeed, liberalism as a field of study started off as a series of critiques of the State. Of course these were simply intellectual coagulation of popular thought amongst the populace at the time but that’s besides the point.  If we study the so called great liberal thinkers we see a common thread amongst them all which is a desire to dismantle and destroy the avenues of power so that people have a right to self determination.

Socrates perhaps is the first recognizable name in history who argued for liberal ideas. He was, of course devoted to defeating the “sophists” who were in control of thought and devoted to limiting people’s thinking and deluding them with propaganda. Socrates argued for not taking things for granted and the idea that individuals might be capable of understanding as well as the ruling elite.

Plato was a slight divergence from this tradition. He tried to pull the Socratic ideal back into the realm of an ordered Statist society. Namely, he thought the main problem with Athens and Greece in those days was that the people in charge were idiots and that if you put the smart people in charge and determining the fate of all those dangerous masses too ruled by their desires things would work out just fine. He saw the problems with the current State society that Socrates pointed out, but he concluded that the problem was that people like Socrates weren’t in charge.

Aristotle pulled it back strictly into the liberal perspective. He spoke of creating a state that was a community of equals and of individual participation in the outcome. His Politics even entails a pretty clear Welfare-like system.

It goes further back too. Other Greek thinkers and thinkers of other cultures forgotten to history. It can be argued very easily that Jesus fits VERY COMFORTABLY within the liberal tradition. Only the restrictive, limiting, totalitarian system he was rebelling against through popular uprising wasn’t the State or Big Business but the all too powerful Church that existed at the time. Still he argued quite emphatically for people to assist one another, and to treat people as equals. Very liberal ideas.  Somehow over the years it became perverted and commandeered by an absolutest Church, but his thoughts more or less survived and became the foundation of what later became modern classical and neoclassical liberalism.

Of course as time passed more famous liberal thinkers rose to prominence. The often misunderstood classical economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx who are often portrayed as opposites when they probably had more in common with each other than they do with modern economic theory. Both were concerned primarily with structuring an economic system that realized the human potential of the masses. Both were afraid of the dangers of a totally unrestrained markets to create inequity and destroy individual potential.

Perhaps the quintessential Liberal in American minds is of course Thomas Jefferson whose thoughts are so well known it hardly bears repeating. Certainly all you need to know to see his well deserved position in the annals of liberalism is the Declaration of Independence wherein Jefferson states quite clearly that all men are inherently equal and that a government’s only Just actions are those done with the consent of the people and done in order to protect people’s rights and effect their safety and happiness. That’s a VERY minimalist government idea. And it’s also radically liberal.

You can find plenty of other liberals throughout history. George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, John Rawls, and John Maynard Keynes come immediately to mind. And the American standbys of John Dewey and Martin Luther King of course are well known. And that leads us up to modern activism as a liberal tradition quite nicely. Here you get thinker-activists like Malcom X, John Lenon, and Noam Chomsky. 

If you study these writers and thinkers and activists you see consistent themes repeated again and again. There is a focus on individual self determination. A focus on equality of treatment and an equality of opportunity. And all along there’s a discussion of the risk of allowing powerful institutions to keep individuals “in their place” and limit the opportunities for personal growth and development.

This is NOT a Big Government philosophy. Liberals are if anything enormously critical of the government. Many outright feared it. And is that any surprise? The liberals of most recent ages saw brutal government attempts to put down popular movements. They saw governments allowing and informally condoning organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and hardly prosecuting criminals from these organizations. They saw the government allowing individuals to be intimidated out of their right to vote and restricted in where they could eat, go to school, or even going to the bathroom. The deck was stacked against individuals, in particularly the people of the least power and the primary institutions used to enforce that inequity were by and large run by the Government.

So liberals fought these institutions. They fought to change them. Hence the plethora of movements that began in the 60′s and continue to this day. Movements to fight for freedoms. Civil Rights movements. Gay rights movments. Women’s rights movements, International Solidarity Movements, and Anti-war movments. All of them are devoted to competing against institutions of power and pushing them to change in a way that would serve in the interests of regular people.

Yes somehow this radically anti-Government philosophical trend has been perverted in recent years. The term “liberal” has vastly lost its roots and its meaning.  Liberal suddenly is now virtually defined as anyone who opposes the ideas of the common mouth pieces of power such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They are seen as people who want “the Government to run your life”, to tell you what to do, etc.?

Yet NO liberal wants the Government to run your life. No liberal wants ANYONE to run your life. Liberals want YOU to run your life. They want you to do so by influencing your government to change in ways that directly benefit you. And hence the society becomes a society that benefits us all. That’s what real Democracy is fundamentally about. That’s what unions exist for. And that’s what popular movements and civil disobedience is about. That’s liberalism.

So the next time you hear someone talk about some “big government liberal” I hope you take the time to re-examine the history of liberalism and realize taht this person is trying to pull a fast one on you. And then ask yourself why?

Just maybe this person has an alterior motive that doesn’t really have your best interests at heart.

When I was a kid I was a bookworm. Everywhere I went I could be seen with a book. I read at every single moment of pause. Whenever I was waiting in line, sitting in an office, at the beginning and at the end of class, on bus rides, or even as I walked down the hallways I read.  I read long into the night almost every night and at times I read instead of sleeping altogether. I was even the person who would bring a book to a movie theater and try to read a bit while waiting for the movie to start. Basically I couldn’t get enough of reading. And most of what I read was fiction books for my own pleasure.

That’s no longer the case though. In fact I find myself less and less inclined to read and especially not for simple pleasure.  I currently have a book of fiction I borrowed from a friend that I’ve been reading for almost a year. A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay. I still haven’t finished. And it’s a good well written book. There’s no reason it’s taking me so long. It’s absurd.

I’ve got another book that is the third book of the second series of an author I love. It’s Kushiel’s Mercy by Jacqueline Carey. When I rushed out and bought it when it first came out I was excited. I quickly read about half of it. And then I stopped. It’s sitting on my bookshelf still unfinished. 

Two famous non-fiction books that I’d been dying to read I also managed to acquire. One, The God Delusion I found at a Half-Price books for dirt cheap so I couldn’t help myself from buying. I’d started reading it a long time ago when it first came out but I didn’t own it until now. So I picked this up and started rereading from the beginning. So far I’ve gotten to page ten.  Another book, called The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a book I’d wanted like forever and my old high school friend surprised me by sending it to me as a gift. When I got it, I was thinking this is SO AWESOME I can’t wait until I read it so I can write about it.

I made it through three pages before being distracted. That was MONTHS ago. I still have it sitting by my bed every day thinking I’ll read it a little before I go to sleep. I never do.

Currently I have five or six books I’m borrowing from friends I haven’t finished. One is tiny. It’s Night by Eli Wiesel. Absurd that I haven’t read it yet. Another is called Godplayers which I haven’t started.

I also have three manga series I’m borrowing.  Two from a friend. One is Tarot Cafe. That’s about 5 or 6 volumes. The other is Ouran Host Club or something like that. I forget. It’s like 13 volumes and some 70+ chapters total though I think I only borrowed the first 8 or 9 volumes.   I haven’t started either of these unless you count a few pages of Tarot Cafe. The other one I’m borrowing from my brother and is called Fruits Basket. I know I love this series since I loved the Anime and I’ve read the first issue of the Manga. But I haven’t cracked open these 20 volumes either.

I also have a Joss Whedon X-Men compilation comic book I haven’t started, and a Deadpool and Cable compilation comic book I’ve read two pages of, not to mention numerous other random small comic books I haven’t cracked. I’d LOVE to get caught up other comics too. Especially, Justice League, the Avengers, and Teen Titans. Not to mention there’s all kinds of interesting stuff happening in X-Men and Batman series that I’ve been hearing about but haven’t been able to read.

I recently read one Mercedes Lackey book that was interesting called Burning Brightly. The only reason I was able ot make myself finish it is because I was borrowing it from a friend who had checked it out of the library so I basically had no choice but to read it so I could return it. It was a good book. And as a result I got curious about all kinds of Mercedes Lackey so I checked out two trilogies and another Mercedes Lackey book and I borrowed another still. In addition my roommate checked out a bunch of Anne McCaffery books she thinks I will love that she wants me to read and which look interesting to me as well. I think there’s like six or seven of those she checked out. In addition I checked out a book called Dragons of Dwarven Depths or something like that by Weis and Hickman which is a retelling of one of my favorite book series when growing up, the Chronicles by Weis and Hickman.

Oh yeah I also bought the third book in the Eragon series I really wanted to read but never got around to it. There’s another book from the half-price book store I got called The Namesake or something that I haven’t read either. I have seen the movie though. I also have two Tarot books that came with my cards I want to read from cover to cover but never have.

On Manga I also desperately want to read One Piece and Shaman King online. But both series are insanely long and will take an eternity to get through. Still I think they are the kinds of series I would definitely love. I’m caught up on Naruto and Negima more or less, but I’m way behind in Bleach another favorite of mine. XXXHolic and Tsubasa Chronicles are also on my list of *must* reads.

I also read web comics. And there’s like five or six of them that I want to read straight through from the begining. Least I Could Do, Looking for Group, xkcd, and Questionable Content just to name a few. But of course I haven’t even gotten close on any of them.

I really want to read Angels and Demons before I go to see the movie. I checked it out from the library intending to read it over a year ago. But I ended up having to return it unread cuz I didn’t have time. And for the Xanga Book club that just started up I want to read Dante’s Inferno too so I can discuss it with everyone.  What are the chances of me actually succeeding in doing that? Very slim I’d say.

When I look through my bookshelves these days I see many more books that I HAVEN’T read than I have. I haven’t even listed half of the pending books here I don’t think. And it’s daunting. It’s more than a little depressing. I got all these books for a reason. I was curious. I wanted to read. I wanted to learn from them, to think about them, or to experience them.  Only I haven’t. They sit there. They gather space and dust and it just makes me feel so sad. So bad.

Part of the problem is that I don’t have time. I don’t feel comfortable reading at work even on a slow day since it looks like I’m slacking. And there’s ALWAYS more work to do at work so it never makes any sense to read on the job. I’m positive my boss would not appreciate it if he walked in and saw me reading a book or saw me with a manga on my computer screen when we’re supposed to be working on a project. At least when I’m writing a blog entry on the job it *sounds* like I’m working.

When I get home I hang out with my roommate, eat dinner, usually watch a movie or TV shows or play video games. My video game backlog is almost as large as my reading backlog.  And I sleep. Usually pretty early.

Many times I go over to hang out with other friends. On weekends especially this happens fairly frequently. During such trips I get little reading done. Usually it’s talking and watching movies, tv shows or something. Sometimes I’m helping out fixing computers or internet access or something along those lines. Very rarely it’s playing games. But virtually never reading. Reading isn’t exactly a social activity.

On top of that there’s shopping for stuff, paying bills, planning future trips, studying so that I know enough to do well on my job, and of course WRITING.  I spend enormous amounts of time writing on my blog and a good chunk of time writing in private journals on rare occassion.  For my blog, I spend tons of time researching stuff online so that I can write about them on my blog and at least get somewhat close to being accurate.

I also spend a great deal of time commenting in great detail on other people’s blogs espeially when I see some dubious or false fact promoted that nobody is refuting. I feel an obligation to take the time to research and leave a comment on these blogs that spells out the truth. But this takes TIME.

I also SLEEP. A LOT. I sleep far too much. I find it far more difficult to stay up late into the night. Especially since I am virtually always sick. I’ve had a cough for I don’t even know how long now. And it’s sapping my energy. I cough harder when I exercise or exert myself so I get unhealthier too by the day. And if this follows the pattern of a few years ago this cough will virtually never go away all I can do is manage it somewhat and make it less disruptive of my life. Sleeping however stops me from coughing so I feel a great urge to be sleeping often. Even now.

Another somewhat new aspect of my life that takes up far more time than I anticipated is chatting online. I do a LOT more of that than I ever thought I would. I’ve been trying to cut back on that cuz far too often I’ve discovered hours of my life gone away during which I did nothing but chat on IM with someone and was lost in thought or randomly browsing the web while I chatted. It get’s ridiculous.  I enjoy chatting through IM and it often alleviate my otherwise boredom but then I look back and see a mountain of video games to play, and books to read, and chores to do, and potential writing to write none of which have gotten anywhere closer to being done.

But it’s not just because I am busy that I don’t get much reading done. It’s also the simple fact that I read incredibly slowly. This is becoming increasingly obvious to me the more I am exposed to people who read quickly. But in truth I’ve always known I read slowly. And I remember being smart enough when I was a kid to be able to hide it from my teachers. I did it instinctively cuz slow readers are perceived as “stupid” in school settings at least they were when I was young. Or rather being a quick reader was a matter of some considerable pride to people and kids would often boast about it.  I thought it was absurd.

Yeah I read pretty darn slowly. It’s not reading comprehension that slows my speed though, it’s more to do with eye tracking and the way I process information. Part of it is that I am EXTREMELY near sighted. I have fairly thick glasses and they are the high index types. That means there really is no comfortable reading distance for me to hold the books I read. Without my glasses I have to put the book so close up to my face that my whole head has to move to track the words. With my glasses I keep adjusting the distance of the book looking for a position that feels right and none really do.

It’s certainly not for lack of practice that I read slow. I read all the time like I said. And I also have tried the tricks to train the eyes to read faster using index cards covering words and stuff like that. They don’t work for me. Part of it is that it doesn’t matter how fast I read the words. I often pause to think and wonder about what I just read and to stare off into space, or my mind just wanders off to something else wholly unrelated to what I’m reading. No matter how engrossing the book I’m reading is. I always do that far more often than is sane.

Also I’ve gotten so used to the bits and bytes of information retrieval model of the internet that I find it harder and harder to concentrate on traditional lengthy stories and detailed expositions. When I’m blogging or searching for information to blog or even searching for information to use for my job, I’m constantly skimming, looking for keywords, reading tiny snippets, and twitters, and brief news articles and clicking on links from one thing to another to another to another. And watching videos in between and listening to audio or rapidly clicking through images.  I’m learning a lot and experiencing a lot but the experience of “reading” online is so different from reading books and manga that switching modes to the more traditional forms of reading. It’s almost as if I’m falling out of habit. Like I’m “forgetting” how to sit down and read a book.

All of this together makes reading seem like far too daunting a task these days. I look at my huge stack of pending reading projects and I think, this is impossible. I’ll never fiinish all of these. And as I try more and more books I want to read will come out, will be lent to me or given to me, will mysteriously show up in my posession. More and more. Even as there are more TV shows and movies and video games I want to experience too. And as my ideas for writing grow and grow and I make new connections I want to keep track of and my responsibilities on my job become more and more. SOMETHING has to give.

So I’m thinking maybe it should be reading. Or at least reading for pleasure. Maybe I’ll just stop. Period. I’ll only read the books in the series I am currently in the middle of as they come out but nothing else unless I know it to be absolutely extraordinary and have numerous recommendations. Even then if I cna’t get into the book right away I’m just going to discard it and never try to read it again. I’m going to try and keep my reading list as small and tight as possible and only read the subset of the very best of the best that also happen to be the kinds of books that I would enjoy.

I’ve always been a person who gets carried away and wants to learn everything I can. That’s the problem. I commit myself to too much and then quickly become overwhelmed and end up with nothing. Life seems to short to waste on such experiences.

Writing is far more important to me than reading right now. So if for no other reason than that I want to have more time to write, I think my reading for pleasure is just going to have to go. 

One day soon I may have to give up video games, movies, and TV shows too so I can focus all my attention on writing. But for now I don’t have the willpower to give up so much so quickly.

You probably didn’t see this on the news on May 5th:

And you probably didn’t hear about this story on May 12th either.

The dirty little secret of the Health Care Debate is that the range of options for potential reform is being carefully controlled to only include certain possibilities. The whole range of possibilities represented by Single Payer systems are being purposefully excluded.

Or March 5th, President Obama convened a health care summit at the White House to discuss possible options for providing Universal Healthcare to the American people. In his remarks on that day Obama stated categorically that “every voice has to be heard. Every idea must be considered. Every option must be on the table. There should be no sacred cows. “

And yet in the meeting, of the 120 plus attendees there was one lone advocate of Single Payer or government funded National Health Insurance: Democratic Michigan Congressman John Conyers.  And he was a last minute addition after protest.

Whatever you think of Single Payer, surely this seems oddly out of balance.  A CBS News survey taken in 2009 suggests that 59% of Americans favor the Government providing some for of Health Insurance at least for emergencies with 49% favoring Universal Health Insurance that covers everything provided by the Government.  Only 32% trust Private Enterprise to provide it.  This is up from 40% who believed the Government should provide some form of coverage in 1979.

But surely even 40% of the actual populace favoring a system would have been enough to merit SIGNIFICANT representation in a Health Care Summit? With 59%, I would think that half of the representatives or more would be national health care advocates.

That alone would be enough of a reason but when you take into account another survey from the Annals of Internal Medicine that suggests that 59% of Physicians are also in support of similar Government provided National Health Insurance the exclusion seems almost beyond belief. If the Summit is supposed to bring together experts in the Health Care field to come up with an answer to our looming Health Care crises, how is it that the actual Doctors themselves don’t count as experts enough to warrant significant representation at the Summit? At least 59% of them seem to have almost no representation at all.

Congressional discussion on Health Care reform seemed likewise poised to follow the President’s lead and wholly exclude Single Payer as even a option worth considering. But you can’t wholly shut out the opinions of the majority and expect things to go smoothly. Hence the protests above.

But what’s striking is how utterly dismissive the Congressmen are of the protesters who have come to have their voices heard. They can be heard laughing at the protesters as if they were some kind of a joke or amusement. A distraction from their far more “important” work of creating a system that represents the wants and needs of every party *except* for what the majority of the American people want.

So, to deserve such ridicule and dismissal Single Payer must be some kind of a godawful system right? I mean it’s gotta be downright terrible. All those ignorant masses must be deluded to even consider it.

And yet, it’s not. Australia and Canada both have pure Single Payer Universal Health Care systems. Britain has a slightly modified Universal National Health Insurance program where the government must first commision services that their universal fund can be spent toward. Germany and Belgium also have a Universal National Health Insurance System, the difference there being that they require compulsory private and public contributions to their health insurance funds. 

So logic would suggest that these countries must all be doing terribly. If National Health Insurance doesn’t work and should be dismissed the outcomes in other nations foolhardy enough to adopt such plans must be suffering the consquences. And yet in a Commonwealth Fund study in 2007 of health care in the U.S. comparing it with that of Germany, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the U.S. ranked last overall and last in most of the metrics used.

That alone should be enough to suggest that our current health care system is a disaster compared to that of other nations. But if you need more evidence read here: http://cthealth.server101.com/the_case_for_universal_health_care_in_the_united_states.htm

The interesting thing about all this is that Obama actually has stated that he agrees with Single Payer. When he was a candidate.

When speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO on June 30, 2003 he said:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause) “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

And yet Single Payer is not on the table. It’s not in the news. It’s not being discussed.

Obama clarified his stance later since 2007 to one apparently more amenable to the establishment. He now says:

“Here’s the bottom line. If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system…But we’re not designing a system from scratch…And when we had a health care forum before I set up my health care plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices….Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered…I don’t want to wait for that perfect system…”

Which is significantly better I suppose than believing that Single Payer is stupid and only fully Privatized systems should be implemented which many of his opponents believe.

Still, the question to ask is why in the process of transitioning to a better system rather than trying to implement it all at once would or should the administration and Congress shut out the voices that advocated Single Payer? Do they believe that such persons have nothing to contribute? That you can learn nothing by examining Single Payer systems and incorporating some of their ideas into whatever hybrid system we ultimately come up with?

That seems irrational.  By leaving out most advocates of Government funded Health Care, Congress and the President marginalize Single Payer advocates, reducing their influence and insuring that whatever system we do come up with will be all that much further away from the “perfect system” Obama envisions. We can get a lot closer to that RIGHT NOW if our leaders and the media were willing to treat this issue fairly and allow an open and honest debate to develop.

I for one am glad that protesters are going to demonstrate at Congress for Single Payer Health Care. Doctors and Nurses and regular people like you and me are taking time out of their lives and risking arrest in order to make sure that all of our voices are heard in the health care debate and not just the special interests who spend millions to lobby Congress to ensure that they get exactly what they want.

These people should not be laughed at. They should be given medals. They’re heroes. And all of our futures may well depend on all of us becoming more like them.

Isn’t it odd how the media plays with the word “recession” as if we are supposed to care? 

I mean we’d been a recession for almost a YEAR before a group of obscure individuals re-examined the data and decided posthumously to declare that not only were we in a recession but that we already had been for the entire year. Even as the media and the white house battled back and forth about whether what we economic trouble we were experienced could “really” be called a recession.  In the mean time many people I know were already complaining about how bad things were and saying it’s one of the worst “recessions” they’ve seen in their lifetime. It just took forever for the rhetoric to match the reality.

Absurd.

It’s happening again too. Now we here that “economists” are predicting an end of to the recession starting with 3rd quarter 2009. But, even in the same breathe they acknowledge that unemployment rates will continue to rise through first quarter 2010! That’s a HUGE time difference. And they said the reason for that is that growth will be less than the growth in unemployment. So if growth continues to be mediocre we could see unemployment grow or remain constant. 

So if you think about this, with an unemployment rate as high as 10% can we really say this is a good thing?  Can we really celebrate the fact that it’s NOT technically a recession because growth has met some obscure meaningless definition? I think not. It’s a matter of interest to economists, but in terms of what matters to real people that 10% unemployment rate sucks ass. It’s horrible. That’s deserving of some kind of horrible word like “recession” or “depression” all by itself.  Not to mention declining wages, shorter hours worked, increasing homelessness, and increasing wealth gaps.

Really I think the language we use needs to change so that it has some sort of meaningful connection to the life and experiences of real people.

A bill to prevent Hate Crimes called The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act recently passed the House and has been introduced in the Senate. Perhaps not surprisingly it is now under a sustained attack from the Right.

Are there legitimate grounds on which to oppose this bill? Undoubtedly there are. No bill is perfect. The problem is the main criticism of the Hate Crimes bill being circulated isn’t a legitimate grounds for criticism at all. It isn’t even close.

You see what we are hearing is that supports of the unmodified Hate Crimes bill are “defenders of pedophiles”.  Huh? If you’re at all like me that was your first reaction. So you had to go look up the justification. No one sane or at all interested in truth would accept such an extreme claim on face value.

Well something sort of resembling a justification does exist, it’s just based on a clear falsehood. The Hate Crimes bill deals with establishing clear criminal standards and punishments to individuals that perpetrate crimes motivated by “race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim”.  It also provides funding for states to help with prosecuting the criminals, investigating the crimes, and supporting the victims.  Sounds good right? Well here’s the supposed problem. According to the critics, the fact that the bill mentions “sexual orientation” or “disability” somehow implies that the provisions of the bill ALSO apply to pedophiles. That’s the criticism.

Now the right answer to this critique is very simple. You say, “No it doesn’t you bonehead!” And you’re right. “sexual orientation” is not pedophilia according to the legal definition. It applies only to heterosexuality and homosexuality. And the ADA defines the term disability in such a way as to explicitly exclude pedophilia.

But to borrow the words of Colin Powell, “the really right answer” to this critique is so what.  Implicit in the horrified statement of OMG this law “protects” pedophiles is the idea that pedophiles don’t deserve any form of protection whatsoever whether or not they’ve been convicted of a crime. That means if a regular citizen, perhaps you, perhaps me, were simply accused of pedophilia or somehow framed for it, and a mob set upon that citizen, kidnapped them, beat them, tortured them, sexually abused them, and murdered them that mob should apparently just be let go. Off the hook. No problem. Obviously they didn’t do anything wrong. I mean they thought it was a dirty rotten  pedophile right? Such a person deserves what they get. That’s what these pundits seem to be saying.

Further an obvious extension to this would implicate a similar “OK” aspect to other critiques motivated by ANY characteristic we as a people don’t like.  Why not make it OK to violently persecute people with blond hair? Or why not short people? How about liberals? Or conservatives? How about people who dress funny? Or people who smell funny? People who spend all their time writing on their Xanga. Or all those Myspace clowns. Why not take out wasteful people? Or lazy people? Why not military veterans? Why not illegal aliens? Or single mothers? Why not people who look at me funny? Surely we can all see that they deserve to be punished!

Don’t you see? THIS IS THE REASON THAT A HATE CRIME BILL NEEDS TO EXISTS!!

A pedophile is a person who is attracted to children. As far as I know we don’t know why such persons exist or what causes it. It’s still being studied intensely. Is it a disability, a disorder, or an orientation? Who can say? However we DO know it exists and we do know that society frowns upon it. As a society we rightly punish severely people who engage in sexual acts with children. Somewhat more controversially we also severely punish anyone who is caught with possession of child related pornography. Whatever you think about the strictness of these laws, it is surely at least in general in accordance with the values of the majority of the people right now. So then if we do punish people who do these things, why on earth would we ALSO need to allow vigilantism against these people over and above the rule of law?

Being a pedophile does not all of a sudden turn someone into an inhuman monster. It doesn’t make them beyond redemption. It doesn’t mean we can treat them like an animal or a rock. They are still human beings and they’re still citizens. And they’re still entitled to precisely the same rights and protections under the law as anyone and everyone else is. Just as any American citizen who commits a crime is still entitled to those rights and protections and will likewise be equally fairly subjected to the same standards of Justice to which we all must adhere.  Just as gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, or religious principle don’t transform a person into some special class entity whereby they can all of a sudden be shat on by anyone and everyone without recourse, so too does pedophilia or the existence of any other mental orientation not immediately imply that a person ought to be abandoned by the society altogether. Any system that does, is not Just.

Yes, I do think if a pedophile is beaten or murdered simple because he or she is a pedophile, the perpetrators of that crime should be punished in accordance with the full force of all applicable laws. Is it so bad if those people are also punished for being perpetrators of a Hate Crime in addition to whatever other legal punishment they are entitled to? That to me would be a large incentive to NOT take the law into your own for any group you happen to think for whatever reason deserves it.

It’s for law enforcement and the Justice Department to punish criminals in a consistent and fair way in accordance with our laws. Anything less is a perversion of justice.

It’s true that currently pedophiles don’t fall under the current hate crime laws. And no matter what the pundits say, this new law won’t change that. But maybe one day they will. Either under this law or under some other yet to be written law. Is that really so wrong? I believe that nobody should persecute another person under the motivation that the person is different or doesn’t meet their ideals. Our laws should in part discourage that kind of selfish bigotry and persecution whenever and wherever it arises. And in so doing the law will help to keep us ALL safe. Pedophiles and non-pedophiles alike.