The Thousand Words

The Gender of War

2009-09-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

In The Christian Science Monitor, Rachel Brown makes a very strange case. She essentially says two things: That women are disproportionally suffering from the crisis, and that if women will be more involved in negotiations, it would improve peace results.

The first argument is half-plausible; The second not at all. Women are weaker than men, and thus maybe "increased levels of militarization and violence have affected women disproportionately, particularly in poor and marginalized communities", although it would've been nice to see some evidence for that claim. But men are the ones fighting, and thus the ones who are dying and falling captive more; So a case could be made that they are suffering more.

Indeed, Brown's strange view that "civilians on the ground suffer during armed conflict – and ... bears the largest burden of violence" is undefended. In western thought, non combatant deserve special protection in war; It's not OK to kill them as it is to kill soldiers and fighters. But I seriously doubt they suffer more than fighters. After all, fighters face all the "normal" risks and dangers faced by civilians (destruction of their home, loss of economic opportunities, death or injury of themselves or relatives and friends, etc), plus direct threat to their own life and health during or as a consequence of military operations or training accidents. It is true however, that many Palestinian and some Israeli combatants recieve wages from their respective governments though, and thus face somewhat more limited economic hardship.

And none of this offers any evidence thaan women's involvement would solve the conflict, or make it any better. There has been many women involved in the resolution of this conflict: 3 out of 5 American Secretaries of states since the Oslo process has begun had been women. On the Israeli side Tzipi Livny had been foreign secretary for years under Sharon and Olmert's governments, and one prominent palestinian leader had been Hannan Ashrawi. There has been many more women involved in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations than in the Egyptian-Israeli or the Jordanian-Israeli ones.

I don't know what the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I doubt girl power is the answer.

Ignoring the Obvious

2009-09-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

OK, I've been silent for a while, but a commentary by Eliot Spitzer in Slate awakened me. I actually agree with Spitzer, but he makes life easy for himself by ignoring the powerful argument against his (and my) position.

Spitzer writes about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the so called Hillary Movie Case . The Case deals with the Constitutionality of the McCain–Feingold Act, a 2002 bipartisan bill ment to limit the influence of Corporations on politics.

Previous rulings by the US Supreme Court have decreed that limiting Campaign contribution is constitutionally legit. Corporations can't "buy" a candidate by contributing unlimited amounts to his campaign.

The problem was, of course, that where there's a will, there's a way. The amount of money a corporation can contribute to a candidate may be limited, but until the McCain-Feingold bill, the amount of money Corporations spent on political speech wasn't. So, instead of the Corporation giving money to the politician to make films smearing their opponents, the Corporations now make the films themselves.

The McCain-Feingold act tried to limit these films, by regulating the political Speech of Corporations. The act prevented the showing of commercials for a film smearing Hillary Clinton before the 2008 /democratic primeries.

Censoring speech this way is uncomfortable in a Democracy. But if you don't censor it, you create the appearance and possibly the reality of deals between politicians and corporations? This is such a Dilemma, that Eliot Spitzer won't face it. He simply ignores it:

The problem of quid pro quos has been effectively dealt with by limiting direct contributions to the candidate (although the levels of these contributions may still be too high, especially at the state level). There is pretty general agreement that these limits do no harm to our First Amendment. The ability to contribute to somebody else is not at the core of our First Amendment rights, as long as you also retain the right to voice your opinion on your own.

When advocating for a position, Mr. Spitzer, it is NOT Kosher to ignore the other side's best argument.

Why then did I say that I agree with Spitzer's conclusion, that is, I agree that the US Supreme Court should rule McCain-Feingold unconstitutional?

For two reasons - First, the censorship involved makes me very uneasy. Whenever there's censorship, the question of who the censor is becomes critical. As a rule, it's a good idea to forsake it when possible.

Second, and more importantly, preventing Corporations from helping politicians is essentially impossible. The McCain-Feingold act has limits, and there would always be a way of getting around it.

As Elliot explains:

What distinguishes what Citizens United did and what Bill O'Reilly on Fox News—Rachel Maddow on MSNBC—does every day? Fox and MSNBC are corporations bombarding the airwaves with political rhetoric, from the right and left, that is as close to "electioneering communications" as anything I can imagine. [But Fox and MSNBC can do it because t]he McCain-Feingold statute excluded "media companies" from its limitations.

I disagree with Elliot about the distinction making no "logical sense". It is logical. It's just impossible to delimit.

Overall, I think there's an advantage to linking politicians with contributions. By breaking the connection between the Politician and the financier, the Politician can avoid taking responsibility - pretending to be all honorable and honest, while the swift boaters undertake his ugly offenses.

An Ad Hominem attack on Ad Hominem attackers

2009-07-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

this is simply too ironic. To call someone "stupid" is bad, but to say that someone uses "Ad Hominem" attacks is good? That's hillarious.

Is the Occupation Corrupting?

2009-06-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

In a Blogpost about President Obama's Cairo Speech, Dr. Orit Kamir is arguing for the usual Left Wing solution to the Israeli Palestinian problem (dismantling settlements, evacuating the West Bank, creating an Independant Palestinian state, etc), but also to change the Israeli "occupation mentality" so to speak, to "cut down to size" and give up the dreams of an Empire.

The key reason for this, Kamir argues, is that the "occupation corrupts". It hurts not only those occupied, but also the occupiers. It has made Israel cruel not only "towards the Palestinians" but also in "other areas of life":

"We have learned to live with exploitation, with the suffering of others, with De-humanizing. "Foreign Workers", Women being marketed for prostitution, Poverty and huge gaps between Rich and Poor, Healthy and Sick, Fortunate and Misfortunate no longer agitate us. The occupation requires these huge walls of cement we hide behind, and we have learned to seal everything off with them".
(all translations are my own)

This is a very standard leftist line. The argument that the "Occupation is Corrupting" ("Ha Kibush Mashit") is a very old one in Israeli Political Discourse. See for example the argument that the violence of the occupation spills over to violence against women and children.

To be very clear: This is not the argument that the occupation is abusive. Not that it gets worst or that it perpetuates itself. This is the argument that the occupation is infective. That the evil ways it teached the Israeli society than effect Israeli society in other, unrelated areas.

I think this is highly unlikely.

To be sure, the occupation is corrupting in the sense that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The occupation has created interest groups committed to to maintaining it. Israel has lorded over the Palestinians and regularly abuses its power in making life difficult for them. Soldiers actions in check points are rarely models of courtesy, to say the least. IDF soldiers who kill palestinians are hardly punnished.

But has the occupation worsened Israeli society as a whole? This has often be asserted, but I've never seen it documented in any way. Many of the so-called brutalizations have been around long before the occupation (Operation Cast Lead, which Kamir criticizes, was no worse and probably better than many of the actions taken in the 1950s as retaliation against Palestinian violence). Other involve changes that took over Israeli society and usually aped American development. The spread of Capitalistic mentality and the wearing down of solidarity are also partially a natural response of the coming of age of the Israelis who were born after the birth of Israel, and who lacked the founding generations' ideological commitments.

In short, to the extent that the trends in Israeli society which Kamir laments emerged after the occupation, blaming them on the occupation is a case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

I find the argument that the "occupation corrupts" troubling for two reasons.

First, it argues for inaction. If the occupation corrupts, than ending the occupation would solve, or at least ameliorate, Israel's social problems. The expectation that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would significently improve Israeli society is naive. It also implicitly calls for inaction against social justice in the Israeli society: If the source of the illness is with the occupation, treating the "manifestations" of the problem wouldn't do the trick.

Even worse, the argument that the occupation corrupts strikes me as pretentious, patronizing and hypocritical. The Israelis are not the victim of the occupation. The Palestinians are. The idea that we suffer from it reminds me of Robert E. Lee's position on slavery:

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former.

Ending the Occupation of the Palestinian territories will be good for Israel's long term security and peace. It would also be good for Palestinians. It is not, however, a cure for the problems of Israeli school violence or women tariffiking.

More Dragons Not Dancing

2009-06-10T18:12:00.000-07:00

Ah, the web, the web. It really has anything.

Following my recent post I just discovered that there's a blog dedicated to attacking George R. R. Martin for his numerous delays in Publishing A Dance with Dragon. It is amusingly titled Finish the book, George, and it is very funny, although also very unfair and even cruel towards Martin at times. In a way, I guess Martin should accept this as the ultimate compliment - his writing has been powerful enough to elicit all kinds of emotions.

But say what you will about the blog, it is often right. See his criticism of Neil Gaiman's Defence of Martin. Best quote:

"frankly, for Gaiman to call his blog post "Entitlement Issues," and then talk about how he and other writers have seemingly no responsibility to anyone but themselves, is irony at its sickening finest."

Read the whole thing.

Winter is Coming... but what about A Dance With Dragons?

2009-06-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

About all of Humanity (OK, I'm exagerating) is looking forward for the release of George R. R. Martin's new book, "A Dance With Dragons". For those who don't know anything about the book, it will be the latest in the NYT bestselling series A Song of Ice and Fire, about a land where the winters last for years, where politics is a game in which one wins or dies, and in which an ancient evil is making its way towards Civilization. Its a brilliant series, with one big problem - it never ends!

The last complete book "A Storm of Swords", was published in 2000. 2000! You know, when Bill Clinton was President and Britney Spears was sexy. Then in 2005, Martin published HALF a book - a continuation of half the story from "A Storm of Swords". Many of the most interesting characters and story lines from "A Storm of Swords" failed to appear in that book, called "A Feast for Crows". In the book's end, Martin promised that the next book, "A Feast for Crows" would appear "next year", that is, in 2006. Famous Last Words.

Back in February, Martin has predicted that the book would be finished in June, and that it would be released in 2009. This now appears unlikely.

Now, I've met Martin, and he's a Gentlemen and a really, really great guy. He's also hands down the best writer of epic fantasy today. Some of his other stuff, novels like "Fevre Dream" and short stories like "The Way of Cross and Dragon" are utterly brilliant, too.

But what Martin is making his fans endure is really too much. If Martin misses this month's deadline (which I assume is pretty certain) that probably mean the book will not be out until 2010. This means 10 years will have passed between one chapter and the next in his story. This is too much.

Now the internet is filled with defences of the series, arguing that Martin is not behind schedule, or only slighly so, or its not his fault. Some use very complicated reasoning to get there.

In my view, Martin is unfair to his fans. He is a professional writer, who simply does not write! He spends excessively large quantities of his time in other projects (I don't begrudge Martin his recreational activities, but he has edited and contributed to several anthologies in the last few years, as well as worked on a series of A Song of Ice and Fire tie ins).

I will buy "A Dance with Dragons" on Hardback the second it will come out (2011?). I will follow the rest of the books. But I can no longer recommand the series to new readers. They should wait until an era of peace and prosperity, when the wolf lies down with the lamb, and the last book is delivered.

I'M BAAAAACK!

2009-02-03T06:39:00.001-08:00

I decided to restart the Blog after realizing, to my great surprise, that it is still online. More to follow. For now, I'll alert the hebrew readers to a piece I wrote for "Hofesh":

http://www.hofesh.org.il/articles/hiloni_dati/not-so-liberals.html

Drinking and Rape

2006-12-31T11:06:00.000-08:00

For Hebrew readers, Israeli exremist feminist Orit Kamir (I hope I spell it right) is more then worth reading. In my views Kamir is quite often wrong, and almost always over the top even when she's right, but she's thought provoking. Take this post:

http://www.notes.co.il/orit/26644.asp

Following an anti Drunk driving campaign, (which states that if you chose to drink and drive you risk committing murder) Dr. Kamir writes about how, when one decides to drink, one risks raping. That's reasonable. If I knowingly put myself into a position in which I will not be able to read someone else's signals, I should be held responsible.

What strikes me as much less reasonable is Kamir assertion that it also goes the same way the other way around - if one has sex with a drunk person, one risks becoming a rapist because one risks misinterpreting the signals the drunk sends.

This is a bait-and-switch argument. In the first argument, we hold the sober person responsible for what s/he does when drunk, because the decision to commence drinking is done knowingly. In the second case, we don't hold the drinker responsile for his (in Kamir's post, almost certainly her) drunken actions. We don't blame her failure to communicate on her drinking - we blame the non-drinker!

In Kamir's world, instead of blaming the drunk drivers, we should blame the sover people who don't get out of the way fast enough.

A Great article about Paul Krugman

2006-12-23T05:47:00.000-08:00

really interesting:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2006/06/people.htm

Richard Dawkins and the War against God

2006-11-26T06:55:00.000-08:00

So, it's about time to blog about "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. You can find the book on http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004/sr=8-1/qid=1164552561/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0260446-2712852?ie=UTF8&s=books">Amazon.Com.

The book is a fairly standard, if well written, atheist critique of religion. Some things are irritating, though. Dawkins's grasp of American History and Legal system is sketchy. He is emberassing when he talks about the American Founding Fathers or about the Seperation of Church and State.

But what bugs me is not really Dawkins book, but the theist attacks on it. they are so ,predictable. It's always the same. Start with talking about how Dawkins doesn't know what he was talking about. Then go to attack his weaks points on morality (always fun). Use lots of name callings, and never, ever, make a positive case for religion.

Now, this is not really surprising (the positive case for religion being non-existent), but what does surprise me is the lack of candor. I'm sort of suspecting religious people KNOW that their case is weak; that's what make their protestation all the more deperate.

Omer

Mid East Follies

2006-07-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

Are there no journalistic standards in Salon.Com? This: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/07/15/fourpairs/

Is really bad. For one thing, how can you write an article about Israeli occupation and not mention that Israel has stopped occupying Lebannon 6 years ago? The second point is obviously that Lebannon's government is in a prepetual weakness mode. It has had 6 years of little Israeli response to reign in Hizbulla, and had done nothing. It can hardly expect more Israeli leniency in face of its inaction towards Hizbullah.

Losing Obama

2006-07-05T02:24:00.000-07:00

I heard Barak Obama speak in Philladelphia when I was visitng before the 2004 US Presidential election, and I was spell bound. He's a great, energetic speaker. But already I realised he was a politician at heart, and here's his "fault's on both side" nonsense speech about Religion and alleged anti-Religion in America: http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal_keynote_address/index.html

I'll find time and Blog more 'bout this later, but for now, see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-goldberg/whats-the-matter-with-ba_b_24133.html

More on Inflation

2006-06-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Does anyone know Roosevelt's famous joke about the one handed economists? Well, the web has offered us a real flood of one handed economists - the problem is, some of the have a left hand and some a right. Yesterday Iposted about Krugman's view on inflation. And now...

http://people.brandeis.edu/~cecchett/pdf/inf_current.htm

Conservative Economist Greg Mankiw direct us to this "exchange", and he weighs in against Krugman.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/06/on-forecasting-inflation.html

I'm no economist, but Mankiw sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Waiting for Krugman's response...

Stephen Colbert and the Exposure of American Congressmen

2006-06-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

Who voted for this guy? in Israel, we have a relative vote system, so I understand how some lowly member of Parliament (what they call "Backbenchers in the UK") can be rediculously incompetent. But who would vote for someone who can think of no better place for the Ten Commandment then the Court House, and yet can't name them?

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/06/ten_commandment.html

Krugman's newest;

2006-06-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't exactly been a deiligent (nor a particularly well read) Blogger, but Krugman's latest is so fine...

http://krugblog.wordpress.com/2006/06/16/the-phantom-menace/

I'm no fan of Bush and of the current US Administration, but Krugman's columns have been attacking the Government so much, he's almost stopped doing what he does best, which is explain complicated economic ideas in simple, accessible language. When hee gets back to doing just that, he's brilliant.

The Poverty Question Revisited

2006-04-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

A response to Letter to "Why are many people in developing countries poor?"
http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/poverty.html

On one point I agree with the writer of the letter to the editors. The fault for the poverty of the millions of people in the developing world has little to do with ", the people’s own laziness" or "their lacking industriousness". But the answer isn't "colonialism", "the classical imperialism and the world wars" and certainly not "the essence of capitalism itself" There is a misconception underlying all of the author's attempts to find solutions to the poverty question, whether the complicated historical ones, or the "simple", and extremely misguided, central one: Private Property. The article simply asks the wrong question. The right question is: "Why are the rich so rich?"1

For it is not the poor that are the exception, the rich are. For 99 percents of all of human history, the luxuries we in the west (and in islands of wealth in the developing countries) take for granted – health and low child birth mortality, let alone cars and phones and vacations – simply did not exist. Ever since the Agricultural Revolution (or actually revolutions, as agriculture was apparently discovered independently in several places) after the last ice age, mankind has lived near subsistent level, and its economy was strictly Malthusian – living under the constant shadow of disease and death, with a constant fear of hunger.
As recently as 100 years ago, life expectancy at birth in the US was 47. In Mexico it was 33. Infant mortality in the UK fell from 154 per 1000 births in 1900, to 6.3 in 1998 (http://www.time.com/time/time100/timewarp/timewarp.html#) In the developing world, things are much as they were before, with somewhat better medical attention and considerably more dangerous weapons – it is the West's ascendance that needs to be explained.
The truth is no one knows exactly what happened that made the West rise. Whether you call it "the Enlightment", "the Industrial Revolution", "the Scientific-Industrial-Technological Revolution" or "the Spirit of Capitalism", some changes in the intellectual, economic, social and political climate in Europe made its people break away from Nature's tyranny, and allow them to live in a world of abundance.
This difference was already manifesting itself in the 15th century, when Western explorers reached every corner of the world, while the Chinese abandoned their own (widely successful, at least from a technical point of view) explorations (See Levathes Louis "When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433). By the 19th century, it became utterly clear, when the west could do whatever it wanted wherever it wanted, and the natives (with the exception of Japan, which realized the need to modernize) could do nothing at all.
Those who claim that the reason for the West's rise is colonialism are, of course, putting the cart before the horse. To put it bluntly, in order to exploit the natives of Africa, Asia and the Americas, Westerners already needed a qualitative advantage on them. Whatever wealth the west accumulated with the slaves it brought to America and the West Indies (and recall that comparable wealth did not arise from Muslim Black Slavery) – the slaves were transferred across the Atlantic in ships which were, in and of themselves, highly sophisticated technological creations.
It is beyond the scope of this short article to address the question of the Rise of the West. What we want to know is what should be done in order to help the people who were not as fortunate as Westerners to make the move – to gain riches. And the answer is not to abolish private property.
The author's position would've been somewhat more understandable had he written his article in say, 1945. Or, better yet, 1931. The shortcomings of Capitalism appeared, at the time, especially severe. But since then Communism has been tried in many countries, from China and all the way down the Alphabet to the USSR. It failed.
Now, there can be excuses for many of the failures. The Soviet Union was shaped by one of the most terrible dictators of the 20th century and maybe it was never able to escape that shadow. Eastern Europe received no help from the Soviet Union (indeed was forced to pay reparations) while the US lavished funds on the West. China had Mau Tse Tung. The Kibbutz movement in Israel was corrupted by the bourgeois Zionist Capitalists around it. Cuba suffered from US Embargo, and all of the African countries suffered from the long lasting effects of imperialism.
Whatever the merits of these explanations (and many others), and some of them have their merits, there remains one undisputed fact: No single communist country has become rich. Capitalism had had its hits and misses; but to drive the point home: it had hits.
Personally, I feel that we have a fairly good idea about why Communism always failed: because it ignores the major insight of economics – that people respond to incentives. In order to generate wealth, people have to be motivated. Adam Smith had said it best, almost 230 years ago:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

But even if you disagree with this analysis, the overwhelming argument remains: No one ever figured how to make a Communist regime work. If you have your own country, you are welcome to try to beat the odds and be the first, but please don't take me, and the world's poor, along with you.

Note on the Editors' Commentary
The author of the 'letter to the editors', despite all his faults, at least identified the real problem at hand: people in the so-called developing world are living in wretched, miserable conditions, while the people of the West live in luxury. As flawed and erroneous as his diagnosis is, at least he realizes the problem. Unfortunately, the Editors don't.
Bizarrely, the Editors can frame the question. They write:
Those in the Third World starve while those in the First World watch them on color television — and are glad to be doing fine.
But the catch is in the next phrase:
Comparatively at least

You see, unlike the letter's author, what troubles the Editors is not that the people of Angola have a 42% literacy rate, that their life expectancy at birth is less then 50 years, that infant mortality rates there is 135.7 per 1000 birth or that the Gross Domestic Product per Capita is 700 U$. Nor does it matter that they have about 50 % unemployment.
(Source: http://www.hmnet.com/africa/1africa.html) Oh no, the real concern is that the poor in these countries, just like the poor in the west "live for capital".
You shouldn't ask why people in Africa are starving and dying, because that legitimizes Capitalism: " If deficient capitalism would be the reason for the especially wretched squalor in developing countries, then capitalism as such gets off the hook". For the Editors, the problem isn't poverty – it is Capitalism.

1 What follows is my attempt to articulate mainstream economic ideas, and I deserve no credit for originality in anything but formulation. For further reading, I highly recommend David Landes's "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor" (Which for all its flaws is a superb historical analysis of the rise of capitalism), and William Easterly "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economist's Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" (For an analysis of the failure of industrialization in the Third World and what can be done about it)

Second Post, and Virtual First Amendment

2006-04-10T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'm still experimenting with this Blog thing, but here is something I wrote a long, long time age, and I suddenly have the place to show it:

On Constitutional Interpretation

I enjoyed reading Barry Krusch's "Would the Real First Amendment Please Stand Up? (http://www.krusch.com/real/real.html). In it, Krusch argues that the US Supreme Court has radically altered the meaning of the First amendment. The sole purpose of the amendment is to prohibit Congress, not the Federal government as a whole and certainly not the states, from making any law that prohibits any kind of speech. The Court is wrong to distinguish between "protected" and "unprotected speech". As the late Supreme Court justice Hugo Black famously put it "'No law" means 'No Law'

I want to defend the assertion that, bizarre as it may sound, Judge Black was wrong. I think that both common sense and the historical record dictate that the US Supreme Court actually does a fairly good job on the lines of interpreting the Constitution. While I will not defend any particular test or decision of the Court's, I will argue that the Supreme Court correctly recognizes that (1) The first amendment originally referred not only to Congress but to the Federal Government as a whole, that (2) The passing of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment marks a significant shift in the Constitutional system of the US, thus expanding the prohibition of limiting free speech to the States. Most unintuitively, I think that (3) the Supreme Court is correct in not regarding every form of expression as 'free speech' for the purposes of the first amendment.

When analyzing the Constitution we should keep John Marshall's famous statement in mind: "We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding" Interpreting the Constitution is not merely an exercise in historical analysis or in logic, although it must entail both. Determining the meaning of a Constitution is an act of governance – and the role of the Supreme Court, like the role of every over political organ in the United States, is determined in the American Constitution: "[to] establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"

The Art and Science of Constitutional Interpretation

(1) "Congress shall make no law": The First Amendment specifically forbids Congress from making any law prohibiting the freedom of speech. But does that mean that any other agent of the federal government can limit that freedom? If the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect freedom of speech, that makes would make no sense. After all, Congress is in control of the Federal budget. Any agent of the Federal government is a paid agent of the US Congress.

Suppose a law forbids me from doing something, does it make sense to allow me to do it though an agent? There is a Hebrew expression that says, in effect, "The opinion that counts is the opinion of the rich". Or in American parlance: "Money Talks". If an agent of Congress could suppress the freedom of speech it would completely void the first amendment.

(2) The Fourteenth Amendment and the Second American Revolution:
Central to the understanding of the so-called "incorporation" doctrine (that is, applying the protections of the Bill of Rights to the States) is the Fourteenth Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The context to this article is vital to understanding its meaning. Simply put, the Fourteenth Amendment is the constiutionalisation of the greatest change to have occurred in the America since its founding and until the present day: The American Civil War.
The American Civil War was a second American Revolution. It utterly transformed the economic, social and political balance between the Agrarian South and the Industrialist North, and it brought a radical change in conception of race relations in the United States.

Until the Civil War, the United States was dominated by Southerners and Southern interests: Most of the Presidents, Cabinet Secretaries, Supreme Court Justices, etc, were from the South. The US Constitution was largely conceived by Virginian James Madison, in a convention presided by George Washington and the first twelve amendments to the constitutions were carried out under Southern Presidents: Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The pre-1865 constitution, thus, was a Southern constitution, based on Federal principle very different then the principles of Modern America. The main purpose of the Constitution, and particularly of the bill of rights, was to protect US citizens and States from the Federal government. The protection of the state's citizens from the state was to be done through the state constitutions, not the Federal one. Thus, up to and even during the Civil War, Northern antislavery advocated all agreed that the constitution forbade the Federal Government from abolishing slavery in the states – and the more extremist of them, like William Garrison, called it a "Covenant of Death, and an Agreement with Hell" for that reason.

But the Civil War changed everything. It brought to power, for a brief period, a group that wanted a complete change in the Southern social order. The Republican Congress in the 1860s had a completely different conception of national power than any that came before. For a variety of motives, both noble and base, post war Republicans wanted to use Federal power to protect American blacks from white Southerners. Following that view, President Grant had sent in Federal troops to protect Reconstruction governments and to fight off the Ku Klux Klan. And the constitutional manifestations of this view were the 14th amendment.

The 14th amendment transformed the antebellum Constitution. The role of the Constitution was not only to govern the Federal system – now the Constitution was also there to protect the people from the states they were living in. The Federal government was completely transformed, and the long hand of the state could reach out to protect Citizens of the several states from their own governments. This view took time to assimilate – but when in the 1950s and 1960s, the US Supreme Court had proclaimed its various Civil Rights decisions; it was fulfilling the purpose of the 14th amendment, as it was originally conceived.

Thus, although the first amendment literally says 'Congress shall make no law…' the Court is correct in interpreting it as "The US Government or any State government or any agent thereof"…

But what does "Freedom of Speech" means, surely that is straight forward isn't it? Well, actually, no, it isn't:

(3) The all elusive "Freedom of Speech":
Even Barry Krusch acknowledges that the words "speech" in the 1st amendment requires clarifications. The fatal flaw of his entire book can be summarized by quoting one line out of his critique: "Luckily," Krusch tells us "there is a broad societal consensus that these words should be seen broadly"

There is the rub! What does 'broadly' mean? Well, the broadest possible interpretation would be, roughly, something like "Communication of information via any media whether book, comic book, newspaper, radio, television, CB radio, walkie talkie, Braille, sign language, [etc]… ". But what does it mean?

Suppose I want to 'Communicate information' by putting the face of Benjamin Franklin on green pieces of paper and handing them to other people. If Congress wants to suppress my right to hang out green pieces of paper with faces of dead American statesmen on them, isn't it abridging my right for freedom of Speech, based?

But then what happens to Congress's authority to "coin money… [and] To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting"? Recall that the first amendment amends the constitution – that is, anything in it that clashed with the 1st amendment should be out of the water? Did Madison change his mind and decide that he did not want to give Congress the right to coin money and punish counterfeits?

Now, suppose I like Krusch's book so much I want to sell it to people all over the US. Krusch may object, but then, if he can sue me and prevent me from selling it, surely Congress is, via Krusch, abridging my right of free speech, interpreted broadly?

But… the Constitution allows Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". Is that out of the window, too?

And what about if I want to lie under oath, or cheat on my tax forms, or tell the police that I don't know where the bunk robber went? When an FBI tells me to "freeze" is he not a paid agent of congress violating my freedom speech?

The point should be clear enough; Interpret "Freedom of Speech" broadly enough, and government is rendered impotent. Some form of "Speech" cannot be protected under the 1st amendment. Some forms of expressions are "protected speech" others are not – telling which is which the hard part is.

The US Supreme Court will probably keep wrestling with determining what Speech is protected and what is not. Like Krusch, I hope it will interpret "speech" broadly. But whether I agree with the decisions of the Court, at least it correctly recognizes the problem.

First Post

2006-04-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

Not really Historic, but welcome to my "The Thousand Words", my blog about books, politics, economics, religion, and a little bit of Philosophy and the Law, and probably a few other things. Right now I plan to put some book reviews there, a few links, maybe commentry on other people's comments.