June 15, 1215 at Runnymede: King John agreed to the terms of the Magna Carta and acknowledged that no one is above the law, not even the king. The document has become a powerful symbol of liberty and resistance to the arbitrary - and therefore tyrannical - (ab)use of power by rulers.
The celebrations are in full swing! Yes, bells and all! Need a refresher about the Magna Carta? Here is the text. Here is a fun little video from the British Library. (Recognize the voice? It's Terry Jones from Monty Python!)
Want more? Take a look at the resources of the Magna Carta Project. Go on a field trip to the US National Archives and visit one of the few remaining copies of the charter!
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has written a nice little column to mark the day. Do read. Apparently he was not invited to speak at today's festivities in DC - a fact I find not so much baffling as pathetically biased and blinkered on the part of the organizers. Does the (R) after his name negate the fact that he is the only black Senator in Congress? (Don't answer that.) UPDATE: Iowahawk's tweet! If you don't follow Iowahawk, you're doing Twitter wrong.
1963: you can't have that job because you're black.
2013: you can't be black because you have that job.
#SenatorTimScott — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 28, 2013
The very right that laid the foundation for Western civilization is increasingly viewed as a nuisance, if not a threat. Whether speech is deemed inflammatory or hateful or discriminatory or simply false, society is denying speech rights in the name of tolerance, enforcing mutual respect through categorical censorship.
Whither Voltaire? As Turley notes elsewhere in his article, part of the whole point of free speech is the right to be offensive: "Of course, free speech is often precisely about pissing off other people — challenging social taboos or political values." (You may recall that a while back I profiled a history professor who argued that renegades challenging social mores often resulted in more freedoms for everybody. You can read his new-ish book too.)
The NAACP isn’t contesting the neutrality of the exam. ... their claim is based on the result. The problem is the NAACP’s solution calls for race-based disparate treatment, which is a worse civil rights violation than disparate impact.
I’m not angling towards separation. I’m calling out the NAACP for separating Asians. I agree that we should be able to trust the NAACP to guard the interests of Asian children – not ‘other’ and sacrifice Asians in order to favor other minority groups.
You know what’s insulting? Read the NAACP complaint and see how it marginalizes Asians with the rhetorical trick of grouping together “either whites or Asian Americans”.
I'm used to hearing stuff like this from California, where several lawsuits have taken place and all (and I still remember Saint Bill Clinton of the Dems once saying that if not for race-based quotas, UC campus populations would be mostly Asian ... as if that would be a bad thing, Bubba, based on pure merit by test scores and such), but this new story is from New York City where the NAACP is involved in a flap over Stuyvesant High School. The claim is that the entrance exam is "racist" (whatever that means right now according to whomever is using it to their advantage), but the practical goal seems to be taking places from Asian students and redistributing them to black and Latino students. You know, when I was young and ignorant and filled with more pie-eyed idealism than facts, I had a vague thought that affirmative action was a good thing. Then I grew up and realized that it screws over people who are qualified in order to give their places to people who aren't, and that instituting quotas turns human beings into mere numbers, that setting up two sets of criteria is innately unjust, and that the whole thing had become corrupted by identity politics and race-baiters. The whole point to education, as I see it, is to push yourself to excellence as a way to get ahead in life, and I see this as especially applicable to children of immigrants (like myself). Many of these families aren't rich. Mine wasn't. Education is the first, best way to improve yourself and your prospects in life. The intrusion of identity politics into this is a travesty matched only by the Gramscian corruption of public education.
The Arab uprisings have overthrown tyrants in Egypt and Libya, but the populations and lawmakers have yet to grasp that democracy is not only about free elections but creating free societies.
In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.
The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”
Doesn't ANYBODY know what due process is? Read the Fifth Amendment, please. (You'll remember this related bit with the TSA.) Between this and SOPA, I am starting off the year in a nasty mood indeed. Hope and change? Civil rights? You're doing it wrong. Once upon a time, it actually meant something to be a citizen!
