Cynical Me?

Does it make me dreadfully cynical, that when I read the news about this latest NORK/Free World Mexican standoff that I am suddenly casting a suspicious eye towards Washington, DC, wondering what the heck they’re up to that they are trying to distract us with these increasing tensions in Asia?  

Real Restrictions on the 1st Amendment.

Ken over at Popehat struck a  chord with me the other day with a post he wrote about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s famous statement that so many people use as an excuse for their more censorious desires.  I'm talking about the tired old saw "You can't shout 'FIRE!' in a crowded theater!"

This has been with me for a while.  Since I was a little kid, really.  I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing rank little censors wander the streets and internets of my good country using the “You can’t shout 'FIRE!' In a crowded theater!” argument whenever they don’t like what someone is saying and want to keep them from saying it.  As if being a censorious twat wasn't enough, there are several additional reasons that folks who use this argument get my dander up:

1.)  At it's core, the argument, itself, is not logical. 

Hypothetically speaking, let us say that one day, you get pulled over by the police, and are discovered by the police officer to have a massive brick of cocaine in your car. 

For medicinal purposes?

 If you were to argue your innocence using the logic displayed in the “fire in a crowded theater” argument above, you would attempt to talk your way out of being arrested and charged with drug possession by convincing the police officer that because some drugs, like ibuprofen and Tylenol, are perfectly legal, that the drugs that you have in your car with you also should be.

 Wait, what?

 Here is a real world example that I'm borrowing from the Popehat article, of that argument being used in a more contemporary situation.  At the link is an article by a newspaper opinion columnist, calling for the prosecution of a film-maker who made a movie that was critical of Islam.  This film caused a lot of Muslims to get very angry and hurt people to show the world how wrong the film was about Islam being violent.  The logical path that she took in arguing for this man's prosecution was that since making this movie caused some Muslims to go bug-fuck nuts and kill people on the other side of the world, that he should be held responsible for that, and prosecuted for making the movie.  She uses the “fire in a crowded theater” argument to say that, like shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater could cause harm, his words caused harm, and so he should be held responsible. 

"Wait, let me get this straight...  You want to hold HIM responsible for WHAT?"

The epic logical fail is that she doesn't understand that this guy expressing his opinion through a documentary, and the exclamation from the Holmes quote are two different types of speech that are not related in any way.  The actual Holmes quote had him say “falsely;” as in, to falsely shout fire in a crowded theater, with the intent of causing a panic and thus causing harm.  

Therefore, Holmes was referring, specifically, to a person who commits fraud with the intent of causing harm; this is not 1st Amendment protected speech.  

To shout “fire!” in said theater when there really is a fire is not, nor should it be, a prosecutable offense, even if someone is harmed in the ensuing panic.  This is because it is true speech, no matter how dangerous it might be.  True speech (or opinion) that is offensive or dangerous, like that in the subject movie about Islam, is not included in the same category as false, fraudulent speech that is intended to harm someone.  This is true regardless of whether some type of harm is the result of the true speech (or opinion) or not.  That is why I say that this argument is usually used in the most illogical way possible, which is to say that a person wielding this argument is typically using it to point out that some speech is not protected by the First Amendment, and then illogically using that as an excuse to say that the actual speech in question is not protected.  Of course, through all of this, they never actually provide a reason as to why they feel the actual speech in question would not be protected under that prohibition.  Hence, epic logic fail.

In this case, the argument is about as logical as trying to argue with a cop that you shouldn't be hauled off to jail for having cocaine, because Tylenol is perfectly legal.  It is illogical, and makes you look like a moron.  Stop it.

2.)    The quote, itself, came from a horrible statist prick who no modern person should ever try to emulate or use as an example of how to act.

 Seriously, the guy was a B-hole extraordinaire.  He is remembered mostly for his efforts to try and get the entire nation to stop talking during the First World War, and more specifically, prosecute and imprison people who spoke out against the draft during that war.  In fact, the opinion in which he gave us the “fire in a crowded theater” quote was an opinion in which he voted to imprison a man for pamphleteering against the draft; so Holmes was not a good person.

"I ran out of toilet paper, so I used my copy of the Constitution instead."

I guess my point is that most people aren't taken to using the quotes of horrible people to get their across, generally speaking, and yet they seem to eat up this Holmes quote like it is going out of style. They do so while forgetting entirely that the man who gave us this quote is the last person on Earth that they would really want to use as an example for anything that they want to advocate as good and proper.

Okay, that last statement may have been hyperbole.

 3.)    There are restrictions on the First Amendment, but they aren’t what you think that they are

There absolutely are restrictions on the First Amendment.  No reasonable person would deny that.  However, they are generally well-defined and fall under a select few categories:

                                    1.)    Fraud

                                    2.)    Incitement to harm

                                    3.)    Conspiracy to harm or commit illegal acts

                                    4.)    Libel and slander

What?  Hurting someone’s feelings isn’t included? 

 Generally speaking, I like to think of any valid speech restriction requiring two distinct things to make it so:

 1.)    Harm is caused by the speech: 

by this, I don’t mean someone is butthurt.  I mean, there is a violent mob fixing to kill some people, or someone's reputation unfairly harmed, or in the case of Holmes’ quote, a panicked crowd trampling people to get away from a perceived threat; 

2.)    The speech is false and/or is intended to cause harm: 

You can lie all you want, but as soon as your lies cause someone to be harmed, you’ve committed either fraud or slander/libel.  You also can’t directly foment and encourage, or threaten direct harm to someone, nor conspire with another person to commit harm to another. 

 This is why bomb threats are not protected speech, and also why you can’t go online and say that you once saw Billy Mahaffey sodomize a chicken when you really didn’t.  You can say “Bill Mahaffey probably sodomizes chickens!” all day long because that’s opinion, but you can’t say “I once saw Bill Mahaffey sodomize a chicken!” unless you actually did, because that’s slander. 

The most difficult and tricky one above is the incitement to harm item above, because it gets embroiled in semantics and what a “reasonable man” would interpret from the inciter’s speech.  For instance, if a man says “we should go get some rope and hang every motherfucker in Washington DC,” the obvious hyperbole and lack of direct incitement would likely allow him to get away with that, because a reasonable man wouldn’t interpret it as incitement to actually go do it.  

If that same man says “You, Jim Franklin, should go get some rope, go to Congressman Miller’s house, drag him out of his bed in the dead of night on March 23rd, and hang his ass from the tree in his front yard,” that would be specific enough that a reasonable man might think that he was serious, and so it may not be protected.  Notice that I said “may” because this one is so full of grey area that it is really hard to put your thumb on it.  This is why the TJIC issue still seems to be continuing to this day, because there is enough gray area that statist thugs can use that gray area to bleed you dry, even when they are obviously wrong. 

 I think I'll wrap this all up with a quote from Ken over at Popehat, because, being a lawyer, he is much more lawyerly than I, and so speaks from experience and authority when he says:

Holmes' famous quote is the go-to argument by appeal to authority for anyone who wants to suggest that some particular utterance is not protected by the First Amendment. Its relentless overuse is annoying and unpersuasive to most people concerned with the actual history and progress of free speech jurisprudence. People tend to cite the "fire in a crowded theater" quote for two reasons, both bolstered by Holmes' fame. First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute. Saying it is not an apt or persuasive argument for the proposition that some particular speech is unprotected, any more than saying "well, some speech is protected by the First Amendment" is a persuasive argument to the contrary. Second, people tend to cite Holmes to imply that there is some undisclosed legal authority showing that the speech they are criticizing is not protected by the First Amendment. This is dishonest at worst and unconvincing at best. If you have a pertinent case showing that particular speech falls outside the First Amendment, you don't have to rely on a 90-year-old rhetorical flourish to support your argument.

Outdoor Update - March 30th, 2013

My brother-in-law is visiting from Highland, Illinois this week.  Since he lives in the flatlands, he is pretty interested in the mountains and canyons that we have around here.  My Mother-In-Law asked if I would take him up Hell’s Canyon on a jet boat tour this weekend. 

Jeez, twist my arm. 

So on Saturday we headed down through Lewiston, Idaho to the launch at Heller Bar, and ran almost 40 miles upriver past Dug Bar to Dry Creek.  In the process we navigated a dozen Class II whitewater rapids, two Class III, and one smaller Class IV. 

The Class IV was actually on the Salmon River, a tributary to the Snake that dumps into the Snake at mile 22 of the trip.  It is called “Eye of the Needle.”  Here is a Youtube of someone else running it at calmer water levels than we ran it this weekend. 

Needless to say, Mrs. Goober and her mother were clawing holes in the armrests of their seats as we navigated some of this stuff.  Brother-in –law was enjoying himself thoroughly.  As is typical, because of the technical nature of piloting a boat through the rocks, riffles, and rapids of this section of river, I took exactly zero pictures.  Mother-in law took some, but I haven’t gotten any of them yet.  I’ll post them when I get them. 

Saw some more Bighorn Sheep, which B.I.L. thought was pretty cool.  We also stopped at the Cache CreekHistoric Ranch for a picnic lunch.  This Ranch is run by the National Park Service, who employs retired folks for one month stints to get boated or flown in to run the check station and maintain the grounds. 

No fishing, because the Steelhead runs are pretty much over, the Chinook Salmon runs haven’t gotten far enough upriver yet to be in the canyon (hence, the reason that I drove to Portland two weekends ago to fish them there on the lower river), and even though the sturgeon and catfish fishery is in full swing, my passengers were not interested in fishing so much as they just wanted to go site seeing. 

Good times were had by all.  

Male Vices

I’ve posted some of my more favorite recipes on here before, including some that I got from Tanker over at Mostly Cajun, as well as some that I learned from Mom and made up myself over the years. 

What I haven’t done is given any good whiskey recommendations in a while, which is kind of sad since I’ve discovered some really good ones recently.

First, Pendleton:  

As I’ve admitted before, I’m really a sucker for good Canadian blended whiskeys.  They are just so smooth and easy to drink, as well as having a quality that I’ve found that I like over the years – a touch of sweetness.  They also lack the peaty, smoky qualities of Scotch, that, while attractive to some, are a huge turn-off to some palettes. 

The standard, off-the-shelf Pendleton Whiskey is just absolutely outstanding.  That being said, I stepped away from the blends the other day, and bought a 5^th of Pendleton 1910, which is the Pendleton recipe, but using only rye, as opposed to blended grains. 

This is, by a fair margin, the best whiskey I’ve ever had. 

I highly recommend Pendleton 1910 to anyone who wants to try a very solid rye whiskey that is so smooth that you have to do a double-take on the alcohol content to make sure it isn’t diluted.  If you’re trying to bring a new drinker into the whiskey fold, then by golly, you could do a lot worse than starting them out on 1910.  You could make a convert out of a fuzzy navel drinker in one afternoon.  Goes for about $35 a 5^th in the local stores. 

On to Scotch.  As I mentioned before, I tried a new Scotch over at McMineman’s in Hillsboro, Oregon the weekend before last.  It was Laphroaig Quarter Cask.  It is aged in a smaller cask (called a quarter cask), which means that it draws more of the sugars out of the wood during the aging process.  It is smoky and sweet, with a lot less peaty flavor than most scotch whiskeys, which I have to admit is my least favorite aromatic in the scotch panoply.  It smelled so strongly of vanilla that I had a hard time believing that it hadn’t had vanilla extract added to it.  It goes for about $60 a 5^th in the local stores.

As I always recommend when we’re talking about a good Scotch, I paired it with a nice cigar.  The smoking shed at McMinimans is grandfathered in prior to the indoor smoking ban, so we were able to sit inside the shed on a wrap-around couch while we enjoyed our drinks and smokes.  I had a Punch something-or-other.  I honestly don’t remember what it was, but it was really excellent.  The combination of the Laphroaig and cigar was over $30, so this isn’t the sort of habit that you have if you want to die rich.  That being said, I consider the opportunity to enjoy these treats while sitting about catching up with my best high school buddies that I don’t hardly see but two or three times a year if I’m lucky, and it was worth it.  

Copping Out

I have a few really good articles written up in the illustrated list format like the global warming article, but I need to find time after work to get the illustrations into them and get them posted.  Bear with me, it's about to get really exciting around here in the next day or so, as soon as I find some time...

Why I’m Against the Death Penalty

Forget about the hundreds and hundreds of cases (that we know about) of prosecutorial misconduct that seem rampant in our legal system, where prosecutors are found to have actively hid exculpatory evidence that would have exonerated the suspect.

Forget about unreliable witnesses, and the occurrences of dishonest police officers that plant evidence to make sure the guy they “know” is guilty goes down for the crime. 

Forget about the fact that some people are just cur-dogs that deserve a bullet to the head and nothing more.

Forget all of that. 

I’m just not sure that a government that I don’t trust to do much of anything efficiently is a government that I should trust to have the ability to kill the citizens of its nation competently and correctly.

I’m also not sure I like the implications of the conversation that I had today where I pointed out the startlingly high rate of exoneration of people on death row (and I wasn’t talking “walked on a technicality, I was talking “fully innocent of all charges”) and the man, and several more people around us, responded that they thought it was okay if we occasionally executed an innocent man, because, hey, nobody’s perfect, and no system will be right 100% of the time, and the death penalty is there for the overall good of society.  You have to break an egg or two to make an omelet. 

I suggested that if they felt so strongly about it being necessary to execute an innocent person for the good of society and all, that they should volunteer to be next.  I asked them all if they would feel the same way if they happened to be the person caught up in the gears of the machine.  I asked them if they would be singing a happy tune in their heart as the executioner stuck the needle into their arm, because, hey, “good of society” and all. 

And the answer is that no one would.  It is perfectly simple and easy to suggest that innocent people need to be occasionally executed for the good of society, but much more difficult to suggest that you should be next, and I can not, for the life of me, understand how that isn’t just fucking evil. 

Can you? 

I, for one, don’t want to be executed by the government for something I didn’t do.  Because of this, I will not condone a system that would do exactly that to another man just because it is convenient to me.  And until we have a system that never does execute any man for something he did not do, I will stand in opposition to that system, forever.  I don’t care what public good the death penalty creates; it does not, nor will it ever, offset the harm that it causes to the innocent men who have surely been denied their lives as a result of its existence.  

The Progressive Movement Seems to Think That They Have the Answer to Everything.

One of the things that progressives are so certain that they have an answer to is the question of evil in our society.  They see evil as a societal ill, that they can control or eliminate by tweaking the controls of society. For instance, they think that they can eliminate it by denying the evil men the tools of their trade.  Take away the man’s gun, they reason, and he won’t be able to commit evil acts. 

Me?  I see evil as having been with us since way before guns were around.  Hell, it was among us before there was such a thing as society, so I’m not entirely certain that taking away the guns is going to accomplish a damn thing. 

So what would I do about evil? 

Well, first off, I’m not entirely sure that there is anything that you can do to stop it.  Anywhere you find men, you’ll find men among them willing to do evil against other men for their own enjoyment and their own gain. 

Second, even if you find something that can be done (which would be a massive, theoretical leap, since we haven’t figured out what to do with evil for the last 25,000 years), chances are it will take years to implement and years to actually work.  In the mean time, it will continue preying on the innocent among us. 

In the history of man the only thing that has ever worked to beat back the inexorable tide of evil has been righteous violence committed by good men in defense of the innocent. 

And so, given the points above, the only thing that can be done, right now, to stop the societal bleeding being caused by evil among us is to arm the innocent, prepare them to defend themselves, and to ensure that more people among us are prepared to do violence against it.  Therefore, it is my opinion that the progressive desire for gun control is actually counter-productive to their overriding goal, which is to reduce violence and stop evil men from committing it. 

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing to stop it…