We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Would someone please remind the progressives of this?
Author: Derek
DOJ Won’t File Charges Against Wilson
I don’t expect the “hands up” community to be happy about this, but they haven’t let little things like facts and the law sway them from their narrative anyway. They’re kind of like anti-vaxxers and young earth creationists in that way.
Why throw all those resources at this case? More importantly, why wasn’t the same level of resources devoted to John Crawford’s murder? Oh yeah, because CNN and MSNBC weren’t blaring his murder 24-7.
This is not helping my trust in the .gov.
Metal Tuesday Humor
Got this off of one of the picture blogs I follow. I haven’t been to a KFC in years, but it makes me want to hit one for dinner.
Metal Tuesday- Brainstorm – Frozen
Another new band for Metal Tuesday: Brainstorm. Most of their music falls into “background music” for me, but this one I like a lot.
Lyrics in YouTube video.
Friday Quote – Phil Plait
I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is held up as fact.
Phil Plait
Or where emotion is held up as proof.
Limits and Limits
“One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith,” Francis said on the flight from Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Manila.
Emphasis mine.
My response to the Pope: Bullshit. Insults and comedy are part of the natural critique for any faith/belief system/philosophy. The marketplace of ideas is harmed without the full width and breadth of nonviolent critique.
I make fun of religions because I find them foolish. I make jokes of their inconsistencies. I fully expect others to make jokes about atheists.
Here’s where it comes to limits and limits. More to the point, moral limits and legal limits.
If the Pope is calling for moral limits on expression, then that’s fine. He’s the moral leader for millions of people and they expect him to tell them his interpretation of Big Sky Daddy’s will. Breaking the moral limit may get someone excluded from Thanksgiving dinner, but not get thrown in jail.
On the other hand, we’re going to have a problem if he’s calling for legal limits on expression, that becomes dangerous for a society. The problem is that what is offensive is highly subjective, and legally limiting speech becomes a tyranny of the most sensitive. Improvements in science and philosophy are lost because thinkers are not allowed pathways due to “offense”.
Limits and limits.
Metal Tuesday- Iron Maiden- Run To the Hills
Iron Maiden is one of those bands that are almost required before one can call themselves Metalheads. Out of their extensive repertoire, we’re doing “Run For the Hills.” Partly, because it’s a damned good song, and partly so I can use this graphic:
Lyrics in the YouTube video.
Friday Quote – Sean Sorrentino
The problem with gun people is not getting them to tell you information, most of the time it’s getting them to shut up.
Sean Sorrentino, on episode 20 of the Gun Blog Variety Cast
I may have been guilty of this.
Remember, there is a careful balance of knowledge transfer when dealing with people new to guns and shooting. Worse, it’s going to be different for each new shooter.
Barbarians At the Gate
Over the past twenty-four hours, I’ve heard a lot of varying commenting. Many going off on Islam. I’m not going to repeat that most Muslims are peaceful. It really comes down to whether you are a civilized person or a barbarian. Currently, many – maybe most – of the barbarian cultures in the world today worship their magic sky-daddy as Allah.
Worse, the powers that be seem to have two responses to the barbarians: cower or emulate the barbarians.
Proving once again that we are on our own. The barbarians are inside the gates. Be prepared.
We Must Protect Them!
Stolen completely from Borepatch:
Goober on “Social Justice Warriors”:
“You take a guy that lived his entire life in the Amazonian jungle, fighting for every meal he’s ever eaten, making his own living/clothing/abode/etc at huge expense of labor, and living every day with the fear of that next cut becoming septic and killing him, or that next sniffle being the cold that brings him down, or the next monsoon not being monsooney enough and his family starving to death, and you give him a pair of Levi jeans, some tennis shoes, a first world education, and modern medicine, and HE WILL CUT YOUR FUCKING THROAT before he will let you stick him back in that jungle.
…
But SJWs want to keep him there, unmolested by western “cultural pollution” like modern medicine and central air conditioning, in order to “preserve his culture”, without giving him an educated say in the decision at all. More of that SJW superiority.
This idea of “allowing the brown people too stay in their place” smacks an awful, awful lot like “keeping the brown people in their place.”
Yup.
If anthropology has taught us anything, it’s that culture is not supposed to stay stagnant as a museum piece. It is expected to evolve as new technologies and conditions emerge. You don’t protect people by limiting their choices.