Category: Libertarianism

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation comes news that a federal anti-SLAPP bill has been introduced into Congress:

A bipartisan group of representatives, including Reps. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), recently introduced the SPEAK FREE Act of 2015, a bill that would help protect victims of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, also known as SLAPPs.

SLAPPs are frivolous lawsuits used to shut down opposition, particularly against bloggers who probably don’t have the resources to wage a six-figure legal war against a defamation/libel lawsuit. They are a means of chilling the marketplace of ideas by those who don’t want to be challenged. 

Anti-SLAPP laws allow for these lawsuits to be dismissed when there is enough evidence to prove that the case could not win on its merits, and possibly the recovery of attorney’s fees. It makes it much less costly (and easier) for more people to fight back against these lawsuits. 

So, does this legislation pass the “Grandma Test?” Would I want men with guns to possibly shoot my grandma if she refused to stop doing this? If my grandmother was filing lawsuits without basis to stop free expression, then yes. Or else, why do we have a First Amendment?

Today’s evidence:

Then they opened the lines for callers and I very nearly drove into the ditch, yelling at the radio and gnawing on the steering wheel in impotent frustration:

“Welcome back, I’m Indira Lakshmanan, sitting in for Diane Rehm. We’re talking about the Texas attack, ISIS, and the limits of free speech. I’m gonna read a post that we got here, an email from Jean, who says that if someone published cartoons of women, LGBTs, blacks, or a dozen other protected groups, wouldn’t they be prosecuted as hate speech? And why does offense of anti-Islamic speech get a pass in the name of free speech?”

Jean you ignorant slut, do you know that they call it when people publish “cartoons of women, LGBTs, blacks, or a dozen other protected groups”? They call it the internet.

Damn near needed the Heimlich.

Culture - Anthropology. the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.

Humanity’s development of culture is an amazing thing. Humans have developed processes and beliefs that allowed them to survive far from the African savannahs where we evolved. Cultures also have evolved faster than human biology, allowing humanity to adapt to new technology and philosophies. Unfortunately, humans are less likely to discard obsolete cultural practices than obsolete technology. Hell, sometimes they are enshrined in law and religion or we have day long festivals. 

The question is how do we judge a culture? There is a school of thought that cultures can only be judged within the confines of their worldview. That’s valid from a scholarly perspective, but doesn’t necessarily help in the world outside academia. So how do we judge a culture?

I judge cultures based on their attitudes toward liberty and science. Cultures that value personal liberty and scientific advancement are superior to those treat humans as parts to a collective or refuse technological advancement. 

Some cultures condone actions that are so against my beliefs that I can only label them as savages and barbarians. In this day and age, the biggest offender of that is Islamic culture. 

For those of you who say Islam is a religion, not a culture, you’re both right and wrong. When Islam the religion was spread, it brought along with it the Arabic cultural values of Mohammed to the point it became it’s own culture (see definition above). There are variations, but the fundamentals of Islamic culture are the same. The tenets of personal liberty are not present in Sharia law. Science is eschewed for the myths of the Islamic religion. Those that go against the culture are not just shamed, but are subject to physical punishment up to and including death. This is savagery. This is barbarity. 

This is why cultures must be judged on the real world.

 

But damn can he write an opinion:

From his dissent in Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads:

In this case, Congress has permitted a corporation subject only to limited control by the President to create legally binding rules. These rules give content to private railroads’ statutory duty to share their private infrastructure with Amtrak. This arrangement raises serious constitutional questions to which the majority’s holding that Amtrak is a governmental entity is all but a non sequitur. These concerns merit close consideration by the courts below and by this Court if the case reaches us again.

We have too long abrogated our duty to enforce the separation of powers required by our Constitution. We have overseen and sanctioned the growth of an administrative system that concentrates the power to make laws and the power to enforce them in the hands of a vast and unaccountable administrative apparatus that finds no comfortable home in our constitutional structure. The end result may be trains that run on time (although I doubt it), but the cost is to our Constitution and the individual liberty it protects.

H/t Sebastian