Category: Legal, Laws, and Regs

Categories
Legal, Laws, and Regs

More on the Pledge

Dan Lyke pointed out that Illiad of User Friendly fame has weighed in on the Pledge of Allegiance ruling. I laughed until I shuddered and cried.

The Pledge legal decision and the User Friendly cartoon touched on two critical issues facing the US – our hypocrisy in regards to religion (mixing of religion and state in Saudi Arabia is evil, but it’s okay in the US), and our increasing willingness to sell our freedom for spurious safety.

On the issue of separation of church and state – if we demand that others drop their unique religious practices and conform to the greater good of all humanity, then we must ask the same of ourselves. As for the issue of trading security for safety – we’re willing to die for our country, but not for the freedoms on which the country is based. If this is true, then what good is the country?

I may seem as if I’m mixing the message – separation of church and state and giving up freedoms for security – but as Illiad has noted so well using his own style, it’s all about freedom. It’s all about freedom.

I was also caught by one of the discussion threads associated with the cartoon. In it, Geek Princess stated:

And as we continue down the slippery slope of moral decay, I’m wondering when the attacks on morality will stop? Will we have to become totally lawless and amoral before they will stop? How much filth and destruction do they need? 🙁 It just figures that such a ruling would come from judges who live in “The Sodom of America”. What are they thinking we will gain by further separating ourselves? We will either stand/work together, under one power, or our nation will crumble. I have to wonder whose side those judges are on?

Whoa, boys and girls – last time I looked, freedom of religion meant that all people are equal regardless of their religious beliefs. Assuming that the “godless” are amoral and lawless is, well, childish, simplistic, and scary as hell. And, Babes, I just moved from The Sodom of America. There weren’t no orgies in the street. If there was, no one told me where to go and when.

On a related note: once I finish with ThreadNeedle, I’m going to spend time coding a new application – a web bot that goes out to weblogs looking for two phrases “slippery slope” and “moral equivalency”. And every time the bot finds one, a warning email will be sent to the offending weblogger:

Note: You have used one of the following badly overused cliches:

 

Slippery Slope
Moral Equivalency

 

Continued use of cliches such as these has been shown to be detrimental to your mental health and growth. In addition, increased exposure over time leads to frothing at the mouth, a fixed stare, and a tendency to only wear red, white, and blue.

 

We suggest, for your own good, that you consider restricting your use of said terms in favor of something new and fresh. A thesaurus will be provided on request.

 

Thank you

Categories
Diversity Legal, Laws, and Regs

The Pledge

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was extremely pleased and surprised to hear that an appellate court has ruled that reciting the Oath of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of the phrase “…under God”.

Not everyone believes in a God, nor do all religions support the concept of taking an oath. In both cases, the daily oath makes kids who don’t participate feel like outsiders, especially in today’s frenzied patriotic environment.

The Oath of Allegiance and coating our cars, homes, and bodies with variations of red, white, and blue are cheap and easy ways to show our patriotism. Much simpler to say an Oath than to carefully pursue details of bills pending in Congress, or to vote based on individual merit rather than party affiliation.

Not all webloggers are so pleased as I. Amidst a tangled web considers this a giant step back, saying As a big fan of God, I hope he gets to stay in the USA. At Boboroshi.com:

It’s gotten to the point where society is evicting any piece of religion from anything political. The problem exists that, in evicting religion from our society and becoming completely secularized, those who have exized religion have not been able to replace its moral teachings.

Our society was based on a secular government, a nation whereby church and state are separated. This does not preclude the practice of religion, but does put religious practice where it belongs: celebrated by individuals in their own space, their own time, protected by law.

As for the “moral teachings” of religion, there is no religion – none – that doesn’t have incidents in its past that the modern practitioners of same would just as soon forget. And there have been few wars fought that didn’t have a kernel of religion at their core – including the current conflicts in the Middle East. In actuality, morality, or lack thereof, is a matter of individual responsibility rather than religious affiliation.

Perhaps we should create a new Oath – one with a bit broader base:

I give my promise
to all of humanity
to support freedom in all its forms.

 

And to the world
in which we live
one world, indivisible
I support liberty and justice for all

I can live with this.

Categories
Legal, Laws, and Regs

Human Rights

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Read the following very carefully before you react to any one specific piece of information.

I don’t think there’s been any action the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has taken that hasn’t angered somebody, but one thing I’ve always seen in this organization is its adherence to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Even if this action means protecting those who are advocates of hatred and despised almost universally.

Case in point is the now famous planned march in 1977 of Nazi supporters through Skokie, Illinois — a community that was predominately Jewish, with an unusually large number of Holocaust survivors.

Is the Nazi organization a despicable organization? Oh, yes. Personally, I have no tolerance for the organization in any way. Was this planned march cruel and heinous? Oh yes, it most definitely was. However, by the laws of our Constitution, no matter how we feel about the Nazi organization, its members had the right to march if they obtained the appropriate permits.

When the Nazis were blocked, the organization contacted the ACLU to seek help in upholding their constitutional rights. The ACLU accepted the case and in what is now a most famous bit of irony, a Jewish lawyer was assigned to support the Nazi party’s claims, David Goldberger. In another bit of irony, at the time, the ACLU was lead by Aryeh Neier, a German whose family had been killed because of the Holocaust.

Neier was to later say in defense of the ACLU action:

Keeping a few Nazi’s off the streets of Skokie will serve Jews poorly if it means that the freedoms to speak, publish or assemble any place in the United States are thereby weakened.

Goldberger himself later said:

I don’t think I’ll ever look back on it without remembering the pain it caused…. The hardest thing was being at odds with people for whom you had strong feelings of empathy.

The ACLU successfully won for the Nazi party their right to march. However, the Nazis never did march in Skokie, staging a protest in Marquette Park in Chicago instead — their preferred venue.

No legal precedent was set. No momentous turn in history was achieved because of the actions of the ACLU. The only victory was a moral one, in that the ACLU demonstrated the true spirt of Freedom of Speech.

I have tried to model my standard regarding equality and freedom of speech based on the actions of these two men and others like them. To speak out for the oppressed when the oppressed is beautiful, or popular or innocent or winsome is noble. But to speak out for the oppressed when they are ugly and abhorrent — that is true equality.

Categories
Legal, Laws, and Regs

On Human Rights

Read the following very carefully before you react to any one specific piece of information.

I don’t think there’s been any action the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has taken that hasn’t angered somebody, but one thing I’ve always seen in this organization is its adherence to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Even if this action means protecting those who are advocates of hatred and despised almost universally.

Case in point is the now famous planned march in 1977 of Nazi supporters through Skokie, Illinois — a community that was predominately Jewish, with an unusually large number of Holocaust survivors.

Is the Nazi organization a despicable organization? Oh, yes. Personally, I have no tolerance for the organization in any way. Was this planned march cruel and heinous? Oh yes, it most definitely was. However, by the laws of our Constitution, no matter how we feel about the Nazi organization, its members had the right to march if they obtained the appropriate permits.

When the Nazis were blocked, the organization contacted the ACLU to seek help in upholding their constitutional rights. The ACLU accepted the case and in what is now a most famous bit of irony, a Jewish lawyer was assigned to support the Nazi party’s claims, David Goldberger. In another bit of irony, at the time, the ACLU was lead by Aryeh Neier, a German whose family had been killed because of the Holocaust.

Neier was to later say in defense of the ACLU action:

Keeping a few Nazi’s off the streets of Skokie will serve Jews poorly if it means that the freedoms to speak, publish or assemble any place in the United States are thereby weakened.

Goldberger himself later said:

I don’t think I’ll ever look back on it without remembering the pain it caused…. The hardest thing was being at odds with people for whom you had strong feelings of empathy.

The ACLU successfully won for the Nazi party their right to march. However, the Nazis never did march in Skokie, staging a protest in Marquette Park in Chicago instead — their preferred venue.

No legal precedent was set. No momentous turn in history was achieved because of the actions of the ACLU. The only victory was a moral one, in that the ACLU demonstrated the true spirt of Freedom of Speech.

I have tried to model my standard regarding equality and freedom of speech based on the actions of these two men and others like them. To speak out for the oppressed when the oppressed is beautiful, or popular or innocent or winsome is noble. But to speak out for the oppressed when they are ugly and abhorrent — that is true equality.

Categories
Copyright

Creative Commons

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

According to Dan Gillmor, the concepts and technology behind Napster are continuing despite the recent resignations and layoffs at the company.

In particular, Gillmor references new organizations and technologies being introduced at the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference this week, including Creative Commons — a non-profit organization dedicated to “…the notion that some people would prefer to share their creative works…”.

Lawrence Lessig is Chair on the Board of Directorys, and technology team members include Lisa Rein and Aaron Swartz, both of whom I have worked with in past and current writing efforts.

What do you think? Would you dedicate your creative effort to the public domain in the interest of sharing? Technologists have been doing this for years with software; now the door opens for creative talents in other fields to share their work.

Will photographers, writers, musicians, and artists in other media buy into this concept?

Creative Commons: A bold new venture.