Friday, July 19, 2013

Same-sex marriage and freedom of association (2)

I have previously noted some philosophical reasons why we should allow marriage equality and freedom of assocation to coexist rather than allow either of them to trump the other. I now want to point out a more practical reason, namely, that by fighting against freedom of association, we are giving the 'phobes an unnecessary PR victory.

People are already pointing to antidiscrimination lawsuits against bakers and the like as evidence that we are not seeking only the right to live our own lives, but also the power to dictate others' lives. We thus feed the myth of individual liberty as a zero-sum game, i.e., one in which our gains are automatically someone else's losses. We also run the risk of looking like hypocrites for demanding freedom of association for ourselves but no one else.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

More Randroid teathuglican blather about Obama. Oh, wait ....

Which freeper wingnuts do you suppose wrote the following?
Mr Obama has become a more amiable and efficient manager of the American empire. And, in the name of national security, he is laying the foundation for a frighteningly dystopian future by combining full-spectrum surveillance with full-spectrum military dominance.

* * *

Mr Obama, under whom hunger strikers are force fed and whistleblowers prosecuted with unparalleled ferocity, needs to recalibrate before he drives the final nails into the coffin of a once-proud American republic.

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick wrote that in Financial Times.