Culture Warriors category archive

It’s a Republican thing.

Via Job’s Anger.

Amitai Etzioni grapples with freedom of speech. Here’s a bit:

A crucial difference exists between the right to say the most awful things—to use the N-word, deny the Holocaust, advocate for the Islamic State—and the rightness of saying these things. It is the difference between a constitutional right to free speech and what we consider morally appropriate speech. All of us are not only citizens, with a whole array of rights, but also members of various communities made up of people with whom we reside, work, play, pray, take civic action, and socialize. These communities, in effect, tell us that if we must engage in offensive speech—which, granted, is our right—we must understand that one or more of these communities to which we belong might in turn express its dismay. Members of these communities might even decide to have nothing more to do with us, much less lend a hand in a time of need. Nothing in the First Amendment promises that free speech will be cost free.

The entire piece is worth your while.

I must say, though, that I do not agree wholeheartedly with his position. In particular, I think he cavalierly dismisses the concept of “microaggressions.” He says, in part:

Likewise, scrutinizing a 30-something woman’s hand for a wedding band is interpreted as a microaggression communicating that women should be married during their child-bearing years because that is their primary purpose. And asking a nonwhite person where he is from is interpreted as microaggressively suggesting he is exotic or not a “true American.” A guide to “Interrupting Microaggressions” recommends responding to such questions by asking, “I’m wondering what message this is sending […] Do you think you would have said this to a white male?” or “How might we examine our implicit bias to ensure that gender plays no part in this?”

When I young ‘un in the the Jim Crow South, white folks addressed black folks by their first names. For example, I never knew the last time of old Jesse, who lived and died in a house–a shack, really–on the edge of Pine View Farm and who sometimes helped my father on the farm. The lady who took care of me while my brother was born was not “Mrs. Collins”; she was “Bertha.” Her husband was not “Mr. Collins”; he was “George.”

Denying the courtesy titles of “Mr.,” “Mrs., or “Miss” (there was no such thing as a “Ms.” back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un) would be rightly classified in today’s lingo as a “microaggression,” a tiny act of disrespect designed to remind black folks in every transaction with whites that they were not equal.

Some persons cry “microaggression” when referring to “an unpleasantness that I would rather ignore” or “a reality that I don’t want to confront.” Those are not complaints of “microaggressions”; those are whines couched in the fashionable language of the day. Such whines comprise Etzioni’s examples of “microaggressions.”

Etzioni fails to discriminate between those whines and references to the daily little disrespectful and, yes, aggressive behaviors intended to dehumanize or demean their targets, true microaggessions.

The failure to recognize the difference detracts from the post.

One more time, why are persons who call themselves “conservative” obsessed with women’s breasts?

I usually avoid stories about celebrities (and especially those odious bits of click-bait with come-ons like “17 Worst Plastic Surgeries; the Tenth Will Really Shock!” which seem to be all the rage with the advertisers now), but this caught my eye and I’m glad it did.

My father once told me that his father was a natural left-hander, who was forcibly trained out of it in school (that would have been before WWI). Granddaddy resented that for the rest of his life.

A professor of constitutional law points out the Republicans in Congress are trying to do unconstitutional stuff. A snippet:

Though no one is talking about it, this most recent dust-up over federal funding for Planned Parenthood is very clearly an example of an unconstitutional bill of attainder: Congress is singling out Planned Parenthood and punishing the organization for allegedly improper and illegal actions.

More specifically, a bill of attainder has to meet three legal requirements: The law has to “determine guilt and inflict punishment,” it must act “upon an identifiable individual,” and it must do so “without provision of the protections of a judicial trial.” All these requirements are met here.

When I was growing up, Virginia did not permit “liquor by the drink.” Restaurants could not serve cocktails (I’m not sure about the laws on beer and wine, but no decent eatery out in the country, where I grew up, served them). You could buy whiskey and other liquors at ABC (“Alcoholic Beverage Control”) stores, where the clerks wore uniforms and fetched the bottles from the shelves behind the counter.

The local still was located in the woods across a field behind the courthouse . . . .

Afterthought:

Virginia still has ABC stores, but the clerks no longer wear uniforms and customers can browse the shelves. The prices, though, compared to Delware prices which I have observed on my trips to Philadelphia, are somewhat–er–elevated. A monopoly will act like a monopoly whenever given the chance.

Why are persons who call themselves “conservative” obsessed with women’s breasts?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Bruce Lowry thinks it will be unrelenting through the campaign season. A nugget:

I don’t mind rational debate on the subject, in light of the release of some edited videos that showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing, sometimes blithely, the use of fetal tissue with individuals posing as representatives for a fetal research organization. The fact that these people were set up by an anti-abortion group with a clear agenda and bent on Planned Parenthood’s destruction notwithstanding, the video clips are difficult to watch.

Yet equally difficult to watch are the lengths to which Republican presidential hopefuls will go to thrash Planned Parenthood, a group that has, for the most part, done an awful lot of good while administering vital reproductive health care services, particularly to low-income women. In that frame of reference, the level of viciousness, even from Governor Christie, is hard to register.

Of course, he is quite wrong in the first sentence of the excerpt. There can be no rational debate about an irrational lie, other than to point one’s finger and say, “That’s a lie.”

Words fail me. Just read it.

. . . by order of the court.