Freedom demands censorship

I just noticed that one of my friends from high school has joined a Facebook group called "Petition to remove 'Soldiers are not heroes' from facebook." It turns out there is a group called "Soldiers are not heroes," whose description contains statements like this:

This group is intended to point out the absurdity of the many groups on Facebook that portray all soldiers to be heroes and shower the armed forces with unconditional praise.

Putting on a soldiers uniform does not make you a hero.

Supporters of the group generally agree that the wars that our armed forces are participating in at the present time and in recent years are unnecessary and unjust. Therefore we don't feel that we should be pressured into offering "support" to people fighting and killing innocent people for causes that we don't believe in.

I agree, at least as far as that goes (there is also some sentiment that soldiers are always positive villains, which I don't necessarily endorse). Not everyone who is in the military deserves to be called a hero, and there's a straight path between loving soldiery and loving war, a path that too many Americans have rushed down without a glance to either side.

Now, some pro-military people have decided this is "hate speech" and they want Facebook to ban the group. You can probably guess the argument: you shouldn't be allowed to criticize soldiers because they're defending your right to speak freely. Or, as one punctuationally-challenged caps-locker put it:

WHY WOULD SOMEONE SAY SOLDIERS ARE NOT HEROES. RESPECT THEM OR YOU FORGOT THAT IF IT WASN'T FOR SOLDIERS RIGHT NOW WE WOULD BE UNDER NAZI OR JAPANESE OR COMUNIST RULE?

I call bullshit. No soldier since the American Revolution has fought to keep this country from being occupied by a foreign power (technically, not even then). No soldier has fought against anyone who had the power to curtail my civil liberties. Not now, not ever in the last 200 years.

Even Nazi Germany, certainly the worst enemy we've ever fought, was no threat to occupy the US and establish a dictatorship here. It would have hurt us to have Europe so enslaved, but the Germans could not have imposed their system on us. Only Americans have or had the power to do it.

Keeping a large nuclear arsenal and a powerful army in Europe did much to deter Communist expansion, but Communism wasn't defeated by warfare. Korea was a draw and we lost in Vietnam. If remaining free depended on our soldiers winning wars - well, let's thank God it didn't.

Saddam Hussein posed no threat to American liberties. Neither does Osama bin Laden. The latter had the ability to very occasionally kill some of us, but his most spectacular success killed fewer Americans than our own actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have. If defending freedom is the goal, we needn't do anything; if saving lives is the goal, we'd have done better just hunkering down.

Do we need soldiers? Sure, we need a few. But we don't need as many as we have, all over the world, killing tens of thousands in foreign countries that pose only modest threats to ourselves. We would be just as free today, without a huge omnipresent military, as Switzerland. If we keep censoring unpopular opinion, we'll be as free as Iran.


________
PS. Favorite quote from the rant discussion board:

A true soldier is one that seeks to serve their country, not to destroy others.

Protesting is terrorism

If you go to work for the Department of Defense, you will be taught that protests are an act of terrorism:

The written exam, given as part of Department of Defense employees’ routine training, includes a multiple-choice question that asks:

“Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism?”

— Attacking the Pentagon
— IEDs
— Hate crimes against racial groups
— Protests

The correct answer, according to the exam, is "Protests."

Isn't that comforting, coming from the people who claim to be defending "freedom?" Even more interesting is the fact that I was tipped off to the story by the good loons at Worldview Weekend. Of course, they're still in a dudgeon over that report about potential right-wing extremists, but I find it notable that they link to this story without extraneous comment. The article mentions mostly anti-war protesters and quotes the ACLU, but WvW doesn't bother to mention that they usually see these folks as enemies. I know this isn't any sort of turning point in left-right relations, but it's still a nice little moment.

The day after the election, my Facebook status update said something to the effect that I was glad conservatives would start worrying about government overreach again, now that they were out of power. I'm feeling vindicated.

No long names, please

Via foreignpolicy.com and NYT, we learn that libertarian dystopia Germany has a law against people combining already-hyphenated surnames:

In a split decision on Tuesday, the German Constitutional Court upheld a ban on married people combining already-hyphenated names, forbidding last names of three parts or more.

Which is just hilarious, coming from a people who refer to speeding as Geschwindigkeitsüberschreitung.

We just won't look

FP Passport points to this Washington Post article:

Newspapers aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers tampered with the inaugural photograph of the Cabinet, erasing ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver.

Ultra-Orthodox newspapers consider it immodest to print images of women.

They actually photoshopped* the picture to remove the two women and replace them with two other male officials. Keep in mind that the women were as provocatively dressed as cabinet members usually are - about as shocking as the men in business suits surrounding them. "Modesty," right.


______________________
* Btw, I keep waiting to hear Adobe put on a campaign to stop using Photoshop as a verb, for fear of losing their trademark, much as Xerox often does.

Big Brother is still Big Brother

Obama Administration: Constitution Does Not Protect Cell-Site Records

The Obama administration says the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply to cell-site information mobile phone carriers retain on their customers.

* snip *

At issue is whether the government can require federal judges to order mobile phone companies to release historical cell-tower information of a phone number without probable cause — the standard required for a search warrant.

Ralph Maughn plausibly compares this to having a radio collar on almost every American, although the comparison isn't entirely apt: your cell phone records can plot your general location at a given time, but not with the same precision as a triangulated radio signal can. Still, is this really how we want to stand in relation to our government? They don't even have to prove probably cause to spy on us?

Free association

The Vermont Senate has passed a bill to legalize gay marriage, which has prompted some doodleheads called the Vermont Marriage Advisory Council to

[express] deep concerns about the risk of losing " the natural, inherent bonding right of a child to his/her own biological mother and father." It has said that "same-sex marriage directly increases the number of children who will be motherless or fatherless."

Which, for some reason, puts me in mind of this TV commercial:

Will the truth come out?

Bush Spy Revelations Anticipated When Obama Is Sworn In

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh already has a slew of sources waiting to spill the Bush administration's darkest secrets, he said in an interview last month. "You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on January 20. [They say,] 'You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.'"

So far, virtually everything we know about the NSA's warrantless surveillance has come from whistle-blowers.

One encouraging sign for civil liberties groups is that John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, is a key figure in Obama's transition team, which will staff and set priorities for the new administration. The center was a tough and influential critic of the Bush administration's warrantless spying.

It got little play during the campaign, but it's been a huge issue for me. Let's hope Obama comes through and restores some desperately needed glasnost to America. I expect he'll at least refrain from acting against whistleblowers, but I'll feel better if he takes positive steps toward dismantling those programs that are secret and illegal.

The Police State

The Police State - rather popular with the police.

What I'm paranoid about

[I was originally going to title this post, "Why I'm paranoid," but that may not be the same question.]

Via Millard Fillmore's Bathtub:
Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

... snip ...

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

Now put this side by side with this event from Inside Iraq:

Yesterday, a force from the Iraqi army came to my neighborhoods to evacuate the governmental flats where about 600 families live in. One of my neighbors tried to inquire about the evacuation order. He asked the army force "why does the army implement the evacuation orders? This is not the duty of the army". The question developed into an argument and the soldiers lost their mind because they didn't use to listen but they used to beat, fight and kill. They beat my neighbor violently to give a lesson to others to obey and execute only "Execute and then discusses"

I know, I know, I shouldn't be comparing the American army to the Iraqi. But I keep seeing (and I'll continue posting) too many similar events from American police who react with only moderately more restraint if they're asked to explain their actions and commands. "Execute and then discusses." When authorities don't believe they should be bothered with questions, violence isn't far behind.*

And now we're going to have Army brigades especially trained to operate in US cities the way they operated in Baghdad. If I'm supposed to sleep better at night, it isn't working.


* And, yes, there are extreme cases when this has to be done. Army authority is built on the needs of the battlefield, where committees might not live long enough to pass a resolution. But dealing with reporters or escorting a student out of a library just aren't that kind of emergency.