Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Over at Reason, the Libertarian Party of California is quoted as saying:
There’s no reason why consenting adults should not be allowed to marry so long as their arrangement doesn’t interfere with any other individual’s ability to live their life in any way they want to.
Aye, there’s the rub. With the contemporary culture of the invasive nanny state, we do not let people suffer the consequences of their own mistakes.
Since Dan took a (well deserved) pot shot at my town of Chicago recently I couldn’t help but notice this article in today’s Chicago Tribune titled “Public casts colder eye at homeless” subtitled “In Madison, rising suspicions in wake of unsolved slayings fuel backlash”.
The article states that there are 224,000 people in Madison and 3,400 homeless. By some simple math that means that 1.5% of Madison’s total population is homeless, if these statistics are correct. Per the article:
“A backlash against street people is under way in this renowned liberal college town after an uncharacteristically violent turn of events. Two unsolved murders in the span of a little more than two months have shaken Madison’s secure sense of small-city living and, even though no suspect has been named, the eye of suspicion has been fixed on panhandlers who work the streets.”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has an online exhibition about the 1936 Nazi Olympics:
In August 1936, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship scored a huge propaganda success as host of the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The Games were a brief, two-week interlude in Germany’s escalating campaign against its Jewish population and the country’s march toward war. This site explores the issues surrounding the 1936 Olympic Games—the Nazis’ use of propaganda, the intense boycott debate, the history of the torch run, the historic performance of Jesse Owens, and more.
Change a few names and nouns and the above description fits the 2008 Olympics rather closely, no? Congratulations to the USHMM on its fine sense of timing. Let’s hope that the Chinese government benefits less from the 2008 games than Hitler did from the ones in 1936.
Long time readers know that I have devoted a large chunk of my life (and income) to aiding innocent people gain the skills they need to fight their way through a violent criminal attack. I count it as my life’s work.
Obviously, I have a great deal of concern for the welfare of anyone who is a potential victim. Children in particular. As civilized people, we have a duty to protect the most vulnerable in our society.
But this admirable desire to protect children can lead to some extreme abuses of government power.
Case in point is this news article, which discusses a proposed law in Maine. If it passes, then “visual sexual aggression” against children will become a felony.
“Visual sexual aggression”? What does that mean? It means you can go to jail if you are observed to look at children in a public place.
Dr. Helen, who first blogged about this article, asks some very pointed questions. What is the difference between simply watching children in a public place, perhaps at a mall or city park, and actual visual sexual aggression? Who determines that, exactly?
Dr. Helen also points out that women will probably never run afoul of this law, since it is a treasured myth of our culture that women are never guilty of sexual abuse. But what about men like me, a big ol’ hairy-scary guy who is physically confident, and who always tries my best to be aware of everyone in sight? Do I have to start staring at the ground whenever I’m out in the open air, eyes demurely downcast like a woman in a country where Sharia holds sway? Do I have to wear a burkha next?
How in the world do you defend yourself against the accusation that you were gazing at a child with “visual sexual aggression”? “Sure, officer, I was watching the kids. But they were getting pretty close to the edge of the frozen pond, and I didn’t see their parents around. What was I supposed to do, just walk away and trust that Darwinian forces would strengthen the species?”
Many of the rights taken for granted by the general population are forever denied to those convicted of a felony. You can no longer vote in a national election, for example, and most state and local elections are also closed to the convicted.
What is worse in my eyes is that it becomes a crime to possess a firearm, the very tool needed to protect yourself and your loved ones. I don’t object to this restriction where violent criminal offenders are concerned, but to forever be made helpless because one was seen to be gazing at children in public? Might as well start locking men up for walking down the street, simply because they are men who have the gall to wander around in public spaces, and stop all pretense of trying to actually protect anyone from crime.
I don’t think anyone here will be surprised to find out that the state Representative who proposed the law, Dawn Hill, is a Democrat.
(Hat tip to Glenn.)
Last June, I linked an article by Mario Vargas Llosa about dictatorship and what it does to the human spirit. In the current National Review (4/7), Jay Nordlinger has an article which touches on the same theme.
Nordlinger’s piece is about Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, maker of the film The Lives of Others. (If you haven’t yet seen it, you should.) Florian himself spent his early childhood in the U.S., with his family returning to Germany (West Berlin) when he was eight. His personal knowledge of Communism was based on family visits to East Germany and to his two-year visit to Russia in the early 1990s.
The leading actor in the film, on the other hand, had a very personal knowledge of Communist totalitarianism. Ulrich Muehe was an East German, and, while still in high school, he had already been identified as a promising actor.
From the NR article:
Muehe had the fate of being an East German, and the Stasi had its eye on him from the moment he left high school: They knew he would be a big star. During his military service (obligatory), they made him serve as a sniper at the Berlin Wall. He was under orders to shoot whoever tried to cross from east to west. If he failed, he would never be allowed to work as an actor. He would have to be a manual laborer to the end of his days.
So there was Muehe, 18 years old, sitting in the towers, with this incredible burden on his shoulders. The only thing worse than not being an actor would be shooting someone. Muehe developed stomach ulcers, and one day he collapsed on duty, bleeding from the mouth. Doctors had to take out three-quarters of his stomach. But, fortunately, no one tried to cross. Still, the Stasi never stopped warning him to toe the political line, through all the years of his acting. He kept his counsel–until just before the Wall came down, when he gave a big, pro-freedom speech in East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz.
(cross-posted at Photon Courier)