Analysts are idiots. I keep reading how it was a "very narrow win" for those touting religious liberties. I read the opinion. Plus the three separate concurrences and the dissent. Let me tell you what is really going on.
The majority opinion was written by Kennedy, who not coincidently was the Justice that Gorsuch clerked for and also is the one that had the swing vote in the case recognizing gay marriage. Bear in mind that the case on appeal about the baker was an appeal of a decision written by Gorsuch while sitting as a circuit court of appeals judge. In that opinion, the freedom of religion rights were most definitely NOT recognized in a narrow manner. The supremes voted 7-2 to uphold the lower court decision.
Had Gorsuch merely joined in Kennedy's opinion then there would have been five justices agreeing with the narrow view of the case. Alito and Thomas wrote their own concurrences that in essence agreed with the reasoning Gorsuch used when in the lower court. So why did Gorsuch not join the majority but instead write a concurrence? Simple, had he joined with Kennedy, then there would have been 5 votes--a majority. That would have created binding precedent. By concurring, he left only 4 justices agreeing to the majority opinion. Therefore it is NOT binding precedent. Gorsuch made sure that the decision could be written his way the next time it comes up--AFTER Trump appoints another justice of course.
The one thing that I would add to this inside baseball take is that Gorsuch may have inside information on whether one of the other justices (Kennedy?) might retire at the end of this session. In which case, Rick's last paragraph snaps into sharp focus.
"But Borepatch," I hear you say, "why would the people need arms against a government of the people, and for the people, and by the people?" Why, indeed?
In this 2012 peer-reviewed study published not long after Cook’s ridiculous 97% claim, only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis. Published in Organization Studies, a majority of the 1,077 scientists who responded to the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
At the time, Robinson's supporters tried to claim that his arrest and (suspended) sentence were violations of his right to free speech. They were not, as the judge made clear. He violated British laws, he ignored common practice concerning interfering with defendants and/or witnesses in a criminal trial, and he arguably jeopardized the defendants' right to a fair trial by his conduct. I have no issue with the sentence given him.
Peter is correct and puts together a strong argument for following long established social norms - which is after all, what the legal code is supposed to encapsulate. You should go RTWT because I am going to pose a number of questions, all pointing to the same meta question: has the UK government lost its claim to legitimacy, and if so, do any of these long held social norms still apply.
Question 1: Is justice being served in the UK?
Technically, it is a "Court of Law", but when we speak in terms of governmental legitimacy the view is broader. It must be a Court of Justice if society is to keep to the old bargain negotiated 1000 years ago. Back in the Dark Ages, "justice" was the responsibility of the people - specifically their extended family. Clan feuds were the norm - and this has echoed faintly down to our own times with stories of the Hatfields and McCoys. Government was weak then and so justice was rough. The deal that was negotiated between the states and their subjects over the next 600 years was that the State would administer justice, but do it as fairly as it could, making blood feud unnecessary.
Is justice being meted out in Her Magesty's Scepter'd Isle? For those who haven't been paying much attention, there have been dozens of arrests (perhaps hundreds) of adult men who have gang raped under age girls. This has occurred in many locales throughout the land. It has been doing on not for years, but for decades. The number of victims is not reported, but is certainly in the tens of thousands. In each case, the State knew what was happening.
As far as I can tell, none of the State officials - local, county, or national - have lost their jobs over this.
Remember, the deal was that the State would enforce justice fairly so that blood feud would no longer be needed.
Question 2: Who is speaking the truth here?
Sharp-eyed readers will note that I referred to Robinson as an "activist" while Peter refers to him as "Alt-Right". I used this journalistic technique intentionally, partly because it highlights what the left-wing media does all the time when referring to Left Wing terrorists like Earth First! and the like. But it also cuts to the heart of this question. If we don't look at who the messenger is and whether we like him, and instead look at who is speaking the truth, things start to look grim for the UK establishment. The Government certainly did not speak the truth, and in fact covered up these crimes for decades. The media did at least publish the stories when they came out, but there is a strange soft peddling of the story.
The alleged perpetrators are described as "asian males", as if some of them were from China or Korea. This leads to more questions, as we try to peel the onion to get to, you know, the truth.
Are the "asian males" actually Pakistani immigrants? Are they all muslim? Is their muslim identity a key factor in why they chose English girls as victims? To simply ask these questions is to answer them.
The Government officials damn themselves by their silence here. It's actually worse - one single person in a position of power (a Shadow Cabinet Secretary - the Cabinet of the out of power party) actually did speak the truth here, and was promptly sacked.
It seems very unhealthy that the only people who appear to be speaking the truth here are what we're told is an "Alt-Right" fringe.
Question 3: Is the root cause of all these crimes the fact that Europe is really bad at assimilating different cultures?
This is the Question That Must Not Be Asked, whether in Leeds Crown Court, in Cologne or Berlin, or in Paris. If Europe does a particularly poor job at assimilating immigrants from other cultures into a collective Body Politick, then the Europe-wide governmental policy of massive immigration from the 3rd World assumes a very different perspective.
You might get, you know, mass instances of gang rape.
This is a particularly ugly question, and it the question that all European governments (and their lap dog media) are trying desperately to suppress.
Because if the State will not protect the public, then the whole deal is off. Blood feud may be the only option.
Question 4: Is this worse than the Child Abuse done in the Catholic Church?
Peter has written eloquently about the crimes that were committed by many, many priests, and covered up by their bishops. I myself lived outside Boston when the scandal broke, and saw Cardinal Law recalled to Rome (and promoted) by the Pope himself - a more stark depiction of institutional rot is hard to imagine.
But now consider that membership in the Catholic Church is voluntary. If you don't like their church, you are free to go to a different one. But if you don't like your local UK Council (local government), you have to move away from your family and friends.
I guess you could try to vote them out, but what are your chances making this an election issue when there's a chance that some Judge will throw you in jail for talking about it?
Question 5: Is Justice being served in the UK?
Yes, I already posed this question, but want to bring it back into focus after the discussion above. Certainly some people think that the answer is no:
Even if everything done by the police or the court was perfectly legitimate and reasonable, the problem is that many people in England believe that Tommy Robinson is being unjustly persecuted by his government. The fact that he was arrested so shortly after his successful Day for Freedom event, where he gathered thousands of people in support of free speech, strikes many as a little bit more than a coincidence.
Discussion
This is what a collapse of legitimacy looks like. The answers to the questions are more or less irrelevant; the fact that they can be posed without being dismissed out of hand is the point. Societies are remarkably resilient: Adam Smith famously said that there's a lot of ruin in a country, and Roman political and social institutions outlived the fall of the Western Empire by a century or more. But that was because everyone more or less agreed that those institutions still deserved support even though the Emperor had been replaced by the Rex of the Goths.
That's not we're looking at here.
Things get ugly when the government, as the Chinese say, loses the Mandate of Heaven. We are seeing political signs pointing to this all over the place: the election of Donald Trump, BREXIT, the waxing of nationalist political parties across Western Europe, the alliance in Italy of left-wing and right-wing nationalist parties. Everywhere you look the populations are rejecting the existing governments. Each of the governments are desperately trying to suppress this rejection. And so the air is going out of the legitimacy balloon.
But remember, a millennium of expectations do not go softly into that good night. The deal was that blood feud would be replaced by the State using its monopoly of force to ensure justice. What happens when a big enough portion of the population thinks that the deal has been broken? How big does that group need to be?
I certainly don't have answers to any of these questions, but the answers are not important. What's important is that the questions can be asked and not be rejected out of hand.
UPDATE 1 June 2018 12:42: Via Brock Townsend, I see that I'm not the only one who sees things this way.
OldNFO has been blogging for eleven (!!!) years. Err, I guess that should be eleventy!!! Drop by and leave him some commenty goodness.
David, who used to blog at Musings Over a Pint now has new digs at Musings Over a Barrel. Lots of stuff there about shooting. And beer. Not sure what more you'd need than that as a recommendation ...
NITZAKHON emails to say that he is blogging over at Red Pill Jew. Lots there about the Alt-Right which I've only scratched the surface about. My take is that this is the biggest philosophical shift that we've seen in the Post World War II period. Love it or hate it, this will be around for a while.
Simon emails to point out that he has a place up over at SimonPeter. He looks to be another libertarianish techie who posts interesting music now and then. I guess if you didn't like that sort of thing, you probably wouldn't be here so give him a try.
And Jacob emails to point out a broken link to Trigger Finger in the blogroll here. Fixed, and many thanks. Jacob is one of the folks at Widener's Reloading and Shooting Supplies, and it's good to see folks in the business kicking around in our corner of the 'net. I don't have any relationship with them, but if you're looking for reloading and shooting supplies, you might want to go check them out.
If you weren't mad at Valerie Jarrett for murdering Libyans with money stolen from your paycheck, but are mad someone called her a name, you're either an elitist, a slave, an idiot, or all three.
I am the barbarian here, because none of them understand me.
- Ovid, Tristia
Ovid was one of Rome's greatest poets, actually one of the Big Three (along with Virgil and Horace). His reputation was enormous, so much so that he rose from relative obscurity to rubbing elbows with the family of the great Augustus himself.
It seems that Ovid was also a bit of a punk. He wrote a notorious (and wildly popular) sex manual, the Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love"). This was published around 8 BC, right in the middle of Augustus' public morality reforms, and he would have known that this was playing with fire. Likely he relied on his friendships with Augustus' family, especially his grand daughter Julia for protection from the Imperator's wrath. (Did I mention that he was a bit of a punk?)
But something happened (we don't know exactly what), and Augustus exiled his own grand daughter, along with a number of others. Ovid was one, sent in exile to Scythia on the Black Sea which was about as far as you could be sent from Rome and still be in the Empire. Augustus didn't allow him to return, and Ovid lived out the remainder of his years there, miserable. Nobody there even really spoke Latin, turning this great Man Of Letters mute. He wrote many letters to the Emperor, begging to return. All in vain. He had been purged, despite his popularity. It is likely that he was purged because of his popularity.
ABC just canceled their most popular show, Roseanne. They did this seemingly without taking any time to deliberate on the decision. The show is more popular than other extremely lucrative shows like Big Bang Theory which has astronomically high advertising rates - presumably Roseanne is similarly lucrative. ABC just burned that revenue stream to the waterline, without even thinking twice.
That seems a bit of a mystery, like Ovid's exile. But the similarities are striking: both Ovid and Roseanne were a bit controversial, and poked the power elite in the eye. Both were wildly popular, if considered somewhat vulgar.* Both had their careers terminated by the power elite. The power elite took action because each was an influential voice that ran contrary to the goals of the power elite.
Roseanne was so, so not helpful to the cause of Hollywood and the cultural elite. On the contrary, the fact that a voice was allowed to speak uncomfortable anti-PC truths made it fresh, and wildly popular. Lots of people tuned in each week to listen to anti-PC ideas. Lots and lots of people.
And so she had to go. It really doesn't matter what she said, which seems to be pretty mild when compared to the sort of things that get said by celebrities these days. Certainly far worse has been said about George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump. In a larger social sense, the chatter about "White Privilege" or "All Men Are Rapists" show how widely acceptable racist and sexist remarks are on the left. But nobody gets fired over those, which says that there's something deeper going on.
The ABC executives no doubt were horrified as they watched her popularity grow, thinking about all those viewers tuning into subversive ideas. Her tweet, while a useful excuse, wasn't the issue. If she hadn't said that, they would have found something else.
My take is that it doesn't matter if her show doesn't return to the air, at least as far as the culture wars are concerned. The toothpaste is out of the tube, and the people who like the show won't buy ABC's excuse. On the contrary, they will remember the many insults directed against them by the cultural elites and this will just solidify their hatred of those elites. This will be what they talk about with family and friends. Millions of people will look at this and remember why they should vote for Donald Trump.
Augustus triumphed, and oversaw the establishment of a great empire. Along the way, he sent Ovid to where his voice would not be understood. In contrast, ABC is breaking itself, losing money while hardening the opposition to their ridiculous dogma. Despite their best efforts, Roseanne's voice is heard, at least in the manner that causes maximum political damage to the elites. The Re-elect Trump 2020 campaign watches, and smiles.
* Ovid wrote elegant and influential poetry, but the Ars Amatoria (while elegant) was still a sex manual.
A week ago I noticed that I wasn't getting email notifications when people left comments. It seems that other people are reporting this, too.
But the plot deepens. The Blogger dashboard displays all your posts, all the comments people have left, etc. Except it no longer seems to do that. It's only displaying the comments left since January 1 - about 1000 comments here. There have been over 40,000 comments left in the 10 years this blog has been open for business, but Blogger's dashboard doesn't seem to know about the older ones.
But if you go into the blog archives on the right hand side, the comments are there if you look at old posts.
But wait - Blogger isn't done. The dashboard only shows posts back to November, although the posts all seem to be there if you browse the archives.
I have a couple post ideas (and even range reports!) that have been kicking around in the hind brain for a bit but I just can't get motivated to write them down. And I even had a long weekend.
It's looking at history, and what has withstood time and conflict.
It's not meeting friends for a meal and fun.
It's not ice cream and a barbecue.
It's not sitting in your lounge chair.
It's raising your flag, remembering what is important as you look hard at everything.
It's saying "thank you" to those who have served.
It's remembering brave sacrifices.
It's putting your pride in your country out for all to see, not on this weekend, but every day of the year.
It's remembering duty and courage and the willingness to defend.
It's honoring the memory of all of those brave men and women who gave their lives in the service of this country so you could live, here today, in the safe place they made for us.
Very successful attack this morning… All went like clockwork… The battle is going very well for us and already the Germans are surrendering freely. The enemy is so short of men that he is collecting them from all parts of the line. Our troops are in wonderful spirits and full of confidence.
- Field Marshall Sir Douglass Haig, report on the first day of the battle of the Somme
It may be that the greatest British composer of the 20th Century died at the Somme. This Memorial Day weekend is likely littered with references to the Wilfred Owens (Dulce et decorem est) or John McCrae (In Flanders Fields). But arguably the greatest British musical tribute to that great bloodletting came from a composer who only survived five days on the Somme. Twenty thousand died the first day, going "over the top". He lived four days after that "very successful" first day that say 20,000 British dead.
Butterworth was upper class, educated at Trinity College, Oxford. Your don't get much more "upper class British" than that unless you are born purple. As a member of that class, he stepped up to his duty, and soon found himself as a private in His Majesty's army. Soon he was promoted to Subaltern (no doubt due to class distinctions) and then to Lieutenant.
On 4 August 1916 his unit was ordered to take a German communication trench, which they did. But early the next day, a German sniper shot true, and ended a too brief composition career. I guess that you could say that too many careers ended too soon on the Western Front. But Butterworth's was remembered by his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, and that made all the difference for his reputation. Like Williams, Butterworth was influenced by English country folk music. You'll hear it here.
Williams survived the charnel house of the War To End Wars, and left a legacy. Butterworth was picked off by a sniper on the Western Front, and his body hastily buried in the trench his men won with so much blood and toil. You wonder what might have been different had that War To End War not taken place.
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
I usually get a little annoyed at the common feeling that Memorial Day is the start of the Summer barbecue season. It's no such thing. It's a holy day, made so by the blood of veterans. It is a day of reverence, when we should think on their sacrifice and what our society would be like without that sacrifice.
That perhaps makes me a grumpy old fart, I guess. Don't care. They earned this day of remembrance, didn't they?
The gamer punks that caused a man's death by phoning in a fake 911 hostage situation call are facing federal charges:
Federal prosecutors have unsealed an indictment against three men involved in the December death of a Kansas man, Andrew Finch. Finch was shot by police officers after one of the defendants, Tyler Barriss, made a call to 911 dispatchers about a completely made-up hostage situation at Finch's address.
County prosecutors in Kansas have already charged Barriss with manslaughter. Now he faces a slew of additional charges at the federal level, including cyberstalking, making threats across state lines, wire fraud, and conspiracy. And while the county charges targeted Barriss alone, the feds are also charging two others involved in the incident.
According to the indictment, Shane Gaskill, 19, and Casey Viner, 18, were playing Call of Duty: World War II on December 28, when they got into a dispute over events in the game. Viner became so upset that he asked Barriss—who had a reputation for making SWAT calls—to "swat" Gaskill.
Gaskill wasn't impressed with Viner's threat. Gaskill allegedly told Barriss that he lived at 1033 McCormick in Wichita, daring Barriss to swat him. "Please try some shit. I'll be waiting," Gaskill wrote in an electronic message.
They all also face obstruction charges for deleting messages. The officer who killed Finch will not face charges.
The "swatting" nonsense needs to stop, and the telecom industry is (slowly) working on technical solutions that seem like they will prevent it. But in the meantime, police departments need to recognize that some of these 911 calls are punks in their Mom's basement and dial back the SWAT hoopla.
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