Consequences of Public Speech

Sorry for the long silence, everyone; I've been dealing with the end of college life and the series of associated ceremonies. Anyway!

I was thinking just now about airport security. Probably because my vacation schedule for this first month of summer will require me to fly no less than four times in the next three weeks. I don't regret that; this is probably the last time I'll get to relax before I seriously have to dive into searching for work. (Although I might get to work on that job search during vacation periods. We'll see.) I can't imagine I'll enjoy having to deal with airport security along the way, although perhaps the fourth time will be better away from American airport security.

That somewhat sideways expression of disapproval, however, is all I'll say on the matter at this point in time. Particularly, I have no desire to potentially draw additional attention on myself prior to traveling, considering I still have no idea how the TSA decides to send this person through the scanner instead of this other person. Which isn't to say I'll never write that post; we'll see how the next few trips through the airport go before making that judgment.

The point I'm trying to make with my little digression into airport security is that I have a distinct appreciation for how the things I write here could affect the rest of my life. No, I don't post under my real name, but I still believe it would be a trivial matter for someone truly determined to connect this blog to my real persona. I've taken no real steps to preserve my anonymity, which means that anything particularly unwise that I write could have real consequences for me.

This is also why I'm continually surprised at what people will sign their real names to online. Observe:

Liberals no longer accept the will of the people and move on to the next election. This bodes very badly for the future of democracy in America.

The simple truth is Democrats no longer believe in the validity of elections. Elections for them are simply a tool to gain power. They are not the voice by which the people speak.

To say this is dangerous is a major understatement.

It is this type of attitude that breeds tyrannies. We must not only defeat but also totally destroy this attitude if our Republic is to survive.

Oh hey Judson Phillips, I see we're dealing with more Tea Party nonsense. Again.

First off, if you honestly believe that I no longer accept the will of the people, go back and read some of the political things I've written here. If you can get through those posts without changing your mind, I suggest you not read the rest of this, because this is going to be predicated on the manifestly obvious fact that I and most other liberals do still believe in the general validity of elections. In short, that is not a point up for debate, and I will not entertain debate on that here.

I will concede one thing to Mr. Phillips. I can agree with him that if I believed someone's ideas would be permanently or irreversibly damaging to the United States, I would not entertain the thought of compromise with that ideology. To the extent that he honestly believes that left-wing ideology would be irreversibly harmful to the United States, I can understand why he might say something like this.

Needless to say, I believe he is wrong. Quite severely wrong. Wrong in a way that drives me to say that this kind of shit is exactly why I hate and fear the Tea Party as much as I do. I can say with a fair degree of confidence that I will never be anything other than a liberal, a left-wing ideologue, a progressive... use whatever label for it you desire, though I prefer the last. (And all that that implies, including feminism!)

To have him irreversibly connect that ideology to an "attitude that breeds tyrannies" and call for its destruction... well... "to say this is dangerous is a major understatement," if he doesn't mind me borrowing his phrase.

The reason? To me, it strikes me as a call for open violence. When I read that, I see someone saying that liberals are not merely to be argued with, disagreed with... they are to be destroyed. And this is something that he says under his real name, on an open public forum, with indeed people even celebrating and agreeing with him. (Don't read the comments on the Tea Party Nation page. Seriously. It's not worth it.)

I'm left honestly wondering. Do the things people say carry any consequence anymore?

(H/T to Right Wing Watch.)

A Conversation on Capitalism (with the Tea Party)

I keep track of the movements of my school's Tea Party club, for two reasons. One, because it's good to know what the other side is actually arguing, so as to avoid making strawman arguments, and two because my appetite for political debate has been growing recently. As a result, I ended up finding this article on the Tea Party Tribute website, about the morality of free market capitalism. If you'd rather not read the whole article, I think this about sums it up:

Free market capitalism is morally good because of its respect for freedom, hard work, perseverance, and creativity, in addition to preserving the property rights that are so vital to individual freedom. As a philosophy that denies limits, a free market optimistically grows the individual power of success and liberty to the benefit of the entire world.

I tried to post a comment on the article, but the Tea Party Tribune admins have their site set up so that comments have to be approved before they appear publicly, and given the fact that my comment has since vanished from their site, I'm assuming that that approval was denied.

I bear them no grudge for that. Certainly, I cannot claim the right to control this space without also acknowledging their right to control theirs. Of course, as I do control this space, I can do things like post the comment I created here on my blog, so that people can judge for themselves whether or not it was worthy of deletion and possibly start a conversation on the merits and disadvantages of free market capitalism here, instead.

So, without further ado! Keeping in mind that the following text is a direct response to this article, so it might not make a whole lot of sense out of context. The last paragraph of my response (the one that starts with "in a more general sense") relies much less on that context, so you might want to skip to it if you haven't read the Tea Party Tribune article.

Your examples are an interesting commentary on capitalism's advantages versus disadvantages. Particularly, I find it highly interesting that you talk about transportation, especially given that railroads are a particular pet peeve of mine, and because I think transportation is a field in which capitalism is particularly ineffective and indeed potentially harmful. What happened in 1873 is one thing, and it makes the perfectly valid point that government-run systems are more vulnerable to waste (although, that doesn't mean they're always more wasteful).

If we look at the situation today, though, I would argue that capitalism is not going to be promoting any collective good as far as efficient and cheaper public transportation is concerned. What the U.S. railroad system needs today is damn near a complete overhaul - new tracks laid, among other things, to support the full effectiveness of a true high-speed system. Despite the public good that such a rail system could provide, I seriously doubt any private company would be able to provide one, given the massive amounts of start-up funding required and the lack of any immediate return. In this case, public funding is likely going to be necessary to at least kick-start that, just as public funding is necessary to maintain the highway system and the air traffic control grid.

In a more general sense, capitalism does not directly promote the benefit of the entire world. Capitalism rewards behavior that creates profit. When behavior that creates profit ends up benefiting the entire world, capitalism produces a positive result. When behavior that creates profit ends up harming the general good, though, or when behavior that promotes the general good doesn’t create profit (as I addressed above with transportation), capitalism ends up harming society as a whole. For that reason, I believe that capitalism is best when tempered by reasonable regulation and when accompanied by public programs that provide valuable public services that a purely capitalistic system would never support.