Reporting Live: Trusted Source Alex

One of the pleasures (frustrations) of being a parent is talking with your child. The experience is generally fun, but it’s like pulling teeth to get my daughter to tell me what happened at school. She’s seven. She’s too young for this sort of thing.

So I tried another tactic the other day. I asked her to tell me one story about school, and promised I wouldn’t pester her for another one. She agreed, and then said, very matter-of-factly, “We had recess. I went to the monkey bars. I can now skip a bar.”

She’s been pretty excited about the monkey bars for the past couple of days.

She then added, “But I can’t go backwards anymore.”

“Oh no!” I said, genuinely, because she’d been pretty excited about figuring out how to go backwards on the monkeybars. “What happened?”

“I think it’s because of the cold.”

That, in case you’re wondering, is why it is fun to talk to your child. Her comment struck me as being out of left field, but I looked over at her, and she seemed pretty certain that the cold was affecting her monkey bar skillz. Who am I to disagree with her conclusion? We drove on.

At Target
Then she had the day off from school for Veteran’s Day, so I dragged her and Trusted Source Jack on a trip to Target. We were walking by the Christmas section, and she said, “Oh, hey, Dad! A white plastic Christmas tree. We should get one.”

At which point I went on my rant about fake trees (they’re awful) and white trees (they’re even worse) and explained that at no point in her life would I ever agree to even considering a white plastic tree decorating our home for Christmas. My rant took a couple of minutes.

At the end of which, she said, “Yeah Dad, I know. I was just trying to make you angry.”

Proof positive she’s a daughter of mine.

Polygamists: You Violated Our Rights

Raided by officials after a call from a girl confirmed what everybody already knew - polygamist Mormon are all types of dangerous crazy, particularly when children are involved - men at the compound have struck back, claiming their rights were violated. If this is true, shame on the state of Texas for botching what should have been an easy set of prosecutions, and sadly, these men should go free.

However, I’m guessing that nobody’s going to walk here, because I really can’t see where any specific rights were violated. The claims being made by the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (that, amongst other things, police couldn’t have had warrants for every single home within the compound) are thin gruel and not likely to stand up in a court of law that will probably rule that the compound represents a single property and as such, everything within it was authorized to be searched. But I’m not going to law school, so maybe I’m wrong.

Still, it’s funny to see that these polygamists are claiming that their rights have been violated, as if they enjoyed a right to polygamy, underage sex, etc. It’s a funny thing when that Constitutional Freedom of Religion comes into conflict with other laws, and of course, it’s shameful when idiots hide behind that Freedom, claiming that whatever they’ve done was religious in nature and thus protected.

I’ve followed other, similar cases, although none with consequences this dire. One case, in the Northwest, involved a man who wanted to have his 12-year-old circumcised (the father had converted to Judaism), and his mother opposing it. The father claimed dominion on his son’s penis because he was religious. He was actually taken seriously.

It’s strange the lengths we’ll go to protect the religious in their expressions of faith. When I was in college in Massachusetts, the local legal establishment wore kids gloves, and did literally anything they could, to avoid offending the Catholic Church while pursuing the dangerous child molesters who happened to also be priests. Because really, the real victims were the priests.

This claim of violated rights is the first of this nonsense from the FLDS. It’s the only out that they’ve got. By claiming that they’re free to do whatever they want to children because God instructed them to do so, they’re hoping that America will take the same approach as always: generally hands off. “Well, it’s awful, but they’re religious…”

If only everybody enjoyed this sort of legal protection: a drug user saying he was told by God to get high, a recidivist drunk driver claiming God told him to get behind the wheel, a murdered claiming that he was instructed by God to kill. These sorts of things are generally laughed out of the courtroom if they’re allowed in the first place. But the FLDS claim will have credence, because if the problems were really so bad, wouldn’t Texas have intervened long before this situation came to light?

Sadly, the answer is no, because again, America takes a very hands off approach when it comes to the religious. That’s how these hundreds of girls ended up being left at the hands of the monsters in charge of the FLDS.

I’m not suggesting that people don’t enjoy a freedom of their faith, in case anybody was wondering, but rather, that the freedom ends where another person’s begins. Forcing 13-year-old girls, by virtue of the fact that they’ve gotten their periods, to get married and start having children isn’t an expression of free religion, but something more akin to slavery. These girls didn’t willingly choose this life, and those people claiming that the FLDS acted within their boundaries would be wise to remember that.

Kids Don’t Make People Happy

I am not a fan of this article, both because it was written by somebody who is childless and because it was written by somebody who is libertarian and thus conflates money to happiness. Also, I am a father, and I don’t like being told that I’m less happy than the guy without children. But to my objections:

1. The author, Ron Bailey, admits at the end of the piece that he has no children. In fact, he writes:

Disclosure: My wife and I try not to flaunt our voluntarily childless lifestyle too much.

Of course you don’t Ron. That’s why you just wrote about it in the most widely distributed Libertarian magazine in the country. That’s like me writing, “I try not to flaunt my tattoos too much,” right underneath a picture of my tattoos.

2. I don’t know much about myself, but I’d like to believe that I’m smart enough to understand that my decision to do something doesn’t then make that decision right for everybody else. For instance, I don’t drink. I suppose I could “not flaunt” my drinking in such a way as to indicate to everybody who drinks that I think that they have a problem, except that I don’t believe that at all. I just can’t drink anymore. People who can drink should drink. It’s fun.

3. And then there’s this:

And they sure do have more money to squander as they try to pursue what happiness they can and strive to somehow fill up their allegedly empty lives.

Got it? Having more money to spend on yourself equals happiness. Also, he and his wife’s lives are not empty because they’re childless. And you know what? I agree. If Ronald Bailey and his wife are happy not having children, then by all means they shouldn’t have any children. But that doesn’t then mean that couples who do have children should believe themselves to be miserable.

To put that another way, my happiest moments, in my life, involve my daughter. Just the other night, her mother was talking about enjoying a warm bath in peace…and then my daughter said, “Dun dun dun dun! Until I come in and ruin it!” Another time, my daughter asked why she couldn’t have cereal in the living room, and before I could answer, she said, “I know, I know! Because life is unfair.”

I don’t expect that these stories to mean a damned thing to Ronald Bailey. I’m sure, had he witnessed either, he would have rolled his eyes and extolled the virtues of his own life over mine. Me? I’d assume he was doing what he wanted to do - and I would have expected him to do the same thing for me.

In other words, there is no right answer. And people who propose to mathematically solve “life” for right answers are foolish beyond words.

A Personal Failure

My friend Mitch The Killer - check the Glossary of Characters - recently commented on a blog post that this blog has been busy sucking. In a way, I agree. Whereas I once swore regularly, and raged against the dying of the light, and charged foolishly into windmills, now I bore those few people who stop by with tattooing, rationality, and Libertarianism.

Somebody asked me about this obsession with Libertarians. “Why, what’s wrong with you? Why bother with them? They’re a few percent of the population, and they’re never going to win!” These are excellent points.

Once, I went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, one of the gay Meccas on the East Coast, and I remember thinking, “How on Earth can everybody here look so damned similar? These people are gay! They, if anybody, should be tolerant of difference! Where is the difference?!?” And then I walked down to the ocean, which was beautiful, and screamed at the high tide.

So why the newer focus on Libertarians? Because they claim to care about all of the same things that I do - specifically, individual liberty - and yet they propose solutions which will almost certainly reduce the aggregate amount of individual liberty. I cannot possibly square these two realities.

“Move on! Focus on something else! Jesus Christ already, the Libertarians see individual liberty differently than you do, and they’re not going to change that! Come on already.”

But I can’t. Just like I struggle to let go of most things: old breakups, the Mountaineers not stopping Tremaine Mack on the end in the loss to Miami, the lunacy of running John Kerry for president, four-putting the final green in a golf tournament that I won. “How can people be so fucking stupid,” I wonder about everyone, including myself.

Libertarians aren’t so fucking stupid, for whatever that’s worth. It’s just that they don’t seem to give a good god damn about anybody but themselves. That’s fine I guess. No law requires anybody to care about anybody else. But it seems like the right thing to do, and it certainly seems like there are some people who simply can’t take care of themselves. I know that Libertarians have no problem with innocent people being allowed to die - “Hey, nobody has a right to take my money to pay for that old woman’s selfish desire for medical attention!” - but I can’t take the same position myself.

Sometimes, I have this fantasy. There are people in my town who are crazy anti-abortion protestors. They carry around those signs with babies on them in an attempt to shock us into political submission, and they do it on major street corners, because God-for-fucking-bid that I be allowed to drive to work without being confronted with somebody else’s political crusade. I think it would be fun to make a sandwich board that says, “These people oppose contraception.” Nothing for me clarifies better the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement than the morons who believe that contraception is bad. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will lead to fewer abortions than the correct use of contraception. I imagine that my sign board would actually mean something, that people driving by would say, “God, these people are idiots.” I don’t have the time, or the inclination, to actually do such things. So it remains my little dream, a fun little fantasy.

And so it goes that I find myself standing outside of the Libertarian headquarters shaking my fist like an old man telling those damned kids to get off my lawn. It probably doesn’t make for radically interesting reading, but dammit, I’ve got to be me.

Rambling

-Go check out Thursday Cover Page, my nascent web project. We’re updating again. I just rambled on about hip-hop lyrics that blow my mind for pure strangeness. Good times.

-The art show at Wild Zero went well. People actually purchased my Lego recreations of historic scenes. Don’t ask me who these people are, but good on them. Incidentally, my JFK series didn’t sell, so if you’re insane, and you want it for only $50, head down there with your checkbook ready. (I really like that in the above recreation of Ruby shooting Oswald, there are at least two spacemen, one with a very astray helmet, and some pirates. I think we all know that there were spacemen and pirates there that day. Don’t let the government tell you otherwise. Also, I especially like that one of the spacemen is staring directly into the camera. I think serious modelers would be aghast at the oversite, but there is no way that I’m a serious anything, let alone modeler.)

-I turned down an invitation to spend yet more time with Libertarians, this time in regard to professional planning and tenure earning. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, but I’m doing things my way, or I’m not doing them. It’s a bad strategy, but the only one that I’m capable of. Also, the more that I get invitations to these things, although very nice, it seems like entering a very small club in which only the “right” kind of thinkers are welcome. I just want to think; I’m not terribly concerned about being right in anybody else’s eyes.

-Incidentally, my ongoing exploration of the ideas surrounding rationality and rational decision making have led me to the belief that it is impossible for human beings to make irrational decisions. I just don’t see how it is possible. I will grant that a human being’s stated goals can conflict with decisions made, but I don’t see why we should do anything but question those stated goals. Again, if a man tells you he doesn’t like jumping off bridges proceeds to jump off the bridge, aren’t you more inclined to think that he was lying when he told you what he did, as opposed to doing something that he didn’t like?

-Also, had another argument about the basis of natural rights, and the more I discuss them, the more absurd I find the notion to be. In fact, it seems to be an awfully lazy way of winning the argument about what governments should or should not regulate. More soon, as I attempt to further my understanding of these complex problems. I’m really like the six-year-old wading into the deep end - way over my head and having no idea how to swim.

-Finally, I will be attending the Meeting of the Marked at the end of October, and will be sitting for a six-hour tattoo. My ocean legging will be almost finished in this time period, and I’ll be one cranky dude immediately afterward. I’m not entirely sure why I judge this to merit a blog mention, but, it’s my name on the website, right?

Too Much Time On Their Hands

College Republicans at Colorado State have decided to protest the school’s newspaper because it used the the word fuck Immediately after the use of the word Fuck came the word Bush, which might inform us of why exactly these students are protesting.

Politically active college students are a fantastically interesting breed - they’re routinely getting pissed about the least important occurences in the history of mankind, and they’re always doing it for the most absurd of reasons. Had the school newspaper written Fuck Ahmadinejad, for example, those Republicans wouldn’t be stamping their feet like the angry children that they are.

However, the College Republicans aren’t alone in this sort of indignant behavior. College Democrats are similarly stupid, and good lord, College Libertarians? “We’re part of a really small club and if you don’t join us, you’re stupid!” They’ll all show up and protest each other and pretend that these situations are incredibly important when in fact, they’re not. They’re not remotely important.

Oh well. You can find these examples all over the news regularly. I’m not entirely sure why I chose to write about this; I walked by a table manned by College Republicans today at WVU’s Student Union. They were smiley and nice looking and no doubt planning the apocalypse for the social freedoms that the rest of us enjoy…I felt like I needed to post. That’s the real reason.

Somebody’s Seriously Calling Britney Fat?

 Let me get this straight: Britney Spears is fat? Seriously? Is this actually a conversation that we’re having in the pages of our newspapers?

I don’t even like Britney Spears and I think that this is outrageously unfair. Let’s start with the picture used to illustrate the story linked above; you’re telling me that she’s looking overweight in that? What on Earth is going on in this country when that woman is considered overweight?

I’m raising a young daughter dammit; I don’t need this. I don’t need my daughter thinking that Britney Spears, all 110 pounds of her, is overweight. I can barely get her to eat as it is. She looks like Chilly Billy. I don’t need her thinking she needs to be even skinnier than that. I don’t need her thinking that there’s something wrong with her because light doesn’t pass through her skin.

Incidentally, all of the people describing Britney Spears as fat probably aren’t themselves a bronzed Adonis. Somehow, it is acceptable for these people to describe the world as being fat without themselves being responsible enough to put down that donut already.

The world is stupid.

Exorcise The Demons

Let’s suppose I came over to your house, tore off your clothing, and poured olive oil all over you before you were able to call the police. Suppose that when those officers arrived, you told them that I was trying to exorcise your demons. Do you think that the police would let me walk away, without being charged? Of course not.

Take almost exactly the same scenario, but instead, let’s assume that you were my child. I still tore off your clothing, and still poured olive oil all over you before could escape long enough to call the police. Upon arriving, do you think that the police would let me walk away, without being charged? Everybody who said of course not needs to think again.

I’m basing this off the scantest of available information in the above article. (Here’s a bit more.) Still, does it make even the slightest amount of sense that these parents would walk away from this apparent assault scot free, without ever having to go to trial?

The District Attorney claims that there isn’t enough available evidence to prosecute the parents; apparently, the daughter’s testimony just won’t do. Still, there is a troubling story here of children being treated very, very differently than adults would be, given similar circumstances. (Oddly, the “child” in this case was 18, which confuses things even more. She had to be taken into protective custody, which is unexpected given that 18-year-olds can usually just leave. I don’t think the state can force an 18-year-old into anything, although this is worth exploring. Was the child unable to care for herself?)

No matter. I have used my tiny little soapbox to protest the treatment of children before. In that case, I was protesting something that adults don’t think matters, because to the minds of many adults, children don’t matter. This case is obviously different. Here we’re not talking about a dresscode. We’re talking about the health and well-being of an individual and the refusal of the state to step in simply because her health and well-being was threatened by parents.

A judge once told me that I could anything I wanted to my child as, “long as she doesn’t end up bleeding.” I was completely taken aback by this. Imagine a judge telling another adult that, because his assailant didn’t make him bleed, no crime was committed. The outrage would be unbelievable. But when it comes to children, we mistakenly believe that parents have this sphere of invincibility that prevents intervention in anything except the most hideous of examples.

Why? Why would we ever set the standard that we’ll allow abuse to occur, but only to those most vulnerable to it? It as if we’ve got our logic and priorities exactly backwards.

Part of the answer is the insistence by parents that any attempt by the state to raise their kids is over the line, and as a parent, I completely agree. I’ll raise my daughter to be a godless, gay-loving heathen if I so choose (and I do). But surely there is a difference between the state raising our children, and the law intervening on behalf of those who simply cannot defend themselves. This sort of egregious double standard has been witnessed before, of course, in which the adult places his or her needs (rights!) ahead of the child’s for no reason other than vanity.

This attitude though, of children as property and not as people, is counter-productive for our society. Although there are obviously times when parents must intervene for the safety and well-being of their children, allowing them free-reign to do as they please has lead us to a place where the rights of children are conceived as only being those which don’t come into conflict with those of adults. Frankly, that is unnacceptable.

Banning T-Shirts

There’s also this.
Let’s face it: if the above photo of me in a beautiful gray suit with a nice blue shirt, pink tie, and flip-flops doesn’t convince you that I’m a fashion maven, ain’t nothing gonna. I maintain that I looked great. Others who attended the wedding with me were more quizzical in their interpretations. As in: “Really? Flip-flops with a suit? Really?!?!”

Fashion is one of those great ways to express ourselves. Maybe it shouldn’t be so, but it is. Today, I was told that I do a good job of rocking the homeless preppy look, which means my plaid shorts, white t-shirts, unshaven face and growing hair apparently. I guess that’s a compliment.

Of course, this brief fashion rant leads us to yet another school board deciding on yet another set of draconian dresscode designed at limiting expression by students. Although originally even stricter - students were going to be required to wear reds, whites, or blues - the dresscode outlaws t-shirts, jeans, and colors other than navy blue, khaki, brown or black.

It is interesting to me how we see the speech of children repressed regularly and casually, as if these younger versions of us are deserving of less protection than we afford ourselves. (Before the first, and most obvious, objection, I’d like to point out that the dresscodes you’re subjected to at work are voluntary. You can always leave your job. Kids cannot leave school if they’re individuality is being trampled all over.) Some argue that dresscodes benefit children because it eliminates one obvious expression of classism between students: the rich kids can’t dress any better than the poor kids. Although this is a somewhat compelling argument, kids are always going to know the difference. The kid who takes the bus to school is going to know that the kid driving his Land Rover to school is richer, regardless of his trousers.

The simple fact that these adults would deprive children of their ability to, say, wear a t-shirt expressing a political or religious or sexual or musical or artistic opinion should be of concern to freedom loving peoples everywhere. But of course, as it almost always is, the concerns of kids are rarely fodder for adults, unless there is a political battle to be won. The adults pushing this ban, incidentally, are doing so because the dresscode will allegedly make this safe school even safer. They don’t care about these kids; they care about the standing it will give them in the community.

And if that standing comes at the cost of free expression by the citizenry? Well, so be it. Sadly, our conceptions of individual freedoms tend to recede considerably at the age of 18. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but I’d rather have kids wearing whatever it is that they want than have an army of lookalike drones.