Daily Archives: August 18, 2017

Commentary: Although he politely bade me good morning, his clothing was a little odd: reminiscent of a 19th century cowboy from a movie, except for the very modern handgun openly displayed on his hip.

The Jeffersonian distinction between liberty and freedom goes something like this: liberty is something you are free to do while freedom, in Thomas Jeffersons writing, typically refers to being free from oppression or tyranny. Thus, while liberty is one of the inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, it has never been the case that liberty is absolute.

Liberty is subject to limits even in the view of the Declarations principal author. As Jefferson wrote in a letter, Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. To exercise an old saw, my liberty to swing my fist ends at your nose. Through this small accommodation, the enthusiastic fist-swinger is still free to swing but within a limit, so that his neighbor remains free to breathe through an uninjured nose.

Moving from the comical example to how people behave in the real world, this gets turned the other way around. Liberty-takers frequently demand, and typically get, accommodations from others around them. If you have ever suffered passively while your entire house shakes because of an automobile with an invasively loud stereo system, you know what I mean. Perhaps you are the rare person who approached that vehicle and asked them to accommodate you (or your sleeping family) by turning the volume down and you were met with outrage. Perhaps you considered calling the police, only to feel guilty for making trouble or for calling officers away from more important business. Maybe, instead, you grumbled and accommodated, like most people do.

This week, I was in a waiting room while my car was being serviced, and in walked that man who reminded me somewhat of Hondo Lane, gun at his hip. Let it be known that I neither fear nor dislike guns, and used to own a shotgun myself. Also, in New Mexico, open carry is legal and does not require a permit. You can walk into a coffee shop armed without proving your competence or sound judgment to a soul. (Many New Mexicans routinely carry concealed weapons, but if they are loaded you need a license.)

Aside from choosing to wear a sidearm to Sisbarros, this fellow did not behave strangely. Yet he had my unswerving attention. Unable to read minds, I could glean little about his intent or judgment. In some situations, a gun is clearly appropriate; but among people reading out-of-date magazines waiting for an oil change, the purpose of displaying a weapon is less clear. Yielding the benefit of the doubt, his intentions might have been completely honorable, as when some people in another era wore guns and, before that, swords. Yet knowing what a gun can do in unsteady hands, and thinking this a weird context, I remained vigilantly aware of him the entire time we shared this room.

Who, in this situation, was accommodating whom; and who was swinging their fist? If I did not feel safe I could of course leave the room, and allow my armed neighbor to dominate a shared space. Yes, the unarmed can accommodate the liberties of the armed if they feel unsafe, but in that scenario, are both people truly free? Or is freedom for the armed?

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Algernon DAmmassa writes the Desert Sage column for the Deming Headlight and Sun News papers. Share your thoughts atadammassa@demingheadlight.com.

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On Liberty, Freedom, and Open Carry - KRWG

Not all of us who want these issues addressed are opponents of same sex marriage. Not all of us who want these issues addressed are opponents of any form of plebiscite or postal survey. Photograph: Angelo Perruolo/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Countries such as the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada already recognise same-sex marriages. They also have bills of rights which accord some recognition to the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Australia does not yet recognise same-sex marriages not even those marriages recognised in their countries of origin. Neither does Australia have a bill of rights with the result that the federal protection of rights such as freedom of religion is more piecemeal than in other countries. In Australia, the tendency has been to treat the freedom of religion on contested questions as an exemption to sex discrimination laws. This results in freedom of religion being treated as a second order right. But in international law, it is a first order non-derogable right.

The Australian parliament will legislate this term or next term, or perhaps the term after that, to recognise same-sex marriages. No one can predict certainly which party will be in government when the legislation is passed. No one can predict certainly which preliminary steps will have been conducted prior to the introduction of the legislation. There may be a voluntary postal survey conducted by the ABS. But then again, the high court might find a problem with it, and well be back to plan c with the Turnbull government or plan a with a future Shorten government.

One thing is certain. The issues surrounding religious freedom in a society which recognises same-sex marriage will not be fully resolved any time soon. Some argue that these issues should be resolved before the public votes in a compulsory plebiscite or voluntary postal survey. I can see that opponents of same-sex marriage might want to insist on this, and that supporters of same-sex marriage might regard this as a time delaying tactic. I could vote yes in a survey while hoping and demanding that the parliament do the hard work on religious freedoms when considering amendments to the Marriage Act. It is important to appreciate that the legal and policy changes needed to protect religious freedom would not appear in the Marriage Act but in other statutes such as the Sex Discrimination Act.

I will highlight just a handful of the practical religious freedom questions which will arise. Once the Marriage Act is amended, should a church school be able to decline to offer married quarters to a teacher in a same sex marriage? I would answer yes, though I would hope a church school would be open to the employment of a gay teacher living in a committed relationship. Equally I would continue to allow a church school to make a free choice as to who best to employ as a teacher.

Given the lamentable history of homophobia, I would think a good church school would be pleased to employ an openly gay teacher who respects and espouses the schools ethos. Free choice is often better than legal prescription when trying to educate in the ways of truth and love.

Should a church aged care facility be able to decline to offer married quarters to a couple who had contracted a same sex marriage? I would answer yes, though I would hope a church facility would be open to providing such accommodation in Christian charity if it could be done in a way not to cause upset to other residents. After all, same sex marriage is a very modern phenomenon and I would favour ongoing tolerance of the residents in aged care facilities run by a church, wanting to live out their last days with individuals and couples in relationships such as they have long known them.

However, even in Catholic aged care facilities, we need to admit that not all couples are living in a church recognised marriage, and it is no business of other residents to know if they are. We need to allow everyone time to adapt with good grace, provided only that we can be certain that appropriate services are available elsewhere if a church feels unable to oblige on religious grounds.

In 2009 when chairing the national human rights consultation for the Rudd government, I was surprised to hear Bob Carrs boast about how best to preserve religious freedom. He had joined forces with the Australian Christian Lobby and religious leaders like Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, and George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop, opposing a federal Human Rights Act. Carr was fond of telling audiences that debates about the scope of religious freedom and the intersection between freedom of religion and non-discrimination were best and most easily resolved by the state premier receiving personal representations from the religious leaders. He and they thought that religious freedom might suffer some diminution if the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion were included in a statutory bill of rights. Eight years on, I daresay the political influence of church leaders meeting behind closed doors with political leaders has subsided.

Two years after the national human rights consultation, the Sydney Archbishops accompanied the Australian Christian Lobby to a meeting with prime minister Julia Gillard. After the meeting, Cardinal Pell reported that the religious leaders had told the prime minister: We are very keen to ensure that the right to practise religion in public life continues to be protected in law. It is not ideal that religious freedom is protected by so called exemptions and exceptions in anti-discrimination law, almost like reluctant concessions, crumbs from the secularists table. What is needed is legislation that embodies and recognises these basic religious freedoms as a human right.

In 2015, the Australian Law Reform Commission concluded a detailed assessment of traditional rights and freedoms encroachments by commonwealth laws. Though the commission found no obvious evidence that Commonwealth anti-discrimination laws significantly encroach on freedom of religion in Australia, it did recommend that further consideration should be given to whether freedom of religion should be protected through a general limitations clause rather than exemptions. In February this year, the parliaments select committee on the exposure draft of the marriage amendment (same-sex marriage) bill unanimously reported: Overall the evidence supports the need for current protections for religious freedom to be enhanced. This would most appropriately be achieved through the inclusion of religious belief in federal anti-discrimination law. Dean Smith who has drafted his own marriage amendment (definition and religious freedomsbill 2017 was a member of that committee. His bill does not deal with many of the contested religious freedom issues.

Not all of us who want these issues addressed are opponents of same-sex marriage. Not all of us who want these issues addressed are opponents of any form of plebiscite or postal survey. I am one of those Australians who will be pleased when same-sex marriages are recognised by Australian law but with adequate protection for religious freedoms. That will require painstaking respectful dialogue given the lack of a statutory bill of rights. Its no longer good enough to treat the non-derogable right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion simply as an exemption to non-discrimination laws.

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Religious freedom is an important right. Once same sex-marriage is legal, it must be protected - The Guardian

Posted: Aug. 18, 2017 12:01 am

Last weekend, serious violence broke out in Charlottesville, Va., when a group of white supremacist demonstrators was confronted by a group of folks who were there to condemn the message the demonstrators had come to advance. The message was critical of the government for removing a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public place.

For some, Lee is associated with the military defense of slavery. For others, he is associated with the military defense of the right of states to leave the union -- a union they voluntarily joined. For the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, the removal of the statue provided a platform to articulate crudely their view that the Caucasian race is somehow morally superior to every other.

Such a political and philosophical position is hardly rational to anyone who respects the dignity of all people and their moral equality before God and legal equality in America. Believing that one race is morally superior to others is largely a hate-filled theory, supportable only by bias, prejudice, fear and resentment -- and perhaps a wish to turn back the clock to a time when the Supreme Court declared that nonwhites were not full people under the Constitution, a declaration eradicated by war and history and constitutional amendments.

These hateful, hurtful ideas -- articulated publicly through Nazi salutes and flags and incendiary rhetoric last weekend -- aroused animosity on the part of those who came to Charlottesville to resist and challenge and condemn these views. After the police left the scene and rejected their duty to protect the speakers and those in the audience, a crazy person drove his car into the midst of the melee that ensued, and an innocent young woman was killed when she was hit by the car.

Is hate speech protected under the Constitution? In a word, yes.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects "the freedom of speech" from infringement by the government, has a long and storied history. The drafters of the amendment referred to it as "the" freedom of speech in order to underscore its pre-political existence.

Stated differently, the freedom of speech is a natural right, one that derives from our humanity, and hence it pre-existed the government that was prohibited from infringing upon it. The government doesn't grant free speech, but it is supposed to protect it.

In the early years of the republic, Congress punished speech that was critical of the government, through the Alien and Sedition Acts. The same generation that had just written that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech abridged it. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, relying on no law, punished speech in the North that was critical of his wartime presidency. During both world wars, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt used the Espionage Act of 1917 to punish speech that was hateful of the government, because, they argued, it might tend to undermine the nation's war efforts. Lincoln's infringements were rejected by the Supreme Court. Wilson's and FDR's were upheld.

It was not until 1969 that a unanimous Supreme Court gave us the modern articulation of the nature and extent of free speech. Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader in Ohio, verbally attacked Jews and blacks in the government in Washington, D.C., at a public rally. He urged his followers to travel to Washington and produce violence against them. He was prosecuted and convicted under an Ohio law that largely prohibited the public expression of hatred as a means to overthrow the government.

Brandenburg's conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court, which ruled essentially that the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the speech we hate and fear. The speech we love and embrace needs no protection. Moreover, the right to decide what speech to listen to is enjoyed by individuals, not by groups collectively and not by the government.

All innocuous speech, the court ruled, is absolutely protected, and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to challenge it. This rule -- known as the Brandenburg doctrine -- has consistently been upheld by the court since its articulation.

Now, back to Charlottesville. The government cannot take sides in public disputes, because by doing so, it becomes a censor and thus infringes upon the free speech rights of those against whom it has taken a position. On the contrary -- and this was not done in Charlottesville -- the government has the duty to protect the speaker's right to say whatever he wishes and the audience's right to hear and respond to the speaker.

When the police decline to maintain order -- as was their decision in Charlottesville -- they permit the "heckler's veto," whereby the audience silences the speech it hates. And when the heckler's veto comes about through government failure as it did in Charlottesville, it is unconstitutional. It is the functional equivalent of the government's taking sides and censoring the speech it hates or fears.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage open, wide, robust debate about the policies of the government and the people who run it. It would be antithetical to that purpose for the government itself to decide what speech is acceptable and what is not in public discourse.

What about hate speech? The remedy for it is not to silence or censor it, because we need to know from whence it comes. The remedy is more speech -- speech to challenge the hatred, speech to educate the haters, speech to expose their moral vacuity. More speech will create an atmosphere antithetical to hatred, and it will reinforce the right of every individual to pursue happiness, which is the American promise.

But that promise is only as valuable as the fidelity to it of those in government, whom we have hired to protect it. In Charlottesville, they failed.

Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge, is senior judicial analyst for Fox News. He owns Vine Hill Farm in Hampton.

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Freedom for the speech that we hate and fear - New Jersey Herald

UPDATED: Thu., Aug. 17, 2017, 5:28 p.m.

BOISE A major Boise convention center and hotel canceled the Idaho Freedom Foundations upcoming banquet forcing a change of venue just 11 days before the event because it learned the groups keynote speaker was a scholar whose controversial theories on race and intelligence have drawn disruptive protests around the nation for the past six months.

The decision to cancel the event was based solely on our responsibility for staff and guest safety, said Kristin Jensen, a partner in Riverside Hospitality, which operates the Red Lion Riverside Hotel and Convention Center. It was definitely not politically motivated or influenced.

After seeing many, many recent examples of protests and riots at Charles Murray events across the country, we knew that an incident was more than likely, and we just couldnt take the chance, Jensen said. You just never know, especially with what just happened in Charlottesville.

Idaho Freedom Foundation President Wayne Hoffman railed against the decision on the groups website, declaring, Even in Idaho, the Left is successfully bullying businesses, badgering, trolling and harassing anyone who dares to contradict their progressive world view. We are but the latest victim.

Hoffman found a new venue, the Chateau des Fleurs in Eagle, on Tuesday, the same day that the Riverside canceled the Aug. 26 banquet. The Riverside agreed to pay the $10,000 difference in cost for the higher-priced venue.

We had a signed contract, Jensen said. Any time we might be in a position to have to cancel a contract and were the ones doing the canceling, of course we would make it right.

Murray is a 74-year-old libertarian scholar with the American Enterprise Institute whose controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve, theorized that intelligence was the best predictor of success and that social programs and efforts to educate the disadvantaged would therefore fail. Most controversially, hes tied intelligence to genetic factors, including race.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Murray a white nationalist, but Murray sharply disputed that, saying theyd mischaracterized his writings.

In March, a violent protest that left one professor injured disrupted a speech Murray was giving at Middlebury College in Vermont. Protests, some peaceful and some disruptive, followed at his speeches at Notre Dame University, Indiana University, Villanova University and the University of Wisconsin, among others. One college, Azusa-Pacific University, canceled an April speech by Murray after protests.

Hoffman, who didnt return a call Thursday for comment, blamed the thought police for the change in venue of his groups annual banquet, entitled, Faces of Freedom. On the groups website, he wrote, We will not allow fear and intimidation to silence us.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation is a conservative lobbying group that rates bills in the state Legislature and assigns ratings to lawmakers based on their compliance with groups positions, such as opposing occupational licensing and taxes. Its also become increasingly active, through a political arm, in political campaigns.

Jensen disagreed with Hoffmans assessment. We were not bullied by the left, and it was not at all politically motivated. But we understand not everyone will see it that way, he said.

What it really boils down to is the fact that our guests have the expectation of a safe and enjoyable stay in a resort-like atmosphere, she said. It became evident that we would not be able to control the circumstances.

She noted that the Riverside has more than 300 guest rooms, and theyre not separated from the ballroom where the banquet was booked. Also, it has dozens of entrances and is easily accessible by foot, including from the public, riverfront Greenbelt that runs right behind it. We just thought we cant guarantee safety and security with an event like this should something break out, and in all likelihood it would, Jensen said.

She added, They didnt tell us who the speaker was. We actually found out about it because of some of the online chatter that wed seen, including plans for protests.

The Riverside notified the IFF on Monday that it wanted to meet with them; it met with IFF officials on Tuesday and agreed on terms for canceling the event.

Were not in the habit of canceling our groups events, Jensen said. It was just out of real concern for safety and security for our staff and for our guests, and that was the only reason it was canceled.

Updated: Aug. 17, 2017, 5:28 p.m.

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Speaker with controversial race theories leads to cancellation, move of Idaho Freedom Foundation annual banquet - The Spokesman-Review

2017-08-17 08:02

Ashanti Kunene

Our parents were sold dreams in 1994, we are just here for the refund. These words demanded attention in a sea of posters at a #FeesMustFall protest. And it still holds mine.

The generational disjunctures between us, the so called born-free generation, and our (grand)parents generation have become increasingly tangible, visceral and unavoidable. #FeesMustFall and decolonisation are but two forms of its expression.

Intergenerational disconnectedness is not unique to South Africa. But our disconnect is unique in that it is linked to the idiosyncratic atrocities that shaped this land and its people.

For us, 1994 carries the weight of unfulfilled democratic promises.

For our parents and grandparents, it is that together with the pain, memory and lived reality of apartheid and colonialism.

To us who have only known democracy the concept of a rainbow nation rings hollow. To our parent generation, I am told, many still say they never thought theyd live to see apartheid fall.

The rainbow nation made us believe that even within our differences we are equal. But we are not. We live in a country with the highest wealth inequality in the world. All political freedom did was make us seemingly equal in identity as South Africans (and then only just).

It turned a society of fundamental inequality into a society of nominal equals. And because we are all equal, all infinitesimal pantone variations of a rainbow, it requires that we, in effect, ignore the real things that divide us.

An uncritical lens allows the rhetoric of the rainbow nation to go unquestioned.

The concept of the rainbow nation was an idea that our parents and grandparents could believe in. Needed to believe in. The promise of a rainbow nation was (and is) so much better than the brutal, unflinching unrelenting reality of apartheid beatings, rapes, teargassing, killings, oppression and daily terror.

Being included into the mainstream was progress; not having to carry a dompass and move freely was seen as progress. Not being at the mercy of a white baass whims was progress. Because it was.

But it is here where the friction of the intergenerational disjuncture manifests itself.

We recognise that progress, we are grateful for this progress, we respect the gains made. But we have to ask, must ask: how is this freedom when the very land we now move freely uponstill does not belong to us?

How is this freedom when we still dont earn the same pay as white people? How is this freedom, when the black womxn* is still the face ofpoverty and unemployment in South Africa?

On its own, inclusion based on identity does not solve the structural consequences of apartheid. We know our parent generations understand this. Or we think they do.

Our agitation comes from the seeming lack of advancement for the marginalised, the slow pace of economic justice. The apparent notion that now that we have political freedom we can sit back to let the slow progress of time and markets spread equality.

Thats not enough. Its not nearly enough; it wont solve SAs socioeconomic issues because you cannot eat a vote.

We dont want to be included, to merely be allowed to walk upon this land freely. We want to own our land, in every sense: as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as captains of industry, as owners of capital, with access to finance. We know that restitution is needed. We just dont understand why no one is seriously talking about it. We want to be heard when we say there is a need to reimagine our political economy.

Rejecting the unfulfilled promise of the rainbow nation is not a rejection of the struggles our (grand)parents of Mandela, of Sisulu, of Winnie and so many more less well known, who fought against apartheid.

It is, rather, a rejection of compromising on true freedom; political freedom with economic freedom and epistemic freedom. It is a rejection of the notion that freedom is something to be negotiated, to be bestowed on us black, coloured and Indian people by those who (still) hold the economic power and agency to live lives of dignity, relative comfort and even prosperity.

It is a rejection of a freedom that sees the structural inequalities of apartheid continue due to the unwillingness of those very same people to give up or sacrifice, this comfort and prosperity in the name of reconciliation and restitution.

Compromise on its own is not a bad thing. But compromises that privilege one section of society and continues to marginalise others is what we reject. We reject compromises that result in a lived experience that is fundamentally incompatible with the democratic promises of the rainbow nation, an experience where if you do not have R10 in your pocket, you do not eat. An experience where if you are born black, poor and a womxn one can make some fairly accurate descriptions about the kind of life you will lead. The words comfort and prosperity do not feature.

In the words of Malcolm X if you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches that is not progress. We still have the knife in our back.

Only a few of the majority black population has benefitted from this kind of progress and some have had to morally bankrupt themselves to get to where they are today. Marikana, Nkandla, state capture, the Guptas. We need not even say more.

We must all fulfil our historical mission and not turn back until the mission is completed. That is the duty before all of us, and especially one that lies at the feet of born frees and all those still to follow.

We simply want to talk about it. To our parents. And grandparents. And not be dismissed but taken seriously. Asijiki Singagqibanga!

* Womxn is a term used to indicate that women are not the extension of men and seeks to highlight the structural barriers all womxn face in a patriarchal society. The term womxn attempts to indicate that gender is a spectrum, its fluid and thus this term includes and speaks to the entire LGBTQI community that sits outside of the heteronormative patriarchal binary conception of man and woman.

** Ashanti Kunene is an intern in the Sustained Dialogues programme at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. She is also an International Studies Masters student with Stellenbosch University.

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Speaking to our parents: how is this freedom? - News24