When I see an aging white male frothing about freedoms, the first thing that comes to mind is—
well, if we were living in your ideal period, say 1760, you would most likely be dead by now. You can drink that glass of water because you can be comfortable that it is clean. Same for the food you eat the air that you breathe.
“I want my Freedoms”—what are they really asking for? Here is a list of subjects where it is so easy to grab the wrong end of that freedom stick, and then torture us all by beating the living day lights out of rational thinking:
Bolded Freedoms will be discussed below.
- The Freedom to have a life expectancy of 35
- The Freedom for (innocent) people to be put to death
- The Freedom to start illegal Wars, killing U.S. troops, Civilians, etc.
- The Freedom to invent your own “family values”
- The Freedom to torture children (why stop at adults?)
- The Freedom to enslave and then kill coal miners
- The Freedom to rape
- The freedom to tear up the Constitution
- The Freedom to engage in institutional torture of livestock
- The Freedom to demand vaginal probes
- The Freedom to be imprisoned for life based on three strikes
- The Freedom to put prisoners in solitary confinement for life, i.e., torture
- The Freedom for the U.S. government to default on its debt
- The Freedom to racially profile
- The Freedom to engage in voter suppression
- The Freedom to refuse to serve black people, etc. (Ayn Rand, Ron Paul)
- The Freedom to discriminate against homosexuals
- The Freedom to cure homosexuals via conversion therapy
- The Freedom to discriminate against women
- The Freedom to be not allowed an abortion
- The Freedom to ignore facts, science, or the experts
- The Freedom to declare America to be a Christian country
- The Freedom not to have access to healthcare
- The Freedom to ensure others cannot get a living wage
- The Freedom to be sexually harassed at work
- The Freedom to harass in the bedroom.
- The Freedom to treat corporations as people
- The Freedom to over-fish to extinction
- The Freedom to pollute and decimate the oceans, lakes, and rivers
- The Freedom to erode the fertility of the soil
- The Freedom to use roads, bridges, and tunnels built by the government.
- The Freedom to rabidly bite off the hand that feeds it, by not valuing:
- Social Security (presently protected from Wall Street greed)
- Medicare, Medicaid
- Benefit from the Affordable Healthcare Act
- Benefit from public schools and universities
- Benefit from school buses
- Benefit from the Food Stamp Act
- Benefit from regulations ensuring your savings are safe, insurance claims are paid
- Benefit from police protection, fire fighters
- Benefit from assistance in case of natural disaster
- Benefit from libraries, postal services, especially in cut-off areas
- The Freedom of a religious employer to prevent access to birth control.
- The Freedom to pretend that you are not aiding and abetting bigotry.
Let’s look at a few of the above in more detail:
- The Freedom to have a life expectancy of 35.
Stupidparty advocates love to dream about living free (from regulation?) and fantasize about colonial times. Well, back in 1760, it looks like you were lucky to reach 35. Today, life expectancy in the USA is 79.8. America comes in at 35 on that list. On the other hand, according to historians E. A. Wrigley and Roger S. Schofield, between 1781 and 1851, life expectancy at birth rose from thirty-five years to forty years.
Here is the State Breakdown:
Mississippi is beaten by 60 other countries, including Bosnia, Ecuador, China, and Cuba, and ranked equal to Syria (before the war). Of course, places like Cuba have a better healthcare system and that helps.
Stupidparty Disciples have a life expectancy of around, say, 76 (as opposed to 80 for the other Americans). These individuals are forced to live twice as long as they would evidently prefer, because they benefit from stuff they supposedly hate—such as Social Security, Medicaid, clean air and water, food safety standards, workers’-injury compensation, vacation days to rest and travel, police to keep the peace, food nutrition programs.
2) The Freedom for (innocent) people to be put to death.
In 1977 only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty. By 2012 this number had risen to 97. In 2011 only 11 countries executed more than 5 people. These countries from Worst to Least Worse are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, USA, Yemen, North Korea, Somalia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam.
But the USA is somewhat unique, as it does not exactly have a unified approach—each state being free to decide its own policy.
18 states have abolished the death penalty. But the following are still pretty gung-ho.
Most people believe many of these individuals may not even be guilty, especially in the case of defendants who came up against a prejudiced jury and a plaintiff attorney or prosecutor significantly more skilled than the lowly public defenders. The following death row inmates have been exonerated—just to take two years, 2008 and 2009:
2008
*125. Kennedy Brewer Mississippi. Convicted 1995.
- Glen Edward Chapman, North Carolina. Convicted 1995.
- Levon “Bo” Jones, North Carolina. Convicted 1993.
- Michael Blair, Texas.
2009
- Nathson Fields, Illinois. Convicted 1986.
- Paul House, Tennessee. Convicted 1986.
- Daniel Wade Moore, Alabama. Convicted 2002.
- Ronald Kitchen, Illinois. Convicted 1988.
- Herman Lindsey, Florida. Convicted 2006.
- Michael Toney, Texas. Convicted 1999. (Toney died in a car accident on October 3, 2009, just one month and a day after his exoneration.)
- Yancy Douglas, Oklahoma. Convicted 1997.
- Paris Powell, Oklahoma. Convicted 1997.
- Robert Springsteen, Texas. Convicted 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates#2010.E2.80.932012
*125 means 125th exonerated death-row victim
New DNA technology, which is now used regularly, clears individuals of crimes they had been adjudicated guilty of. Also, minorities are more likely to attract the severe sentences. Various degrees of murder or manslaughter can make the outcome quite uncertain—but politically ambitious district attorneys love to buff their résumés against poorly represented and scary minorities, so when those gray areas emerge, the better lawyer will tend to carry the day.
4) Freedom to invent family values. My personal favorite—because we have to endure so much utter claptrap from all those pseudo-Christians that have hijacked common sense, common decency, and the common good.
Stupidparty leaders love to lecture about family values. They assume we will believe they are taking up the Sword of Christ, leading a Christian battle against evildoers or those whose lifestyles they disagree with. But these leaders, if they are to wield the sword, must be willing to be felled by their own arguments. Firstly, they cannot simply be allowed to talk the talk. If it turns out they are hypocrites, then they must be judged harshly by their own standards.
But what are these biblical values they keep thrusting down our throats? Surely they are not trying to promote slavery per St. Paul’s instructions
Ephesians 6:5-9: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ…”
Surely their family values allow women a vote, a voice—some equality? St. Paul did not simply promote slavery; he was by today’s standards a bit of a misogynist (Ephesians 5:22-24: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything”).
Surely they are not advocating genocide, as per Noah’s ark, the final plague of Egypt, or the decimation of Sodom and Gomorrah?
How about the family goes out and enjoys a good stoning?
Are they suggesting stoning nonvirgins on their wedding night? (“Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die”—Deuteronomy 22:13-21.)
They cannot be suggesting stoning for virtually any departure from their values—like, say, stoning livestock (if an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned—Exodus 21:28), or likewise stoning for non-Christians, children who disobey their parents, those who break the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-56), or for simply touching Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:13).
Gandalf and Harry Potter must be stoned if you believe in Leviticus 20:27, and then sometimes stoning to death is just not enough—it must be followed by burning with fire (Joshua 7:1–26).
So even though Stupidparty pundits regularly suggest eradicating all and sundry, encouraging prisoner suicides to save taxpayer money (Ed Bolling on Fox News The Five), or immediately labeling as an enemy anyone who says, “Allah” (God)*—no, let us give them a break and presume that they have evolved and are actually referring to simple, easy-to-understand Christian values like pro-life, the institution of marriage, marriage between a man and a woman, and having a family with lots of happy, home-educated children to grow up as future consumers. But there are a few big problems in being so kind to our Stupidparty fellow Americans, who preach these supposedly Christian values.
(* John McCain had to give the presenters a little education on that one.)
The Bible is pro-choice. Evidently, “The Bible places no value on fetuses or infants less than one month old”:
“And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.”—Leviticus 27:6
“Fetuses and infants less than one month old are not considered persons”:
“Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them. And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD.”—Numbers 3:15-16
“Yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.”—Hosea 9:16
“Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.”—Hosea 13:16
“Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.”—2 Samuel 12:14
“Tamar thy daughter-in-law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, bring her forth and let her be burnt.”—Genesis 38:24
“And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed.”—Numbers 5:21, 27–28
I feel somewhat uncomfortable, using the Old Testament to preach policy—since I find it difficult to respect supposed Christians who use the Bible in a parallel way to nut-job Muslims—to cherry-pick from the Quran. I happen to believe that Christians have far less excuse, since their go-to prophet is massively impressive and had a different core message and lifestyle than the other guy.
A Christian should follow the teaching of Jesus. His actual lessons, not spoiled by various power-seeking zealots who polluted his central messages. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus discuss abortion. Thus, it is not a Christian value. Just like Racism, Judge-mentalism, Pro-death, War mongering, Asset-stripping, Gun toting, Misogyny, Anti-knowledge, Dishonesty and wanton lying; none of these core Stupidparty values are the values of Christ.
The Bible simply does not have these so-called values.
Neither Jesus (nor the Bible) had anything to say about “straight” marriage or even about it simply being between one man and one woman. Jesus had nothing to say about gays. Any supposed biblical arguments against gay marriage are unsustainable. The New Testament is pretty much silent on the institution of marriage. Not only that, but Jesus and his disciples were hardly good examples of such invented “family values.” Were any of the disciples married? Did they have children? Yes, probably one, Peter—which in itself is odd, since he was the rock upon which the Christian Church was built. Yet centuries later, the papacy—for financial reasons unrelated to the teachings of Jesus—chose to become a male-dominated club. Jesus himself was quite comfortable consorting with Mary Magdalene, who many scholars believe had been a prostitute.
The Bible, Jesus—they had nothing to say about contraception. They had nothing to say on abortion. There is no pro-life biblical agenda. In fact, the reverse is true. The Old Testament God was clearly pro-choice, happy to choose genocide and other methods of terminating innocent life (as in Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the tenth plague against Egypt, and let us not forget when God killed 14,000 people for complaining that God kept killing them).
I’m sorry, but I can’t engage my time reading some neoliberal assault on everything. It’s a whining manifesto. Fuck you over the top liberals that want to cure even “original sin” with your drivel. I’m a flaming liberal, eager to defend ANYONE who is affected by misjustice.This writer seems like he just got out of some save the world seminar or something . Boring stuff.If you want change, then act, don’t whine.
A Trumpeteer communicates -as indicated by the vacuousness of the effort.
So, you can’t actually address the response and resort to ad hominem. Typical liberal.
Your entire site is devoid of intellect or content, merely the bleats of a white liberal cocksucker of privilege. (That’s a comment on your social position. I give less than a shit about your sexual orientation. Though I bet you don’t get much.)
A Trumpeteer responds revealing their trademark – Zero substance, Zero intellect—just incoherent labelling. Since writing this piece, I have upped my game on the issue of freedoms and fascism – notions obviously far too deep for Iman and his ilk, https://www.stupidpartyland.com/1/post/2022/02/nazi-seditionist.html
Have you ever listened to Rush, Hannity, the rest of your pundents whine about everything! How about companies like Walmart or Wendys who whine about raising the minimum wage because it will cut into their profits! Or maybe banks and wall street because being honest is too hard! How about insurance companies dropping out of the ACA because their profits arn’t high enough! Your right wing media whines more then a 3 year old in a candy store.
If you are eager to defend anyone who is affected by injustice, have you heard of Schaeffer Cox, railroaded into prison for a speech – The Solution To Reclaiming Liberty. on Youtube, also you can see there The Schaeffer Cox Story & the Tragic Love Story of Marti & Schaeffer Cox. He is in a CMU for “terrorists” Eric Holder commended the prosecutors who lied cheated & broke laws to convict him. He has been in prison 6 years so far. He didn’t do anything, break any laws, harm anybody. It was all Government Agenda to get rid of guns. Our courts have become corrupt to the core. MSM repeated all their lies to destroy Schaeffer’s reputation in Alaska where people who knew him should have stood up for him
Really – this is the best you got -sounds like your man is real winner -but do not expect to re litigate the case for this creep here.
In March 2010, Cox was arrested by state authorities in Alaska for failing to disclose a concealed weapon.[14] It was reported that he assaulted his wife and pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment,[15] but his wife joined him to publicly deny the claims, and to explain the allegations completely as lies to defame Cox.[16]
In 2011 he was arrested for alleged involvement in a murder conspiracy known as “241” where two law enforcement officers were to be killed for each member of the Peacemakers Militia killed in anticipation of government action against Cox and weapons charges.[10][17]
In March 2011, Cox was arrested on federal charges in Fairbanks, Alaska, by the United States Marshals Service. He was charged with conspiracy to possess unregistered silencers and destructive devices, possession of an unregistered destructive device, possession of an unregistered silencer, possession of an unregistered machine gun, and other related charges under 18 U.S.C. § 371, 18 U.S.C. § 922 and 18 U.S.C. § 924 and Internal Revenue Code sections 5861(d), 5871, and 5861(f).[18] Also charged for involvement in the plot were Lonnie Vernon, Karen Vernon and Coleman Barney.[19] Cox’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the charges should have been thrown out because the grand jury that served the indictment was flawed.[20]
In late October 2011, all state charges against Cox and his fellow defendants were dismissed. The dismissals followed a court ruling that kept prosecutors from using, as evidence, secret FBI recordings made without a search warrant. According to Assistant District Attorney Dway McConnell, the state charges cannot be refiled. [10]
Cox continued to face the federal weapons charges. In November 2011, additional federal charges were brought against him. The new charges related to the alleged purchase of hand grenades and silencers, and alleged possession of a loaded grenade launcher.[21]
On January 20, 2012, Cox and two co-defendants were charged in the same case with conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the United States, including law enforcement officers, “in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1111 and 1114….”[22][23] The trial began on May 7, 2012. The case went to the jury on Thursday, June 14, 2012.[24]
On June 18, 2012, Cox and codefendant Lonnie Vernon were each found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. The jury was unable to reach consensus on the conspiracy charge against codefendant Coleman Barney.[25][26] Barney was, however, convicted of conspiracy to possess unregistered silencers and destructive devices and possession of unregistered destructive devices.[27]
On September 24, 2012, Coleman L. Barney was sentenced to five years in federal prison. On January 7, 2013, Lonnie Vernon and his wife, Karen Vernon, were sentenced to 25 and 12 years, respectively.[28]
On January 8, 2013, Cox was sentenced to 310 months, or nearly 26 years, in federal prison. The conviction and sentence are being appealed.[29][30] Cox is currently incarcerated in the Communication Management Unit at the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois and is not scheduled for release until 2033.[31]
On December 13, 2013 Cox recanted his claim of mental illness and the Fairbanks News Miner published a thirteen-page letter in which he alleged the Federal government is part of a broad conspiracy that led to his conviction and sentencing. He stated, regarding a forensic psychologist who evaluated him, “She was a short frumpy woman with frizzy hair, beady eyes.” She had testified that he suffers from several paranoid disorders. At the sentencing hearing, Cox told the judge, “I put a lot of people in fear by the things that I said.” “Some of the crazy stuff that was coming out of my mouth, I see that, and I sounded horrible.” “I couldn’t have sounded any worse if I tried.” “The more scared I got, the crazier the stuff. I wasn’t thinking, I was panicking.” [32]
In February 2015, a federal appeals court denied Cox permission to fire his fourth attorney, one who was currently handling his appeal.[
The Freedom for people to be put to death because they fight each other more after get freedom..