You Can Still Fly Your Racist Flag

 

It seems people really have a lot of trouble grasping what the First Amendment actually is.  The Confederate Flag has not been banned.  If you are a private citizen you cannot be arrested for displaying the Confederate flag.  You cannot be denied equal protection under the law simply because of your racist views.  That's what the Constitution guarantees and nothing more.

The flag in South Carolina will be taken down off State property.  The State of Mississippi might take the stars and bars off their flag.  This is the result of people petitioning their government for change, something that is actually guaranteed in the constitution.  Additionally, I can exercise my First Amendment right to call you a racist and my right as a consumer if I desire not to buy stuff from retailers.  Freedom of speech is not the freedom from social consequences.  Lenny Bruce's rights were violated because he was arrested, not because people were criticizing him.

I fully support the rights of anyone who wants to fly the Confederate flag, the Nazi flag, or the Islamic State flag if you want to.  The rest of us are then free to call you a bigot.

No, the Nazis Didn't Enact Gun Control to Seize Power

A common theme among the selective-interpretation-of-the-Second-Amendment-enthusiasts is that the Nazis imposed gun control on the German people so they could assume power and rule with an iron fist.  Strictly speaking, Hitler and the Nazis did affect gun control; they made it easier to get guns, with the notable exception of the Jews whom they didn't exactly extend a whole lot of other rights towards.

There was gun control in Germany in 1919 in response to the Treaty of Versailles, which was vehemently opposed by Hitler in Mein Kampf:

Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors [...] But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. 

Then in 1928 Gun Control was addressed again by the Weimar government with the Law on Firearms and Ammunition, which eased some of the restrictions on private gun ownership while simultaneously enacting strict licensing requirements.  It wasn't until 1938 after Hitler had been in power for three years that gun control was addressed again.

The German Weapons Act of 1938, continued to ease many restrictions on firearms in Germany including:

• Gun restrictions only applied to handguns and were removed from long rifles.
• Expanded the groups of people allowed to own guns including lowering the age of firearm possession to 18.
• Gun permit renewal was extended to three years instead of one.
• Jews were forbidden from obtaining a permit to manufacture weapons and ammunition (Forham Law).

The regulations were then extended later in 1938 with the Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons.  That seems self-explanatory.

It never ceases to amaze me how in the age of the internet, with more information accessible to anyone then at any other time in human history, that people can so easily use quasi-factual arguments without being challenged.  Confirmation bias is a bitch.

If you think that gun control is what allowed the Nazis to seize and maintain power then a gun won't help you defend against tyranny, because you're too easily manipulated to begin with.

Sources:
Fordham Law http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr

Treaty of Versailles http://web.archive.org/web/20080509145908/http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/versaillestreaty/ver159.html

Today in Moronic Memes

 

I generally don't like internet memes.  On a good day memes can be clever and maybe point out irony, but more often they reduce nuanced ideas down to a couple of sentences to appease the intellectually lazy.  The above is one such meme with which I'd like to point out the following flaws:

• First,"heroine" is a female hero; "heroin" is a drug derived from opium.
• This baby is engaging in a logical fallacy known as the "straw man argument" that is misrepresenting the argument of your opponent.  As far as I can tell no serious person holding office, has suggested that we ban all guns and I am unaware of any legislation that has been introduced.  Furthermore, assuming for a second that those conditions I am unaware of exist, they certainly don't represent the vast majority of those whom support gun control.
• There is a long history of humans doing drugs.  In fact, it's all of human history in every society in the world.  Demand for drugs is largely inelastic meaning most people will continue to buy them regardless of the price.  The demand for guns is likely fairly elastic meaning that beyond a certain point, most people won't be willing to spend that much money on them.  I don't think it's a stretch to say that the demand for drugs is far more widespread than the demand for guns.
• Estimates for opium consumed globally per year are around 3,700 tons (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime).  This number is most likely flawed do to the difficult nature of estimating a black market; however, given the concentrated nature of heroin you could probably meet American demand for heroin with one tractor-trailer truck of pure heroin.  Based on size it would be much easier to meet demand for guns rather than heroin.
• Expanding on the idea of supply and demand, nearly all guns in the United States have legal origins, manufactured in large factories 100% legally, often within our own borders.  It's much harder to manufacture guns on a massive scale than it is to manufacture drugs.  Maybe that will change as 3D printing becomes more prevalent, but as of right now the argument doesn't hold water.
• If your argument is that guns should be legal because illegal goods like heroin and meth are prevalent, then logic follows that you support the idea that heroin and meth should be legal.  I'm not saying that this is necessarily the worst idea, but that is what you are arguing...
• Many countries with strict gun control have succeeded in reducing the number of guns and raising the street price of illegal guns.  Australia, which had a similar gun culture to ours, instituted strict gun control after a massacre and now the price of a pistol in Sydney averages around $15,000 (The Australian).

You might be able to convince me gun control is a waste of time, but you'll need to do better than a baby meme.

Sources:
United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Afghanistan/Afghan_Opium_Trade_2009_web.pdf

The Austrailian http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/gun-smuggling-linked-to-criminal-gangs/story-e6frg6nf-1226499388180

Will Sex-Bots Save Humanity?

 

From time to time, I engage in thought experiments concerning how weird the future will be.  I think about how humanity will cope with global warming, the enduring threat of global conflict, coming challenges from bacterial resistance, and the social, economic, and physical consequences from ever-improving artificial intelligence.  It is about the ever-improving artificial intelligence that I wish to expand upon today.  Artificial intelligence specifically relating to one thing that may save humanity or maybe destroy it:  Humanoid sex-bots.

Whitewashing History

Why would anyone trust these people?

One of the more troubling trends to come out the past 15 years is the complete re-writing of the reasons we got involved in the Iraq War.  The reasoning behind the war now falls primarily on bad intelligence.  Simply if our intelligence hadn't been so wrong about weapons of mass destruction then the Bush administration wouldn't have led us into war.  I can forgive someone who wasn't politically aware at the time for believing this, but having been politically aware at the time; I can say that this is complete bullshit.

Part of the chorus of apologists is NY Times columnist David Brooks whom recently wrote an editorial oddly titled "Learning From Mistakes":

...The first obvious lesson is that we should look at intelligence products with a more skeptical eye.  There’s a fable going around now that the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war.