War of Words

Okay kids.  Let's talk freedom of speech.  I think the 1st amendment is the most contested of the 27 amendments that have been ratified, so I'd like to weigh in with my opinion and a few indisputable facts.

I started meditating on Freedom of Speech and its meaning a few days ago when Richard Spencer was stripped of his credentials and ejected from the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC.  For those of you who don't know, Richard Spencer is the president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, and a very outspoken white supremacist.  He stands by the policies of Adolph Hitler and has called for a "peaceful ethnic cleansing" in America.  When interviewed outside the conference after his ejection he made several comments that were taken as a call to action for white supremacists.  He also stated that white American citizens of European descent have become a minority in this country.  First of all, so what?  This country was created to be a melting pot, not a glass of milk.  Second, NO THEY AREN'T.  I'm so sick of uneducated people making that assertion.  Look at the facts.  Based on the most recent U.S. census non-Latino Caucasians make up 63.7% of this country.  The next most prominent ethnic group, Latinos, only constitutes 16.3% of the population.  That means there are 4 whites for every Latino citizen in this country.  And that ratio becomes even more unbalanced for African Americans (12.2%), Asians (4.7%), American Indians (0.7%), and those considering themselves multi-racial (1.9%).  So in what way are whites a minority?  I will fight to the death for Freedom of Speech, even hate speech, as long as those words are factual, legal, and based in reality.  Mr. Spencer fails on all fronts.  So let's take a look at what Freedom of Speech does/does not mean in this country.

Fact 1:  Although many don't like to admit it, Freedom of Speech was created to protect unpopular opinions.  That is the essence of why it exists.  Think about it.  No one needs to create a law to protect people from shouting "I love puppies!" or, "Rainbows are awesome!"  No.  The founding fathers created the law to protect outsider beliefs and those that could cause offense.  More importantly, Freedom of Speech was first contemplated as a means to allow citizens to voice their dissent against political officials and government.  The 1st amendment sort of grew out of a distaste for the oppressive rules of the British monarchy.

Fact 2: The amendments to the constitution protect citizens from legal retaliation in the criminal courts, not the civil courts with the noted exceptions of slander and libel.  You can say as many hateful things as you want without risk of being arrested or prosecuted.  In the case of slander (verbal defamation) and libel (written defamation) you can still say whatever you like as long as what you say is true.  But that doesn't mean that society can't punish you in its own way.  For example (and this may surprise some of you) I firmly stand behind the right of a bakery to say they will not make cakes for gay weddings.  A bakery is a privately owned business and, just like any other business, they have the right to refuse service to anyone they choose.  That being said, I defend the rights of any citizen who refuses to patronize those businesses.  I also defend their right to hold protests outside the business on public property.  That right is also guaranteed under the 1st amendment.  Another example would be Chick-Fil-A.  The restaurant chain's president, Dan Cathy, is a right-wing Christian conservative who has spoken out against LGBT rights.  He's allowed to do that.  It's a privately owned business and he's entitled to his bigoted opinions.  I however, am expressing my rights by refusing to eat there.

As I said, I will defend Free Speech to the death, but there are lines.  Statements made that cause physical harm to an individual, both perceived and implied, are off limits. There's a reason you aren't permitted to yell FIRE in a crowded theater (unless there actually IS a fire).  The resulting panic of individuals rushing to get out and save their own lives would cause great harm to everyone around them.  Telling someone to act out in a dangerous way is off the table as well.  You can't tell a rally of people to kill all the n****rs.  You can't threaten anyone's life in general.   You can't preach in an effort to evoke harm.  You can't call citizens to act in a violent or illegal manner.

There is also the line of protected classes.  You can't refuse service simply because someone is black or because they are Muslim.  You have to ensure that your business is handicapped accessible.  You can't refuse to hire women.  There are certain demographics like age, sex, religion, ancestry, etc that the government has decided warrant special protection under the law.  That's pretty awesome but it's only a start.  Right now there are only 10 protected classes.  That list needs to be much longer.  So far there are no civil protections for those of the LGBTQ community and that is a travesty.  I'm not gay myself, but I stand my all my fellow citizens.  No H8.

So, as long as what someone has to say is factual, legal, and based in reality, I support their right to say it.  Supporting free speech is fundamental in a democratic society.  But just as hate speech is legal, so is our right to speak out against it.  Just last month I told off an elderly man for making a horribly racist statement to a black pharmacy clerk.  As Michelle Obama said, "When they go low, we go high."  We have to stand by our moral convictions and let the world know we what we will and will not tolerate.  We might have to suffer under a delusional, nationalistic, autocrat in the White House but we can be still be vocal about our dissent.  That is our right and our duty as American citizens.

P.S. I do like puppies.

The Good Things From the Bad

I woke up Saturday thinking, 'Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe there wasn't an inauguration yesterday.  Maybe there's hope left for this country.'  But no, it wasn't.  And yes, there was.  Still, regardless of those facts, there is always room left for hope.

I purposefully did not watch any news coverage yesterday.  I avoided social media and listened to CD's in my car rather than the radio.  I didn't want to hear any of the details of the catastrophe that was unfolding in our nations capitol.  But I can't avoid it forever.  So today I broke down and turned on the news.

Instead of a pretentious, overblown, tasteless, megalomaniacal dictator I saw crowds marching.  I saw pink knit pussyhats en masse.  I saw hordes gathered across the country as well as around the world marching in solidarity against tyranny.  I saw men, women, and children together waving banners declaring that 'LOVE TRUMPS HATE'.  It was a reminder to me that the good thing about bad things is how they draw communities together.  Bad things by their very nature give birth to good things.

But good things aren't instantaneous.  Tolerance arrives over time and is often spurred on by a catalyst.  In 1872 Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined for voting in a public election.  This catapulted the women’s suffrage movement and led to the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.  In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education eliminating “separate but equal” statutes and paving the way for the eventual fall of segregation.  In 1958 Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who were legally married in Washington D.C., were arrested in the state of Virginia for the crime of cohabitation.  Nine years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Virginia law used against the Lovings was, in fact, unconstitutional citing Brown v. Board of Education as precedent.  Now, 50 years later, Loving v. Virginia was itself used as a precedent in a new battle, this time for gay marriage.  Because of the Lovings’ fight for equal rights for all citizens, same sex couples are now free to marry.  While these individual events in no way display the entirety of the journey and struggle towards freedom, they do provide an example, and inspiration, calling all of us to think better, see better, and do better for our society.

Much like today's global protests, we consistently see examples of diverse groups of individuals working together for the betterment of the community.  Wherever a natural disaster occurs, individuals gather to help one another, neighbor to neighbor, to respond and rebuild.   During health crises, medical organizations worldwide share information and resources to heal the sick, protect the healthy, and ebb the spread of disease.  In towns across America citizens gather in common causes to take back the night, end hunger, quell gang violence, or protest injustice in their communities and governments.   It is by the sheer determination of those feeling disenfranchised that each generation creates a society more accepting and tolerant than before.

And so we march.  We raise our voices.  We still live in a country where religious places of worship are vandalized or burned, where women are paid less than men for equal work, where minorities are saddled with failing educational institutions and few career prospects.  There are still veterans who fought to defend this country only to end up homeless and forgotten.  We still battle the lack of support and treatment for those with mental illnesses.  We've been saddled with an administration that encourages discrimination and abuse.  All of these conditions exist, and may continue to exist for some time.   Bad things happen quickly.  Good things take time.  In order to progress as a nation, it's up to We The People to continue to stand together for what we believe in.  We cannot rest on complacency.  Democracy and progress only triumph when individuals are given a platform, a voice, and the opportunity to instigate change.

So there IS hope.  There is always hope.  We stand together to show our children the real meaning of solidarity.  I fear that the next four years will be among the hardest that this nation has faced.  But face it we will.  We will not back down and we will not compromise.  We will teach our children about love and acceptance. And if we try hard enough we might just create a little good out of the bad.

Government 101

When I started this blog I wanted to be as inclusive as possible.  I wanted everyone to see a part of themselves here.  For that reason I have intentionally stayed away from politics and religion.  However, we are in a unique situation right now.  One that I simply can't ignore.  As Americans we believe in democracy and the notion that all men are created equal.  But we've established a political system that runs contrary to these core beliefs.  We've ended up with a 2-party system where those shunning big politics and flying the banner of the Independent party have essentially given up their power and ability to participate in our government.  We also have an electoral college that unfairly assigns power to those states with the least citizens and, therefore, steals the voice from the majority.

So how did we get here?  I'm glad you asked.  Almost 250 years ago a bunch of white, land-owning men got together to try to come up with a system of government for our fledgling nation.  There was a great rift between those that believed in a strong centralized government and those that felt a centralized government sounded too much like a monarchy and we left England to get away from such a system.  So they compromised on a system where the majority of responsibilities of governing (policing, education, social services) would be maintained by the individual states, but that larger matters (printing money, organizing a military, regulating a free market) would be handled by a representative government (side note: My spell check has made me acutely aware that I apparently don't know how to spell the word 'government'.  That's probably why I became an accountant.)

So, the states got to maintain most of their independence while still having the support of a larger national government made up of their representatives.  But who are the representatives?  How are they chosen?  How many do we each get?  If we award representation based on population, then small states like Connecticut and Delaware will have very little say.  But if we give every state an equal number of representatives then large states like New York and Pennsylvania get very little say.  What to do?  What to do?  Welcome Congress.  Congress is composed of 2 separate houses, one built of representation based on population (the House) and one giving equal voice to each state (the Senate).  Every issue of national importance must be approved by each house so both the big states, the small states, and everyone in between goes home happy.

Not quite.  There was another issue driving this concept of representation other than population.  Slavery.  Citizens of the southern states felt that, when it comes to counting population, slaves should count.  Women and indentured white farm workers counted, so why not slaves?  Okay, I'm going to answer that question, but don't shoot the messenger.  These are the thoughts of our founding fathers, not me.  Here we go.  Slaves were not counted as part of the population because they weren't considered human.  They were chattel. They were bought and sold on the free market just like pigs and horses. A pig doesn't count so why should (once again, not my word) a negro?  By excluding slaves from the census we would almost guarantee that the southern states would bail on the whole Constitutional Convention and form their own sovereign entities.  People like James Madison knew this would be a deal breaker and end their foray into democracy before it even began so he proposed the Three Fifths compromise.  Each slave would be valued equal to 60% of a free man for census purposes.  So now all the states feel they're being heard and receiving fair representation.

This brings us to the Electoral College.  I hate to say it, but the founding fathers didn't exactly have implicit trust in you and I.  Actually they didn't have trust in me at all.  I'm a woman (a nasty woman, but we'll save that for Part II).  The only citizens who were permitted to vote were other white, land-owning men.  Being a land owner was essential, but the founding fathers basically thought farmers were too stupid to understand what they were voting for.  So they put in place the Electoral College, a group of white, land-owning men nominated by each state to cast the all important votes for the Presidency on behalf of the citizens of their respective states.

Now, everyone knows that it's possible to win the most individual votes but still lose the election, but most people don't quite understand how.  Let me try to break it down for you.  When it comes to passing laws, having 2 separate houses, one based on population and one on equal representation, makes sense because the 2 vote independently of each other.  A bill has to be approved by the House (yay large and slave states) then it has to pass the Senate (shout out to all you small states).  But when it comes to electing a President those 2 get lumped together. So if you have 53 members in the House and 2 in the Senate, you get 55 Electoral votes.  Conversely, if you have 1 member in the House and 2 in the Senate you get 3 votes.  I know this is getting weird but stay with me.

This SOUNDS okay, doesn't it?  Each state should have the same number of votes as they do Congressional representatives.  It SOUNDS good, but when you do the math, it just doesn't work out.  For example.  The state of Wyoming has the lowest population of the 50 states.  It's so low (less than 600,000) that it only has 1 member in the House.  So, Wyoming gets 1 vote for their congressperson and 2 votes for their Senators, 3 total.  That works out to 1 Presidential vote for every 200k citizens in Wyoming.  Not bad.  Now lets look at California.  California's population is nearly 39 million entitling it to 53 members of the House. So it has 53 votes for their congresspersons and 2 for their Senators, 55 total. That works out to 1 vote for every >700,000 citizens.  Seems kind of unbalanced now, doesn't it?  As if that weren't bad enough almost every state in the Union (excluding Maine and Nebraska) have a winner-take-all Electoral system.  So if 51% of voters in a state vote for a particular candidate, that candidate gets 100% of the state's Electoral votes.  Essentially, if you vote for a candidate that doesn't win the popular vote in your state, too bad.  Your vote doesn't count at all.  Oh yeah, and did I mention that there's no federal law saying the Elector MUST go along with the popular vote?  Historically they do, but there's nothing stopping them from going rogue and voting for their rich but simple-minded nephew.

If you stayed awake through that last paragraph, I want to sincerely thank you.  The informed voters of America thank you.

Bottom line here, America was founded as a democratic republic.  We are supposed to believe that all men are created equal.  It's right there in the Declaration of Independence.  2nd paragraph.  Look it up.  But the Electoral College is a very firm reminder that, even today, not all men are created equal.  It was formed out of fear on the part of the founding fathers that we aren't intelligent enough to elect a President on our own.  Maintaining the antiquated system of an Electoral College denigrates the intelligence of American citizens and negates the voice and the will of the people. This past Tuesday was the second time in my lifetime that I saw a person declared President-elect who did not have the support of the majority.  It's happened a total of 5 times in American history.  I can only hope and pray that it doesn't happen again.