Category Archives: Civil Rights

Updated 2019 05 09 Freedom and equality vs rules and power — all are essential for symbiotic coexistence in a successful, thriving society. Many clamor for “freedom and equality” and forget that the price for that is “duties and obligations.” Fairness is a bit more difficult to achieve. There is little fairness in equality of outcomes. The latter is the enemy of and defeats the former.  Still, a successful, thriving society uses the right tools to establish a good balance in the apparent conflict between freedom and equality vs rules and power, by allowing and promoting them to exist in a constructive symbiosis. “The young men who are not embraced … Continue reading →

How many identity types must identity politics cater to?  The short answer to the question is, there are at least seven million different unique identity types that identity politics must address.  The figure is that large or larger when catering to identity types is not just demanded in two or three developed nations but within the context of the global village.  If it is difficult to imagine why there should be such large numbers of identity types, consider the example of a man who is a gay, Black, an illegal Chinese, Lutheran, elderly, transgendered person.  (Caution: When contemplating such combinations of category attributes, it is entirely possible that, apparently, some of … Continue reading →

Updated 2019 05 12 Identity politics clash with reality. They result in too many quotas and insufficient excellence. Lack of reward and punishment is fatal to an economy that is forced to conform to identity politics. An ideal, conservative, moral universe (let’s not quibble but assume there is such a thing) needs no identity politics.  No one is favored, no one unfairly burdened, everyone has equal opportunities, equal rights, equal obligations and equal privileges.  That’s it, that’s all, and it doesn’t get any simpler. People (except for some progressives) in a conservative moral universe will be free and generally happy. An ideal, radical-liberal, moral universe (again, let’s not quibble but assume that Utopia can be … Continue reading →

Equality of Outcomes destroys Freedom. “A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.” —Milton and Rose Friedman, in Free to Choose: A Personal Statement Facebook’s design for the constraints it wants to place on freedom of expression, by means of its “community standards,” makes it impossible to accuse Facebook and the people who run and own it of failing “to promote their own interests” … Continue reading →

Individual rights and freedom of expression took thousands of years to evolve.  They made civilization great and held the promise to make it greater yet.  Facebook is out to dismantle much of the progress in attaining universal free speech.  Instead, Facebook promotes speech codes and censorship.  Those are to freedom of expression what shackles and prisons are to freedom of movement.  That is not progress, it is regress. Human nature strives to achieve improvement, perfection, with the limits to that only being set by human imagination, and that is limited only by human ingenuity.  No flights of unlimited human imagination are achievable by using anyone’s “community standards” that constrain freedom … Continue reading →

Update 2018 12 31: Rewritten to incorporate two sections, “Comparing Facebook to other utility-access services,” and “FB must not have the right to censor”  Speech codes limit the right to free speech and to freedom of expression.  Who gave Facebook the right to act as judge, jury and executioner, to be a lawmaker, to issue the rules, to enforce, monitor compliance, judge adherence, hand down punishment for non-compliance and administer punishment accordingly?  Why did Facebook assume the powers of legislator, police, judge, jury, and jailer? I’m no longer confused. I became confused when I heard the word ‘service’ used by these agencies: Revenue Canada Service, Canada Postal Service, Telephone Service, Civil … Continue reading →

Facebook : legislator, police, judge, jury, and jailer – Facebook becomes a contender in the realm of the business of the law.  That is not a good state of affairs.   Facebook assumes the roles of police, judge, jury and executioner, even that of the legislators (legislators means lawmakers, our legally elected, legal representatives, who “hammer out the laws” that our employees – the police, the judges, and our jailers and executioners of our system of jurisprudence – install, monitor adherence to, judge the quality of performance on and administer, are put in charge of performing the duties required to ensure that punishment ordered by judges is administered properly).    Facebook … Continue reading →

The drive for re-education, for turning moral traditions topsy-turvy, by replacing them with FB community standards, is a convoluted road. The FB-reality is that the use of bad and inappropriate language of the gutter variety is good, while even to insist only slightly on maintaining established, more conservative traditions that society came to hold dear must must be regarded as being in bad taste, wherefore it is verboten.  Things become very difficult and confusing, when good becomes bad and bad becomes good, when it may be that either or both are verboten, especially when it appears that good things may at times be verboten, while bad things (things that were … Continue reading →

Sniffing butts is impolite, verboten.  Sniffing butts is a No-No.  I know that it is, because my parents and my oldest sister (17 years older than I) told me so, a long time ago, without any help or nudging from Facebook.  It was in 1939 when that happened.  Facebook had not yet come on the scene. It made its first appearance 65 years later, in 2004.   Humanity had managed fairly well until then to catch on to the rules of politeness and of political correctness, without Facebook’s help. Still, being blessed with an analytical mind and fairly early in my life, before the invasion of Poland by Hitler’s Armed Forces, the … Continue reading →

This relates to free speech, democracy and Facebook algorithms. Who falls asleep in a democracy will wake up in a dictatorship. — Otto Gritschneder (when asked why he wanted to publicize the system of terror in German military justice under the Nazis) Introduction This article series addresses free speech, freedom of expression, Facebook censorship (allegedly measured against Facebook’s infamous “community standards” and thereby justified), identity politics, and the number of identities that identity politics must cater to. (A linked index is shown after the following image.) Index Introduction Preamble Sniffing butts is a No-No, and Being politically incorrect is verboten FB community standards vs moral traditions Facebook : legislator, police, judge, jury, … Continue reading →