Wonderful Matters

I just wanted to briefly confess some naivete, and elaborate a bit on the things I shared that are hate speech crimes but the World seems to be perfectly happy blapping loudly about. Remember those things? If I told you to go steal something from the store across the street, and you were particularly impressionable and went off to do it, would I not be complicit in the theft? If I am, I can't see how I haven't committed a hate speech crime. If I told you to go commit a sexually immoral or indecent act with someone else, even if that someone else appeared to be perfectly fine with it, and I furthermore shared with you explicit instructions about how to do it and how to feel about it, would I not be complicit in sexual abuse? If I am, I can't see how I haven't committed an act of hate speech. If I told you to act on your desire to obtain something someone else has, particularly when it appears that someone else is in a different tribe with common physical features...

Sadly, for so many, understanding that hate speech is indeed a crime will never happen. It'd be nice, but it just won't happen. We've been a civilized people for, what, at least 6,000 years, and we're still not getting it. We look around at people trying and trying and trying and just get exasperated. I confess, I do too. I look at it all, and get exasperated. I'm working at acceptance, something I myself have been on about for some 20, 30 years. Acceptance is a very good thing, but it is still hard for me to not feel it when people simply refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes. Oh, Jesus did the same thing, trust me. You can find how he felt in Scripture, His own words. Read about His feelings here, in just these few verses from the gospel of Mark -- 3:5, 6:6, 8:12 -- yeah, check it out. Jesus got exasperated . So yeah, I really can't add anything else to what I've shared, to what I've encouraged people to look at in Scripture or in...

I wanted to continue the thread from the last post with a few more thoughts, but I won't have time to continue it as I'd like. I just don't have the time. I may put in a "Part VI" with more later, but I'm afraid there will always be more to blog on. There is so much the World is doing to draw people into its clutches, and much of it involves the most hateful speech there is. For now I can briefly add this to top off my remarks on socialism from the last post. No matter how much you think socialism is the answer in some form or another, even if you are the nicest sounding Christian -- and yes, much of socialism's strength comes from very nice-sounding Christians -- governance  works it out so that powerful exploiters, rich people very good at value extraction, continue to  get rich  so governance can appropriate more of wealth. Progressive taxes mean it can get more tribute. And governance needs gobs of rent-bestowed exploiters out there for sucking u...

A few years ago I wondered why a video game company didn't invent a gaming experience in which the player can shoot at his enemy of choice -- zombie, monster, Nazi, whatever -- and do so in and about his regular environs.  That is, he dons a set of glasses, goggles, or other such somewhat non-obstructive reasonably fashionable VR device, and the images of his targets appear from behind the tree across the street, from around the corner of the building in front of him, from behind the couch in his living room. Blam blam blam  -- using your fake pistol aimed at fake threats in a real setting, there you go, you just saved your family from some evil being right there about to invade your home. Or at least you could feel  like you did. Well, now there is something that is coming close to that, Pokemon Go, and it is the biggest video game craze since Pong. Apparently you can hop out and find Pokemon out and about in your regular environs , sort of a combination of video Pok...

I am blogging yet again on a day when otherwise I'd be at work giving every once of attention to my job. I am blessed to do this now because I have time off from work for a while. I'm also committed to sharing more out of my latest home page piece in which I make the case that hate speech is indeed a crime, and that there should indeed be laws governing it. The twist is that just as much as the liberal politically correct crowd is obsessed with speech police enforcement of offensive language violations, they too are subject to the same laws. When someone screeches "You microaggressed me!" I am perfectly within my rights to insist right back, " You're  microaggressing me! You're the one who's violating healthy speech expectations!" Yesterday I went into a bit more detail about how sodomous behavior actually destroys those who engage in it and as such I am perfectly justified in speaking out against it, and indeed it is those openly and vocall...

After posting my latest home page piece , I realized I should probably blog a bit about all the stuff included in the idea of speech . Yes, I'll never blog enough to cover all the things I wanted to write, all the things I'm still thinking about it all. This is why a critical component is that we're talking about it with others, indefinitely, just talking . That's a very good thing. It is also why I should mention one of the top philosophers regarding this "freedom of speech" thing, and that is John Stuart Mill. I wanted to plug him into the home page piece, but I just couldn't find a place for him without messing with an already delicate cohesion. But he deserves a mention. He argued that we should live in an environment where all our differences may be respected and there is opportunity for all views to be shared. If a particular view is considered irrational or unrighteous in some way, well then, we can all employ our level-headedness and s...

I finally uploaded my latest home page piece , and I had a goal of making a reasonably clear statement about this thing speech . I think I was able to share some lucid considerations, but I realize it is a subject that is so complex and multi-faceted that it requires much more -- ahem  -- talking  about it. What I've seen out there in the big bad world right now is a lot of rigmarole over what kind of speech is acceptable. There is this conception mostly among conservative/libertarian types that any  speech is acceptable ("Hey! First Amendment  baby!") but this always reflects a pathetic refusal to do the intellectual hard work to understand what's really happening. In fact, I've come to the realization that hate speech is indeed a crime, and should be fully prosecuted with the full extent of the law. The terribly troubling part about that is, what is it exactly  that should be prosecuted? This is a critical component of the presently raging culture war, and...