Note: this page was created from 12:30am to 2:00am in a fit of rage. I'm not thinking very clearly. Organizational skills are lacking, as is my ability to type quickly and accurately. Who cares.

• The legislation is unconstitutional. The term "indecency" is not only vague and difficult to define legally but has also been established to be protected by the First Amendment by the Supreme Court. Furthermore, the Court has also held repeatedly that any censorship legislation must use the "least restrictive means." The CDA's board controls are more restrictive that those of any other media when the Internet is one of the least 'pervasive' of all--and in fact lends itself ideally to self regulation.
• No justification. Even if all so-called "justifications" for censoring pornography were accepted, they would still not mandate any sort of censorship legislation. If we are indeed an evil race and pornography is indeed a nasty, terrible, immoral thing that must be eradicated, then sweeping it under the rug is the worst possible way of dealing with it. Some complain education is expensive; try ignorance.
• Religious justifications are rediculous and self-defeating. The CDA's broad restrictions make it illegal to transmit the Bible over the Internet as it includes numerous indecent passages. In fact, the text of the bill itself contains "indecent" language and probably can't be legally transmitted online.
• The protection of our First Amendment rights is necessary for the survival of a free society. There is a reason the Bill of Rights exists: to protect a society from the oppression of the majority. Pure democracy--by definition--allows the majority to oppress minority opinions and rights. Constitutional democracy, on the other hand, sets up certain limitations that protect the individuals fundamental right to speak out against an oppressive social system. This is what the Declaration of Independence is all about. Once the First Amendment is destroyed--once we allow the government to take away these fundamental protections--the survival of liberty is at stake. While limitations on the said rights are indeed necessary when such speech represents a "clear and present danger" to the United States, pornography on the Internet is but a mockery of that standard.

  [ Censored | CDT: Free Speech Online | Communications Decency Act FAQ | Routine Somersaults of Self-Censorship | The Tenderich Ten | Re: Pornography ]

Fuck the War on Drugs

• The Drug War is based on lies. The threat to society does not come from drug usage, but drug regulation. Drug control laws are based on a policy of hypocricy: tobacco and alcohol usage are responsible for more than 200,000 deaths annually; illegal drugs are responsible for approximately 3500. In it thousands of years of known use, marijuana has never caused a single death. The end of the prohibition of alcohol in 1933 proved the futility of drug control by increasing violence, increasing crime, and negatively impacting society as a whole.
• The US government is the largest drug peddler in the world, pushing the export of tobacco to other countries while chastizing them for their exports of cocaine.
• The Drug War is a threat to the rights of all Americans. In the name of this "War", property is confiscated, innocent citizens are destroyed and foreign wars are waged.
  The "Drug War" pogrom being promulgated across the land by authoritarian bigots based in the United States has failed so miserably in it's stated purpose "to limit and control access to drugs that can make you 'high' or intoxicated in a pleasant way" [1], that it's now seen as the engine of a lingering and accelerating "Kristallnacht" against several cultural groups including Native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, tens of millions of "other" Americans who use psychoactive plants recreationally, and several religious sensibilities including many variants of Shamanism, the Ethiopian Coptic Zion Church, the Rastafarians, and any person who chooses to crossover into experimentation or practice of one of these religious systems. These links connect to some of the people who realize that America is repeating one of her most preposterous blunders. A mistake so large it left a skidmark on the Constitution the last time it was attempted (18th and 21st amendments). Something which Richard Milhous Nixon liked to call his "War on Drugs."
• Dare to think for yourself. What a concept.
• Basic Lockeian social contract theory implies that the government has no need to regulate your actions if they do not affect the safety or well-being of others. Were the relationship between the government and citizens the US not perverted as they are today, this would be painfully clear. Why does any individual, group or governing body have any right to tell me what I can or cannot do in the privacy of my own home, provided my actions don't threaten their liberty?
• You have no right not to be offended. No such right exists. If you can avoid the situation (e.g. it is not pervading), then my right to speak my mind outweighs your right to security/peace and quiet/whatever. If you don't like what I have to say, and hearing me say it threatens to destroy whatever fragile beliefs you may hold, grow up and learn to deal with it--don't try to take away my right to say it.

  The billions of dollars we spend every year enforcing drug laws--entire Federal agencies dedicated to the futile goal of preventing the sale and use of controlled substances. The thousands--if not millions--of prison beds filled with drug users and dealers alike. The countless others who are incarcerated for drug related crimes. The legal costs for the said inmates' trials. The thousands of dead teenagers killed in drug related crimes. Political careers jumpstarted by candidates' support for the "War on Drugs".

  God fucking forbid, resources could be reinvested in programs--education and treatment--that might actually make a difference. What a concept.

  [ A Guided Tour of the War on Drugs | The War on Drugs is a Scam | The Drug War is Killing Us | Cures Not Wars | Dope Fiends | Crime and the Drug War | FEAR: Forfeiture Endangers American Rights | The Facts ]

Fuck the Fascism

• Political Corrections. "The National Security State uses fascism to protect capitalism while they say they're protecting democracy from communism." The disintegration of Liberty and the rule of Fascism in the United States. Only the most arrogant of people refuse to acknowledge that the freedom of religion and the freedom of expression were the ideals that precipitated the creation of the United States and that their Puritan ancestors were themselves escaping oppressive social conditions.
• Open your damn mind. Believe those who seek truth; doubt those who claim they have found it. The simple meme-criterion filter of resisting new ideas (conservatism) or rejecting them (orthodoxy) is the single greatest impediment to social progress.
• You are told not to think. Free thought threatens the status quo, and hence "security".
  It does become ominous when defenders of the status quo domesticity, whether nuclear family or Maoist collective, justify legislative and coercive force to prevent the emergence of higher levels of consciousness and evolution. The social moralist then becomes a neurological fascist relentlessly opposed to any conception of human destiny higher than docile ant-hill productivity.
• Fuck Faith. "Through some twist of fate western society has come to regard faith as a virtue. To hold an idea as true despite all evidence to the contrary is an abdication of reason. Convictions are the end of knowledge, not the beginning; they are the enemy of truth more than lies."
• Religious convictions are based on fear. Take a look sometime at the opening page on one of those Gideon (?) Bibles you find in motel rooms; that single page of "Comfort in time of Need, etc." references seems lie at the very heart of religion, because it allows one to forfeit free thought in exchange for emotional and psychological security. This is the trademark of all organized religion and makes me want to yak.

  [ Fighting the Religious Right | Dare to think for yourself | Free Exercise of Religion | Ring of Truth | Shreveport Humanists | The Tyranny Page: It Can't Happen Here? | Re: Pornography ]