Hate Crime

“Adding extra penalties to a crime based upon the offender’s motive or prejudicial statements is an unconstitutional abridgement of free expression. … Proponents of hate crime laws have attempted to compare the need for hate crime laws with the need for laws against discrimination. On the other hand, some have noted that civil rights laws target discriminatory behavior, not the prejudice behind the behavior.” (Encyclopedia of American Law)

I owe the reader a precision. The first sentence has been cut to express my full endorsement of the idea and this is not the current state of the law. The original sentence is “Critics of hate crime statutes argue that adding extra penalties to a crime etc.”

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One Repeal to Freedom: Terminating the Civil Rights Acts

The most conspicuous, when the Acts are repealed, is that nothing will be changed. The fair employment section has not desegregated the workplace and the fair housing act has not desegregated neighborhoods–as far as those for whom these acts were allegedly passed, the Negroes, are concerned.

“Civil rights are statutory protections against discrimination, enacted by legislative bodies to regulate activities in the private sector. … Civil liberties are the rights we have against the state, that is, against government.” (S. Kennedy & D. Schultz, American Public Service, 2011)

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The Threat of Standing Armies

(Completes The People in Arms in Law 14.)

The second amendment has three functions: (1) To defend against a tyrannical government

Assuming a tyrannical government is what Scalia calls “public violence” in the phrase “(protecting oneself against) both public and private violence,” and that to defend against it is to defend against its army, can it be done by the militias as known from the statutes?

The National Guard is “under the dual control of the state governments and the federal government”: If one of the two controllers is the tyrannical government, the National Guard cannot act as a defense against it unless it splits from the tyrannical controller. If the two controllers are together, the National Guard can do nothing.

State Defense forces are under state control. They cannot defend against a tyrannical government if the state in question supports said government or is the tyrannical government.

These are not militias but integral parts of the governments that the Constitution suspects of possible public violence and tyranny, and therefore the legislative acts are best described as maneuvers to empty out a major constitutional object.

ii

Why did the Founders fear standing armies? Standing armies are made of the scum of society (Montesquieu already said so, why would it be different today?), so in the final analysis what you’ve got is a scum bureaucracy and a political lobby of the scum, which is gathered in a mass and thus can develop a scum class consciousness (contrary to tertiary sector workers, completely atomized). Add police to this brutish organized element and, besides big business (Delaware Inc. [see below]), you’ve got the most prominent political lobby in the state.

The Republican Party is their mouthpiece now (them plus small business. What blue collars? The jobs are outsourced in China), which platforms therefore ask both for small government and large armed forces: a banana republic. So much so that, seeing this farce, some true conservatives have been forced to flee to a third party, the Libertarians, even though, as I wrote elsewhere (Law 10), a two-party system is better than a multi-party system. The Republican Party’s platforms vindicate both small government and large armed forces. Small business, bosses and employees alike, the former due to their opposition to red tape, the later out of resentment against functionaries’ entitlement, calls for small government. The praetorians call for large armies. The Democratic Party’s platforms are dictated by the technostructure, which is compounded of big business and state bureaucracy.

iii

When this or that politician emphatically declaims that the army is the most desegregated institution in the states, it’s a bloody sarcasm on racial minorities. More desegregated is only… prisons. What is it they gloat over?

In my opinion, professional soldiers should never be called veterans. It must be reserved to drafted civilians. The figures of military outsourcing in the U.S. (Titan Corporation etc.) are now staggering and these companies’ employees most probably never get called veterans.

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Delaware Inc.

Biden has spent his career making it difficult to wipe out debt via bankruptcy. Biden is from Credit Card Company-run Delaware. (Patrick Howley, journalist)

Oh Biden is from Delaware… Recently I read this on Delaware: “Most American corporations are incorporated in Delaware and … most Delaware cases of corporation law are done in front of professional judges [Delaware Court of Chancery, an equity court], not jury laymen.” (De Geest, American Law: A Comparative Primer, 2020)

I apologize for putting Howley’s “credit cart company run-Delaware” description in its true light, which is that it’s not even half the picture, since “Most American corporations are incorporated in Delaware and … most Delaware cases of corporation law are done in front of professional judges, not jury laymen.”

Delaware is the incorporation state of “most American corporations” so they can avoid litigation via popular juries.

Therefore, the item Howley lays down from Biden’s record (making it difficult to wipe out debt via bankruptcy) must have a more accurate reason, which is, in my opinion, that Delaware is the state of big corporation interests and it’s small business owners who need accommodating bankruptcy laws. Big corporations have an interest in holding small business by the throat.

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The Mexican Flag As Gown

North Carolina student denied diploma after wearing Mexican flag over graduation gown.

Here’s the story.

“Livestreamed video footage from the ceremony shows the principal ask him to take the flag off. After an unsuccessful attempt to take it off, he was handed his diploma holder, which the other students also received. But after walking across the stage, he was denied his actual diploma.”

“This incident is not about the Mexican flag,” the school said, adding they “strongly support [their] students’ expression of their heritage.” But “school dress code allows decoration only on graduation cap.”

Then, “In a statement to ABC News on Sunday, … High School said that Lopez’s diploma has been available for pick up since Friday and that an apology has never been requested, expected or required.”

With title “North Carolina student denied diploma after wearing Mexican flag over graduation gown,” the author of the paper seemingly intends to make of this story a civil liberties issue, whereas it is a dress code issue, and when you read till the end, of course the student’s got his diploma: he can pick it up at the school and the school has not even asked for an apology for the decoration day’s dress code breach.

ii

The facts: E. Lopez wore the flag of Mexico over his graduation gown at decoration day. The principal who was to hand the diploma asked him to remove the flag because it was a breach of the school’s dress code for decoration day, upon which demand Lopez tried to comply but had difficulty removing the flag, so the principal handed the diploma nevertheless, finding Lopez’s wish to comply compliant enough. However, someone else from the school staff, after he had walked across the stage, thought differently and took the diploma back. This caused some outrage and a small demonstration took place in the next days. The school explained that the sanction had nothing to do with the flag but with a breach of dress code, that the diploma was available at the school for Lopez to pick it up, and that the school was not asking him an apology. The sanction was therefore simply that his diploma was withheld a few days by school officials, which seems quite fair and the school could have asked for an apology in the bargain without making a disproportionate demand, I find.

A paper was released (attached to a video from decoration day) with title “North Carolina student denied diploma after wearing Mexican flag over graduation gown.”

I wonder whether the word “denied” is not misleading and I would really like to know how other readers interpreted it. The diploma was retained a few days, does it justify the use of the word “denied”? On the other hand, Lopez did not get his diploma that day so he was denied the diploma that day, sure; still, he was not denied the diploma more than a few days…

The first thing that came to my mind when reading the headline (I’m not an American citizen and for a moment I overlooked the narrower meaning of the word diploma in English) is that E. Lopez was denied his degree, that is, the school authorities canceled his studies because of his wearing a foreign flag on his gown at decoration day, as if they had found it a seditious act. We all know the issue with flags is sensitive, Republicans tried to make burning or otherwise defiling the Stars and Stripes a criminal offense (the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional, so they tried to amend the Constitution, no less), so for a moment I thought school authorities had reacted in a hugely disproportionate way (the Supreme Court grants school authorities extensive prerogatives so why not?). I had been reading about Mexico’s President Vicente Fox urging, in his times, Mexican migrants to keep Mexico’s interest at heart when they vote in the U.S., so perhaps the climate in the school was marred by ethnic tensions and the authorities would have seized the opportunity and used the power that is bestowed upon them to make an example, treating the case as sedition and canceling the kid’s study years in a snap.

After I cooled down I knew it was only about the paper document, but still to “deny” Lopez this document, like forever, would have been disproportionate.

Then I found out the document was only withheld a few daysand I think it is all set (and the school could even have asked for an apology in my opinion). I said this was a mere dress code issue and not a civil liberties issue but this is not accurate: a dress code issue may well be a civil liberties issue, as is known since Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969): “The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, did not permit a public school to punish a student for wearing a black armband as an anti-war protest, absent any evidence that the rule was necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others.”

The school authorities may have been quite lenient with Lopez because they had this Supreme Court’s decision in mind and not only because of possible diplomatic consequences or out of political correctness.

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“Not liberty, but Dominion”

« (President John Quincy Adams) continued, America “goes not abroad in search of enemies to destroy.” If America embarked upon such a course she would “involve herself beyong the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.” In prophetic words, Adams added, “The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force … She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” Adams summed up America’s achievement in these words: “(Her) glory is not dominion, but liberty.” » (Claes G. Ryn, America the Virtuous, 2003)

“Not dominion, but liberty,” President Quincy Adams said. Now it seems that Americans are going to have “not liberty, but Dominion” (Dominion Voting Systems).

The very word Dominion should be abhorrent to Americans, for two reasons.

1/ In this major presidential speech from 1821 (the “not dominion, but liberty” speech) President Adams was reaffirming the tradition, set up by Washington in his farewell address, of avoiding entanglement in international relations, of avoiding it for the very sake of America’s greatness.

2/ Pursuant to the same ideal, America advocated nations’ right of self-determination in a time when the British and other European countries had world empires with dominions, allegedly “self-governing” colonies. That is to say the word dominion runs into the idea of self-determination.

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The Faceless Against Hate

Justin Trudeau: Freedom of expression isn’t “freedom to hate.”

That’s the true state of Canadian law, where faceless bureaucrats (of whom Trudeau is but the mouthpiece) decide what is hate and what is not, and what citizens, writers, intellectuals, journalists are allowed to say.

That a few states be added to the territory over which the Union is sovereign, is long overdue. If the U.S. does not consider it seriously or keeps accepting such a sham, such a parody of democracy at its border, then the Union will not be able to maintain its freedoms for long because its sense of freedom will be eroded by the deceptive idea that a country can be mocking and trampling liberties as Canada does and still be a legitimate model of Western democracy.

Before the internet people had no idea, but I fear the internet is not going to make Canadians ask for the same freedoms as their neighbor but rather that American faceless bureaucrats will press Congress and courts to curtail American freedoms, legitimized by the Canadian example. I fear the internet is not going to make Canadians ask for the same freedoms as their neighbor, precisely because their system is locked up. People do not decide what subjects are open to debate, Canadians are not allowed to ask “freedom to hate,” that would be, as the faceless bureaucrats construe it, to stand against the state, that would be sedition.

You might say Trudeau is the face of the “faceless,” after all. As much as a conservative prime minister would. They are called faceless no matter who is “in charge” because, in a locked-up system, the people cannot look at bureaucracy as in a mirror. Their dictates are promises made to lobbies behind closed doors; and while they hardly ever show up on political platforms, yet repressive laws are piling up.

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Flag Desecration Amendments Galore

Whereas in most countries flag desecration is a criminal offense punishable with prison, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a statute prohibiting burning and otherwise defiling the Stars and Stripes.

Therefore, since Texas v. Johnson, 1989, in order to make it a criminal offense like elsewhere U.S. lawmakers need a constitutional amendment.

« There have been several proposed Flag Desecration Amendments to the Constitution of the United States that would allow Congress to enact laws to prohibit flag desecration:

Douglas Applegate (Ohio) in 1991
Spencer Bachus (Alabama) in 2013
Steve Daines (Montana) in 2019
Robert Dornan (California) in 1991
Bill Emerson (Missouri) in 1991, 1993, 1995
Randy Cunningham (California) in 1999, 2001, 2003,
Jo Ann Emerson (Missouri) in 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013
John P. Hammerschmidt (Arkansas), 1991
Orrin Hatch (Utah) in 1995, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2011, 2013
Andrew Jacobs Jr. (Indiana) in 1995
Joseph M. McDade (Pennsylvania) in 1989, 1995, 1996
Clarence E. Miller (Ohio) in 1991
John Murtha (Pennsylvania) in 2007
Ron Paul (Texas) in 1997, but he opposed any federal prohibition of flag desecration, including his own Flag Desecration Amendment which he proposed only as a protest against proposals by his Congressional colleagues, such as Emerson and Solomon, to ban flag desecration through ordinary legislation instead of by Constitutional Amendment.
Gerald B. H. Solomon (New York) in 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997
Floyd Spence (South Carolina) in 1991
David Vitter (Louisiana) in 2009 »

(Wikipedia: Flag Desecration)

To think that lawmakers are so obstinate, they must have plenty of time to waste. But this is no surprise; as I always say, it takes independent judges tenured for life to defend free speech, whereas elected officials are always against free speech.