Southern Poverty Law Center, or: How NOT to respect a news outlet!

I've a number of criteria for judging whether a news agency is reputable or not. Usually it's a long-term process of determination but lately it's become much, much easier for me.

Wanna know why?

It's real simple: any news outlet that cites the Southern Poverty Law Center as a reputable source of information, gets a honkin' HUGE demerit and damn near an unforgivable one.

I first heard of ethnic warfare whore Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center fifteen years ago, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Dees was pimpin' himself on most of the news channels, claiming his Southern Poverty Law Center was warning the feds way in advance about "the militias movement". 'Twas enough to make me wonder who this twit was. Since then I've discovered that he's not much more than the worst sort of perpetual pest: the kind that demands everyone see a "crisis" to justify his own pathetic self-imposed purpose. In the case of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center this entails claiming that everyone who is against their wacko socialist agenda is automatically a racist on par with Hitler himself.

So it is that I have also come to sincerely believe that any so-called "journalist" who even remotely considers Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center to be creditable, should be fired automatically if not outright dragged out into the town square and locked up in the pillory for a well-earned mocking.

But don't take my word for it, dear readers! The Southern Poverty Law Center has just published a "hit list" of forty "patriots" that the organization has deemed to be a threat to American society. On the list are columnist Chuck Baldwin (he ranked #1, and that's his response at the link), Representative Ron Paul of Texas, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, and Glenn Beck (somebody that I have never listened to and have no plans to, but to the very best of my knowledge has done nothing inordinately wrong). There are also a number of outspoken critics of the federal government, and especially of the income tax and the IRS.

Curiously, there is not one person on the list who could be considered an avowed "liberal". Every person denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center is regarded by conventional wisdom as being a "conservative" or a "libertarian".

Darn. I wish that I could be on that list! Guess I'm not a big-league enough blogger yet.

Maybe if I pointed out that Morris Dees is a sexual pervert and child molester who was once caught exploiting his step-daughter, and that his Southern "Poverty" Law Center has by many accounts raked in more than a hundred million dollars by scaring the gullible with rumors of the Third Reich rising again, that maybe he would put me on his enemies list?

Or maybe putting it in larger font would mark me as a worthy adversary...

MORRIS DEES
OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

IS A SEXUAL PERVERT, CHILD MOLESTER,

ETHNIC WARFARE WHORE,

PIMP OF THE PERPETUAL CRISIS,

AND MONEY-GRABBING HUCKSTER

OF THE UTMOST DEGREE!!!

Dear Lord, I hope that will do the trick.

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A libertarian thought for a Tuesday morning

To live for the satisfaction of a government of men is the most seductive and evil slavery of all.

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Less than an hour left to smoke in restaurants in North Carolina

Our "enlightened" Governor Bev Perdue and state legislators in Raleigh have decreed that as of midnight tonight, smoking will be banned in all restaurants and other places of dining in North Carolina.

This new "law" sucks donkeys balls to no end.

(Longtime readers will recognize that as my personal "worst possible epithet" for something.)

I'm not a smoker. It's one of the nastiest, filthiest things that a person can do to himself or herself. And believe you me, I've seen firsthand the damage that cigarette smoking can do to someone.

Hell, I've worked on computers before that were owned by smokers. More than a few had corrosion on the motherboard and other components, from where the tar and nicotine had eaten away at the material. If stuff like circuit boards can have holes melted through them by cigarette smoking, think about what that same crap will do to a person.

But as much as I'm against smoking, I'm even more against government trying to micromanage our lives more and more.

The owners of bars and restaurants in this state should be free to choose for themselves whether their establishments are smoke-free or not. It's very simple: if a restaurant allows smoking, and you don't like smoking, then you can decide for yourself whether you want to eat there.

If I owned a restaurant, I'd bloody well defy this law. Hell, I'd put a sign outside my place of business proclaiming that "SMOKING ALLOWED HERE!" And then just sit back and watch the money roll in. It would be capitalism in fine form.

We all know what this really is. Perdue and her ilk are only doing this because they are too intoxicated with the thrill of the power. Like too damned many other politicians in this country. They don't give a flying rat's butt about serving their constituents, but they'll do everything they can get away with to lord their supposed "authority" over us.

They neglect to remember that their authority comes from we the people, not from government for its own sake.

I hope that enough of the citizenry will remember that when Perdue and her cronies come up for re-election.

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A more realistic political spectrum

One of the people that in the long run has most influenced and impacted my political beliefs is, without a doubt, Matt Mittan: host of the extremely popular show Take A Stand! on the radio and streaming on the Internet every Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. I count myself as a very fortunate person for getting to work under Matt when he was the editor of The Asheville Tribune. And I'll never forget the first time I came into his office and he showed me what his weekly newsmagazine was all about...

"Most people think of the political spectrum like this," he said, drawing a horizontal line on a dry erase board and labeling the ends "liberal" and "conservative". "But that's wrong," Matt went on. "It's really like this!" And he then drew another line: this one going up and down, with the state/government at the top and the individual at the bottom.

"It's really about the state having the power versus the one person having the power." And Matt continued to talk about how at one far end there is totalitarianism and fascism, and at the other wild extreme there is total anarchy.

And that's when I realized, for the very first time in my life, that the whole "conservative and liberal" thing is a con job. It's a fraud, that regardless of which "party" is in control of Washington or the states its only real purpose is to give more and more power to government. I don't want a totalitarian state and neither do I desire a completely lawless land. But in between, Matt suggested, there can indeed be a "happy medium" that upholds personal liberty while avoiding reckless abandon.

That's never going to be a cut-and-dried thing. But ever since then I have come to still believe in it enough to pursue it, with whatever talents and devices I might ever have on hand. Matt opened my eyes wider than he ever knew that day, and I've been praying since that others might come to realize it as well on their own.

Maybe that's starting to finally happen. David G. Muller Jr. has written an article for American Thinker called Rethinking the Political Spectrum, in which he also argues that the traditional "conservative versus liberal" paradigm is outdated and horribly flawed. And while he doesn't abandon the "left/right" model, Muller's model is quite similar to what Matt Mittan showed me in 2000...

Personally, I think this is a much greater and more accurate take on modern politics. It squarely places both liberalism and conservatism as less free mindsets than libertarianism: a school of thought which is enjoying considerable growth even if the party bearing its name has not of late. However, I would extend this range a bit further to the right and put "anarchy" on that fringe. In my mind, that is the ideal: personal liberty that stops short of all-out chaos. "Voluntary order", as V puts it in the graphic novel V for Vendetta.

Regardless of minor details, this is still a much better portrait of political reality than is the tired and obsolete version that most of our politicians and media and too many businesses (and more than a few religious folks) expect us to buy into.

But then: most of them have a vested interest in keeping the status quo going, aye?

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MAKE MINE FREEDOM: Amazing insight from a 1958 cartoon

Just over fifty years ago, Harding College produced a series of films "to create a deeper understanding" of American culture. This one, Make Mine Freedom, has been "re-discovered" in recent days and is making the rounds quite a bit across the Internet. Personally, I found it to be uncannily prophetic about the country we are living in today. Perhaps we should begin considering the wisdom of the past.

Here is Make Mine Freedom...

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