Redefining words: Contrary to what you think, it’s not hostile to bomb cities and kill people

By David McElroy · June 18, 2011

One of the ironies of majoritarian political systems is that they turn otherwise-reasonable people into blind hypocrites.

When Bill Clinton launched military attacks on other countries, Republicans said he had no power to do so and would be wrong even if it were legal. They were opposed to “nation-building” — at least until George W. Bush started doing it, in which case it became fine. Under Bush, it was Democrats in the streets chanting, “Bush lied, people died,” and demanding an end to war. But now that Barack Obama is continuing policies that are pretty indistinguishable from Bush’s, I don’t see many Democrats in the street chanting.

On Friday, we had the news that President Obama ignored the legal advice given to him by the top lawyers in the Pentagon and the Justice Department saying that he had no legal authorities to continue attacking Libya without congressional approval starting about a month ago. (I’m ignoring the entire question of whether the War Powers Act is even constitutional.) Obama wanted to keep attacking the Libyan regime after the 60-day window allowed by the War Powers Act, so he just ignored it.

Well, it’s not entirely fair to say he ignored he. He merely redefined what he was doing. He claimed that the bombing the U.S. military was doing in Libya didn’t amount to “hostilities.” Just how many people do you have to kill before the action becomes hostile?

I’m not surprised to see a president brazenly ignoring the law. I’m not surprised to find most members of Congress quietly ignoring the lawbreaking. (Kudos to the 10 members who are suing to stop the illegal action, by the way.) I suppose the only thing that surprises me is that people still pretend that laws apply. If we’re just going to make up what the law means as we go, why go through the charade of pretending we care what the written law says?

At least since the beginning of the s0-called “Progressive era,” we’ve been told that the U.S. Constitution is a “living document” that means different things over time. This obscene idea has spread so far that it has no limits, apparently.

As far back as 1946, George Orwell was warning that words were being used in dishonest ways to cover up their true meaning. Orwell was a socialist, so he certainly didn’t agree with my views about the world, but he and I agree that if you torture the language in order to cover up what you’re doing, you’re being dishonest, no matter what you favor.

People who favor majoritarian systems talk a lot about the morality of their systems. They make noises about rights and laws and respect for others. But in practice, any majoritarian system comes down to the use of force. This is how “democracy” works. You will do things my way or else I will bomb you back to the stone age. But it’s not “hostilities” when we do it, of course.

The problem isn’t just the politicians who happen to be in charge right now. It’s a mistake to point fingers at Obama right now or Bush before him. The problem is the coercive state itself. Any system that asserts that it has the right to force people in its own territory to obey will eventually assert the right to force people outside its borders to obey, even if they claim the force is for the people’s own good.

Barack Obama deserves to be called out for his dishonesty right now. George W. Bush deserved to be called out for his dishonesty before that. But as long as partisans just keep pointing fingers in this way, they’ll ignore the real issue, which is “our enemy, the state.”

Note: The art about “how democracy works” is available for sale as a poster at this site.

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When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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