This is the last post in a seven-post series. The first post is here. The entire series consolidated in one post is here.
There was a time, such as when a trio of anti-war reds started the ACLU, that the Bill of Rights was seen as an instrument that might occasionally be useful to the defense of worthy causes like pacifism, labor organizing, and anti-racism. The enemies of those worthy causes, like capitalists, militarists and white supremacists, having a great advantage to start with, fended for themselves without the assistance of people they vocally despised, exploited, and persecuted.
Somewhere along the line, the idea that everyone has the same rights, morphed into an obligation to defend anyone’s rights, despite any evidence that helping avowed enemies is less self-destructive than it appears on the surface. That we’re now at a point where the Redskins trademark and lynchy frat boys garner more avid civil libertarian support than Ramsey Orta, makes the folly of this exceptionally plain in a uniquely disgusting way. But this is the predictable result of chickens making tactical alliances with wolves.
Recognizing this is not tantamount to uncritical support for things like hate speech laws. It’s simply rejection of reactionary politics and whitewashed repression flying under cover of free speech fairy tales. It’s to insist that, regardless of where we are on the free speech spectrum, we’re no more obliged to actively defend racists and corporations than we are to provide a shuttle to a cross-burning.
Any friend, even an anguished friend, of a nazi, or any other flavor of white supremacist is no friend of mine. In fact, they’re an enemy. This goes triple if they also insist corporations are people. White supremacy and corporations don’t need our help, and anyone who says by helping them you help yourself is a liar or a fool. Whatever its proponents intend, First Amendment absolutism is, in practice, an extremely clever ruse that very obviously serves power. It’s long past time to call bullshit.
Also, free Ramsey Orta
All Chapters
The Rancid Honeytrap 
Jeff Popovich is truly an artistic genius and master of disguise! See him play Tarzie/Bowie/Swinger as he e-behaves in a manner that his penis wishes he would meatspace behave! Kooky “wife” who teaches in public schools and is afraid to criticize their flaws, pretentious phony “daughter” who shits on a piece of wood and calls it “art,” and 14 alter egos on the internet where he practices his “characters” for the watercolor CRACKERS-HAVE-RUINED-MY-FANTASIES-RAPISTS-MADE-ME-HETERO-AND-GAYS-ARE-GENIUSES novel of ideas that has been gestating for 40 years now.
This is past boring and into tragic.
I don’t think anyone wears misery and self-loathing on their sleeve quite like you oxy. Unplug and take a bubble bath. Be kind to yourself.
Just wanted to thank you ever so much for this important article.
I first read it when it was one long piece. It works much better divided up into sections. However, may I suggest you reverse the current order so that it starts 1/7? Would be easier to access that way.
Again thank you.
Thanks for the suggestion. The convention on a blog is latest first, and I’m not going to make an exception. There’s plenty of navigation in the posts themselves. I will put a link at the top of 7/7 that jumps to the beginning, though.
Hi Tarzie,
Thanks for coming in to the forum to clarify your points, I tried to represent what you wrote as I read it, and I’m sure I didn’t do a very good job. When I was discussing making leaps, I was replying to the general assertion that “leftist history lesson” blog posts were a negative thing as a form of argument.
My problem is a lack of historical understanding of many parts of the US, so I don’t have a strong basis to evaluate the evidence you’re presenting without being accused of cherrypicking. Will return to lurking! All the best.
Thanks for stopping by. The frustration that came across when I replied to you was less about you than a build-up as I struggled to be respectful to people who called me “leftist scum” and seemed to have only skimmed my post if they bothered with it at all.
I get what you’re saying about cherry-picking, and I can see how a lack of history could leave you open to being misled. But the history of political repression in the US is unambiguous as to who gets the billy club and who doesn’t. There have been three surges of increased radical political movement — First Red Scare, Second Red Scare and the 60s — and a commensurate uptick in state repression. I described in my post how the Klan — which being entirely reactionary — grew and shrunk in relation to upheaval and state repression, eliciting very little in the way of pushback from the state, and even becoming a partner of the FBI in the 60s to squash the emerging Black Civil Rights movement. I’m not going to repeat the details, because I sincerely believe my post gave enough information to warrant a certain amount of trust that could be tested with just a little more research. I don’t know how I could possibly avoid being accused of cherry-picking unless I’d provided an entire history of the United States. As far as I’m concerned, it’s incumbent on people who are accusing me of lying or cherry-picking to give some evidence as to why they’re saying that.
Here in the US a lot of leftists don’t know history, and I think it’s a problem. Hence, I don’t agree with you on leftist history lessons. I don’t know how one could possibly build a case for the U. S. state’s historical preference for racist reactionaries over left dissidents without introducing history.
I think “garnish more avid civil libertarian support” should probably read ‘garner’.
And thank-you very much for this series of articles, they’ve been very interesting.
Holy shit, yes. Thanks!
I put many true liberals before me before I started ‘ringing a bell that could ring’ while, then, realizing the most important of mankind in the moment were dead because the darkness is not random on a level I couldn’t have dreamed up (i.e. Saul Bellow’s murder after completing More Die of Heartbreak, poisoned like a Pope of Old). I searched and searched and I knew then in ’03 that the Iraq war announced to start almost immediately, was a war crime, so I walked the streets more. Finally, I came upon an art piece in front of the IMAX theater in Birmingham, AL that was black marble, water, and steam, and I thought that it would give the masses the impetus to read what was ‘there’ to be found, this idea that evolution is substitution. I called an artistic friend of mine and told him something to the effect that I had found something special. Right before the first attack in March, I walked past it again, and it was destroyed, still, so many questions left unanswered. To this day, it does not ‘run’ although it had been fixed once over the course of a long time. Jokingly, I am sure, they ran fire through the steam vents (pic should be below). Varela was dead of Hepatitis C, which does not exist, similarly to AIDS (The AIDS Blunder on YouTube), and many many other issues of the truly liberal passing, not surreptitiously, into oblivion. Of course, there is way more preface to this, and way more historically significant facts afterward about our kind. I am so thankful for this piece!
Picture belongs here of flames coming out of 30′ high black marble spire arising out of 5′ square black marble base.
I, meant “the truly liberal passing surreptitiously into oblivion,” not “not surreptitiously.” So, there I remain standing on my head.