Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

This blog will pay for itself.

Giving up is unforgivable.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

When we show up, we win.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / You’re Wrong and They’re Also Sending a Message, You Clueless Numpty

You’re Wrong and They’re Also Sending a Message, You Clueless Numpty

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Being a libertarian at Reason means never knowing anything other than whatever the left is doing, they are wrong. Here is the latest:

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is angrily condemning a memo released today by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that it describes as “an all-out assault on LGBTQ people” creating “a sweeping ‘license to discriminate'” in furtherance of President Donald Trump’s “cynical and hateful agenda.” The memo does this via provocative language such as “freedom of religion is a fundamental right of paramount importance” and “government may not interfere with the autonomy of a religious organization” by, for example, forcing an Orthodox yeshiva to accept female rabbinical students.

Don’t get me wrong—we’re not exactly fans of Sessions here at Reason. But today’s memo shouldn’t make your list of reasons to dislike the man, who is much more fittingly criticized for being a lover of asset forfeiture and a drug warrior extraordinaire.

Haters of the religious liberty memo seem to believe (or, perhaps more accurately, want you to believe) that it establishes a new right for businesses and government agencies to turn people away on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. They should be comforted, then, by the revelation that virtually everything in the document is merely a restating of existing law and Supreme Court precedent.

Ok (hold on to your hats folks, but a glibertarian is wrong), this is not true:

Today, HRC responded to the Trump-Pence Administration’s latest attack against the transgender community. At the direction of Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) rescinded a memo issued by the Obama Administration. Sessions replaced the important instructions with a discriminatory memo, arguing that anti-discrimination protections under Title VII do not apply to transgender people. DOJ instructed all U.S. attorneys to adopt this dangerous position in all pending and future matters.

But let’s pretend this idiot is correct, and nothing has changed. Then why did they release a memo that, in her words “does little more than reiterate what federal law has been for years.” And let’s note that the weaselly “little more” nonsense, which is an admission that her entire premise that nothing has changed is, umm, a fucking lie.

The answer is because after consulting with Christianist extremists to help craft this memo (which, again, does more than just restate federal law), is that they are sending a message that the Justice Department and the weight of the government is open for business for bullshit religious grievances and eager to advance case law trashing minority parties for the benefit of religious lunatics. It’s “hey guys, we’re stacking the courts, you have a Justice Department that isn’t going to do shit to defend the rights of all Americans, and we’ll have the Supreme Court soon, so start getting these cases into the pipeline. It’s go time for religious bigotry.”

Because that’s how this shit works in America. No one is going to successfully introduce and pass a bill that says all gay people need to be stoned in the public square (well, at least not yet). So what they do is slowly chip away at constitutional protections afforded all individuals, eroding their rights, and creating a separate second class of American citizens which has the added benefit of making the lives of LGBT people miserable. On top of the overt actions in the memo, that’s what is really happening.

And the assorted douchebags at Reason either know this but their kneejerk hatred of “teh left” trumps that knowledge, or they don’t understand what the fuck is going on out side their myopic Randian universe. Either way, they should probably shut the fuck up until they know something.

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  1. 1.

    gene108

    Once you chip away at gay rights, how long before it becomes ” he shouldn’t have to sell to blacks, if he doesn’t want to” or ” they should not be forced to hire blacks or women, if they do not believe in it “?

  2. 2.

    bystander

    Glibertarians are like the no-labels nuts. They’re just embarrassed to say they’re repubs who remember you’re supposed to keep your misogyny and homophobia and racism quiet.

  3. 3.

    Caphilldcne

    Thank you. The libertarians are useless. Yes, the memo means that as best possible the administration is going to undermine progress on (especially) trans rights and since the gays are the camels nose under the tent they’re doing whatever they can to push that back too.

  5. 5.

    bystander

    On a lighter note, I just read about Chelsea Fagan’s twitter feed where she tells of talking to a bartender who reminisced about his high school production of “Rent”. They were not allowed to refer to AIDS, so the disease they had was diabetes.

  6. 6.

    BKinNC

    And the assorted douchebags at Reason should probably shut the fuck up until they know something.

    That would make things tomb-silent there for a time measured by continental drift.

  7. 7.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: Many libertarians in fact advocate such things; they’ll insist until the cows come home that they’re not racist but mandating that private businesses be non-racist in their dealings is an unforgivable abridgment of liberty, and that the Invisible Hand will provide.

  8. 8.

    Izabela

    :( I’m trying to remain positive. On Monday this week, I sent the email to my supervisor and HR dept that I had decided on a date to go forward with my work transition and after getting the response back, put in for my time off the week after Thanksgiving. The Monday following that, I will go to work for the first time as myself, as Izabela.

    The election of Trump has a been a constant feeding of nightmare fuel into my brain.

    But I’m not going back in the closet. Not a chance on that. I just hope that enough good people and tolerance will be enough to keep any of this stuff going down doesn’t affect me too badly.

  9. 9.

    Mike in NC

    Remember what KKK leader David Dukes said about the riot in Charlottesville: that they were celebrating the “promise of Trump”, meaning that anybody who wasn’t white, straight, and Evangelical Christian needed to be kicked out of the country, if not executed.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    There’s no excuse to be a libertarian after age 25.

    PS: I love “numpty.” It’s a British import, I think. No one does insults like the Brits.

  12. 12.

    WereBear

    @Mike in NC: And here is how they treat their own (repeated from dying thread)

    They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants

    McGahey had heard of Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery. People called it “the Chicken Farm,” a rural retreat where defendants stayed for a year, got addiction treatment and learned to live more productive lives. Most were sent there by courts from across Oklahoma and neighboring states, part of the nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

    Aside from daily cans of Dr Pepper, McGahey wasn’t addicted to anything. The judge knew that. But the Chicken Farm sounded better than prison.

    A few weeks later, McGahey stood in front of a speeding conveyor belt inside a frigid poultry plant, pulling guts and stray feathers from slaughtered chickens destined for major fast food restaurants and grocery stores.

    There wasn’t much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of America’s top poultry companies. If McGahey got hurt or worked too slowly, his bosses threatened him with prison.

    And he worked for free. CAAIR pocketed the pay.

  13. 13.

    gene108

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I know they think that, but that has been a bit fringe. With Trump, I am not sure how much longer those views stay fringe and don’t get picked up by prominent Republicans.

  16. 16.

    JDM

    You know, Trump and Sessions aren’t really doing much more than restating existing federal law regarding asset forfeiture and drugs laws either, so why does Reason even mention those things. After all, since Trump and Sessions are doing little more than restating law on those matters, they can’t be worth getting upset about, according to Reason.

    And you know what else, I’m starting to think Reason isn’t very well named.

  20. 20.

    raven

    @WereBear: In Korea in the 60’s there was a part of the village of Yon-Gu-Col that was called “The Turkey Farm”. When you first got to your unit you had to wait 30 days to get a pass and the “experienced” troops loved to befuddle the cherries with wild tales. It wasn’t what we thought it was!

    http://rickinbham.tripod.com/Korea09.jpg

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Tillerson’s departure from Exxon Mobil for the State Department came with a handy payday as he cashed out of Exxon stock, but due to the structure of his compensation and certain quirks of tax law, he’ll be hit with a $71 million tax bill on the proceeds unless he stays with the government for at least a year. That’s a pretty compelling reason not to quit.

    As usual, it’s all about the $$,$$$,$$$

  30. 30.

    FlipYrWhig

    Why are we relitigating “public accommodations” now? IANAL but this is a 50-year-old concept at least.

  34. 34.

    sukabi

    This goes way beyond numpty, this is fucking evil.

    Michigan judge granted joint custody of an 8-year-old boy to a convicted sex offender who allegedly raped the child’s mother nearly a decade ago.

    Sanilac County Circuit Judge Gregory S. Ross awarded joint legal custody for the boy to 27-year-old Christopher Mirasolo after a DNA test established paternity, but the victim’s attorney questioned the chain of events that led to the decision, reported The Detroit News.
    ….

    A Michigan judge granted joint custody of an 8-year-old boy to a convicted sex offender who allegedly raped the child’s mother nearly a decade ago.

    Sanilac County Circuit Judge Gregory S. Ross awarded joint legal custody for the boy to 27-year-old Christopher Mirasolo after a DNA test established paternity, but the victim’s attorney questioned the chain of events that led to the decision, reported The Detroit News.

    The victim, now 21, and her attorney say the case was prompted after the county surveyed her about child support she’d received during the past year, and the judge then gave her address to Mirasolo and ordered his name added to the boy’s birth certificate.

    “I think this is all crazy,” the victim told the newspaper. “They never explained anything to me. I was receiving about $260 a month in food stamps for me and my son and health insurance for him. I guess they were trying to see how to get some of the money back.”

    That was all done without the victim’s consent, according to her attorney.

    “This is insane,” said attorney Rebecca Kiessling. “Nothing has been right about this since it was originally investigated. He was never properly charged and should still be sitting behind bars somewhere, but the system is victimizing my client, who was a child herself when this all happened.”

    “An assistant prosecutor on this, Eric Scott, told me she had granted her consent, which was a lie,” Kiessling said. “She has never been asked to do this and certainly never signed anything.”

    Kiessling filed objections Friday to Ross’ order and is seeking a protection order under the federal Rape Survivor Child Custody Act.

    The attorney said Mirasalo, then 18, raped and threatened to kill her client, who was 12 at the time, in September 2008.

    “She, her 13-year-old sister and a friend all slipped out of their house one night to meet a boy and the boy’s older friend, Mirasolo, showed up and asked if they wanted to go for a ride,” Kiessling said. “They thought they were going to McDonald’s or somewhere.

    Instead, the attorney said, Mirasolo tossed their cell phones and kept the girls captive for two days in a vacant house, and he was arrested a month later — when her client was pregnant.

    Mirasolo was sentenced to one year in the county jail after accepting a plea deal on third-degree criminal sexual assault, but he was released after just six and a half months to care for his sick mother.

    “(The victim) and her family (were) told first-time sex offenders weren’t sent to prison because people come out worse after they go there,” Kiessling said.

    Mirasolo was convicted again of assaulting a teen between 13 and 15 years old in March 2010, but he served only four years for the second rape.

    His attorney told the newspaper that Mirasolo had not initiated the case but was notified by the prosecutor’s office that he’d been granted joint legal custody and visitation privileges.

  36. 36.

    Bruuuuce

    @FlipYrWhig: Because the GOP and its plantation masters who want to return the country to 1849 need to erode all them modren “rights” and stuff. Next up, women’s suffrage. :-(

  40. 40.

    James Powell

    @gene108:

    Once you chip away at gay rights, how long before it becomes ” he shouldn’t have to sell to blacks, if he doesn’t want to” or ” they should not be forced to hire blacks or women, if they do not believe in it “?

    Wasn’t this pretty much Rand Paul’s position on the Civil Rights Act when he ran for president?

  41. 41.

    schrodingers_cat

    One thing I don’t get is the Anglophilia on this blog or in this country. Churchill, wonderful. Queen so cute, pretty hats, lovely dogs. Is it any wonder that unscrupulous and godawful Brits like Sullivan* and Milo are able to charm the pants off of even Americans who consider themselves savvy and sophisticated.

    *Yes I know Sullivan is a naturalized citizen now but his clipped accent was his ticket to media stardom. I am sure pol sci PhDs, even ones from Harvard are not all that rare.

  42. 42.

    Wapiti

    @sukabi:

    Michigan judge granted joint custody of an 8-year-old boy to a convicted sex offender who allegedly raped the child’s mother nearly a decade ago.

    Based on the paternity test, he clearly had sex with her when she was 12 and he was 18. Sounds like rape to me. May the god finally get off their dead ass and cause the judge’s dick to fall off.

  46. 46.

    Izabela

    @WereBear: Thank you! There’s a lot of cruddy things happening in this country right now, but I’m finally getting closer to living fully and feeling a happiness I had once believed to be impossible.

  48. 48.

    hellslittlestangel

    … they should probably shut the fuck up until they know something.

    Oh come on! No one should have to shut the fuck up for that long!

  49. 49.

    Steeplejack

    @John Cole:

    A-fucking-men.

    My gay brother and his gay husband would not be (legally) gay-married and have their two gay adopted children without the progress that was made during the Obama administration, all of which is now being chipped away at by Trump, Sessions and their minions.

    My brother has a co-worker that he walks with at lunch, and the co-worker is all “Oh, you don’t have anything to worry about; it’s settled law now.” No, it isn’t, asshole. (This guy was Trump-curious and might even have voted for Trump, but he dances around that with my brother. And I think my brother is afraid to ask, because, oops, there goes a 10-year work friendship.)

    The great state of Texas took a full year to issue my brother a birth certificate for his son with Bro’ Man and his husband on it (necessary for proof of legal guardianship, getting a passport, etc.). And that was (mostly) under Obama law and with my affluent brother nagging them and having his attorney shoot them threatening letters. The only answer they ever got was red tape and “Hey, stuff takes time.” Bullshit. And does anybody think it’s not going to get harder under Trump? Ditto for marriage licenses, cake baking and all the other bullshit that constantly comes up.

    Shorter: Fuck off, glibertarian assholes!

  51. 51.

    mai naem mobile

    @WereBear: maybe Jared and Dolt45 Jr can work at the Chicken Plants when they end up in prison. Also too, Manafort,Vanki,both Flynns and Roger Stone need to recieve the same fate.

  52. 52.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Baud: The Revolution was so long ago, and the Empire has been gone for about 70 years. Given time and distance, I’m not surprised. Britain is no longer an Empire or a rival, so Americans can enjoy the culture without anger or fear.

    I suspect these days Anglophilia has more to do with James Bond, the Beatles, Princess Diana and tea and scones than anything else.

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    And I just remembered there was a bunch of bullshit with the (older) daughter involving the great state of Florida, which (I think I’m remembering the details correctly) didn’t recognize gay marriage at the time, so my brother had to adopt daughter individually, and then there was subsequent legal maneuvering to get his husband recognized as a legal parent for the daughter. Another huge fucking mess. Thank you, states’ rights!

  54. 54.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Either way, they should probably shut the fuck up until they know something.

    To be a glibertarian is to know everything about everything. Always. As such, what you propose is a cosmic impossibility which, should it ever happen, would probably create a black hole or something and wipe out life as we know it.

    Plus, per bystander above, every glibertarian I know over 25 is merely an Embarrassed Republican.

  55. 55.

    schrodingers_cat

    @CarolDuhart2: Then why is Nazi nostalgia so repugnant. May be Hitler should have just restricted himself to the genocide of non European people?
    From Pakistan to Palestine to Iraq and Iran people are still paying the price for the so called benevolent Empire.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: Rand Paul already subscribes to it, I think.

    And, of course, Barry Goldwater, the ur-advocate of this position, is now a hallowed figure of old.

  58. 58.

    Amir Khalid

    @Wapiti:
    I don’t get it either. A rapist gets paternity rights to the child conceived by his crime? Even if he isn’t seeking those rights? That’s barbaric.

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    @bystander:

    They were not allowed to refer to AIDS, so the disease they had was diabetes.

    I would have gone with mono for the high school lulz.

  60. 60.

    Repatriated

    @gene108:

    Once you chip away at gay rights, how long before it becomes ” he shouldn’t have to sell to blacks, if he doesn’t want to” or ” they should not be forced to hire blacks or women, if they do not believe in it “?

    That isn’t even “slippery slope” — it’s what they actually did in the 1960s (shutting down integrated public school systems and replacing them with segregated religious private schools).

  61. 61.

    schrodingers_cat

    @debbie: True, but the scale of the British Empire dwarfs the others in scale and secondly we don’t deal for the most part with Belgian or Dutch Milos and Sullivanses and our media betters falling for their so called charms.

  62. 62.

    gorram

    Enough about this “lgbt rights” business – let’s focus on real issues like ASSET FORFEITURE!

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    @Izabela: Stay strong, and be yourself. You can’t control other people, you can only control your self.

    Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    zhena gogolia

    @Izabela:

    All the best wishes for you. I have to think that most people are pretty decent, even if our powers-that-be are not.

  67. 67.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Repatriated: The argument indeed has roots in the reaction to the movement to make commercial racial discrimination by businesses and individuals illegal, with laws passed in the 1960s and 70s.

  75. 75.

    CarolDuhart2

    @schrodingers_cat: Nazi nostalgia is repugnant because of the deliberate genocide of millions and the horrific war and the revival of racist ideology.

    On the other hand, America was partly founded with Brits, so there’s a cultural link that wasn’t there with Germany. Even with the Germans, there’s an appreciation for pre-Nazi German culture; a lot of Germans immigrated to the United States before it was even an unified nation and had nothing to do with either the Kaiser or the Fuhrer.

    It’s a mixed bag most of the time. There’s music and fashion and food that was there before the nasty people came to power, and the same afterwords. Should Americans stop listening to the Beatles, who were born during the war and came to fame afterwards? What about Shakespeare? Bach, Beethoven, Oktoberfest were long before even the root ideas of Naziism were even in creation.

  78. 78.

    Sloane Ranger

    @sukabi: I presume she’s right and Michigan no longer wants to financially support her lazy, sluttish, money grabbing ways.

    Put the rapist on the B/C and tell him he’s responsible for child support. Drain on public purse halted. He doesn’t pay? Tell her to sue him. It’s no longer our problem.

  80. 80.

    Brachiator

    @gene108:

    Once you chip away at gay rights, how long before it becomes ” he shouldn’t have to sell to blacks, if he doesn’t want to” or ” they should not be forced to hire blacks or women, if they do not believe in it “?

    This has always been the Libertarian position. They harp on individual liberty and always come down in favor of the right to be a bigot.

  85. 85.

    StringOnAStick

    A gorgeous 74 degrees today and tomorrow, then over Sunday night a big snow with the first hard freeze hits. Then it will be warm and sunny for weeks. Such is life on the east side of the rocky mountains in CO. Monday’s commute will be hideous so I’ll be taking the train.

    I do hope the idea that libertoonion’s grow out of it after 25, and I pray that continues to hold true because someone posted here recently that Rand’s turgid fiction is increasing in popularity with the younger folk. I’m afraid that anyone under 45 has known nothing but government being sabotaged into dysfunction so they don’t even think to look in that direction to improve society. We’ve got a 40 year old friend who seems liberal but just read Atlas Shrugged and complained that she has to pay higher health insurance costs because of the inactive, poor diet, and overweight people at work. I’ve countered with “well, my husband is Mr Fitness but now he has chronic leukemia; what did he do to deserve this other than choosing the wrong parents?”. I try to keep pushing her to see we’re all stronger together and I think/hope I am making progress.

  87. 87.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The good folks (gag!) at Reason have no problems with Sessions’ white supremacy, either.

    They’re scum. All of them.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    @Amir Khalid:

    .I don’t get it either. A rapist gets paternity rights to the child conceived by his crime? Even if he isn’t seeking those rights? That’s barbaric.

    Yes, it is barbaric. It even violates the spirit, at the least, of past law and tradition, where paternity rights are based on the existence of a legal or socially acknowledged relationship between a man and woman.

    The ability to use DNA in some cases has complicated the issue, but this nonsense trying to give rights to rapists is just an expression of hatred of women.

  90. 90.

    schrodingers_cat

    @CarolDuhart2: British were responsible for 40 million deaths in India alone due to genocide by mass starvation during the 90 year rule by the Crown. Churchill’s actions were responsible for 3 million deaths during the Bengal famine in 1942-43. Plus at least the same number dead and many more displaced when the British left in 1947.

    Nazi nostalgia is repugnant because of the deliberate genocide of millions and the horrific war and the revival of racist ideology.

    British Empire was all tea and cricket, right? No racist ideology at all. Even those British Raj nostalgia shows don’t claim that.

  92. 92.

    No Drought No More

    The republican party plays a long game, too, and always on the dirty end of the field. For example, the stab-in-the-back myth that the War in Vietnam was “lost” by anti-American domestic insurgents* was their doing, as well. Their pay-off for that Big Lie came in March of 2003.. and was immediately supplanted by another big lie that honest mistakes were made by honorable people, and the war could therefore be reduced to that of having been a mere “mistake”, just simple errors of compounded poor judgement..

    Let it serve to explain why in 2017 in I don’t hesitate to call out anyone who supports today’s republican party as being an anti-American enabler intent on seeing our democracy implode, and the rightful inheritance of government established of, for, and by The People, denied our national posterity. Those people are the mortal enemies of everything I was ever taught to revere about this country, and furthermore, everything that I intend to protect to my dying day.

  95. 95.

    Corner Stone

    @Sloane Ranger: It was pretty obvious, actually. But we have a POTUS that gives a blatant *wink* and a “Thank You Very Much. You’ll find out” when asked what “calm before the storm” means.
    Soooo…nothing matters anymore.

  96. 96.

    Repatriated

    @Sloane Ranger: Heck, if you’re going there, there might be disturbingly less difference between them and the United States…

    Which of course is the problem of moral relativism as a framework.

  98. 98.

    Wilson Heath

    Glibetarians only really care about three rights: absolute property rights, including against taxation ; the right to make any contract free of government regulation to protect the vulnerable; and the right to get high. Human rights, and lower tier civil rights, don’t really factor in unless it goes to one of these three.

    I just want a life beyond the Thunderdome.

  99. 99.

    Repatriated

    @Repatriated: The unique feature of mid-20th-century Germany was the sheer industrialization of the genocide. Previously, that sort of thing was accomplished through malign neglect.

  100. 100.

    RSA

    @Brachiator:

    This has always been the Libertarian position. They harp on individual liberty and always come down in favor of the right to be a bigot.

    In the discussions I’ve had with Libertarians, they also always come down in favor of lower taxes. They may talk a good talk about social issues, but it never drives their votes, if they do vote.

  101. 101.

    gene108

    @schrodingers_cat:

    There’s an ugly side to the British Empire that is vastly under reported. On the flip side, the British had adopted some form of representative government, when the rest of the world still had absolute monarchs.

    They spread this idea of representative government to their colonies like USA and India. The Nazis have far fewer redeeming qualities.

    I do not think colonialism was a net positive, and I think Churchill is vastly overrated. He carried out what Neville Chanberlain had started. For all of Churchill’s bluster about Hitler, he went out of his way to avoid directly confronting the Wehrmacht in Europe and postponed allied plans to open a front in Western Europe until June 1944.

    In Asia he was more than willing to cut off his nose to spite his face, by refusing India’s call for Independence after the war for unconditional support of the British war effort against Japan, and Germany. Instead of having the support of India, he bogged the British war effort down in putting down Indian boycotts of the British, and giving an opening to partition India.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne

    @Repatriated:

    This. They kept experimenting and improving and refining genocide until it was as efficient as they could make it.

    I saw an essay by someone who visited one of the death camps (they are now all monuments/shrines) and was surprised at how small it was.

    Then he realized they didn’t need much space since they were murdering people as soon as they got off the trains. All they needed was space for the crematoriums and a spot to stack the bodies out of sight of the arriving victims.

  103. 103.

    trollhattan

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Maybe that’s the reason Gary Cohn is keeping his head down following his $285 million Goldman Sachs separation. “Doing fine over here guys, nothing to see at all.”

  104. 104.

    msdc

    This isn’t even the superficial glibertarian bullshit of “whatever the left is doing, they are wrong.” This is the deep core libertarian bullshit of “we are 100% in favor of the government restricting other people’s rights as long as they don’t come after ours.”

    I mean, they all but admit it:

    Don’t get me wrong—we’re not exactly fans of Sessions here at Reason. But today’s memo shouldn’t make your list of reasons to dislike the man

    “Everything before the ‘but’ is horseshit” – Ned Stark

  105. 105.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Repatriated: @schrodingers_cat: There is a fundamental difference and that is cold blooded, state organised genocide. Nazis yes, Britsh Empire/US no. I know that there were some attempts to destroy some native American populations but this was usually locally driven and never reached the stage of being Federal policy.

  106. 106.

    cokane

    great post Cole.

    It’s so true that libertarians tend to know so little about shit. Why investigate policy when your ideology already tells you the answer?

  107. 107.

    trollhattan

    @RSA:
    Lower taxes (none would be even better, please), dismantling the federal government and tossing everything to the states and courts.

    Their platform doesn’t read as strident today as it did when David Koch ran but it contains the same elements.

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sloane Ranger:

    And don’t forget, this is one of the things that the forced birthers WANT. They want a 12-year-old rape victim to be forced to bear her rapist’s child, and they want to force her to let her rapist have a relationship with that child so she never, ever forgets what a slut she was for letting herself be raped.

  109. 109.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    I am outraged, OUTRAGED I tell you, at how my precious religious freedom is being thwarted by the gubbmint!

    That’s my SERIOUS RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION to plant a sharp ax in the noggin of annoying christianists.

    How am I ever going to get into Valhalla if this INTOLERABLE religious oppression continues?1??

  110. 110.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Izabela: Best of luck! I know from personal experience what an exhilarating/terrifying leap of faith you’re making.

    FWIW, I’ve never been fond of the “you’re so brave” thing — I was just doing what I had to do — but let me just say, yes you are courageous. Being trans isn’t a choice, but how we live our lives are trans people is a choice. And you’ve chosen to live your life as your authentic self.

    In case it’s helpful, here’s my coming out email and the Trans 101 FAQ I created for my co-workers. (Cisgender folks, if you’d like to learn more about Teh Tranz, this is a quick way to do so.)

    https://www.danceswithgender.com/2016/12/06/coming-out-resources/

  111. 111.

    Repatriated

    @msdc:

    This is the deep core libertarian bullshit of “we are 100% in favor of the government restricting other people’s rights as long as they don’t come after ours.”

    That’s the core of it. If their goal wasn’t a govenment to protect their — and only their — rights, they’d be anarchists, not libertarians.

  112. 112.

    CarolDuhart2

    @schrodingers_cat: I didn’t say that. But the British weren’t out to kill every Indian on the Subcontinent, or go out and start a war for “Liebenstraum”, killing people who they considered inferior races just because. Nobody denies the horrors of empire, the slavery, malign neglect and all the rest. But the Brits, at their worst, didn’t try to create an ideology of racist purity that denied other peoples right to live.

    Also, the point I made was that culture is often separated from politics in some ways. The Anglophilia is possible because most of British culture was shaped by other forces than the Empire.

  113. 113.

    Nora

    @Snarki, child of Loki: Yeah, those poor oppressed Christians who are silenced and prohibited from the mere practice of their faith, which turns on issues of hatred toward other people who are not like them (and some — women, for instance — who are in fact part of their group). They’re so much worse off than the rest of us who practice different religions — like yours, which you clearly believe sincerely and deeply — and my Unitarian Universalism which has as its first principle the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. My religious beliefs are so coddled in this society that you can’t turn around without finding someone shouting it from the rooftops and forcing other people to practice it.

  114. 114.

    James Powell

    @schrodingers_cat:

    One thing I don’t get is the Anglophilia on this blog or in this country.

    Don’t know about others, but for me it’s because of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, and growing up with BBC documentaries.

  117. 117.

    Brachiator

    @Sloane Ranger:

    I know that there were some attempts to destroy some native American populations but this was usually locally driven and never reached the stage of being Federal policy.

    This is not true, or rather strains too much to absolve the federal government of blame. Pacification, removal or outright murder of native people happened through the use of the US army. Similar operations happened in Canada through the use of Canadian government forces.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    One thing I don’t get is the Anglophilia on this blog or in this country. Churchill, wonderful.

    The US has always been an anglophile country. The American revolution severed the political connection between the countries, but not the social or cultural connections.

    And Churchill’s mother was an American. Hard to get more connected than that.

    ..

  119. 119.

    Steve in the ATL

    @CarolDuhart2:

    On the other hand, America was partly founded with Brits, so there’s a cultural link that wasn’t there with Germany

    America was mostly founded by Brits, we speak their language, our legal system is based on theirs, our culture was based on theirs, etc. The shared language makes cultural things such as Shakespeare and Dickens and British Invasion music easier for Americans to understand and enjoy than similar things from Germany or Belgium or China or wherever.

  121. 121.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    Pikers. In Saudi Arabia, that renowned model for all forward-thinking societies, if a man is found guilty of rape, his victim is accordingly convicted of fornication.

  122. 122.

    Librarian

    @gene108: Yes,the development of parliamentary government was England’s great contribution. Representative government, habeas corpus, trial by jury, our legal system , all that stuff comes from England.

  125. 125.

    Matt

    @WereBear:

    Every person involved in setting this up should be collecting dust behind bars until they rot – from the judges who fed the program, to the Christianist sadists who ran it, to the executives who collected bonuses on the backs of slave labor.

  129. 129.

    bemused

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Well that’s a huge incentive for him to want to stay a year. So much for his wife convincing him the job was God’s plan for him and he should serve his country. Money and who knows if getting sanctions off Russian oil couldn’t possibly have anything to do his decision to take a job he likely already knew he’d hate, you betcha.

  130. 130.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Sloane Ranger: Are you seriously going to argue that the genocide by starvation practiced by the British in Ireland and then in India was a better way to kill people? 60 million Indians died of starvation due to British policies while Britain got richer and richer, India became known for its poverty. Go to any trouble spots in the world today and you will find British paw prints on most of them.

  131. 131.

    schrodingers_cat

    @gene108: Indian National Congress and most other parties supported the war effort in WWI. Indian troops performed with courage in most of the battlefields. What did India get in return? Rowlatt Acts and the Amritsar Massacre. That was the real turning pt in the freedom struggle.

  133. 133.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    One thing I don’t get is the Anglophilia on this blog or in this country.

    No Anglophilia here from me. The British “royalty” are not a bit different from the mafia, or Mexican drug gangs. They just came out on top, got to make the laws, and if you let it be known you disagreed, you were publicly eviscerated (Drawn! as in you bowels drawn from your body while you watched) and then pulled apart by teams of horses.

    Unless you were a beloved member of the royal family, in which case they had the royal executioner chop your head off, which was I suppose more merciful than the drawn and quartered execution. And the English folk, they loved it, thousands would throng the field where these modern punishments were meted out to the victims of the royalty, and cheer when the victim’s bowels hit the brazier of hot coals in his lap.

    The English are, to me, historically equal to ISIS, who also specialize in torturous executions for those who disagree with them. I suppose Britain in the 20th century wasn’t as bad as the Japanese Imperial Navy, nor the Third Reich, but that is damming with faint praise.

    Like you, I fail to understand American women who are enthralled by Princesses (Diana? Give me a fuken break!) and Princes of Olde Europe. The whole bunch of them are criminals with the morals of Mexican drug lords. See how that word works so well there?

    European history got even worse when they began to conquer foreign lands, in Africa, the South Pacific, Asia (Opium wars, anyone? Mexican Drug Lords, British Drug Lords, what’s the diff?) and even right here in North America, where we fought a desperate war to force the British royalty out of our country. Churchill invented concentration camps in the Boer War, IIRC. I may not, I quit reading about colonial history when it started making me ill, a very long time ago.

    @Brachiator:

    You are quite correct. I do not understand it, I must suppose ignorance and envy are the primary causes. Going on about the queen’s cute dogs, and her wonderful hats, ignoring where that fortune came from. Despicable. I will watch Brexit with great interest, as I expect it to ruin Britain, as planned by Putin’s henchmen.

  136. 136.

    Kathleen

    @CarolDuhart2: Several years ago when I was contracting at Major Telecom Corp I worked closely with people in UK. I jokingly told one of them, “You Brits say anything on a call or in a meeting because Americans just love listening to your accents when you talk. We’re like all ‘Love Actually’! ‘Beatles’! ‘Princess Di’!”

  138. 138.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Kathleen: And the Royal Family is mostly decorative these days, as is much of Britain. It’s easy to be an Anglophile when there is no power over you, and the culture is much older than the atrocities.

    A parallel is Rome. Rome ruled the Mediterranean with an iron fist for almost a millennium. But people then and more so now, enjoy the cultural remnants . And Italy flirted with Fascism with Mussolini in the 1930’s. But people enjoy much of modern Italy and even facets of pre-war Italian culture.

  145. 145.

    Kathleen

    @CarolDuhart2: I do think if I were more versed in Irish history my view of GB might change from neutral to hostile. Tremendous cruelty and starvation, as Ms. S_C pointed out.

  147. 147.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I’ve never understood libertarians’ hostility toward civil rights. You’d think that shit like this would be right up their street, but it isn’t. I know there were no libertarian bloggers on the internet back when the uppity Blacks and their communist sympathizer white n¡gger loving fellow travellers were fighting to end lynching and segregation, but, shit, you just know that if there had been, they would have been whining and wailing not about the injustices of lynching and Jim Crow and sundown towns, but about the people fighting to end all that. The only rights these people ever care about are the rights of people who already have everything stacked their way to begin with. What’s wrong with these people?

  148. 148.

    A Ghost to Most

    The British think 100 miles is a long way. Americans think 100 years is a long time.

  149. 149.

    AnonPhenom

    Haters of the religious liberty memo seem to believe (or, perhaps more accurately, want you to believe) that it establishes a new right for businesses and government agencies to turn people away on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

    These are the same folks so quick to make distinctions between ‘rights’ and ‘privileges’ on human being’s health care access.
    You know what’s a privilege? The limited liability bestowed on corporate entities by the rest of us. The tax free status of approved organized religious groups. And as for government agencies, the tax dollars that we give them. Those are privileges.
    You want the ‘right’ to be an asshole? Do it on your own dime and without the support of the rest of us.

  150. 150.

    Sloane Ranger

    @schrodingers_cat: During the Potato Famine the British made a terrible situation worse mainly because of a belief in the magic of the market. Please provide evidence that they deliberately created the famine with malice aforethought, as the lawyers say, with the intention of murdering every Irish man, woman and child. I agree this was cold comfort to the people concerned but it does make a difference to the judgement of history. And the major trouble spots today are in the Middle East. An area where the paws of the Ottoman Empire were in evidence for centuries before Britain got the mandate at the end of WW1.

    Also, according to Wikipedia, execution by cannon was the preferred method of the Mughal Empire, Britain’s predecessor in India. It was also in favour in Afghanistan. So arguably respecting local (if savage) practice,

  151. 151.

    J R in WV

    @Izabela:

    Best wishes, hoping that everything goes smoothly for you. I know telling you to stay calm probably won’t help with being calm, but there it is anyway. And know that everyone here at Balloon Juice HQ and across the country is with you.

    And congratulations on making you decision! I know it may not be the hardest part, but I also know it wasn’t easy at all.

    Hang in there!!!

  152. 152.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Sloane Ranger: Since we are talking about World War II please check what Churchill said and did during the Bengal famine in 1942. While 2.5 million Indians were fighting on behalf of the Empire. All of Churchill’s speeches would have accounted for diddly squat in WWII without the blood and treasury of India. How was India’s contribution repaid, first there was the Bengal famine and the total dereliction of duty during the handover of political power in 1947. Yes they were marginally better than the third Reich. So what?
    As an aside,the famines in British India were a direct result of agricultural and taxation policies of Great Britain.

  154. 154.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): it’s not that hard to explain. Nobody has a right to have dinner in your kitchen, or sleep in your spare room, without an invitation. You can refuse dinner guests for whatever reasons you like: racism, homophobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism, whatever.

    What the libertarians do is pretend that there’s no difference between your kitchen and the dining room of a restaurant, or between your spare room and the guest rooms of a hotel. It’s a horrifying and evil argument, and if left to run wild, leads to segregated lunch counters and sundown towns, but it makes sense if you accept the initial premise.

  155. 155.

    J R in WV

    @gene108:

    They were able to bust and jail a judge in PA who was getting rich from sending juvenile “convicts” – they were all convicted as there was money at stake – to for-profit prisons. They also got the people bribing the “judge”, which was good.

    Sounds like what this “christian” rehab group needs, convicted! For Profit prisons must be the lowest game played by the lowest scum on Earth!!

  156. 156.

    Ruckus

    @Lurking Canadian:

    but it makes sense if you accept the initial premise.

    Really? To accept that original premise you have to suspend all belief in ownership limitations and the concept of public. With the logic of your average 6 yr old maybe. With adult level logic it’s bullshit all the way down. Ahhhhh, OK I see how you got there, using the logic of a libertarian, which is that of a snotty 6 yr old at best.

  158. 158.

    CarolDuhart2

    Marginally better than the Nazis? First of all, Britain didn’t start the horrific war in the first place. Nor did they operate concentration camps that deliberately tried to kill. And whatever Britain’s flaws, few Brits seem to be interested in reviving the empire or justifying its excesses anymore.

  159. 159.

    Sloane Ranger

    @schrodingers_cat: I don’t know much about the Indian famines but a quick Google indicates that historians attribute the Bengal Famine to many different causes and are still arguing about how these impacted each other and their relative importance one against each other.

    You are obviously entitled to hold to one interpretation and I am entitled to point out there are others.

    As for the Independance statement, I have heard this before but I have honestly never understood it.

    India gets its independence from the British Empire just as it’s leaders wanted but the former Imperial power should still be held responsible for policing and security?

  161. 161.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    ETA: But Americans using British spelling and British swear words just sounds pretentious and silly.
    /end mini rant.

    I sometimes throw a spare “u” into an American English word, just for amusing effect. But you’re quite correct about people who do it consistently – putting on airs, aren’t they!!

  162. 162.

    J R in WV

    @Izabela:

    So glad when you needed a little moral support we could be there for you. A little boost from friends, even on-line virtual friends, can go a long way sometimes.

    Again, best of luck with everything. I don’t have any first hand experience with friends going your way, but I expect you are just starting out on a long and winding road.

    Take care and keep in touch!!

  163. 163.

    J R in WV

    @SgrAstar:

    “Who the heck reads Reason??????”

    Well, I went by there by random surfing recently, and didn’t recognize where I was for a few minutes. Pretty stupid, though, so I figured it out pretty quickly.

  165. 165.

    J R in WV

    @gene108:

    On the flip side, the British had adopted some form of representative government, when the rest of the world still had absolute monarchs.

    Well, not really. For a very long time only land owners could even vote or run for election. And in Jolly old England, you had to be quite upper crust to own enough land for it to count for your right to vote. By the time most English folks could vote rule by monarchy was over in most of Europe. And of course they brutalized women seeking the right to vote. Beatings, forced feeding hunger strikers, the whole gamut of government terrorism.

  166. 166.

    opiejeanne

    @CarolDuhart2: The Germans didn’t do that because of Love’s Dream (Liebenstraum) I think the word you’re looking for is Lebensraum. Living space, elbow room. And yes, it was probably autocorrect that did you in.

    I chuckled today when I read a water board candidate’s arguments for why she’d be the best for the job, when she referred to her penultimate goal as providing clean water. I think she does not know what penultimate means.

  167. 167.

    J R in WV

    @Sloane Ranger:

    President Andrew Jackson, on your money, illegally confiscated the land of Cherokee and many other tribes in the south, and marched them on a well planned trip to Oklahoma, and when I say well planned, I mean planned to kill most of them before they arrived in the desert.

    You are so wrong about the role of the federal government and the US Army in attempting to wipe out the original owners of this nation. Completely ignorant of what happened from the landing of the Pilgrims to California in the early 1900s.

    Don’t go there when you don’t know what you’re talking about.

  168. 168.

    J R in WV

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Actually, west of the Mississippi, in Louisiana, and especially in the Southwest, law is more based upon the Napoleonic Code and old Spanish law. Especially with regard to mining and real estate. IANAL, but I talk to them some.

  169. 169.

    CarolDuhart2

    I’ve been curious as to how libertarians square this with the need for national security. It takes more government than they believe in to make sure there are no raiders along the coastline or highway bandits between towns. It’s no accident that the incentive to centralize government was the need to secure cargo and insure safe passage for trade and traders. Not to mention the exhoribant tariffs, fees and outright bribes needed to make sure merchants could actually operate between towns.

  170. 170.

    Steve in the ATL

    @J R in WV: Louisiana law is based on the Napoleanic Code, but it’s the exception. Most state law and almost all federal law derives from English common law.

  171. 171.

    Steve in the ATL

    @CarolDuhart2:

    I’ve been curious as to how libertarians square this with the need for national security.

    Libertarians don’t square anything. The sole purpose of their “philosophy” is to justify their selfishness.

  172. 172.

    Zelma

    I quote one of my favorite historians, Simon Schama:

    “History is meant to be a bummer, not a stroll down memory lane”

    I spent forty years as a history professor. I viewed my job as trying to honestly describe what happened in the past and offering an explanation of why it happened. I was by training a British historian but I had no illusions that the English/British were “better” than anyone else. They weren’t worse, either. Theirs is a very interesting story and they did develop the modern practice of representative (not democratic) government. Their empire was, like every empire past and present, dependent on coercion and force and was operated to benefit the British. I would point out that the Amrister Massacre created a furor in Britain when it happened. I would also note that Gandhi’s non-violent resistance could only have succeeded against a “liberal” imperial power.

  173. 173.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Zelma: what’s important is whether you say “an historian” or “a historian.” But you don’t come across as a pretentious d-bag so I’ll assume you do this correctly!

  174. 174.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Zelma

    : I would point out that the Amrister Massacre created a furor in Britain when it happened. I would also note that Gandhi’s non-violent resistance could only have succeeded against a “liberal” imperial power.

    How nice of them. Who should I send a thank you note to? BTW, its Amritsar not Amritser.

    . I would also note that Gandhi’s non-violent resistance could only have succeeded against a “liberal” imperial power.

    So the independence was a generous liberal gift just like the tea, cricket and railways I suppose?

  176. 176.

    Mr. Wu's Pigs

    @Izabela: Hurray for YOU! The *authentic* awesome YOU!
    I’m thrilled that there will be more happiness and joy in the world, now that you can be YOU! :)

    I wish the very best for you!!

    Love and Peace :)

  179. 179.

    No One You Know

    @Izabela: About ten years ago, Bill went out for extended medical leave and came back as Sue. HR did the right thing and talked to everybody, and made it clear this was not a joke. Here’s to hoping you get the same respect: and a cheer for your courage. This is a great thing you’re doing for yourself. Life is too hard to spend being anyone you aren’t. I wish I’d learned that sooner!

  180. 180.

    Texasboyshaun

    @bystander: Coming out and walking in your own truth is hard. Thank you for being strong enough to be who you are. I pray you have strong support and love from everyone around you. And thank you for being a role model to the young LGBT kids who will someday walk the path you and I are on. :)

  181. 181.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I think Zelma means an imperial power with some capacity to be shamed for (at least the most heinous of) its misdeeds. Britain was by then enough of a democracy that Britons could disapprove of governmental misbehaviour, and see their disapproval exert some influence over the Government’s conduct.

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