A Voice for Freedom

We get a few TV stations from Denver here in Laramie, and lately I've been seeing a lot of advertisements about "Referendum I". As the pro-I ads claim, it provides "basic legal rights" to gay couples by allowing them to gain domestic partnership status. I support gay marriage, but I would vote "no" on I, and here's why: I think the whole domestic partnership thing needs to be curtailed rather than added to.

Visiting each other in hospital is fine, but does it disturb anybody else that non-married couples have the right to make funeral plans, "make end-of-life decisions" (which I can only assume roughly translates to "switch off the machine"), inherit property, and direct nursing home care? These are the rights of family. Why extend them to couples who are unwilling to make the commitment to actually be married?

I picked up a copy of the New York Times the other day (forgive me!), and was surprised to see, stuffed into a single column on the last page of the front section, a column called "Shopping For A Nobel", with the words "Mirco-loans are good. Wal-Mart is better" glaring up at me. After double-checking what paper I was reading, I proceeded to read the column.

The columnist, a remarkably level-headed writer by the name of John Tierney, drew quite a bit on work by Michael Strong, the head of a nonprofit group called Flow, which promotes entrepreneurship abroad. Strong says that microfinance and helping people in poor areas of the world to start small businesses can only lift their status so far, and that getting work in a factory is often better for them. While we in the United States may balk at the wages earned by factory workers in third-world countries, it's often enough to lift the average family far above the poverty line in these places. In Honduras, the average worker in a clothing factory makes $13 a day, while nearly half the country's population makes less than one sixth of that amount.

Opponents of Wal-Mart often say they would prefer the company charge higher prices and buy its goods from American suppliers to ensure that workers producing its products are treated properly, but Tierney argues that removing Wal-Mart's dollars from poor countries would do irreperable harm to employees who often move hundreds of miles to get a job at one of those horrible American factories.

The other side of the equation is Wal-Mart's supposed mistreatment of its American employees, but according to Tierney, "on balance Americans come out well ahead because they save so much money by shopping there". I'd also point out that most of Wal-Mart's grunt-level employees - the ones who supposedly make too little money to live - are either students (who are not looking for a full-time, high-paying career) or retirees (most of whom have pensions or savings).

It's encouraging to see the NY Times print something like this, though it would have been nice if it had been given better placement than the third-page article about French politicians sleeping around.

Ah, Hollywood: that nirvana of nincompoops which has given us Michael Moore, George Clooney, and a lot of other people I'd very much like to see stuck in the Phantom Zone for eternity. Now southern California's obsession with liberalism, political correctness, and other very wrong things has begun chipping away at its next victim, perhaps the most iconic one yet: the Man of Steel himself.

"Truth, justice, and the American way" was one of Superman's most famous catchphrases, so much so that it is a cliché not unlikely to be heard in conversations that have nothing to do with good ol' Mister Kent. Tonight, I watched Superman Returns and found myself dumbstruck by the following line:

"Does he still stand for truth, justice, and all that stuff?"

And there you have it, folks. In the twenty-eight years since the first Superman movie was released, Hollywood has managed to turn "American" into a dirty word. It's no longer acceptable for Superman to fight for "the American way". Truth and justice are fine, but we can't have Superman looking like he supports, you know, democracy and such.

It's been the same message coming out of Hollywood for years: hate yourself if you're a man, hate yourself if you're white, hate yourself if you're Christian, hate yourself if you're American. I wouldn't be surprised if half the production team had wanted to make Clark a black lesbian.

Faster than a speeding bullet, apparently, is still not fast enough to outrun the PC gang's truckload of flying manure. Maybe in the next movie, Superman will further accept the Hollywood agenda and do away with truth and justice as well.

Item one on today's agenda: President Bush's new space policy. Seeing as the last time we heard anything on this subject was in 2003, it's about bloody time. Though the full statement issued by the Office of Science and Technology Policy contains such interesting factual liberties as "For five decades, the United States has led the world in space exploration" (does anyone remember that the Soviets were the first to launch a satellite, put a man in space, put a man in orbit, and land a probe on the moon?), it's nonetheless an encouraging document. If it all goes forward, humanity's backwards progress in space exploration may finally come to an end. When I was ten years old (which by the way, was exactly ten years ago today - yep, it's my birthday!), there was little doubt in my mind that we'd be on Mars by 2010, but that was before we saw years of governments around the world that haven't cared enough to push us any further than the International Space Station. We were travelling further out in the early 1960s than we are today. Does that seem strange to anyone else?

Item two: Laura Mallory. In case you were unaware, this is the name of the monolithic monument to mental misfunction who's attempting to ban the Harry Potter books from her local school district on the charge that they glorify witchcraft, teach immorality, and cause school shootings (no kidding). Note that she hasn't even read the books.

Mallory believes that Wicca is an evil religion and that Harry Potter encourages kids to follow this belief system. Ask a Wiccan what they think of that - there's nothing of any real religion in Harry's wizardry. The books are more about universal values like friendship and good battling evil than they are about any sort of organized belief system - and the fact that Potter demonstrates the possibility of morality without religion is, to my mind, what makes maniacs like Mallory so angry.

The Harry Potter books were recently named the "most challenged" books of the twenty-first century by the American Library Association. JK Rowling's response was characteristically whimsical and almost overly respectful, while still making its point quite clearly: "Once again, the Harry Potter books feature on this year's list of most-banned books. As this puts me in the company of Harper Lee, Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger, William Golding, John Steinbeck and other writers I revere, I have always taken my annual inclusion on the list as a great honour. 'Every burned book enlightens the world.' - Ralph Waldo Emerson."

You know, though, I'm actually going to thank Mallory, seeing as all she's doing is making more kids want to read the books she so abhors. To put it in the words of one Hermione Granger, "Oh Harry, don't you see? If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!"

"I’ve never criticized President Bush."
-Bill Clinton (here)

Saywhatnow???

According to an article in the Times of London, the European Court of Justice has just decided that women who take time off work for maternity leave have no automatic right to pay which is equal to that of men who do take time off (or, presumably, women who do not take time off).

Never thought I'd say this (and don't worry, I'm still UKIP all the way), but score one for the ol' EU. The concept that two people should be given equal pay for a year in which one takes three or six months off work has always seemed incongruous to me. Yes, we need to have a system which ensures that women who take maternity leave - or men who take paternity leave - do not go broke during this period. I'm all for paying them something, but I know I would feel just the tiniest bit guilty getting paid the same amount as somebody else for doing half the work. But maybe that's just me.

Could this mean I'll have to change my definition of the EU? By the way, that definition now reads: Incorrigibly inefficient imbiciles, illimitable incompetence and inexorably increasing immorality.

We'll see.