The Stifling Of Dissent
*
I have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. I cannot in good conscience sit idly by and watch the destruction of that Constitution by a judiciary that is no longer independent. Despite a tradition of silence by judges on such topics, I can no longer keep quiet about what I, as an insider, have seen happening in, and to, our courts. I may be accused of unethical conduct and threatened with professional discipline, as I was in the past. If that is a risk I must take, so be it. Others before me have taken much greater risks in defense of republican government.
I have witnessed liberal totalitarianism on many fronts as both a lawyer and a judge, but it is fair to say that I probably would not have written this book if I had not had my own, very direct run-in with the tyrants of tolerance. That unpleasant personal experience forced me to do some serious thinking about what is happening to American law, how it is happening, and who is making it happen. And finally it convinced me to write this book, and to accept whatever consequences came from publishing it.
That run-in occurred when I dared confront one of the most active elements of liberalism: the radical feminists.
“Manifesting Bias”
If Social Security is the “third rail” of American politics, then sex is the third rail of American law. Anyone who touches it, except in the manner approved by the tyrants of tolerance, is fried. In this realm, the tyranny of tolerance is best described as rule by the radical feminist cadre of liberalism. Like the rest of the illiberal liberals, femifascists display single-minded devotion to imposing their tyranny on the American people—and will viciously punish those who resist.
I learned this from painful experience....
I concluded my opinion by observing the danger of imposing liability based solely on speech. “[T]he sexual harassment police,” I wrote, “seem oblivious to the First Amendment as they eagerly enlist the courts as censors of words and literature in the workplace.” More specifically, I noted that it seems clear to everyone “except for the denizens of the cloud cuckooland of radical feminism” that no court had ever held a sexual advance to be actionable in and of itself.
Although I did not expect liberals to applaud my opinion, and I probably expected a certain amount of controversy, I was comfortable with the complete freedom judges have had historically to say what they thought about the law. When writing opinions, especially on issues where precedent is unclear or conflicting, judges have a unique opportunity to criticise the parties’ theories and to explain or instruct the public concerning the state of the law. I felt particularly comfortable because my dicta did not control my legal analysis of the main issue. I was doing nothing unusual—or so I thought.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307393562&view=excerpt
How disappointed he was when he discovered the author of Something Wicked This Way Comes had voted conservative. How was it possible for a dazzling imagination not to come from the left? How right was it to bleat for the unfortunate and the dispossessed? To discard the arrogant self confidence of the rich. To come within a millimetre of being saved; and yet to be all knowing. To love mankind in the abstract; well humankind now. Men had become so unfashionable, dismissed. Agree with us or get out of the way.
If it wasn't for personal experience he would never have held the views that he did. He was tired of the extremists, yet the lunatics really had taken over the asylum. No one thought twice. No one really believed there was an answer; they hid their views, they zippered their mouths, they watched their pandering, simpering colleagues who, like sleazy little puppies looking for attention, performed all sorts of tricks to show how acceptable their political views were. Lolling on their backs, their smelly, happy little breaths puffing in the winter dawn, delight and expectation of reward glistening in their eyes.
His was a different march, a different tune. In this amorphous chaos that was the contemporary world, when "working families", picked up from focus groups and regurgitated back at the population by the self-serving government of the day about sixty million times, was what passed for political debate. Led by slime bags and old fashioned socialists, every standard trick had been used to fool the populace. The trouble was, the other side was just as bad, worse perhaps, because they knew better but were too afraid to tell the truth.
It was all here now, a multi-cultural feminist society, all the fashionable theories adopted from around the world, all in the name of self-preening progress. You couldn't disagree or even question without being called a racist or, in effect, a patriarchal oppressor out to bash women. Publicly funded campaigns bashing up on men and fathers were prime examples of the indoctrinations of the masses. The crumbling chaos t hat was the world, that's what we inherited. Why did the conservatives cling to ridiculous things like opposition to gay marriage? Why did it matter? Who cared at the end of the day who married who?
So the conservatives gave themselves a bad name by clinging to remnants of Christian ideology, for no good purpose. While the welfare budget kept growing bigger and bigger. The former Prime Minister John Howard made the conservatives in this country a laughing stock by his ridiculous, counter-intuitive measures; his massive public spending, his massive expansion of the tax regime, his ceaseless, frenetic efforts to buy his way back into power. A concession here, a concession there, old people, young people, disfigured people. Everybody copped a little bit, depending on their level of dysfunction.
Now the socialists are in, and there's no chance now of any common sense. He could have been called. He could remember back to 1970s and the era of of Gough Whitlam, but few other people could. There seemed, strangely, to be almost no contemporaries.
No one spoke up. No one yelled out: this isn't right. The bureaucrats were as smooth as silk, manufacturing injustice, creating dissent, stifling voices of opposition. Oh how could it be, that the world we had championed had turned out so badly? Nothing will be the same in two decades time, nothing at all, he could remember saying, stumbling down the street and the sky swirling around him. But the world that had become, the world they had helped create, was in and of itself a tortured place where reason had been abandoned, where tolerance was a lie, where the pack mentality of the left and the goose stepping precision of the state had become the accepted norm. And you did not suffer: as long as you agreed with everything they said.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/16/business/euro.php
Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has plunged Europe into a familiar bout of hand-wringing about the future of its grand experiment in political and economic integration.
But the angst has not spilled over into currency markets, where the euro - perhaps the most tangible symbol of European unity - rose Monday against the dollar, the first full day of trading since the results of the Irish vote were announced.
That is a marked change from three years ago, when the rejection of a proposed European constitution by France and the Netherlands deeply rattled the euro. At that time, some experts questioned whether the currency could survive in the long run without a more unified Europe. Few people are saying that today, which testifies to the resilience of the euro but also to a widening belief that the European monetary union can function fine without an accompanying political union.
"Any poll in Ireland would show massive support for the euro, but not for political integration," said Philip Lane, a professor of international macroeconomics at Trinity College in Dublin. "The question is, 'Do you need political integration for a functioning monetary union?"'
The answer, for the most part, is no, said Lane, who pointed out that "monetary policy is essentially a technical exercise, when delegated to an independent central bank."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/labor-goes-global-to-squib-a-squabble/2008/06/16/1213468331462.html
THE Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, has called for calm over petrol, saying it was a global problem that would not be helped by squabbling at home.
With the Government again under attack from the Opposition yesterday, Mr Ferguson said the reasons for high prices were many and an international response was required.
"It's about time we understood that it's a serious debate not only confronting Australia but also the global community," he said.
"There's no simple solution to the problem of record oil prices and no one nation can shoulder the burden on its own."
Mr Ferguson will represent Australia at an emergency international conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this weekend.
A Herald/Nielsen poll published yesterday showed 78 per cent of voters wanted the Government to take action on petrol prices. Of these, 67 per cent - which translates to 52 per cent of all voters - advocated cutting fuel excise. Only 22 per cent - or 17 per cent of all voters wanting Government intervention - supported Labor's FuelWatch scheme.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23875159-2,00.html
SUPPORT for the Liberal Party and Brendan Nelson has slumped back to pre-budget levels, wiping out gains made by the Coalition in the political fight over petrol prices.
Six weeks of slight and slow improvement for the Opposition Leader and the Coalition has collapsed, and a six-week slide in Kevin Rudd's popularity from record highs has been arrested.
The Prime Minister and Labor continue to dominate Dr Nelson and the Coalition despite popular anger at rising petrol prices and the furore over the behaviour of NSW Labor minister John Della Bosca and his wife, federal Labor backbencher Belinda Neal, at the Iguanas nightclub earlier this month.
According to the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, the Coalition's primary vote dropped four percentage points to 33 per cent in the past two weeks, while Labor's was unchanged on 46per cent.
During the same period, Dr Nelson's support as preferred prime minister also fell four points, to 13 per cent, while the Prime Minister's support rose from 66 per cent to 68 per cent.
I have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. I cannot in good conscience sit idly by and watch the destruction of that Constitution by a judiciary that is no longer independent. Despite a tradition of silence by judges on such topics, I can no longer keep quiet about what I, as an insider, have seen happening in, and to, our courts. I may be accused of unethical conduct and threatened with professional discipline, as I was in the past. If that is a risk I must take, so be it. Others before me have taken much greater risks in defense of republican government.
I have witnessed liberal totalitarianism on many fronts as both a lawyer and a judge, but it is fair to say that I probably would not have written this book if I had not had my own, very direct run-in with the tyrants of tolerance. That unpleasant personal experience forced me to do some serious thinking about what is happening to American law, how it is happening, and who is making it happen. And finally it convinced me to write this book, and to accept whatever consequences came from publishing it.
That run-in occurred when I dared confront one of the most active elements of liberalism: the radical feminists.
“Manifesting Bias”
If Social Security is the “third rail” of American politics, then sex is the third rail of American law. Anyone who touches it, except in the manner approved by the tyrants of tolerance, is fried. In this realm, the tyranny of tolerance is best described as rule by the radical feminist cadre of liberalism. Like the rest of the illiberal liberals, femifascists display single-minded devotion to imposing their tyranny on the American people—and will viciously punish those who resist.
I learned this from painful experience....
I concluded my opinion by observing the danger of imposing liability based solely on speech. “[T]he sexual harassment police,” I wrote, “seem oblivious to the First Amendment as they eagerly enlist the courts as censors of words and literature in the workplace.” More specifically, I noted that it seems clear to everyone “except for the denizens of the cloud cuckooland of radical feminism” that no court had ever held a sexual advance to be actionable in and of itself.
Although I did not expect liberals to applaud my opinion, and I probably expected a certain amount of controversy, I was comfortable with the complete freedom judges have had historically to say what they thought about the law. When writing opinions, especially on issues where precedent is unclear or conflicting, judges have a unique opportunity to criticise the parties’ theories and to explain or instruct the public concerning the state of the law. I felt particularly comfortable because my dicta did not control my legal analysis of the main issue. I was doing nothing unusual—or so I thought.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307393562&view=excerpt
How disappointed he was when he discovered the author of Something Wicked This Way Comes had voted conservative. How was it possible for a dazzling imagination not to come from the left? How right was it to bleat for the unfortunate and the dispossessed? To discard the arrogant self confidence of the rich. To come within a millimetre of being saved; and yet to be all knowing. To love mankind in the abstract; well humankind now. Men had become so unfashionable, dismissed. Agree with us or get out of the way.
If it wasn't for personal experience he would never have held the views that he did. He was tired of the extremists, yet the lunatics really had taken over the asylum. No one thought twice. No one really believed there was an answer; they hid their views, they zippered their mouths, they watched their pandering, simpering colleagues who, like sleazy little puppies looking for attention, performed all sorts of tricks to show how acceptable their political views were. Lolling on their backs, their smelly, happy little breaths puffing in the winter dawn, delight and expectation of reward glistening in their eyes.
His was a different march, a different tune. In this amorphous chaos that was the contemporary world, when "working families", picked up from focus groups and regurgitated back at the population by the self-serving government of the day about sixty million times, was what passed for political debate. Led by slime bags and old fashioned socialists, every standard trick had been used to fool the populace. The trouble was, the other side was just as bad, worse perhaps, because they knew better but were too afraid to tell the truth.
It was all here now, a multi-cultural feminist society, all the fashionable theories adopted from around the world, all in the name of self-preening progress. You couldn't disagree or even question without being called a racist or, in effect, a patriarchal oppressor out to bash women. Publicly funded campaigns bashing up on men and fathers were prime examples of the indoctrinations of the masses. The crumbling chaos t hat was the world, that's what we inherited. Why did the conservatives cling to ridiculous things like opposition to gay marriage? Why did it matter? Who cared at the end of the day who married who?
So the conservatives gave themselves a bad name by clinging to remnants of Christian ideology, for no good purpose. While the welfare budget kept growing bigger and bigger. The former Prime Minister John Howard made the conservatives in this country a laughing stock by his ridiculous, counter-intuitive measures; his massive public spending, his massive expansion of the tax regime, his ceaseless, frenetic efforts to buy his way back into power. A concession here, a concession there, old people, young people, disfigured people. Everybody copped a little bit, depending on their level of dysfunction.
Now the socialists are in, and there's no chance now of any common sense. He could have been called. He could remember back to 1970s and the era of of Gough Whitlam, but few other people could. There seemed, strangely, to be almost no contemporaries.
No one spoke up. No one yelled out: this isn't right. The bureaucrats were as smooth as silk, manufacturing injustice, creating dissent, stifling voices of opposition. Oh how could it be, that the world we had championed had turned out so badly? Nothing will be the same in two decades time, nothing at all, he could remember saying, stumbling down the street and the sky swirling around him. But the world that had become, the world they had helped create, was in and of itself a tortured place where reason had been abandoned, where tolerance was a lie, where the pack mentality of the left and the goose stepping precision of the state had become the accepted norm. And you did not suffer: as long as you agreed with everything they said.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/16/business/euro.php
Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has plunged Europe into a familiar bout of hand-wringing about the future of its grand experiment in political and economic integration.
But the angst has not spilled over into currency markets, where the euro - perhaps the most tangible symbol of European unity - rose Monday against the dollar, the first full day of trading since the results of the Irish vote were announced.
That is a marked change from three years ago, when the rejection of a proposed European constitution by France and the Netherlands deeply rattled the euro. At that time, some experts questioned whether the currency could survive in the long run without a more unified Europe. Few people are saying that today, which testifies to the resilience of the euro but also to a widening belief that the European monetary union can function fine without an accompanying political union.
"Any poll in Ireland would show massive support for the euro, but not for political integration," said Philip Lane, a professor of international macroeconomics at Trinity College in Dublin. "The question is, 'Do you need political integration for a functioning monetary union?"'
The answer, for the most part, is no, said Lane, who pointed out that "monetary policy is essentially a technical exercise, when delegated to an independent central bank."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/labor-goes-global-to-squib-a-squabble/2008/06/16/1213468331462.html
THE Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, has called for calm over petrol, saying it was a global problem that would not be helped by squabbling at home.
With the Government again under attack from the Opposition yesterday, Mr Ferguson said the reasons for high prices were many and an international response was required.
"It's about time we understood that it's a serious debate not only confronting Australia but also the global community," he said.
"There's no simple solution to the problem of record oil prices and no one nation can shoulder the burden on its own."
Mr Ferguson will represent Australia at an emergency international conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this weekend.
A Herald/Nielsen poll published yesterday showed 78 per cent of voters wanted the Government to take action on petrol prices. Of these, 67 per cent - which translates to 52 per cent of all voters - advocated cutting fuel excise. Only 22 per cent - or 17 per cent of all voters wanting Government intervention - supported Labor's FuelWatch scheme.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23875159-2,00.html
SUPPORT for the Liberal Party and Brendan Nelson has slumped back to pre-budget levels, wiping out gains made by the Coalition in the political fight over petrol prices.
Six weeks of slight and slow improvement for the Opposition Leader and the Coalition has collapsed, and a six-week slide in Kevin Rudd's popularity from record highs has been arrested.
The Prime Minister and Labor continue to dominate Dr Nelson and the Coalition despite popular anger at rising petrol prices and the furore over the behaviour of NSW Labor minister John Della Bosca and his wife, federal Labor backbencher Belinda Neal, at the Iguanas nightclub earlier this month.
According to the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, the Coalition's primary vote dropped four percentage points to 33 per cent in the past two weeks, while Labor's was unchanged on 46per cent.
During the same period, Dr Nelson's support as preferred prime minister also fell four points, to 13 per cent, while the Prime Minister's support rose from 66 per cent to 68 per cent.
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