Libertarian Commentary #16-14D, by Nathan Barton

With the “victory over religious dogma” and “homophobia” and “hatred” in the Supreme Court, those few months ago, in which laws in most states, and many centuries of common law, as well as definitions found in dictionaries for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, were overturned, the massive, global “cultural war” entered a new phase. The Nazgul declared that not just a man and a woman, but two men, or two women, may be “married” to each other, and it was proclaimed by many a great victory for “liberty” and freedom.

The Tranzi and homosexual activists who enjoyed and celebrated that victory have swiftly moved to secure that victory and expand on it. The conservatives and those few lovers of liberty who could see clearly have worked desperately to (if not overturn the victory) at least limit its impact on society, culture, and basic human freedoms. But looking at the news this week, this next phase is already a defeat for those conservatives. But also a defeat for cultural and social preservation. And a defeat for human liberty.

“Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have allowed ministers and others refuse to marry gay couples because of their religious beliefs”, according to Reuters. “McAuliffe, a Democrat, said the measure approved by the Republican-controlled legislature was unconstitutional and would drive business away from the state. ‘Although couched as a ‘religious freedom’ bill, this legislation is nothing more than an attempt to stigmatize,’ he said in a statement.” Tom Knapp (Freedom News Daily) correctly points out, “Why would a law be necessary to “allow” religious officiants to refuse to marry anyone for any reason?”

The quick answer to Tom’s question is also simple:  Freedom is dead in this country and the only things that anyone is allowed to do is those things that government SAYS that they can do.  It is rule by majority, but a majority that is terrorized by threats from a small minority. Actually, we can see it is a “coalition” of small minorities. We have the Tranzi managers (de facto owners, no matter who “owns” the shares) of big transnational business. We have that part of the homosexual population which craves not just acceptance or tolerance but affirmation of their superiority. And we have that even smaller minority (the hundredth of the one percent?): those who lust after and exercise power over the masses, and more and more wealth, the new god-kings.

All of these elements can be seen to Virginia’s south. The BBC reports on a related issue which is part of this current phase of the culture war. This little fuss is part of the attack on society which has been launched with renewed vigor since the Nazgul decision. “Business backlash grows against North Carolina’s discrimination law. Eight businesses have joined a growing backlash against a new North Carolina law ending anti-discrimination protections across the state. Bank of America, based in Charlotte, has joined dozens of major firms publicly objecting to the law. It also means transgender people must use bathrooms according to the gender on their birth certificates. Republican Governor Pat McCrory said the law was protecting privacy and based on common sense. New York, Vermont, Washington, San Francisco and Seattle have banned travel by public employees to the state as a form of protest.”

In this story, Steve Trenward (Freedom Net Daily) misses the mark completely when he writes “This whole issue is so ridiculous, but will persist until we stop confusing waste-elimination with sex!”  No, it is not a matter of confusion, it is a matter of the most intimate right of privacy, the very same “foundation” on which the “right” of abortion and the “right” of homosexual activity was erected.  Since those things are now allowed by government (and oppositions or even dislike or failure to “affirm” them as good is now detestable and all but illegal), there is no need for that “right of privacy” any more.  It can be done away with, along with the rights of free speech, freedom of association, freedom of worship, and others which were enumerated, not just implied. By doing so, the essential elements of civil society and even Euro-American civilization are attacked, weakened, and destroyed.

The “bizarre” idea that people might have a right to privacy when “eliminating waste” (of necessity exposing their “private parts” (a now quaint and “outdated” concept) and when bathing (those same private parts) MUST be suppressed in our glorious new society. The equally “strange” idea that people may not just express their dislike (much less moral objections to) certain sexual practices (or other lifestyles) or SOME religions and societies and economic systems must ALSO be demonized, denigrated, and suppressed, no matter what the cost to liberty. (After all, liberty is just an artifact of an outmoded society and religion. The quaint concept is nothing but a distasteful reminder of the illegitimate power of a patriarchal society of primitive nomads.) The idea that individuals, and their lives, matter, is something that will go away quickly enough, and indeed is fading fast, washed away by the blood of aborted infants and drone-killed children, women and elders.

Freedom of speech cannot be tolerated in this brave new world. With such a dangerous liberty, there will constantly be challenges and fresh reminders that not everyone is affirming and embracing the diversity of the new societal norms, brave new world of hypertyranny and elevation of the state (always with its partners of transnational business and academia) to godhood.

Which is why I think that freedom of speech is being so viciously attacked in the 2016 campaigns to elect a new Massa.  We saw the insane clown-car spectacle of panic in one university over a few chalked Trump signs in Georgia, not that long ago. That apparently worked so well that (as Reason’s Robby Soave writes about) at Scripps College in California, the student body president says a “Trump 2016” whiteboard message is “intentional violence.” “Here we go again. A Mexican-American student … woke up to find that someone had scrawled ‘Trump 2016’ on her white board. (I gather that the board is on her dorm room door.) The student-government president has condemned the messages as ‘intentional violence’ and vowed to punish the perpetrator. Minjoo Kim is student body president of the private women’s college in Claremont, California. On Saturday, she sent a campus-wide email alerting fellow students to the whiteboard incident and informing them of the counseling and bias-reporting services available to the traumatized.” Such attempts to stigmatize, suppress, and punish free speech are not new, and not limited to “women’s colleges” of course. But this kind of attack is more sophisticated than screaming groups of protesters trying to silence political speeches or people handing out political flyers or religious tracts. Even repeating “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” may itself become forbidden speech soon.

If a “child” can be harmed by reading (or hearing) the “wrong” words in their college campus (and remember that once upon a time, college students ages 17-24 were NOT considered to be “children”), then the ability to write and say those things must be taken away, in the same way that guns and explosives and some drugs must be taken away as much as possible, and tightly controlled when they cannot.

All those old freedoms, those old ideas of liberty, are no longer needed and no longer wanted, when we have the loving, protective arms of the state wrapped around each of us. And those who refuse to accept that are different only in degree, not kind, from the (non-state-sanctioned) terrorist who bombs the markets and stations. Or the terrorist who dares to pull, even USE, a gun on the mugger or home-invader (supposedly “forced” to do so, because their poverty is too great to bear). And like the (would-be) child of wealth (who would otherwise suck up too much of the earth’s resources) must be torn bloodily from the womb and thrown away, these enemies of the state must be eliminated. Without pain or suffering of course, if that is possible. (After all, everyone knows that while car-bomb and suicide vest bomb victims suffer great agony, victims of B-52 and Fencer and Mirage and drone attacks die painlessly.)

Society is not “crumbling” – it is being torn down.  Freedoms and liberty are not fading, they are being ripped from us.  Those who are cherished and sacrosanct “victims” today, whether they are homosexuals or women collegians or Islamic believers or abused refugees, will be the targets of elimination in the future as the power of the state grows enough that they are no longer needed.