Week of 06/11/2001

Target: The ACLU and the NRA
- by David Matthews 2

"The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists." - Dr. Martin Luther King

When it comes to protecting and defending our civil rights, you can’t find two groups any more active, vocal, or influential than the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association. Both groups are very fervent in their defense of their respective favorite constitutional amendments. The NRA concerns itself with the right to bear arms, while the ACLU concerns itself with the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights.

NRA members are very defiant in their stance concerning gun control. They announce to the whole world that the only way government will take their guns away is if they pry them from their cold dead hands! Now that’s a graphic picture! Of course, its a bonus when they can get NRA president Charlton Heston to make the pronouncement with his booming "Moses" voice.

The ACLU, on the other hand, attack like mosquitoes on anything they consider to be a threat to civil liberties. They don’t make booming pronouncements. They don’t leave graphic images of defiance in their wake. They don’t even protest. They just file lawsuits. That’s all they do. If they can’t work with the various government entities, they sue those entities.

Both groups are governed by their extreme defense of their respective rights. The NRA feels that you should have the right to own, sell, collect, possess, and properly use a vast arsenal of weapons, and to defend your property with an M-60 machine gun if you so incline. The ACLU would be willing to support any individual or organization from government repression, even admitted pedophiles.

And yet, even though both sides are strong advocates of liberty, both sides are often on opposite ends of each other.

ACLU members are governed by the more liberal factions of society, and are often advocating gun control. They believe so strongly in a peaceful society that they cannot even remotely support people defending themselves when threatened. Of all of the rights in the Constitution, they feel the Second Amendment has simply outlived its usefulness.

Meanwhile, the NRA is governed mostly by conservatives, and while they have a downright religious devotion to the Second Amendment, they’re not too happy about the other nine parts of the Bill of Rights. They don’t believe in the Separation of Church and State because they feel it takes GOD out of society. They really have no qualms about taking land by eminent domain, as long as it’s not THEIR land being taken. They feel that only guilty people exercise their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, and guilty people also have no right to complain that their punishment is "cruel and unusual." They’re all for a right to a speedy jury trial as long as that jury says "GUILTY" the minute court is in session.

NRA members don’t mind the Fourth Amendment being voided, simply because it’s being done in the name of the War on Drugs and the War on Crime, and those two things use the word WAR in them, and WAR means using guns and all, and they really, REALLY love that!

And let’s not forget the First Amendment, shall we? Free speech? Well, they don’t care about that, because it lets protesters burn the American Flag, which they proclaim to be just one step "Under GOD". The right to assemble? Well, so long as it involves an NRA meeting, or a church gathering. Anything else is fair game. And speaking of religious fervor, let’s not forget the Freedom of Religion, which they support so long as the religion in question is THEIRS.

Two groups governed by extremely polar ends of society, often on each other’s back so closely they’re almost going to need a condom and some lubricant.

Now let’s get brutally honest here… I happen think these two powerful, extreme polar groups really should be working together, not against each other!

Both groups currently believe that some of the rights spelled out in the US Constitution are to be supported to their extreme ends. The NRA feels the right to bear arms should be absolute, and the ACLU feels the same way about most of the other rights. They also feel that the rights they do not respectively support HAVE limitations.

What they fail to understand, however, is that those arguments inevitably cancel each other out.

The NRA, for instance, feels their Second Amendment right is unyielding. It "shall not be infringed" - as it is written. Yet the First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law", and NRA members seemingly have no qualms about watching Congress make laws that infringe on THAT Amendment, do they? Sure, Congress can make laws that censor speech and turn America into a neo-Nazi theocracy as long as it worships THEIR God. Just don’t touch the guns.

The ACLU feels that the Second Amendment is outdated, just like the Third Amendment, which prohibits the government from forcing you to house soldiers. But if the Second Amendment can have an expiration date, what is to stop the government from imposing an expiration date on any other right? The federal government, for instance, can claim that in this day and age of the "War on Drugs", the Fourth Amendment has outlived its usefulness.

And here’s a nightmare scenario for my fellow civil libertarians: what would happen if a faction of the government decides to simply ignore the judiciary? A law is declared unconstitutional, and the government says "screw you, and screw the courts, we’re still going to enforce it". What are you going to do then? Send more lawyers? Get in front of the cameras and whine about it? What are you going to do when the government refuses to respect that "civilized" society?

Perhaps the best way the ACLU and the NRA can start to work together is to stop this push by anti-freedom moralists to censor things deemed "harmful to minors." Once upon a time, the conservatives would not have even given a second thought about those things, because they believe that "harmful to minors" would only pertain to sex and explicit words. However, quite recently, violence has been added to the list of things considered "harmful to minors." And quite often, anything that even remotely resembles a gun has been censored in our government schools. Drawing a picture of a gun, or even pantomiming using a gun has had dire consequences by youngsters. Even a picture of a young boy at a firing range being supervised by a certified instructor has resulted in government persecution. Certainly the NRA would have a vested interest in making sure their freedom of speech would not be infringed in the name of "protecting children", right?

Then again, the NRA is starting to find out on their own about the value of free speech, thanks in part to the McCain-Feingold reform bill that would outlaw much of their lobbying efforts. Oh yeah, NOW they’re preaching the virtues of free speech when it’s THEIR speech that’s on the censored list!

Both the ACLU and the NRA fail to make an important connection concerning the interrelation of our constitutional rights. They fail to realize that each of those rights in those first ten constitutional amendments have equal worth, and each are needed to protect the others. The arguments they use to protect one of those rights can be used to protect ALL of those rights. And conversely, the arguments they use to limit any other right can also be used to limit THEIR rights as well.

No, it’s not easy to defend the rights of those people you would otherwise not give a care about. Do you really think that the ACLU want to defend the people who make their skin crawl? They’re about as comfortable doing that as the NRA is in defending the militia groups who think the UN black helicopters are just around the hill. But if they cannot make that libertarian leap, then the next right that will be on the government chopping block could very well be theirs.

Week of 06/04/2001

Our Love-Hate Relationship With Privacy
- by David Matthews 2

"I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors." - H.L. Mencken

"None of your business!"

Ah, the rallying cry for privacy!

We don’t like having people poke through our affairs… even if we don’t have any affairs for people to poke through.

Even the most exhibitionist of people have that one part of their lives that they keep to themselves. There are people who would parade about stark naked for the whole world to see, and yet they will be very quiet about what they do for the first few hours in the morning, or about that time they spend with their significant other. Ask them about that, and they’ll politely tell you that it is none of your business.

We all have those levels of comfort in our lives, that point that we’ll share with the world, and then we expect the world to just leave us alone.

Not everyone has the same level of comfort. Some of us, for instance, aren’t happy with having a webcam follow us through our meals, morning shower, and mid-morning constitutional. Some of us don’t want to have our video rentals and credit card purchases made public for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to dissect.

It’s not that we have anything to hide, but maybe we don’t want to have marketers call us at all points in the night to try to hustle us some useless insurance package. Maybe we don’t want to have our bible-thumping neighbors try to brow-beat us if they realized that we’ve signed up for the "Sexy Cheerleader Video of the Month Club". Perhaps our vegetarian-eating, anti-fur environmentalist neighbors would be infuriated to know that we eat red meat packaged in Styrofoam containers and have five fur coats in the closet.

It’s that little bit of privacy that helps keeps us civil. What our neighbors don’t know won’t come back to haunt us.

On the other hand, we can be incredibly voyeuristic. We’re curious to know everything we can about our neighbors, and the person down the street, and the people on the other side of the tracks, and what’s going on in the White House. MTV’s "Cribs" and "Video Diary", for instance, takes you into the personal lives of rap stars and other musicians. E! Television’s "Celebrity Homes" does the same thing for other celebrities. Both of them could give credit for Robin Leech and his "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" show, which showed the whole world just how well the good life is.

And that’s really the crux of this whole voyeurism thing, isn’t it? We want to know if other people are living life better than we are.

Ironic, isn’t it? We want to know everything we can about our neighbors, and yet we expect others to respect our own privacy.

And when it comes to voyeurs, there is nobody more inquisitive than those in the government. Our government wants to know EVERYTHING about us. They want to know how much money we make, how many jobs we have, what kinds of cars we have, what kind of house we live in, how much we spend on groceries, how much money are we saving for retirement, how far we drive to work every day, how many times we go to the bathroom. And if you think that the government is not interested in all of that, then you obviously were not one of the thousands of people who were shipped the LONG form of the 2000 Census.

Or how about those "Know Your Customer" banking regulations? Ever hear of those? Our government wanted explicit regulations in place that would require banks to create a database about all of your financial transactions. They wanted the banks to ask you as customers about where you got your money, and what you plan on using that money for. And our government wanted to have access to all of that information at ANY time, without a warrant or even notification.

There was quite a bit of outrage over those proposed regulations. After all, what business was it to have the government look into our financial transactions? We’re not criminals, so why should the government force the banks to treat us as criminals?

Well guess what? Not only were many of those regulations secretly put in place after all of the publicity died down, but now those same government regulators are trying to make this a GLOBAL activity... to be able to peek into any bank account around the world! They want to get rid of the confidentiality of long-established banking havens like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

You didn’t know about that, did you? Well, of course not! Because the government would tell you that it’s none of your business!

Besides, they say, they NEED to know these things so they can spot all of those criminals and miscreants who are out there in the world. After all, we know only bad people put their money in Swiss Bank Accounts, right? Well, bad RICH people anyways.

How about your online habits? Where do YOU go online?

Did you know, for instance, that certain websites have little text files called "cookies" that are put on your hard drive? These things are used by marketers to not only track how many times you’ve visited that site, but also which sites you came from, which sites you’re going to, what kind of computer you have, what kind of ISP you’re using, what kind of browser you’re using, right down to where you live!

You didn’t know that, did you? Well of course not! Because marketers would tell you that it’s none of your business! Just as they would say that it’s none of your business to know what they want to do with that information they collect on you!

And now there are those in our federal government who want to eliminate anonymous web surfing altogether! They feel that only bad people surf the net anonymously, and you have nothing to hide, right?

That was the rationality government officials around the world used when they forced a private anonymous service called "anon.penit.fi" to shut down their operations in the mid-1990’s. They believed that only terrorists, pedophiles, and drug traffickers used this service, so they forced the owner in Finland to either reveal all of the names of their for-free users or else shut down. He wisely chose to shut down.

Our ongoing battle with encryption is yet another example of Uncle Sam playing "Big Brother." When the creator of Pretty Good Privacy encryption wanted to get a patent for his work, the Department of Defense stopped it by classifying encryption in the same category as nuclear weapons! And when he simply released the program for free over the Internet, our government threatened to try and execute him for treason! Unconstitutional? You bet your ass it is!

Yet, this is the same federal government that outlawed the private sector from gathering online information from kids without their parent’s permission. The same federal government that still collects information about all of its online visitors, young or old, even when they are explicitly told by the President of the United States not to!

Hey, how about your cell phone? Did you know that a regulation by the Federal Communications Commission will force all cell phone makers to install global positioning devices in your cell phone so people can track you down to within 1000 feet of your location? You didn’t know about that, did you? Well of course not! The government would tell you that it is none of your business!

Let’s get brutally honest here… trusting the government with our privacy is like trusting a kleptomaniac with the family jewels. They’ll keep it safe, but only if THEY get to keep it.

If we want privacy, we have to not only insist upon it for ourselves, but for our neighbors as well. It is very easy for our government to give us the old line of "Oh, we’ll NEVER use it on YOU! We know you’re nice people! We only want to keep track of the BAD people!" The only problem is that when government makes such rules, there is no differentiating between "good" people and "bad" ones. To them, everyone is a "bad" person. Today it would be your next door neighbor.. and tomorrow, it would be you.

And don’t start in on this "Well, it helps law enforcement!" So would scrapping the US Constitution and turning America into a paramilitary police state, but you don’t hear too many people advocate that, do you?

There is a certain trade-off when it comes to public figures, no matter if you’re talking about a movie star, a sports figure, a centerfold model, or a politician. They choose to make a certain part of their lives public. That doesn’t mean that everyone else should be forced to have their lives made public too.

I realize that it is instinctive to be curious about the lives of others. When someone opens up a window shade, or a webcam, many of us are going to take a peek. However, there is a difference between someone leaving a shade open, and us forcing that shade to be open. Government certainly wants to force all of our window shades open, and keep them open… supposedly for our own good.

We need to tell them is what they often tell us… that it is none of their damn business!

Week of 05/28/2001

Stomping on Political Eggshells
- by David Matthews 2

"When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave." - Eric Hoffer

For more than five years, conservative Republicans controlled the US Congress.

And conservatives did not want you to forget that. They did not want you to forget that for forty years, they were the minority legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Sure they held some power here and there, including having brief control of the Senate in the early 1980’s. And they certainly did not want you to forget their conservative Presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the elder George Bush. But above all else, they wanted you to remember that every case of government excess, every case of tax-and-spend budget deficits, every bloated regulation book and every over-exaggerated 1040 form came from the forty years that liberal Democrats had control over the US Congress.

So when Inauguration Day of January 1995 came about, conservatives were in sheer political ecstasy! Finally, after forty years, they were in control of Congress! People like Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, and Joe Biden would give way to Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, and Strom Thurmond! In fact, they were having so much fun, that they almost had to outlaw it because it was so close to being downright orgasmic! Conservatives up and down the media dials were throwing parties and singing praises of their victory. Special interest groups such as the theocratic Christian Coalition were elated that they would finally be able to shove their beliefs down America’s throat!

And certainly they were proud that on this Inauguration Day of 2001, after a heavily contested election, conservative Republicans were finally able to remove the stench that was the Bill Clinton regime from the White House, giving them power not only in the Congress, but in the White House as well. With the younger George Bush in the White House, and conservatives controlling Congress, it would be a snap for the conservative movers and shakers to reshape the face of American politics in their favor.

Well, now it appears that the conservative control is coming, in part, to an end.

Despite the myth that the GOP came to power in a "landslide" (when only 20% of the registered voters actually voted in 1994), voters were not really happy with the conservatives in control. They liked the idea of less government, but they really saw little difference between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Both groups wanted to shove some form of government down our throats. So starting in 1996 and moving onward, the voters started to chip away at the GOP power base, until finally, in 2000, they elected a US Senate that was evenly divided at 50 votes apiece. Vice-President Dick Cheney, as President of the Senate, would be the tie-breaker, and was the only reason why the Republicans held control of that branch of government.

You would expect that the party leaders would be gently walking on political eggshells for the next two years. After all, it would take only one defection, or for one candidate to die, for there to be a change in power.

Certainly the liberal Democrats and the members of the media were anxiously looking at the geriatric Strom Thurmond, who is on the verge of turning 100, and hoping and praying that he would slip on a banana peel and shuffle off this mortal coil. But even that was not a certainty, since not only was Thurmond too crusty an old fart to die, but even if God was to do the world a favor in that regard, it was a crapshoot that the Democrats would be able to get his successor. So the conservatives had a little bit of confidence that they would be able to hold on to that sliver of power until the next congressional election.

But not all was right in GOP-land, and by "right" I don’t just mean content.

There were some politicians who were not happy with the tone of their party, and the direction it was taking America towards. This splintering of the GOP had been going on for the past few years, culminating with the moderate Michael Forbes switching to the Democrats, for claiming that the GOP was too conservative; and with arch-conservatives Pat Buchanan and Senator Bob Smith becoming independents, claiming that the GOP was not conservative ENOUGH. Smith, though, found being a lone wolf too lonely, and crawled his rotund body back to the ranks of the GOP. Forbes, on the other hand, got voted out on Election Day by a Republican.

It was an otherwise little-regarded moderate senator from the state of Vermont by the name of James Jeffords who would be the most pivotal man in the US Senate. For one week, Jeffords would have the fate of the most powerful senators, and five years of GOP control of the Senate, in the palm of his hand.

Imagine, if you will, having that much power in your hand for a brief period of time. Having political movers and shakers, whom would otherwise take you for granted and not even give you a second thought, suddenly at your beck and call, promising anything under the sun. All it would take would be your assurance that you would continue to support a party that was moving contrary to your beliefs. Or, with but a word, you could shift the balance of power more towards your liking. Would you make that deal? Or would you exercise that power, and politically castrate those movers and shakers?

Senator Jeffords chose to exercise that power by quitting the Republican Party and becoming an independent. In doing so, he shifted the balance of power from 50-50 to 50-49-1, and gave the Democratic Party control of the Senate for the first time in five and a half years.

Now the conservatives are in panic mode. Instead of having a lock on all three branches of government, they now once again have to share power with their hated enemies, the liberal Democrats. Instead of delegating, they now have to go back to deal-making. Instead of presuming authority over any issue, they now have to work to get that support.

Boy, it must suck to be them!

Conservatives are also looking for someone to blame for this turn of events. The most common question being asked by talking heads is not "What now?", but "Who dropped Jeffords?"

Some are blaming Jeffords for not being a "party player." They claim that his moderate-to-liberal leanings don’t really make him a "real Republican", but simply a political opportunist. They are trying to convince their associates that they really don’t need Jeffords anyways, and that he was always a liability.

But hold that childish temper tantrum for a minute.. Jeffords was a Republican Senator for over twelve years, long before the so-called "Republican Revolution." He could have switched to the Democratic Party at any time they were in power! Certainly he could have crossed over when Bill Clinton came to power in 1992 and further cement the Democratic power base.

And while we’re on the issue of political opportunism here, how about we go back in time to that 1994 election, shall we? A certain Georgia congressman by the name of Nathan Deal had just been re-elected as a Democrat. The minute he realized that the balance of power in the House was going to shift to the GOP, he switched parties. Now how is it that Deal’s defection to retain his seniority was a "decision of conscience" and Jeffords’ abandoning the GOP considered an act of "political opportunism"? You can’t have it both ways!

Some people are blaming Da Big W for his failure to retain Jeffords. They claim that Jeffords felt slighted when President Bush forgot to invite him to the White House to honor one of his constituents. I realize that politicians can be extremely petty, but do you actually think that a senator would be willing to make that kind of monumental shift in power just over a forgotten invitation? If you do, then you also believe that the GOP shut down the federal government in 1995 over House Speaker Newt Gingrich being snubbed on Air Force One.

Some are blaming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for not keeping a tighter control over his more moderate members. It was Lott, after all, who kept Jeffords from serving as chairman of the Environment and Public Works committee, and instead had this ardent environmentalist chairing a committee he did not want to work in. Certainly Lott could bear some of the blame in that regard, but running the Senate does not work in a vacuum. There were others who also made it their point to keep Jeffords out of key positions of power where his moderate-to-liberal leanings could undermine their efforts.

Let’s get brutally honest here.. the conservatives have nobody to blame for this shift in power but themselves! They could have easily used this fragile balance between Democrats and Republicans as a working demonstration of how they could work with other groups. Jeffords’ political leanings were not concealed like some kind of hidden affair (a topic some politicians know more than others). They could have easily used this as their proof that the GOP really IS the party of "the big tent", where ALL levels of the political spectrum were welcomed.

But then again, it really would be against their nature, wouldn’t it? Much like the old story about the scorpion and the frog, the conservatives cannot help but be what they are, even if it means losing power.

Deep in their hearts, conservatives have never been for compromise. Being a conservative has never been about deal-making and finding consensus. Those things have been as alien to conservatives as air is to a fish. Theirs has been to make standards and to hold others to those standards.

Conservatives have never been comfortable with the "big tent" theory of political parties, unless it is a "big conservative tent". In the minds of many a conservative, the GOP is THEIR party. Period. Moderates, liberals, and libertarians are more than welcome to join so long as they sit down, shut up, nod their heads, open up their wallets, and vote the way they are told to vote.

When Pat Buchanan sided with the Reform Party, he did more than just assume their party’s name. His people did their damnedest to turn the Reform Party into the kind of party he wanted the GOP to be.. in other words, a conservative party. When Bob Smith was looking for a political party in his brief absence from the GOP, he wanted the American Taxpayer Party to not only become an ultra-conservative party, he wanted the name of the party changed to the Conservative Party. Smith, however, quit that party when they would not change to suit his demands. And Buchanan’s transformation of the Reform Party not only alienated the more libertarian members, but it also cost him the support of the man who brought him into the Reform Party in the first place, namely H. Ross Perot.

Much like their symbolic elephant, conservative Republicans cannot find it within themselves to tread lightly. Rather, they can only stomp mightily wherever they go and deal with the consequences afterwards.

It has always been the arrogance of the conservatives that has been their undoing. It was that arrogance that cost Newt Gingrich his role as Speaker of the House. It was the arrogance of Buchanan that cost the Reform Party their fleeting support. And it was that arrogance that inevitably cost the GOP their position of power in the US Senate.

Now that they are reduced to being the minority power in that branch of the Congress, perhaps they can once again discover humility and cooperation. Perhaps they can take it upon themselves to work with others instead of lording over them. They will certainly have to try in order to get President Bush’s programs passed.

Week of 05/21/2001

Wertham Revisited?
- by David Matthews 2

"I just feel that there's something wrong with this current system, that if a book does not bear the stamp of the Comics Code Authority that there's something wrong with the book. I think frankly that's just bullsh*t. And that level of bullsh*t has really hurt the comic-book business in America for the past 50 years. If you get to other countries in the world where there hasn't been this institution, comic books have become a significant, interesting, lively mainstream form of media with a tremendous amount of creative freedom and a hugely diverse offering." - Bill Jemas, Marvel Comics

On May 16^th, 2001, the people who brought the world Captain America and the X-Men gave their own blow for freedom and the American way of life.

In a press conference that garnered little attention, Marvel Comics made the announcement that they would be abandoning the Comics Code Authority. Executives said that they would no longer adhere to the fifty-year old morality code of the CCA, declaring the code to be outdated, and it’s "seal of approval" meaningless in today’s comic book market.

Of course, Marvel would not be the first to abandon the CCA. DC Comics had strayed from the CCA decades ago, first with mainstream comic characters such as Green Arrow, Vigilante, and the Doom Patrol, then later with their own Vertigo label.. and then again when DC purchased Wildstorm Comics. Wildstorm itself came from Image Comics, an organization of writers and artists who felt constrained by both the CCA and corporate mentalities. And there have been scores of other smaller publications who have also made the decision to abandon the CCA.

But you never really heard of these others flat-out abandoning the Code, did you?

As a matter of fact, how many of you even HEARD of the Comics Code Authority? Or know the history behind it?

That’s precisely Marvel’s point. Most people don’t know. Or care, for that matter.

But once upon a time, they did.

The Comics Code Authority was the comic book world’s unpleasant alternative to government censorship fifty years ago. Back in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, when the only "freedom" actively practiced in America was the freedom to suppress, the moralists began to turn their attention to a popular publication called the comic book.

Quite predictably, they didn’t like what they saw.

They saw a wide array of comic books and comic strips, geared towards all ages of readers. They saw fan favorites like Superman, Batman, the Human Torch, Wonder Woman, the Phantom, Popeye, and Bugs Bunny. But they also saw the horror books like "Tales from the Crypt" and "House of Horror." Clearly these were not books for kids, and they discussed issues at the time that they themselves did not like. So they piously made the declaration that comic books were evil and had to be stopped "for the good of the children."

The man leading this charge against the animated world was a New York psychiatrist by the name of Fredrick Wertham. From his lofty intellectual world, he stood in judgement not only of horror books, but also the mainstream "superhero" books, and declared them a menace to the youth of America.

To prove his point, Wertham related dozens of instances where children leaped off rooftops trying to fly like Superman. He pointed to testimonials from parents who said that their "precious little angles" became sadistic demons once they began reading comic books. And when he couldn’t use words from paranoid parents, he began to make his own judgements. Batman, for instance, was not a nighttime vigilante, but rather a wealthy pedophile who has a young boy (Dick Grayson), who is given a girl’s nickname (Robin), and is forced to wear shorts to expose his legs, and they both live reclusive lives without any sign of an active heterosexual social life. Wonder Woman was initially dressed as a Can-Can girl, which in those days was considered a floozy. Her costume back then consisted of a red bustier, blue skirt, and boots. The bustier, of course, exposed her shoulders and her cleavage. The skirt barely reached to the knee. Clearly not something your average "upright" woman would wear in public in those days.

Armed with their so-called "expert judgement" from Wertham and others like him, the moralists went to Congress to demand action. And it was the self-named House Subcommittee for Un-American Activities, that bastion of tyranny that made a publicity whore named Joe McCarthy famous, that would call hearings on the "appropriateness" of comic books. And no doubt many in the comic book publishing world feared those hearings would eventually lead to censorship legislation, or else they would not have agreed to self-censorship through the creation of the Comics Code Authority.

Almost fifty years have passed, and a lot has changed.

For one thing, comic books have moved away from the "kids only" tag and moved back into the adult crowd. Frank Miller’s "Dark Knight Returns" presented a grittier Batman who wasn’t afraid to bloody a nose or break a few bones. "Watchmen", a mini-series created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, gave the world more realistic superheroes, and showed their effects not only in society, but also in history. I mean, how could America lose the Vietnam conflict with the help of the most powerful men in the world?

Even mainstream comic books became more and more grittier. The nobility of Captain America and the ethics of Daredevil gave way to the killers and assassins named Punisher and Wolverine. Green Arrow dropped his sidekick after his heroin addiction, and he abandoned his Batman-like trick arrows and became a killer after his girlfriend Black Canary was brutally assaulted.

American readers were also getting introduced to Japanese comics, or Magna, which not only had a children’s section, but also an adult one. The Japanese had no mental stigmas about comic books being a "kids only" genre, and American adults were eager to read quality work that wasn’t watered down. All of which, by the way, were without that CCA seal on them.

Now let’s get brutally honest here… Marvel did not have to make a big production about their departure from the Code. They could have easily crept away from the CCA without completely abandoning them, as did rival DC. In fact, if you look carefully with a microscope, you should still find that "Seal of Approval" on the covers of DC’s more popular titles. Or they could have abandoned the CCA without even so much as a notice.

But by making a public announcement and making it clear why they are abandoning the CCA, Marvel Comics has once again placed itself squarely in the sights of the moralists, daring them to once again take action.

And this commentator has no doubt that at some point, the moralists WILL be taking shots at Marvel Comics. For while times have changed for the rest of us, moralists have not. They continue in their anti-American ways to suppress freedom under the guise of "protecting children" by getting the local police to shut down comic book stores and arresting store owners. It really doesn’t matter if the charges are later dropped
(as recently happened to one store owner in Texas) or if the owners are found not guilty. Quite often the intent of the moralist is not to win cases, but simply to drive the struggling owner out of business. Essentially they engage in economic terrorism.

And given the recent crusades against anything "violent", it would not take long before the Federal Trade Commission starts peering into the comic book world just as they are doing now with movies, music, and television. It would not be much of a leap before the FTC starts doing an "expanded study" on print media.

Marvel, however, is not the same publishing organization of fifty years ago. They have much more money, not to mention much more support today than ever before. Comic book writers, artists, and fans have also banded together to form the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an organization dedicated to fighting moralism and defending the rights of responsible comic book store owners, artists, and publishers.

Other comic book publishers will no doubt make their own decision to stay or to leave the CCA, but they shouldn’t expect the CCA’s "Seal" to protect them from all moralists. Former 2000 Presidential candidate Harry Browne said it best when he said the following:

"The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a "safe" code of conduct - one that would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can always be condemned by someone - for being too bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or too conservative. So it's necessary to decide whose approval is important to you."

Much like their X-men, Marvel Comics and their supporters will have to prepare for a conflict that hopefully will never materialize. Much like the anti-mutant bigots of their world, the moralists of the real world are also self-righteous and scared of the things they have no control over. But unfortunately, it will not be adamantium claws or eye-beams that will win this struggle. Rather, it will take good hearts to stand up against the self-righteous, and to remind them what freedom really is all about.

Week of 05/14/2001

The Making (And Unmaking) Of A Martyr
- by David Matthews 2

"I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom." - Voltaire

By all rights, Timothy McVeigh should’ve been a dead man this week.

McVeigh was scheduled to die this Wednesday, May 16^th, 2001, for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, and the hundreds of lives lost that day, some of whom were but children.

McVeigh supposedly did this as payback for the deaths in Ruby Ridge and Waco by federal agents. An eye for an eye, as the old law went.

He even went so far as to admit what he had done, and had asked that his attorneys stop any appeals in his case. He asked, even begged, for an execution date. And the federal government was all-too eager to give him one.

If carried through, it would have been one of the speediest executions in recent American history. Most executions take decades to be carried out, mostly because of the myriad of appeals filed by lawyers. McVeigh put a stop to that, saying that he was ready to accept his punishment and meet his maker.

But that’s not going to happen. Not now anyway. And quite possibly not for a while.

And we can thank our government for that.

That’s right.. OUR government screwed up. It seems in their zeal to convict McVeigh and his buddy Terry Nichols, the Federal Bureau of Investigation forgot to disclose some 3000 pieces of evidence, which they are obligated to give to both the Justice Department and the defense attorneys. They just... forgot! Just slipped their minds. Whoops! Sorry about that!

Because OUR government screwed up, the execution has been postponed for a month.. and quite possibly longer, should McVeigh decide to change his mind and start appealing his conviction.

That certainly is a bummer for anyone eager to see McVeigh die, but until it is determined that the evidence that was withheld couldn’t either validate the conviction, or vindicate McVeigh, we can’t execute him. Goes back to that "rule of law" thing. You remember the rule of law, right? We once tried to oust a US President on that.

Now I’ll be brutally honest with you.. I am certainly NOT a fan of what Timothy McVeigh did. Despite any and all possible disagreements I have with government both large and small, I am not someone who would advocate - never mind initiate - violence against the government for their past crimes. The malicious deaths of a mother and child at Ruby Ridge, and the needless deaths of hundreds of Branch Davidians in Waco are not justifications for ANY kind of like response. If it were up to me, I’d have a hand on that lethal injection, making sure McVeigh gets exactly what he deserves.

Timothy McVeigh and those like him would have us think they stand up for freedom against a tyrannical government. They picture themselves as modern-day patriots and liberators. But instead of fighting FOR freedom, what McVeigh did was strike a huge blow AGAINST freedom.

Because of what happened in Oklahoma City, the federal government went into its stereotypical security overkill mode, wanting restrictions the likes of which would’ve made Josef Stalin proud. They wanted tagging agents put in anything that could conceivably cause an explosion. They wanted to monitor and control all sorts of so-called militia groups, even wanting to ban so-called "cookbooks" that would explain how to make explosives. The public scrutiny ended up destroying much of the militia movement, drying up their ranks, and causing some to re-evaluate why they were there in the first place.

Worse yet, the explosion in Oklahoma City turned public opinion TOWARDS the government, not away from it! As long as it was only the government that was the aggressor, as long as it was only the government that was taking lives, public opinion was against them. All of that changed when the federal building blew up. And it became the perfect forum for anti-freedom politicians like President Bill Clinton to espouse their beliefs that we have "too much freedom".

Nice going, Tim. You actually did your own cause a disservice!

Look, I know we have a government that is at times running out of control, but I seriously do not think we have reached that point of no return where we can’t make peaceful changes to the system. We can shake things up without resorting to violence or acts of terror. But in order for us to do that, we need to get the people not only on our side, but also pissed off enough to take that peaceful course of action. They will not do that if they fear the solution just as much as they fear the problem.

Some people are suggesting that Tim McVeigh wants to die a martyr to his cause. The problem being, though, that his cause died the minute he decided to be like his enemies. Much like the warnings of Friedrich Nietzsche, McVeigh had stared into the abyss, and the abyss became him. He became a freedom fighter alright, but only in the same way that a fire fighter fights fire and a crime fighter fights crime. If that is the way he wishes to be remembered, so be it, for that is the way history will view his actions as.. as those of a terrorist.

As for the FBI’s handling.. or mishandling.. of the case, it’s a good thing that Director Louis Freeh is on the way out. Given the number of scandals that have surfaced in the past few months, this would’ve cost someone their job anyways. But bear one thing in mind.. even if the evidence they withheld does nothing but validate McVeigh’s conviction and support his execution, the fact that it WAS withheld vindicates the mistrust in government that initially created people like Tim McVeigh. That’s something that Freeh’s successor should always keep in mind.