North Carolina: Godland USA

It looks like we can now throw North Carolina in with a growing cluster of states like Arizona, Utah, and to the surprise of no one, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, that don’t mind taking certain liberties with the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause that establishes federal law as taking precedent over state and local legislation. Here is a refresher:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

You see, it’s the second part of this sentence that excites the states rights crowd. And what really stirs them into a tizzy is the word, “nullification,” which is the notion that if states deem that a certain federal law is unconstitutional, like, oh, I don’t know, the simple truth that immigration enforcement is solely the federal government’s responsibility, they have the power to invalidate federal statutes. Except that they don’t. Unfortunately for those folks, the Supreme Court has concretely ruled against nullification in at least two cases (Cooper v. Aaron, 1958, and Ableman v. Booth, 1859).

But don’t let that stop the pioneering state of North Carolina, which is now considering a bill that would make it possible for the state to establish laws respecting religion, if not establish a religious state altogether. According to N.C. House Joint Resolution bill 494,

Whereas, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads: “… Congress shall make no law respecting an Establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” … Whereas, this prohibition does not apply to states, municipalities, or schools … each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion … The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

Notwithstanding what the First Amendment says that is completely to the contrary and notwithstanding the Founders’ own commitment to protecting the people against religious tyranny, the other hurdle facing zealots in North Carolina — thankfully the law provides many hurdles to tomfoolery of this sort — the Fourteenth Amendment further protects against the states “abridging” the privileges and rights of U.S. citizens. And, while I realize there are those believers who would just as well ignore the fact that freethinkers and skeptics walk in their midst and breathe the same air, last I checked, nonbelievers’ rights are as equally protected in the Constitution as believers’.

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Indubitably, I dislike the following

Slate is featuring a story about word aversion titled, “Why Do We Hate Certain Words,” and the word, “moist,” seems to near the top for a lot of people, at least among those few who have stewed so much on the topic that they have actually created a list. I too am not a fan of “moist.”

Some people actually loathed certain words so much that uttering them made them physically sick. One person, for instance, had a particularly strong aversion to “meal” and doubly so when coupled with “hot.” I can’t say that I hate any word with quite as much zeal as some folks, but here are a few words that make me cringe when I hear them ring in my ears:

  • Anathema, appropriately.
  • Gyrate and pretty much any word beginning with “Gy.”
  • Scuttlebutt is so unnecessarily clunky when “rumor” will do every time.
  • Clack is bad, but so are “cluck” and “click.”
  • Elongate and most words ending in “- gate”
  • Etcetera
  • Legume
  • Ergonomic, nothing efficient about this word.
  • Ungulate, just an ugly three syllables.
  • Gusto
  • Apropos, a word people use to make themselves appear more intelligent than they actually are.
  • Approximately, I find that many use this clumsy word rather than the more succinct “about.”
  • Indubitably, indubitably this word doesn’t exactly roll off the lips
  • Ratchet

Maybe if I give it some more thought, I’ll come up with a more extensive list of loathsome words, as well as some favorites. Just off the top of my head, I give early nods to keepers like “albatross,” “seismic” and “mettle.”

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Proliferating the stupid

Maybe someone can help me understand the logic in this: P.Z. Myers disagrees with the message conveyed by a stupid meme on Reddit, and instead of ignoring or down-voting the post — or whatever it is people do on Reddit — he brings attention to it and even publishes the offending picture.

If you are offended by something posted on the Internet, why not just move on? Rather, Myers has effectively ensured that this piece of Internet trash will be further proliferated and cached online for years to come from his own site. That’s what I call a good feminist hard at work.

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Postscript

To save people who may come here from Myers’ site or elsewhere the trouble of wading through the comments below, let me clarify a few points. This particular post was a clusterfuck of unintended inconsistencies. I’ve already admitted that, and hell, if I had a do-over, I would have approached it differently. When you blog five years with no filter but your own mind, you might whiff a time or two, and I think it’s important when people call me out if something I write is beyond the pale in some way.

First, let me say that I appreciated Myers’ tone and the way he handled his response to this. Obviously, I routinely publish content with which I disagree for the expressed purpose of outlining what I feel is wrong with it. The intention of the post was, from my perspective as someone who does not adopt the feminist label, to highlight the fact that here was a feminist, Myers, dredging up an image that is probably best left in the bowels of Reddit. He could have just linked to it as I did or simply described it without the link.

The only thing that I question about what he said in response was the distinction he made between something that he views as merely “wrong” versus an offensive image. This, it seems to me, is splitting hairs. If he didn’t find that viewing the image caused a certain amount of displeasure, which is the definition of “offensive,” presumably he wouldn’t have written about it and used it as an example of how Reddit’s reputation is falling “deeper in the slime.” Folks often like to avoid the word “offensive,” claiming that they have thick skin and that little truly offends them, and while that may sound good on paper, that’s not always the case, even if we don’t like to admit it. I’m willing to concede that perhaps all this was erroneous thinking on my part in hindsight — and many of you have made your case — but this is why I bothered to mention Myers’ post in the first place. The delivery, as I’ve said before, left something to be desired.

As for my views on equal rights and feminism in general, I’ve written about this at length, and it most closely resembles John Stuart Mill (Read “The Subjection of Women“), and more recently, Noel Plum 99, although if Mill was alive today, I have my doubts that he would adopt the modern manifestation of feminism because it seems to embrace women’s rights, which is all well and good, but it often does so at the expense of the other half of the population, whereas Mill called for “perfect equality” with no favoritism one way or the other. Noel Plum described a view that I think is perfectly reasonable, that we should be working toward, not necessarily “equality of outcome,” but “equality of opportunity” between the sexes, wherein everyone has the same chance at success in life and everyone is treated as individuals.

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