Noam Chomsky—a liberal writer and professor—came under fire when he decided to write the introduction to a book that denied the holocaust ever took place. The reason he wrote the piece, was not that he believed the holocaust never took place, but because something far greater was at stake. Freedom of speech is sacred to someone like Chomsky and this freedom is in most need of protection when the speech is inflammatory. Much like Chomsky, this week I will defend a very important principle.
In Kansas, the Supreme Court has recently over-turned a law that punished underage homosexual acts more harshly than heterosexual acts. The law gave a homosexual teen seventeen years in prison for an illicit act with a fourteen year old boy. The problem comes in the fact that if one of the boys had been a girl, the maximum sentence would have been fifteen months. The court said that “moral disapproval" was not a good enough reason for the law to exist.
Let it be known that I am well aware that the Kansas law is not fair at all, but that is not the point. In fact, I would argue It remains to be seen whether or not the free people of Kansas can come up with a law to govern themselves. In other words, are we still a republic at all?
President Lincoln sums up the whole of my argument nicely: “I believe... that each community as a State has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State...”
It is easy to get caught up in the absurdity of the Kansas case and overlook the larger picture. It is a people's right to come up with the rules which they will live by, no matter what a handful of appointed justices may say. This republic is ours to keep, so long as the courts do not fritter it away.
6 comments:
Between Federation and Republic and Nation there are some intricate deliniations and the courts are the correct sphere or branch to define them.The Founders were wise in this. They also gave us a Bill of Rights which transcends these boundaries and you should check it out, as well as The Federalist Papers.
I would have to disagree. The legislature should decide issues of social importance. The Constitution was never intended to apply to the states. Moreover, there is nothing in this Kansas case that speaks of a Constitutional issue. A state should still be free to make inane laws if it will.
1. Noam Chomsky is in no way, shape, or form a liberal.
2. Chomsky never wrote the intorduction to the book you're refering to - he wrote an essay on academic freedom which was taken without permission by Faurisson and used as the preface to his book.
3. The value of democracy is not that the majority always prevails, but that rights of the minority are protected. For example, perhaps it wasn't 'the will of the people' for desegregation to take place, but segregation was something that was undemocratic to begin with, and so it had to go.
Noam Chomsky is not a liberal? How do you swing that?
Simple. If you take either definition of 'liberal', the American or European one, Chomsky doesn't fit. He's not for moderate social reform or for free markets. Noam Chomsky is a declared anarchist - or, if you prefer, a libertarian socialist. Either way, he believes in abolishing the state. Find another 'liberal' who wants us to live in an arco-syndicalist society and you've got me.
Thanks fot straightening me out Loyal. I feel terrible embarrassed for publishing something that was factually untrue.
As for your contention that the man is not a liberal, I will take your word. I have not read enough of him to say either way, but I have rarely heard his name in a sentence without the word liberal near-by. Still, it is, possibly, equally frustrating to hear Bush dubbed a conservative.
I'll try to be more careful next time.
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