Holder's replacement

Confirming Holder's replacement?

I question if that is the correct statement. Reid will either rubber stamp with no filibuster or Obama will wait for the inter-session recess that will happen before Jan. 3, 2015. Either way the Republicans will have no say on Holder's replacement. The replacement will likely be even more corrupt.

Tolerating Intolerance

If you favor Democrat politics, odds are that you enjoy the power of political correctness to silence opposition to your cause de jour. You state your position and shut down any logical response as racist, bigoted, homophobic, hateful, or violative of history's progress. You will not tolerate to hear the contrary position. You will shout down opposition at the dining table or the lecture hall. You will march out of the room or in the streets. Your ears burn to hear a different point of view. The Spanish Inquisition would be proud of the power of your ability to avoid hearing sinful comments.

In that Democrat positioning you cannot tolerate to hear intolerance. Are you proud of your intolerance of intolerance?

Philosophers as deep as Karl Popper have argued about this proposition. Usually they come across as erudite simpletons. Like most philosophical debates well versed on Kant, they make the issue too complicated and impractical to resolve.

Long before Popper, Lord Justice Blackstone wrote about the implementation of freedom of speech and press. He insisted that such freedoms were to be free of restrictions on expression before the expression is made. To deal with truly intolerable speech or publications was best handled by having consequences for wrongful expression. He used the torts of libel and slander as his examples. A potential slanderer should be allowed to utter his defamatory statement, then there should be a consequence in punishing the slanderer after the defamatory utterance. 

His counter-example was to require licensing of the speech's content before its utterance. The licensing is intended to prevent future harm. In practice this allows too much power to the bureaucrat to abuse the licensing process for the bureaucrats' own or his patron's benefit. It forestalls speech that simply undermines the powerful or the corrupt while providing little real benefit to society.

Political correctness is merely the social version of Blackstone's licensing counter-example. Politically correct speech is intended to prevent contrary opinions from being heard by giving the target of an attack to forestall the attack without regard to the truth of the attack or the benefit of society at large. It avoids Blackstone's problem of government bureaucratic power by shifting to the appearance of using etiquette to avoid intolerable speech.

Regardless the mechanics, the results are the same. Speech and publishing are impeded unless the message is deemed acceptable in advance by the elites. The damage on free thought and the exchange of ideas is impeded in favor of maintaining the power of a preferred group that is seeking power and influence over the people-at-large.

The etiquette imposed is like a protocol in the court of Versailles with all ministers, lords, and ladies knowing their place and the correct steps in the preferred dance of the day. All act in accordance with the Sun King's wishes in order to maintain their position of power and ambitions of seeking ever greater proximity to power and influence.

What is tolerable is defined by the king's ministers while the peasants, craftsmen, and bourgeoisie not at court have no say.

The intolerant define what is tolerable. 

Karl Popper gets lost in philosophical gobbledygook to unentangle this mess.

Once again the United States' founding fathers had a logical method to deal with this type of problem. They used it in defining the only crime written in the US Constitution: treason. To prove treason, the government must show that an act to take down the government was committed before two witnesses. This requirement shifts the criminalty of treason from the thought to the act. The message to the commission.

Disagreement and lack of acceptance of differing philosophies or religions is not intolerable. Harm to life, liberty, and property is intolerable. It violates the basic purpose for coming into society and then governmental organizations in the first place, according to the tenets of John Locke. That harm is where civil tort and criminal law come in to play. Defamation, property damage, violation of natural rights, murder, rape, theft, and run away licensing and regulation are intolerable violations of life, liberty, and property.  Action to steal elections through ballot fraud, to install illegal candidates in office, or to blow up legal government agencies, property, or personnel are intolerable. They prevent the regular exercise of life, liberty, property, and the voting franchise for the ordinary citizen.

Islam is not intolerable for preaching the Quran or teaching about Sharia. Islam is intolerable when it forces its daughters and wives to live according to Sharia against these women's individual will. Islam is intolerable when it takes a concrete step toward an attack on the life, liberty, or property of an American citizen or its duly elected or appointed government. Islam is intolerable when it conspires for a group of Muslims to do intolerable acts.

Tolerating the intolerate is intolerable. The intolerate are those who would act or conspire to deprive us of life, liberty, or property in the name of their philosophy or religion. It is not that difficult, Mr. Popper.