{"id":25984,"date":"2012-02-03T12:05:17","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T18:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25984"},"modified":"2012-02-03T11:28:57","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T17:28:57","slug":"all-that-glitters-isnt-intelligent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25984","title":{"rendered":"All That Glitters Isn’t Intelligent"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while ago, I issued a challenge to supporters of single-sex marriage, and opponents of the proposed Constitutional Amendment on the issue this fall; develop an argument that’ll convince a majority of Minnesota voters that you’re right about the issue.<\/p>\n

For a fair chunk of that audience, the “argument” has been expressed as simply chanting “you’re a bigot”, which is a stupid argument.<\/p>\n

For another fair chunk, the argument reverts to chanting “we don’t vote on civil rights”, which is a nice platitude. \u00a0Also bullcrap. \u00a0We vote on civil rights all the time. \u00a0Ask any second amendment supporter or opponent of campaign finance “reform” \/ speech rationing, or academic freedom activist, or anti-“Fairness Doctrine” watchdog. \u00a0And that completely avoids the question “is marriage a civil liberty”. \u00a0I don’t know that I support the Amendment – but I know that all the best arguments against it come from conservatives.<\/p>\n

The dumbest argument of all? \u00a0Glitter.<\/p>\n

It’s become a fad among the local cutesy-but-inartciulate crowd in the past year; if you can’t manage an actual adult argument (and they never, ever can), throw glitter at them.<\/p>\n

The Strib editorial board\u00a0sounds off against the fad<\/a>\u00a0– for all the wrong reasons. \u00a0It comes in the wake of some giggle moron throwing glitter at Mitt Romney during his stop in the Twin Cities earlier this week:<\/p>\n

\u00a0That’s a mistake. Further glitterings, especially of presidential candidates, place everyone at campaign rallies at risk. Security officers must make instantaneous judgments about suspicious-looking people who get close to the candidates and their families. Whether it’s highly trained Secret Service officers or local law enforcement, it’s incredibly difficult in those split-seconds to distinguish someone drawing a weapon from someone pulling out a hidden bag of confetti.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Strib, that’s <\/em>the reason to stop the glitterings; the safety of the idiot throwing the glitter.<\/p>\n

Thjey’re wrong, of course.. \u00a0The risk to the over-schooled, under-educated, smug little glitter-throwing jagoffs isn’t the main reason to ditch the glitter.<\/p>\n

The damage the practice does to our political discourse. \u00a0It’s long been a principle of free speech; your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins. \u00a0Maybe a couple of feet before, if you’re smart. \u00a0Throwing anything <\/em>at another person is a form of assault; if you did it to a spouse or significant other in the wrong context (the middle of a fight) it could earn you a trip to jail. \u00a0As, indeed, it should have for the little prick that glittered Romney.<\/p>\n

So what we have in Minnesota -and it seems to be a phenomenon among smug little Minnesota jag-bags, so far – is a group of people that thinks a form of assault, stylized as it is, is a legitimate form of protest. \u00a0 Of “free speech”.<\/p>\n

It makes Minnesota look like an invincibly stupid place.<\/p>\n

As if electing Al Franken and Mark Dayton hadn’t done enough damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while ago, I issued a challenge to supporters of single-sex marriage, and opponents of the proposed Constitutional Amendment on the issue this fall; develop an argument that’ll convince a majority of Minnesota voters that you’re right about the issue. For a fair chunk of that audience, the “argument” has been expressed as simply chanting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25984"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25990,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25984\/revisions\/25990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}