Friday, April 19, 2013

Compared to Rosa Parks

This podcast makes fun of people who compare themselves to Rosa Parks, the Alabama black activist who refused to move to the back of the bus in 1955. She spent a day in jail and became a national hero.

So let's compare her to Dan Brewington, who is sitting in jail for threatening to expose a corrupt family court judge and a psychologist who unjustly took his kids away. He has sacrificed far more than Rosa Parks, and did it for a much bigger and more important issue.

The Hitler analogies also offend people:
The comparisons recently prompted the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, to call on critics of gun control to keep Hitler and the Nazis out of the debate.

The rhetoric "is such an absurdity and so offensive and just undermines any real understanding of what the Holocaust was about," said Ken Jacobson, the ADL's deputy national director. "If they do believe it, they're making no serious examination of what the Nazi regime was about."

But some gun rights advocates firmly disagree.

"People who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it," said Charles Heller, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which has long compared U.S. gun control to Nazi tactics. "I guess if you're pro-Nazi, they are right. But if you're pro-freedom, we call those people liars."

Comparing gun control activism to Hitler is not new. In a 1994 book, "Guns, Crime and Freedom," NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre wrote that "In Germany, firearm registration helped lead to the Holocaust."
I am inclined to agree that these Nazi comparisons are not helpful. But California is actively seizing guns, and considered confiscating a lot more.

Just this week, California was in court defending censorship of psychotherapists in order to further a leftist political cause:
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court on Wednesday tussled with the legality of California's unprecedented ban on gay conversion therapy for minors, suggesting it could be upheld despite concerns for the free speech rights of counselors who support the practice.

During nearly two hours of arguments, a three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel grilled lawyers on both sides of the issue, wondering whether the First Amendment applies to psychotherapy ...

Mathew Staver, head of Liberty Counsel, a group challenging the law, called the California ban "breathtakingly broad," insisting there is conflicting evidence on whether it is justified and that it is preventing teens who choose the therapy from getting professional help. Therapists who violate the law risk losing their licenses. ...

The judges, however, also pressed Alexandra Gordon, deputy attorney general, on whether the evidence the Legislature relied upon to enact the ban was too anecdotal to risk eroding free speech protections, citing past court decisions that could be problematic for the state. That includes a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down California's ban on the sale of violent video games to minors because it violated the First Amendment.

Kozinski, in fact, noted that psychotherapy generally involves "speaking opinion," and he expressed concern about the lack of scientific proof of conversion therapy's harm to minors. "The evidence before the Legislature is weak," Kozinski told Gordon.
The great deniers of civil liberties in the 20th century were the Commies and the Nazis. I have never met a Nazi sympathizer, but I have met dozens of Commie sympathizers. All of our major universities have had professors who were Commie sympathizers. We have free speech for Commies. We do not have free speech for Christians, California psychotherapists, and fathers. Dan Brewington sits in jail for complaining about the crooked officials who took his kids away.

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