Positive Liberty

Ian McKellen v. Sodomy Laws: Let me just say that I love Ian McKellen. Every time I hear him speak on gay and lesbian issues, he is just a model of firmness, decency, and common sense:

I knew very little about Singapore until I came here and I was immediately encaptured by the beauty of the place, the old buildings as well as the new, the old culture and the new, and the people, who were unfailingly friendly and helpful at every turn. And of course, being openly gay, I managed to meet a lot of gay people…

…And then we come to the one thing I don’t like about Singapore, which is 377A. You know that law. It’s a British law, and why the hell you’ve not got rid of it, I’m not quite sure. Well, I am sure, because it’s taken us a long time in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world to deal with these old problems, these ancient attitudes which need to be removed if we’re going to be part of the 21st century. So it’s very important that gay people, wherever they are, should identify themselves, stick up for themselves, represent themselves, modestly and positively, so the rest of the world knows that we’re here and we’re not going to go away. And we’re happy to be here…

Singapore continues to struggle with basic issues of privacy, equality, and of course censorship. Which brings me to…

The Internet v. Censorship: Censortive is a WordPress plugin that replaces the text of your blog posts with images of the same text to evade automated censorship programs. (Thanks, M’Gath!)

The Kurds v. Liberty: Think the Kurds are the good guys in Iraq? Think again. (And is there any regime in the Middle East worth supporting — even with our good will, let alone with our dollars and lives?)

Yahoo! v. Chinese Dissidents: Wired’s Threat Level blog has been all over the case, which gets worse and worse all the time. Yahoo knew, or at least clearly should have known, that the e-mails it handed over to Chinese officials were part of a crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Western companies should be ashamed of enabling Chinese repression.

Linden Labs v. Austrian Economics: Writing for the Mises Institute, Matthew Beller predicts economic doom for Second Life, based on the little-appreciated fact that Linden Labs is in essence running a fractional reserve banking system with particularly bad fundamentals.

Victor Aguilar v. Austrian Economics: Some weeks ago I commented on what I thought was a spurious offer by mathematician Victor Aguilar, who promised $1,000 to anyone who could defend Austrian macroeconomics against the critiques he made of it. Back then I scoffed as follows:

Appointing a jury… of Victor Aguilar… to judge the merits of the theories… of Victor Aguilar… with $1,000… of Victor Aguilar’s money at stake… well, it doesn’t take an economist to chuckle at that one.

But Austrian economist Bob Murphy now reports, “For what it’s worth, Victor Aguilar’s reward $$ wasn’t ’spurious.’ I wrote a response to his critique of Austrian capital & interest theory, and he did indeed pay me $1000. (You can see my response at his site.)”

And in fact you can. I doubt that I could follow the entire very technical discussion, but I happily retract my previous skepticism about Aguilar’s offer.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali v. The Seventh Century: The usually insipid “On Faith” section of the Washington Post gets a visit from the firebrand critic of Islam. I find all I can do stand back and applaud:

A woman in Islam is not competent and must always have a guardian. The responsibility of guardianship may pass from father to brother to uncle before a girl is married off, at which point she must answer to her husband. Marriage is typically arranged, with no choice given to the girl, and there is often an exchange of money in the process. Thus, under the religious rule of Islam, it is still common today that a woman’s rights are essentially sold to a man she may not know, and most likely does not love.

As for education of girls under Islam, there is a clear program of indoctrination of inequality. Under Islam, education is the passing on of the rules of submission to the will of Allah. Intrinsic in this “education” is the dictation of gender roles. Girls are instructed in subservience first to God, then to the family and finally to the husband. There is strict emphasis on modesty, defined by virginity. A Muslim girl is taught to guard fiercely her virginity as an expression of loyalty to her creator and to her family and husband.

This form of education hampers her chances of ever becoming self-reliant or financially independent. A woman’s lack of social equality and freedom is a direct consequence of the teachings of Islam. Under Islam, a wife must always ask her husband for permission and she must obey indefinitely. This stricture is lifted in the unique event that he asks her to forsake God, wherein she is allowed the right of disobedience. While it is true that in Islam, technically speaking, women have the right to trade and own property, the condition of total obedience to guardians makes this “freedom” hypothetical, at best.

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