I haven’t been making fun of The Seattle Times’ Ed Cetera blog recently. And point of fact, their intern is doing a pretty good job providing content.
But fortunately, there’s still their occasional nonsense where Bruce Ramsey and Lynne Varner argue usually over some detail on a non-issue where they start out meeting each other 90% of the way. Surprisingly, this time they actually talked about a real issue: The police response to the May Day vandalism. Bruce Ramsey starts it off thus: “I’m big on individual rights, but here is where I draw a line.”
Sure. We all have our lines. So it’s fair to say where they are. But I feel like Bruce Ramsey is regularly saying where we should curtail our individual rights and saying he usually supports individual rights as opposed to this time. But it seems to me, he could focus more on the rights he wants to expand.
Now, I’m sure he can link to pieces about lower taxes and claim that’s an individual’s right to not pay whatever tax the column is about. But that’s not the same. I’m sure he can link to pieces where he talks about property rights, and that’s closer but still not the same; the main regulations are downstream problems and other externalities, and anyway, a lot of people don’t own property. I’m sure he can link to pieces where he has defended corporate rights when they’ve been unpopular, but that’s not anything like individual rights.
Look, I know there are drug war things where he’s been fine. But it seems he cares less about individual rights than the average liberal. But he talks about how he’s for individual rights more than just about anyone. And you’d think someone like that would go out of their way to write about the individual rights they want to expand more.
If they’re masked and hooded, how can you tell they’re the same people. Also, from what I could see the Mayday rioters looked to be in there early twenties (unless you’re talking about the King County Sheriff’s deputies that went on a police riot). If that’s the case the WTO rioters would have been, what, 8-12 years old at the time? That’s pretty hardcore.
And there was property destruction done by people who weren’t masked as well. Fuck, let’s round up all the unmasked people. Maybe these people had yellow backpacks and running shoes on and the police were looking for people with black backpacks and Doc Martins? Maybe the police had more information than you did, Mr. Ramsey?
Oops, bad editing and the edit function seems to have gone missing. Both the Mayday rioters and the WTO rioters looked to be in their early 20’s.
People who smash things are a problem, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very small group of folks and they tend to grow out that sort of thing very quickly and solutions like Mr. Ramsey’s put forward tend to cause more problems than they solve.
It’s nice to say you’re for individual rights, but the flip side to the coin is individual responsibility. I think that’s what was lacking in some of the May Day behavior in Seattle.
Carl asks what individual rights I support—and not the rights of business owners, which don’t count for much because not everyone owns a business, not rights of property owners, because not everyone owns property, and not the rights of marijuana smokers, because, well, maybe because not everyone smokes dope. He wants me to defend the rights of “anarchists” who parade in Ninja-type outfits with masks and heavy sticks and have a habit of property destruction, and I will point out that not everyone does that either—and I refuse to defend them.
As a reporter I never covered cops, and few of my columns have been about them. I have written several times about traffic cameras, against them. An exception: last fall, I wrote about an inquest on a fatal shooting by King County police, and I was critical of how the police handled it.
My defense of smokers is not limited to cannabis but includes pipe and cigar smokers and smokers of roll-your-own cigarettes.
Probably still not enough for Carl. This is a progressive blog, and I am not a progressive. I can’t help that.
@4
Yes, this is a liberal blog and you’re not one. But, the criticisms leveled at you, and repeatedly at the Seattle Time’s editorial board, have to do with faulty logic and poor writing, not the fact that you and they not liberal.
@4, Thanks for the comment. It’s appreciated. I’ll make a general comment, and then respond to the individual links. I didn’t take a position in the post on if you or Lynne was right. I said it was “fair” for you to take it. The point of the piece, that I stand by, is that your definition of individual rights is rather limited.
– “Rights of business owners” is saying businesses should be able to curtail the rights of women to control their bodies. Not a big government piece as the title of my post suggests, but hardly a pro individual rights piece.
– “Rights of Property Owners” is the right to either have the county subsidize the cost of figuring out the downstream effects, or just ignoring them. That said, all property rights are by definition big government since try claiming a right to your property without the government. Your property is only yours because local and state government say it can be yours. Property rights are important, but fundamentally, they’re not individual rights.
– “Rights of Marijuana Smokers” I said in the piece that you’ve been fine on the drug war, so congrats.
– “traffic cameras” Come on. You think the government has a right to stop you before you commit a crime but not to write you a ticket after?
– “an inquest” a solid piece, but not really about individual rights.
– “pipe and cigar smokers” OK, I guess. It’s a pretty bad policy, but I suppose if you want to call that a right, it counts under the criteria I laid out.
– “roll your own” For fuck’s sake. There should be a right to be taxed less because you smoke roll-your-own versus pre-rolled cigarettes? Whatever you think of the policy, couching it in rights language is incredibly weak tea.