Why Youth Don't Fight Back

Traditionally, young people have energized political movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

Young Americans -- even more so than older Americans -- appear to have acquiesced to the idea that Corporate Capitalism can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. 

A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans "Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?" 

Among the 18-34 year old age group, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly taxing the wealthy and the big corporations; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.

How exactly has Corporate Capitalism subdued young Americans?

1.- Student-Loan Debt. 

Large debt - and the fear it creates - is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City College when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt.

While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world.

The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.

Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt. 

During the time in one's life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life. 

2.- Medicating Noncompliance. 

In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, "Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man."

Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" (ODD).

The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules," "often argues with adults," and "often deliberately does things to annoy other people."

Many of America's greatest activists would today certainly be diagnosed with ODD and other disruptive disorders.

Heavily tranquilizing anti psychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving anti psychotic drugs have non psychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients).

3.- Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Leadership.

Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: "The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions." 

A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.

The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don't care about, and that they are impotent to affect their situation. 

A teacher can lecture about democracy, but schools are essentially undemocratic places, and so democracy is not what is instilled in students. Jonathan Kozol in The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home focused on how school breaks us from courageous actions. 

Kozol explains how our schools teach us a kind of “inert concern” in which "caring" - in and of itself and without risking the consequences of actual action—is considered "ethical." 

School teaches us that we are "moral and mature" if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school - its demand for compliance - teaches us not to act in a friction causing manner.

4.- "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top." 

The Corporate Capitalist System has figured out a way to make our already authoritarian schools even more authoritarian. Democrat-Republican bipartisanship has resulted in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, the Wall Street bailout, and educational policies such as "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top." 

Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. 

In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by Corporate Capitalism-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities. 

5.- Shaming Young People Who Take Education -- But Not Their Schooling - Seriously. 

In a 2006 survey in the United States, it was found that 40 percent of children between first and third grade read every day, but by fourth grade, that rate declined to 29 percent. 

Despite the anti-educational impact of standard schools, children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning. That was not always the case in the United States. 

Mark Twain famously said, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education." Toward the end of Twain’s life in 1900, only 6 percent of Americans graduated high school. Today, approximately 85 percent of Americans graduate high school, but this is good enough for Barack Obama who told us in 2009, "And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country."

The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America's ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class. 

In the 1880s and 1890s, American farmers with little or no schooling created a Populist movement that organized America's largest-scale working people's cooperative, formed a People's Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892 presidential election, designed a sub-treasury plan (that had it been implemented would have allowed easier credit for farmers and broke the power of large banks) and sent 40,000 lecturers across America to articulate it, and evidenced all kinds of sophisticated political ideas, strategies and tactics absent today from America's well-schooled population. 

Today, Americans who lack college degrees are increasingly shamed as "losers"; however, Gore Vidal and George Carlin, two of America's most astute and articulate critics of the Corporate Capitalist System, never went to college, and Carlin dropped out of school in the ninth grade. 

6.- The Normalization of Surveillance. 

The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. While the National Security Agency (NSA) has received publicity for monitoring American citizen's email and phone conversations, and while employer surveillance has become increasingly common in the United States, young Americans have become increasingly acquiescent to Corporate Capitalist surveillance because, beginning at a young age, surveillance is routine in their lives. 

Parents routinely check Web sites for their kid's latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, are monitoring their children’s computers and Facebook pages. 

Some parents use the GPS in their children's cell phones to track their whereabouts, and other parents have video cameras in their homes. Increasingly, I talk with young people who lack the confidence that they can even pull off a party when their parents are out of town, and so how much confidence are they going to have about pulling off a political movement below the radar of authorities? 

7.- Television. 

In 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that TV viewing in the United States is at an all-time high if one includes the following “three screens”: a television set, a laptop/personal computer, and a cell phone. 

American children average eight hours a day on TV, video games, movies, the Internet, cell phones, iPods, and other technologies (not including school-related use). 

Many far-thinking people are concerned about the concentrated control of content by the corporate media, but the mere act of watching TV - regardless of the programming - is the primary pacifying agent (private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards).

Television is a dream come true for an authoritarian society: those with the most money own most of what people see; fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a 'divide and conquer' strategy; TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities; and regardless of the programming, TV viewer' brainwaves slow down, transforming them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. 

While playing a video games is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this "virtual potency" is certainly no threat to the ruling elite.

8.- Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism. 

American culture offers young Americans the "choices" of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist consumerism. All varieties of fundamentalism narrow one’s focus and inhibit critical thinking. 

While some far-thinking people are fond of calling fundamentalist religion the "opiate of the masses," they too often neglect the pacifying nature of America’s other major fundamentalism. 

Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. 

A fundamentalist consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulations, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulativeness, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form political movements. 

Fundamentalist consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult for the solidarity necessary for democratic movements. 

These are not the only aspects of our culture that are subduing young Americans and crushing their resistance to domination. The food-industrial complex has helped create an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. 

The prison-industrial complex keeps young anti-authoritarians "in line" (now by the fear that they may come before judges such as the two Pennsylvania ones who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated).

Isn't it time we did something to stop this? And to free our youth from Corporate Capitalist control!

Depopulation

"Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World." ~ Dr. Henry Kissinger

World population is, by all intents and purposes, completely out of control.

Plans are underway now, implemented by the Corporate Capitalist Elite, to depopulate the planet's 6-7 billion people to a manageable level of between 500 million and 2 billion.

There are many means and methods of depopulation that are being employed today, the three primary ones include: 

1. unsustainable/exploitative international development, which leads to massive hunger, starvation and famine worldwide (at least 40 million deaths annually); 
2. the fomentation of war, hatred and military procurements throughout the nations leading to millions of deaths worldwide; 
3. and finally, the creation and spread of infectious diseases leading to global pandemic, plague and pestilence on an unprecedented scale.

Other methods used include; the build-up and use of nuclear, chemical and biological agents, weapons and warfare, the poisoning and contamination of the planet's food and water supplies, the introduction and use of deadly pharmaceutical drugs in society, weather modification and the triggering of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis through electromagnetic psycho-tronic weapons both on Earth and in space, the promotion of homosexuality to limit population growth and spread the deadly AIDS virus, forced sterilization in countries such as China, forced vaccinations, abortion, euthanasia etc...

Death, and the management of who lives and who dies, has become the central organizing principle of the 21st century.

The previous century has been, by far, the bloodiest in human history. Hunger, famine and disease took billions of innocent lives. World Wars I and II, along with the despotic regimes of Mao Tsetung, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and others, took hundreds of millions of lives. The 21st century is shaping up to accelerate this dismal trend where hunger, famine and disease are reaping record levels of death (the equivalent of seven Jewish holocaust annually). Contemporary wars continue to rage on and proliferate. In the nation of Iraq, the killing fields have taken the lives of more than 2 million men, women and children (mostly children) this past decade from foreign and economic intervention. Vastly unreported is the genocide occurring in the Congo, where more than 4 million people have been slaughtered, mutilated and massacred recently with only scant world attention given. Add to this the unrestrained and very profitable build-up of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical and biological, in the world, particularly in the volatile Middle East region, with the expressed desire and willingness to actually use them, and you have an Apocalypse of World War III becoming a virtual inevitability. The death toll of THIS war is sure to surpass all previous in scale and in magnitude, as has been planned.

The international campaign to eliminate the "useless eaters," on behalf of the planet's privileged ruling elite, is surely to take a more voracious toll as global population levels continue to rise.

To implement their "final solution" to depopulate 4-5 billion people from the Earth, the world's Corporate Capitalist elite will undoubtedly harness the newly emerging bio-tech and nanotechnology industries to create a super 'bioweapon' virus creating a global 'kill-off' pandemic through which only they will have the cure.

The smart thing to do is to stop Corporate Capitalism before it kills most of the people off and enslaves the rest....

The State of the Union: 21st Century

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

– Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author

I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can’t do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months … until one day I took a closer look at the “Nutrition Facts” … Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let’s see … “Serving Size about 1/4 second spray” … Hmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say “about”. I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons — You’re good!

The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.

On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.

Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.

And on Thursday … yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.

The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.

Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.

Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight? Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy? The Washington Post’s senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above: “I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don’t radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control.”

Last month “Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe’s economic crisis” as he arrived in hard-hit Spain. “The economy doesn’t function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind,” he declared. “Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good.”

“I am a Marxist,” said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.”

“I don’t believe in anything,” said Barack Obama. “At least not really strongly.” (No, I made that one up.)

Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States “winning the Cold War” is that countless progressive people think there’s no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people’s minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating “command economy”, no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called “communism”, and they know how awful that is.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.

Agribusiness: Corporate Control of Food

The agribusiness sector is composed of a diverse group of corporate interests -- crop producers, livestock and meat producers, poultry and egg companies, dairy farmers, timber producers, tobacco companies and food manufacturers and stores.

Individuals and political action committees associated with the agribusiness sector contributed $65 million at the federal level during the 2008 election cycle and leaned Republican -- giving the GOP 62 percent of its contributions. In years past, the sector has been even more supportive of Republicans, giving as much as three-quarters of its contributions to the party. However, the sector marginally increased its contributions to Democrats after they regained Congress in 2006 – a trend that has persisted going into the 2012 presidential elections.

The agribusiness sector has contributed $480.5 million to federal candidates during the past two decades, with two-thirds going to Republicans.

The sector’s top contributors for the past three election cycles have been the Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) and American Crystal Sugar. Altria contributed $1.2 million in 2008, split evenly between the two parties. American Crystal Sugar gave 63 percent of its $1.9 million in contributions to Democrats during the 2008 cycle. The sugar cane and sugar beets industry -- as opposed to the sector as a whole -- has consistently leaned Democratic during the last two decades.

On the lobbying front, the sector spent $133 million in 2009, with the agriculture services, food processing and tobacco industries accounting for the majority of the expenditures. While the tobacco lobby has always had a major presence on Capitol Hill, the other two industries have steadily increased lobbying expenditures during the last few years as Congress has considered placing new food safety regulations and disclosure requirements on their products.

Issues of importance to the sector include agriculture subsidies, environmental and safety regulations and trade policy that favors agriculture. Increasingly, immigration reform has also become an issue, as many industries in the sector are highly dependent on immigrants and seasonal workers for labor.

The United States has the best Government that Corporate Capitalism can buy....

Corporate Capitalism Rules the World

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

~ Abraham Lincoln

Today we know that corporations, for good or bad, are major influences on our lives. For example, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations while only 49 are countries. In this era of globalization, marginalized people are becoming especially angry at the motives of multinational corporations, and corporate-led globalization is being met with increasing protest and resistance. 

[A U.S.] Supreme Court ruling in 1886 ... arguably set the stage for the full-scale development of the culture of capitalism, by handing to corporations the right to use their economic power in a way they never had before. Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1868 to protect the rights of freed slaves, the Court ruled that a private corporation is a natural person under the U.S. Constitution, and consequently has the same rights and protection extended to persons by the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech. Thus corporations were given the same “rights” to influence the government in their own interests as were extended to individual citizens, paving the way for corporations to use their wealth to dominate public thought and discourse. The debates in the United States in the 1990s over campaign finance reform, in which corporate bodies can “donate” millions of dollars to political candidates stem from this ruling although rarely if ever is that mentioned. Thus, corporations, as “persons,” were free to lobby legislatures, use the mass media, establish educational institutions such as many business schools founded by corporate leaders in the early twentieth century, found charitable organizations to convince the public of their lofty intent, and in general construct an image that they believed would be in their best interests. All of this in the interest of “free speech.”

From this ability to influence, “corporate libertarianism” emerged, which placed the rights and freedoms of corporations above that of individuals. This influence also led to cultural and economic ideologies known by numerous names such as neoliberal, libertarian economics, market capitalism, market liberalism etc.

Some of the guiding principles of this ideology included:

    * Sustained economic growth as the way to human progress

    * Free markets without government “interference” would be the most efficient and socially optimal allocation of resources

    * Economic globalization would be beneficial to everyone

    * Privatization removes inefficiencies of public sector

    * Governments should mainly function to provide the infrastructure to advance the rule of law with respect to property rights and contracts.

However, the assumptions behind these principles are questionable as much as the principles themselves.

The influence and power of large corporations has increased and is an undeniable facet of the 'global village' and corporate globalization. Of course, the influence of various groups and entities is nothing new. But today, the increasing size and wealth of corporations point to more concentration of wealth and of political and economic power and influence than before. Indeed, today as mentioned above, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries.

Now there is a real 'conspiracy theory'.... 

What Is a Man?

A man carries cash. A man looks out for those around him — woman, friend, stranger. A man can cook eggs. A man can always find something good to watch on television. A man makes things — a rock wall, a table, the tuition money. Or he rebuilds — engines, watches, fortunes. He passes along expertise, one man to the next. Know-how survives him. This is immortality. A man can speak to dogs. A man fantasizes that kung fu lives deep inside him somewhere. A man knows how to sneak a look at cleavage and doesn't care if he gets busted once in a while. A man is good at his job. Not his work, not his avocation, not his hobby. Not his career. His job. It doesn't matter what his job is, because if a man doesn't like his job, he gets a new one.

A man can look you up and down and figure some things out. Before you say a word, he makes you. From your suitcase, from your watch, from your posture. A man infers.

A man owns up. That's why those who think they are perfect are not men. A man grasps his mistakes. He lays claim to who he is, and what he was, whether he likes them or not.

Some mistakes, though, he lets pass if no one notices. Like dropping the steak in the dirt.

A man loves the human body, the revelation of nakedness. He loves the sight of the pale breast, the physics of the human skeleton, the alternating current of the flesh. He is thrilled by the snatch, by the wrist, the sight of a bare shoulder. He likes the crease of a bent knee. When his woman bends to pick up her underwear, he feels that thrum that only a man can feel.

A man doesn't point out that he did the dishes.

A man looks out for children. Makes them stand behind him.

A man knows how to bust balls.

A man has had liquor enough in his life that he can order a drink without sounding breathless, clueless, or obtuse. When he doesn't want to think, he orders bourbon or something on tap.

Never the sauvignon blanc.

A man welcomes the coming of age. It frees him. It allows him to assume the upper hand and teaches him when to step aside.

Maybe he never has, and maybe he never will, but a man figures he can knock someone, somewhere, on his ass.

He does not rely on rationalizations or explanations. He doesn't winnow, winnow, winnow until truths can be humbly categorized, or intellectualized, until behavior can be written off with an explanation. He doesn't see himself lost in some great maw of humanity, some grand sweep. That's the liberal thread; it's why men won't line up as liberals.

A man gets the door. Without thinking.

He stops traffic when he must.

A man resists formulations, questions belief, embraces ambiguity without making a fetish out of it. A man revisits his beliefs. Continually. That's why men won't forever line up with conservatives, either.

A man knows his tools and how to use them — just the ones he needs. Knows which saw is for what, how to find the stud, when to use galvanized nails.

A miter saw, incidentally, is the kind that sits on a table, has a circular blade, and is used for cutting at precise angles. Very satisfying saw.

A man knows how to lose an afternoon. Drinking, playing Grand Theft Auto, driving aimlessly, shooting pool.

He knows how to lose a month, also.

A man listens, and that's how he argues. He crafts opinions. He can pound the table, take the floor. It's not that he must. It's that he can.

A man is comfortable being alone. Loves being alone, actually. He sleeps.

Or he stands watch. He interrupts trouble. This is the state policeman. This is the poet. Men, both of them.

A man loves driving alone most of all.

Style — a man has that. No matter how eccentric that style is, it is uncontrived. It's a set of rules.

He understands the basic mechanics of the planet. Or he can close one eye, look up at the sun, and tell you what time of day it is. Or where north is. He can tell you where you might find something to eat or where the fish run. He understands electricity or the internal-combustion engine, the mechanics of flight or how to figure a pitcher's ERA.

A man does not know everything. He doesn't try. He likes what other men know.

A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong. That he planned to. He can tell you when he is lost. He can apologize, even if sometimes it's just to put an end to the bickering.

A man does not wither at the thought of dancing. But it is generally to be avoided.

A man watches. Sometimes he goes and sits at an auction knowing he won't spend a dime, witnessing the temptation and the maneuvering of others. Sometimes he stands on the street corner watching stuff. This is not about quietude so much as collection. It is not about meditation so much as considering. A man refracts his vision and gains acuity. This serves him in every way. No one taught him this — to be quiet, to cipher, to watch. In this way, in these moments, the man is like a zoo animal: both captive and free. You cannot take your eyes off a man when he is like that. You shouldn't. The hell if you know what he is thinking, who he is, or what he will do next.

Regulating Free Speech

Many have blamed heated political rhetoric in the wake of the recent tragedies, in which armed lunatics opened fire, killing several people and wounding many others. If heated political rhetoric can create a climate that encourages mentally unstable people to harm others, then I say it's time we start regulating speech the same way we regulate toys. After all, to protect the public, we regulate cars and toys, medicines and mutual funds. So, simply as a public health matter, shouldn’t we take steps to reduce the toll from our domestic communications industry?

All forms of communication, including but not limited to speech and writing, should be regulated just as much as toys. Or guns.

But wait! Doesn't our cherished Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) guarantee our right to free expression, unhindered by government interference?

Perhaps once upon a time, but let's face facts: those antiquated documents were written at a time when communication technologies were far less dangerous than they are today. They were drafted at a time when the power to spread dangerous ideas and words was strictly limited, when only a select few wielded the power of the press. The founders can not have foreseen the dizzying pace of technological advance, which today allows any nut with a blog or A.M. talk show to spread his or her dangerous, heated political rhetoric. So it's safe to say we can brush aside those outdated guarantees for public safety's, and expediency's sake.

We should demand an immediate government clampdown on all forms of dangerous speech or other communications. Here's why:

• We are awash in unsafe speech. Just listen to anything on conservative talk radio or read right-wing blogs.
• Unsafe speech is a public nuisance, and must be abated.
• Speech can incite people to riot, rebel, or commit crimes against humanity. One person can cause harm to thousands if not millions. Just look at the damage caused by the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler. Or Winston Churchill.
• Porn harms bazillions of lives. Or so I've heard.

Here are a few simple yet effective things our federal government should do immediately to protect the public from harmful words and thoughts. We must not delay, as this will only increase risk to life and limb.

• Establish a Consumer Communications Safety Commission (CCSC) with authority to monitor public communication venues, looking for potentially unsafe communications. It will draft and enforce regulations using administrative proceedings, thus eliminating costly and time-consuming jury trials. This can be done under the auspices of the F.C.C.Require a federal license with a 30-day waiting period and a background check before publishing a new blog or website.
• Limit blog or website authors to one new post a month, and talk show hosts to one talk show a month. This will give federal regulators a chance to monitor and prosecute writers and speakers for their crimes. Licensed 'mainstream' media outlets will be exempt from this restriction, of course.
• Establish a consumer speech "hotline", where concerned citizens can report dangerous or defective communication safely, easily, and most importantly, anonymously.

Jurisdiction

Does our federal government have the authority to do any of these needful things? Surely there must be impediments to such sweeping regulation of thought and word!

Wrong again, bub. Here's why:

It's 'well established' that the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate just about anything its great big heart desires.

Any speech (or writing) that travels in, or might have a substantial impact on interstate commerce is subject to federal regulation.

And, since anything that travels on the Internet is by definition traveling in interstate commerce, Congress has the authority to regulate everything there.

Thoughts expressed in the privacy of your own home will remain unregulated. At least until we can show a link between unsafe speech in the home and harmful effects on children. Shouldn't be too difficult.

Why aren't you laughing?