Lies and imposters

“Dear religion,
This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school.
Yours, Science”

A friend of mine posted this image on her Facebook with the comment “Enough said”.

I say not quite.

That wasn’t religion.
That was an imposter. And a lie.

You see, no matter what they call it, no matter what claims they make and no matter what “excuses” they may try to sell you,
the truth is that evil is just evil.
It’s not an integrated part of anything else. It’s just evil.

Remember that.

There’s never a good time for bad wording

At the time I’m writing this, there’s 48 days remaining until the American 2012 election and the republican candidate Mitt Romney is in rough weather after being recorded saying 47 % of American voters will never vote for him because… well basically because, in his opinion, they’re simply too stupid to be reasoned with. In his defense, he did not use those exact words and it may not even be anywhere near what he meant to say. But that’s more or less how it came across.

So, basically, Romney did the kind of thing where you write a nasty e-mail about someone and it ends up getting sent to them? It happens. Well, if you write nasty e-mails about people, it will. Just a matter of time. And there’s never a good time for something like that to come back and bite you – and bite you it will. Which is why you shouldn’t write nasty e-mails about people, or post crappy comments online. You may think you are “amongst your own” at the time, but you never know who might eventually end up reading it and how bad it can make you look in their eyes. In fact, this applies not only to e-mails and online comments, but to pretty much the whole world in general: It is never a good idea to try to impress people by speaking badly of others. At the end of the day, most people will be anything but impressed.

Sad but true…

Yes, it has occured to me, that although I scolded the “extremist blogger” Eivind Berge for his violent rhetoric in my recent Democracy revisited post, the fact that he did post the things he did and got arrested for it was the reason I even heard of him – and read his blog.

For him it did work: He got plenty of attention and now states that “While my kind of violent rhetoric is legal, it is no longer needed. We are strong enough to fight feminism in more elegant and subtle ways now.”

Yes, Eivind, posting those statements about “killing the cops” really worked out well for you. Sad but true. (Not sad because you got attention, but because of how you got it.) But I do hope this time you will actually practice what you preach.

Democracy revisited

Over the past several weeks, the "extremist blogger" Eivind Berge has gotten a lot of attention in Norwegian media. To those who do not know him, Mr. Berge calls himself a male rights activist (MRA) and anti-feminist, he opposes the "feminist state" and has repeatedly spoken favorably about the use of violence as a political tool - specifically against the police. For this reason, he was arrested and imprisoned for 3 weeks in July.

In the spirit of my own blog post about "true democracy" earlier this year, I have visited Mr. Berge's blog, read some of his work and responded rationally and without hate or anger.

I left the following comment under his "Thoughts about the trial" post:

In my humble opinion, Eivind has expressed several political opinions and rational concerns that are quite legitimate in themselves. But in my eyes, he completely and utterly destroys this legitimacy with his hateful ramblings about killing people.

Killing a police officer does not harm the state, it just kills a person and makes the state want to harm you. Also, it gives them all the legitimacy they could possibly need to do so: The moment you resort to violence, they can treat you ONLY as a dangerous terrorist and not pay any attention to your politics at all. I fail to see how this is supposed to accomplish anything good.

If you're angry about something and want to correct it, what you need to do is convince enough people and the state will correct itself. It can be a slow and painstaking process, but it's the only way I know that really does work.

As Winston Churchill once said it, "Democracy is by far the worst form of government. Except all the others that have been tried."

Democratic fair game

Since I'm writing a lot about democracy lately, let's level the playing field and lay out the ground rules of an open and free democratic debate, for use both on my blog and elsewhere.

In my opinion, we need only two rules:

1. Attacking, challenging or questioning an idea, a concept or a political opinion is always acceptable.

2. Attacking, threatening or discriminating against a person or a group of people is never acceptable.

There you go. It's as simple as that, I say.
But of course, this is an idea or a concept, so anyone who thinks otherwise is welcome to say so. ;-)

True democracy – do we have the stomach for it?

22. July 2011 is a date that we Norwegians will never forget. Yet many of us would like to say that it hasn’t changed us. But come on, let’s be honest with ourselves and each other here: No one can go through something like this and not change in any way. No one. Nor, in my opinion, should we want to, because that would be a quite spectacular display of inability to learn from even the most dramatic of events. I say, in this case - as so often in real life - the question is not if we change, but how we change. As individuals. As a society. As a nation. As a democracy. And as members of the human race and citizens of the planet Earth, both of which I personally hold above any and all national, ethnical, religious or political boundaries.

If we keep our minds open to it, there is always something new to learn and there is always something that can be changed to the better. Even after a tragedy like this. And that’s one of the major strengths of an open democracy where people can and do speak their minds: Somebody will always have learned something and if we listen to what they have to say and discuss it with them, we can all learn even more and our entire society can benefit from it in some way none of us have even imagined yet.

One interesting point I have seen raised in the wake of the 22. July attacks is that we should allow the people we consider “extremists” more room in our public debates. Yes, it may seem problematic to some, but consider this for a moment: If democracy is really such a great system, then shouldn’t we trust it? And if we actually trust our democracy, then why would we need laws against certain types of “unwanted” expressions and opinions? Isn’t democracy all about letting everybody speak their mind?

It seems to me like we do have a problem as a democracy when certain thoughts and opinions are considered “unwanted” and a person is practically excluded from participation in an open and public debate once he or she becomes known to have “unwanted” thoughts and opinions on things. First of all, it’s hardly a true democracy when it works like that for some people and second, I believe excluding people in such a way can actually do more harm than good.

For starters, if a person is practically excluded from public debate on the grounds that we don’t like what he or she has to say, then that fact alone goes a long way towards breaking down that person’s respect for our democratic system as a whole. Such people can very easily end up spending countless hours hiding in a room all by themselves, with nothing but their own dark thoughts to keep them company, and/or they get in touch with other “misfits” and join some shady group or another, seeking a sense of community and belonging that the regular society hasn’t given them. Typically, people within such groups will also have some sort of internal democracy and open debate within the group, but that’s just the thing – it’s all within the group, and only the “right” type of opinions are expressed there. So, while the rest of us gradually grow more “rounded” and “colorful” from participation in an open debate involving many different points of view, the “extremists” will only grow more and more “extreme” from participating in their own closed internal debates. Obviously, this is not a good thing and it’s not something we should want to make any kind of contribution to bringing about. In a society - any society – it is practically never a good idea to exclude anyone.

So, next time you hear somebody saying something you don’t like - whether it seems selfish, hateful or just plain stupid – don’t get angry and resort to name calling, but listen to what they have to say – and then tell them what you think about that. No, it’s not easy and it will not always be pleasant. But if you consider yourself a true democrat, I think you should at least give it your best shot.

Or, as a respected Norwegian politician once told a political opponent, "I don't agree with anything you just said, but I'd still die to defend your right to say it."