Seeping Matter

Not long ago I had an assignment to prepare a slide deck for work.  It was really only work related in the sense that I was asked to do it at work, so I took some liberties with it.  One of my slides featured a large picture of the moon, with the phrase “TANSTAAFL, but TISTAAFD!” followed, in smaller letters, by the statement “Heinlein was wrong!”  The significance of this was lost on almost everyone.

After the meeting I had to explain the following:

• TANSTAAFL stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch,” a phrase we all understand which was popularized by Robert Heinlein in his book “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”
• TISTAAFD is something I made up, namely, an acronym for “There Is Such Thing As A Free Dinner,” a reference to the multiple times that Microsoft bought us dinner when we were crunching to deliver MED-V v2
• Sci-fi is probably the best form of fiction there is, and Heinlein is probably the most notable sci-fi author of all time

Subsequent discussion led to a request for a list of what I consider the most important books to read.  I pointed out that, in truth, I mostly read non-fiction, but they were not to be denied!

So I put them off.  Until now, anyway.

In order to make this list, the book must be more than just good.  A good, entertaining story or presentation of interesting information isn’t enough.  If it were, there would be many, many more books on this list.

No, to make this list, the book must be truly influential.  It must have a permanent effect on the way that I see the world and/or the way that I approach life to make my list.

So I now present, in no particular order, a list of books that I consider most influential thusfar in my life.

• “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey. Outside of scripture, possibly the most important book I’ve ever read, and also unfortunately blamed (inappropriately) for a lot of corporate-speak like “Proactivity” and “Synergy.”  ”Seven Habits” is often ridiculed, but almost never by people who have read it.
  • Key Takeaway: This book is full of valuable lessons, on proactivity, on leadership, on stewardship, on prioritization.  But one of my favorite nuggets from the book is, “Be efficient with things, but effective, never efficient, with people.”
  • Other great books by Covey:  ”The 8th Habit”
• “1984″ by George Orwell. The concept of an all-seeing “Big Brother” comes from 1984, including the name itself.  Orwell paints a bleak and somber picture of a dystopian future in this book written in 1949.  This is not a happy book.  It is disturbing, frightening, and powerful.  But I don’t know how you could tell the message any other way, and I consider the message absolutely essential.  Everyone should read this book.
  • Key Takeaway: Freedom to choose is of utmost importance to happiness, more than fulfillment, security, or prosperity.  Once you start to trade freedom to your government for those other things, you may not be able to stop it, including giving up the freedom to choose who you love.
  • Other great books by Orwell:  ”Animal Farm”
• “Buffettology” by Mary Buffett and David Clark. “Buffettology” is primarily a financial book, wherein Warren Buffett’s ex-daughter-in-law Mary Buffett describes the investing techniques that Warren Buffett has used for decades to become the world’s wealthiest investor.  As a financial book, it is not bad, although I doubt this book alone will make you rich.  But it will teach you to think like an investor, and that will change the way you think about a lot of things.
  • Key Takeaway: Regardless of whether you trade stocks, you are an investor.  You invest your time and your money — in your career, in your family, in your friendships, in your hobbies.  Thinking about things from an investing point of view has had a significant impact on how I view business decisions, family decisions, and personal decisions.
• “The Code Book” by Simon Singh. You might be surprised at just how entertaining and valuable a book on the history of cryptography can be.  And you might be surprised at how much it enriches your life.
  • Key Takeaway: There is an ongoing race between the creation of cryptographic forms and the creation of techniques to crack those cryptographic forms.  For centuries, the two sides have traded the lead back and forth countless times.  All of which makes modern legislative efforts around cryptography seem pretty stupid.  This further erodes my confidence in all the other things they are trying to “fix” also.
• “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric S. Raymond. You might think you have a pretty good grasp on the software industry and how all of that should work.  You might think all those open-source wackos are beyond comprehension by normal, capitalism-minded folks.  You might think all of that until you read “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”  Until you read it, you won’t understand open source.  And afterward, you will start to wonder whether there really is a better way.
  • Key Takeaway: Open source software may not cost anything to obtain, but it is not free.  How do you pay for open source software?  Businesses that do not  understand this will never be successful in open source, no matter how much noise they make about it.
• “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” by John Gray. It isn’t too popular, especially among men, to read books on relationships.  So I do realize that most men would make fun of me for admitting that I’ve read this book.  Of course, most men don’t have as great a marriage as I have either, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
  • Key Takeaway: Men and women feel love differently from each other and are therefore differently motivated and differently rewarded.  To have fulfilling relationships, each must learn to show love in ways that will make the other feel loved, not necessarily in ways that would cause the person expressing the love to feel loved themselves.
  • Other great books by Gray:  ”Mars And Venus Together Forever”
  • Note:  Despite me having read this book, I do give my wife most of the credit for our fabulous marriage.
• “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe. In this classic novel, Defoe tells the tale of the fictional hero Robinson Crusoe who lived some 28 years marooned on a tropical island at sea before finally being rescued.  It is still an epic story today full of countless life lessons.
  • Key Takeaway: What would be your outlook on life if you were in his situation?  How likely would you be to make of your life what Robinson Crusoe did in such difficult circumstances?
• “The Millionaire Mind” by Thomas J. Stanley. While Stanley is probably better known for another title, my favorite of his is “The Millionaire Mind.”  Through extensive surveys and university research, Stanley gathered the information presented in this book to expose many surprising traits about the truly wealthy in America, and what they do — and do not — spend their money on.
  • Key Takeaway: Being wealthy can be defined as having some quantity of money (usually enough to never need to work again), but it can also be defined as a state of mind, an attitude towards money.  Regardless of where you currently are financially, you can start thinking of yourself as wealthy.  Then when faced with a financial decision, you can use this frame of reference:  ”I’m a wealthy person, and that is not the sort of thing a wealthy person spends money on.”  Over time, conducting your life as a wealthy person will eventually lead you to actual financial wealth.
  • Other great books by Stanley:  ”The Millionaire Next Door”
• “The Universe In A Nutshell” by Stephen Hawking. When it requires the effort to type that it must for Stephen Hawking, you can expect that he would pine over every word before writing it out.  The result is an elegantly written and easily understood explanation of modern theoretical physics that is truly enriching.  And whether he meant it or not, Hawking’s writing strengthened my belief in God and his plan for us.
  • Key Takeaway: You can think of our universe as walnut-shaped, where the size of the universe follows roughly the shape of the nut as time moves along the axis of the nut from top to bottom.  If true, how many of these might there be?  Might not God create one of these periodically as a timed test environment in which his billions of spirit children can prove to themselves whether they choose good or evil?  Does this explain how God can know the beginning from the end and yet still allow individual agency?
  • Other great books by Hawking:  I haven’t actually read it, but I’m sure “A Brief History of Time” is excellent and is definitely on my must-read list.
• “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. This story of a young boy, a child prodigy of military strategy and tactics, is more than just a story about aliens and war.  It will make you think about international relations, the philosophy of preemptive strike, the place of diplomacy, submitting to a higher will, the right to destroy something (or someone) for the greater good, and more.
  • Key Takeaway: Do your very best work, give your very best effort, always.  You never know just how important it might be that you give the very best of yourself.
  • Other great books by Card:  ”Speaker for the Dead” and many others.
• “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s actually not his best-received book, but probably my favorite.  While he eventually provides some counterpoints to the argument, the central premise of “Blink” is that our initial analysis of a situation is usually the best.
  • Key Takeaway: You know all those times you said, “I should’ve followed my gut?”  Yep, you were right.  Pay more attention to the gut next time.
  • Other great books by Gladwell:  ”The Tipping Point” and “Outliers”
• “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein. Not every Heinlein book is that great, and some of them are either too edgy or too over the top.  But not “Starship Troopers.”  This is a great book with a smattering of philosophical and societal concepts that will really make you think.  And the way he predicts, in 1959, the consequences that would come from juvenile delinquency and leniency are pretty freaky.
  • Key Takeaway: I can’t stick with just one here.  One of my favorites is the need for balance between authority and responsibility, a principle that is so blindingly obvious when you examine it, yet so appallingly absent in nearly every social structure today, especially government entities and corporate environments.  Another is his reasoning behind why, in the future world of “Starship Troopers,” military service is a prerequisite for citizenship and, thus, for voting rights:  Before you let people vote on public policy, they should learn how to put the needs of the whole ahead of their own personal desires.
  • Other great books by Heinlein:  Be warned, these are progressively more edgy, but still pretty amazing:  ”The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress,” “Farnham’s Freehold,” and “Stranger In A Strange Land”
• “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. “Freakonomics” claims to explore “the hidden side of everything,” which is a lie (one that both authors admit to in the follow-up book).  But they do explore the hidden side of many things, which makes the book interesting.  In my world, however, interesting doesn’t mean great.  What makes it great is, well, the key takeaway below.
  • Key Takeaway: No matter how confusing the problem or how perplexing the situation, there is probably a fairly simple and logical explanation, if you just can obtain the right information.  This learning is key in a number of ways.  In politics, for example, whatever confusing story you’re being sold is probably not the whole story.  At work, your boss’s erratic behavior probably makes perfect sense if you just understand his motives.  So question everything, and seek for the hidden side of everything.
  • Other great books by Levitt and Dubner:  ”SuperFreakonomics”
• “Linchpin” by Seth Godin. I wrote before about Linchpin and how meaningful it was to me.  Godin does a masterful job of encouraging you to be more than you are today, and while he doesn’t tell you exactly what to do, he gives you a framework to work within to achieve it.
  • Key Takeaway: No matter what career you are in, you have a choice.  You can either become a Linchpin, wherein you make yourself indispensable and therefore worth increasingly more, or you can participate in the race to the bottom, wherein you become worth increasingly less.
  • Other great books by Godin:  ”The Dip”
• “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. Funny, interesting, insightful, and influential, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” is a must-read for everyone, especially people in technology.  Once you read this book, you will understand where fjords come from, why “42″ is the answer to any question, why Altavista named their language translator “Babelfish,” and why towels are so important.
  • Key Takeaway: Perspective.  Among all the other greatnesses of this book, the one thing I come away with every time I read it is a better ability to see things from a different perspective.
  • Other great books by Adams:  ”Life, the Universe, and Everything” and “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” are great too.  Actually, I’d recommend just buying the leather-bound “Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide” which contains all of the books in the series in a beautiful package.
• “The Cashflow Quadrant” by Robert Kiyosaki. Kiyosaki isn’t exactly a fantastic writer, but the concepts in Cashflow Quadrant are excellent.  Even if, like me, you don’t actually get around to putting them into practice for a while, the Cashflow Quadrant provides a great frame of reference for understanding how money is made and how the business world works with respect to you personally, and it helps you know where you are trying to go.
  • Key Takeaway: If you want to make more money, you have to be willing to take more risk.  You might not be willing to take more risk — that’s perfectly fine.  Just don’t be too upset when, after shunning risk, you find money shunning you.
  • Other great books by Kiyosaki:  ”Rich Dad Poor Dad”
• “The Book of Mormon” (Scripture). On one hand, it seems weird to discuss scripture in a post that has otherwise discussed secular books; on the other hand, no set of books has influenced my thinking more than my scriptures, and no scriptural book has done this more than the Book of Mormon.  Compared to the Bible, the messages are comparable and complimentary, but the writing style is clearer and the lessons more obviously relevant to us today.  If you have not read it, give it a good old college try.  You might be surprised.
  • Key Takeaway: There are a number.  The most important is that Jesus Christ is the Savior and did truly atone for the sins of all mankind.  But there’s a couple of others that I like.  One is that a society cannot exist forever by choosing to condone only some sin.  All sinful behavior eventually leads away from peace toward war and destruction.  Another is that, aside from life itself and the atonement of His son, God’s greatest gift to us is our freedom to choose what we will do with the life we are given and the time we have to live.  Specifically, freedom to choose is more important than personal safety.  How are we honoring that gift, both individually and as a society?
  • Other great scripture:  Obviously, the Bible, the original testament of Jesus Christ, to which the Book of Mormon is a companion.

Ars reported today on a new bill being entertained in US Congress.  The bill essentially would make it lawful to require a domain registrar to stop resolving DNS requests to web sites believed to be making pirated intellectual property available.

This is one of those things that seems like a good idea until you really give it some thought.  Of course, a big hint that it is a bad idea:  Orrin Hatch’s name is attached to it, again.  Just when I thought the guy was done hurting America…

Anyway, consider what’s being suggested here.  An organization, like the MPAA (specifically mentioned in the article), sees that a large number of DNS requests to EvilPiracySite.net are being resolved through some DNS service.  The MPAA successfully petitions a court order for an injunction on this DNS service to stop resolution of EvilPiracySite.net to its proper IP address; instead, it returns something like “No route to host” or similar.

The problem is, who decides whether the content of that website is pirated content?  The plaintiff?  The MPAA and RIAA definitions of “fair use” are certainly not mainstream and not what most reasonable people would consider rational.  Is the MPAA going to go to court and then submit this decision to a panel of domain experts?  The US government isn’t exactly known for their use of domain experts; clearly, this bill is one example of them failing to consult with anyone who knows anything about how the internet works.  Consider also the ridiculous state of the US patent office, or the DMCA.

Of course, shutting down a single DNS server is hardly going to address the MPAA’s (or any other plaintiff’s) problem in a satisfactory way.  They will need to successfully target probably hundreds or even thousands of DNS servers to make an impact, and will have to do it for probably hundreds or thousands of DNS names.  Surely each request for injunction cannot be submitted to a expert panel.  Likely, one of two things will happen:

1. Courts will pretty much just grant these injunctions based on the request of the plaintiff alone, OR
2. Courts will only be able to service the really wealthy organizations (who can pay the court costs), leaving small plaintiffs, who actually could benefit from such a law, out in the dark

If the answer is #2, the law seems to be pretty one-sided in favor of a few small corporations with no real positive effect on the average American.  If your answer is “so what?”, remember that the government is supposed to be for the people, not only for a few wealthy corporations with lobbying budgets.  We shouldn’t be passing laws that don’t have a clear positive effect on the general public.

If the answer is #1, that might even be worse.  Since when do we pass laws such that the plaintiff alone can leverage the law to his exclusive benefit, without any oversight or check?

The funny thing is, many of these “illegal” web sites are run outside of the United States.  I say “illegal” in quotes because, remember, they are located outside of the United States, and legality is defined by a country’s legal system.  Our government often makes the mistake of referring to them as being illegal because they would be illegal if they were located within the US.  But since they often are not, calling them illegal is truly just blatant misinformation.  I’m no expert on the laws of a foreign country, so I don’t know whether the website is legal or not.  But one thing I do know is that citizens of a foreign country, and businesses incorporated within that country, aren’t subject to US law.  Why should they be?

Oddly, the people complaining the most about all of this never complained when they were rolling in the dough from these same foreign countries.  Take the MPAA again.  They produce and license a movie in the United States and protect it under US intellectual property laws.  Then someone gets a great idea:  “I know!  Let’s also sell this movie in Russia!  There are millions of people in Russia!  We can make even more money by selling this movie in Russia!”  Never was any thought given to the fact that Russian IP law may be viewed differently than US IP law, or that perhaps it isn’t even enforced, or perhaps they don’t believe in IP law anyway.

The MPAA was perfectly happy to leverage US trade laws to their specific advantage when they were selling the movie abroad.  But suddenly, when people that live abroad start doing things that violate US IP law, the MPAA wants the US to spend the money to enforce US law in foreign countries, in order to protect their own pockets.  Surely the MPAA would even be in favor of us going to war, if necessary, to defend their fiscal interests.  That hardly sounds like the best thing for the US as a whole.

I’m on a tangent here, I realize.  I’m trying to make a point here, though, which is to state what this bill is really about:  It’s a way for large, wealthy, IP-based corporations to use US law to enforce sanctions against organizations that may not even be US organizations, all because, in the opinion of the plaintiff, those organizations might violate US law, even if they operate entirely legally in their own country.  And to do it, we will block things at the DNS level to accomplish it.

So in other words, we will essentially create a closed network where Americans can only go to web sites that are approved by the US government, and those approvals will be based on what the wealthiest among us think it is acceptable for us to visit.  I mean, really, isn’t that where this is headed?

Doesn’t that concern you?

When I first heard about our country’s new CARS program, my reaction was, “Hey!  Free money if I trade in my Durango for a new SUV!  Despite the dumb name, this seems like an excellent plan!  Almost too good to be true!”

Of course, that should make us stop and think about it.

And I have.  I have some problems with this new plan.  I get the sales pitch:  Make it easier to buy a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle.  Help out the auto makers by increasing sales.  Help out the environment by replacing a number of higher-pollution vehicles with lower-pollution vehicles.  Reduce our oil dependency by replacing a number of less efficient vehicles with more efficient vehicles.  And I get a new car.  Everybody wins!

Well, I do have a number of problems with it.

I have a nomenclature problem.  I don’t understand why we have to come up with a cute little acronym name for this program.  It is also known as “Cash for Clunkers,” which is equally dumb.  My 1998 Durango, which definitely qualifies for the full $4500 rebate, has been a great vehicle for me, runs quite well, and is definitely not a clunker by my definition.  This lets you know what sort of vehicle standards the folks in Washington have, and how disconnected they are from the world in which their constituents live.

I have a fundamental problem.  It should not be the place of the government to get involved in consumer affairs like this.  We’ve had a lot of ever-increasing government intervention in society over the last 60+ years, but rarely has this intervention actually done any good; often it hurts more than it actually helps.

I have a financial problem.  Where does all of this money come from?  Well, ultimately it has to come from the pockets of the taxpayers, either in increased taxes or in increased prices due to inflation caused by printing money to cover it.

I have a principle problem.  Taking a perfectly good, functioning vehicle and scrapping it is flat-out wasteful.  There’s this part of my being that screams out that we can’t expect a net good to come from a plan that isn’t founded in solid principles.

I have an economics problem.  Junking these cars will have an inflationary effect on the general price of cars.  It’s simple supply and demand.  Given a closed ecosystem with 100 car owners with one car each, suppose 10 are new and 20 qualify for the CARS program.  Under normal conditions, we might assume that twenty people are buying a car each year, half of them are buying new and half are buying used, and so ten cars are cycling through the ecosystem per year.  Now you inject CARS into the mix.  There will be people participating who might normally not have bought this year at all, or who might have bought this year but would normally have bought used instead of new.  If half of the 20 participate, and half of those would not have normally bought this year at all, that means instead of 10 new cars entering the ecosystem we have 18, if my math is right.  To balance it, there must be 18 older cars leaving the ecosystem instead of the normal 10.  What you end up with is fewer used cars — 82% are used instead of 90% — and the average car value has gone up.  But note that, at best, the economic condition of the people in the group hasn’t changed.  In fact, it should have gone down by around $400 per person ($3500 to 4500 times ten participants, divided among all 100 participants).  With fewer used vehicles in the ecosystem but the same number of buyers, the demand for used vehicles will go up, driving up the price of used vehicles.

So if you already own a used vehicle in that ecosystem it is only partially bad, because the value of your used car should be higher now.  It’s only a problem if you want to buy.  But I’m not sure this will help automakers beyond this year.  What effect will higher used-car values have on new car sales?  I think you could just as easily argue that it will hurt as much as it will help.

At any rate, it causes yet another economic bubble.  This program artificially inflates the market for car sales and makes adjustments to the ecosystem, based not on the GDP of the people in the ecosystem but on government intervention to make affordable a good that is less affordable if free market economics are left to do their thing.  The government tried this same tactic with the general housing market, and I think history shows that did not turn out too well.

So what we really have here is yet another government program with a dumb name, based on poor principles, with dubious economics at best, that you and I get to pay for.

It’s doubtful it will do anything but hurt us in the long term.  Which is why I’m considering participating.  I mean, if I have to pay for it anyway, I might as well get a new SUV and $4500 out of the deal.

Watch and learn, my children.

My people, there is an epidemic.  It is serious and problematic.  We must take action to address this epidemic.  The epidemic is US Congressional Dumbness.

Now, some people, like Orrin Hatch, are beyond saving.  He is simply too dumb to be helped.  He is a lost cause and will unfortunately continue to infect other US congresspersons with Dumbness.  Our only hope here is to try to contain, minimize the damage, and hopefully quarantine these poor experienced congresspersons with Advanced Dumbness, like Senator Hatch, from the rest who may not yet be infected, or may only be experiencing Early Stage Dumbness.

Evidence of this disease abounds.  One example of such evidence is the recently enacted CPISA which, among other things, made off-highway vehicles targeted toward youth aged under 13 ILLEGAL – not because they are unsafe, but because they contain too much lead.

I do admit, there have been countless times since I bought my KX 250 5 years ago when I’ve gone out to look at it and found my children sucking on it.  I softly and gently tell them, “ARE YOU INSANE?!?  DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THING HAS LEAD IN IT?!?  ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL YOURSELF?!?  HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO SUCK ON MY MOTORCYCLE?!?!?”  This might be why my kids tend to walk into walls and accidentally stab themselves in the eye with a fork while eating.

Nevertheless, this is no excuse for outlawing children’s off-highway vehicles.  I want freedom for myself and my children, even if it means my children are free to break into the motorcycle shed and gnaw on the exhaust pipe.  Being patriotic, I decided I should fight this disease in this case and write my congresspersons.

Here is the context of the e-mail I sent:

Dear [congressperson]:

I wish to express my concern about some of the unintended effects of CPISA that recently went into effect; namely, the restriction on youth-oriented off-highway vehicles targeted by section 101(a) of that act.

Motorcycle and ATV riding is a very popular family activity in our state, a family activity now threatened by this act.  Because of the popularity, this act will also have a very real economic impact on our state.  And speaking personally, this act threatens the sports of Motocross and Supercross, some of the fastest growing spectator sports in the country and a favorite of my father, brother, sons, and myself, because it chokes the pipeline of new talent being introduced to the sport.

While these impacts are very real to Utah, Utah is not the only state affected by this obvious oversight.  Little children do not generally bite, chew, or suck on motorcycles and ATVs, so the health risk from lead contamination to children from these vehicles is small to non-existent, and not even worth discussing.

I hope you will agree with me and do your best to have this situation addressed so that my children, and children all across the country, are free again to participate in this sport.  I look forward to hearing back from you on your success in this endeavor.

You too can help fight US Congressional Dumbness in this case.  To do so, simply go to this website of a US Congressmen who seems free of the disease and send in the form.

It came to my attention today that the America’s Freedom Festival (in Provo, Utah) committed has chosen to recognized Jack Thompson as a Freedom Award Recipient at the Freedom Awards Gala on July 2.

I live in Utah and generally like most things about it. I do not agree with the giving of an award to Jack Thompson for any reason, primarily because I think he is preying upon a frantic conservative populace in order to enrich himself personally for a cause he would otherwise not care about. However, I am willing to concede to any other organization the right to recognize Jack Thompson for things he’s done.

What is ridiculous, however, is that he is being recognized at what is presumably a celebration of freedom. Jack Thompson is not about freedom. He is about government censorship of free expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Furthermore, in the opinion of at least Judge Dava Tunis of Florida, Jack Thompson is guilty of 27 different charges of inappropriate conduct from the Florida Bar, including such things as knowingly making false statements to a tribunal. In fact the Florida Supreme Court will no longer accept any filings from Mr. Thompson unless signed by another lawyer.

It is hard to believe that a festival of freedom, held in Provo, Utah, which is probably the most conservative city in the United States, holding a gala to recognize champions of freedom, would have a committee, presumably made up of locals, that would select such a person as being deserving of this award, if in fact they are aware of what Mr. Thompson is really all about. My guess is that they really aren’t aware of anything other than the fact that he fights against video game companies for releasing and distributing video games that include nudity, sexual content, graphic violence, and adult themes.

I’m not advocating such games nor am I championing the cause for even more games of even more extreme natures to become available. I do find it interesting, however, that we have such strong, organized opposition to video games when there is no similar opposition of this magnitude against other media, such as books, magazines, music, or movies. I suppose each of those media went through their own battles as well earlier in their history. But I do find it interesting that we basically do nothing to prevent or curb pornography, which has a documented association to sexual deviance and violence, but some would raise Jack Thompson up as a champion of freedom for fighting against video games, which as yet have not been shown to cause violence.

It is especially surprising on another front. Consider the case of CleanFlicks, the DVD rental company that rents edited versions of mainstream movies. At least it used to; I’m not sure what their business model is now and how it is different from what it was in 2006, when they were ordered by court to cease their business model. You probably know that CleanFlicks is a Utah-based company, and you can imagine how many upset people there were around here when this ruling came down.

Apparently people don’t see these issues as two sides of the same coin. Apparently, the Freedom Festival folk don’t realize that it is the same line of thought that took CleanFlicks away that they are championing by honoring Jack Thompson. One cannot simultaneously champion the cause of someone to take freedom of legal expression away from one group and lament having a similar freedom removed from them.

I’m willing to grant that some video games today are inappropriate or even evil. It is one thing for an individual to make personal choices about the type of entertainment they will pay for, or that they will allow into their home. It is another altogether to attempt to circumvent the constitution in order to stop something you feel is evil, and yet another thing to decide to take the freedoms of others away for the purpose of stopping evil. Choosing to keep content that I find inappropriate out of my home is my right and responsibility; even Playboy would not argue with that position. It is when I determine that since something is wrong for me, I have the right to take away the freedoms of others to stop the evil that I’m standing on a slippery slope.

We’ve fought too hard to obtain freedom to treat it so lightly. And there have been too many champions of true freedom for us to so tarnish it that we would choose Jack Thompson, of all people, to honor at the America’s Freedom Festival in Provo. What a shame. What a disgraceful, embarrassing shame.