Well I guess the board asked Renae for this mysterious original version of my article. Thank God (forgive the phrase) I can prove that my original, both on this blog, and on my laptop, is indeed the original. If I couldn't do that there is no telling what might happen. Guess it would be funny if this "original" is any different than my actual original, also quite sad.

The Rebel Yell advisory board will meet tomorrow morning, presumably to discuss the mess the people who run the Rebel Yell have gotten themselves into.

I was not invited to attend this meeting by anyone on the advisory board so I therefore don't intend to, they know who I am and how to contact me. I have no idea what they will decide, but I can't imagine they will be too pleased by a weeks worth of publicity, nearly all of which has been negative.

Hopefully they will have the good judgment and foresight to end this matter in a just and proper way as it concerns me, i.e. having the paper apologize and retract it's charges prominently and publicily and to at least offer me my job back (which I don't plan to accept). As to what happens to the people working at the paper who are responsible for this, the advisory board can decide if any of this was necessary and go from there. In terms of the English professor who was the intial source of all of this, she will be dealt with separtely, presumably by her department, for purposely and falsely targeting a student, putting his future school and career hopes in jeopardy rather than mustering her reasoning faculties and making an argument.

Berliner weighs in. It seems the person I've apparently robbed of ideas doesn't see it that way. Dr. Berliner has written to the paper, and if they print it all of the world will be able to see that this plagiarism charge is nothing but baloney.

Plagiarism is the theft of the words and ideas of another. No one is in a better position to tell if plagiarism has occured than the guy who is supposedly being plagiarized. In his opinion, no plagiarism ever took place and since he thinks so, the charge is effectively worthless.

The question now is what will the paper do? I don't know. Should they reinstate me I will gladly accept and then quit. Should they leave me fired they will never be able to say why because there is no reason other than some people didn't like what I had to say.

We shall soon see.

Did he plagiarize or didn't he?

I was fired for supposedly plagiarizing this piece, did I? You decide.


The following appeared on Capitalism Magazine
Did Christopher Columbus "Discover" America?
by Michael Berliner (October 10, 2002)


[www.CapitalismMagazine.com] Columbus Day approaches and this year has a special meaning. Christopher Columbus is a carrier of Western Civilization and the very values attacked by terrorists on September 11. To the "politically correct," Columbus Day is an occasion to be mourned. They have mourned, they have attacked, and they have intimidated schools across the country into replacing Columbus Day celebrations with "ethnic diversity" days.


The politically correct view is that Columbus did not discover America, because people had lived here for thousands of years. Worse yet, it's claimed, the main legacy of Columbus is death and destruction. Columbus is routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide, and the celebration of his arrival likened to a celebration of Hitler and the Holocaust. The attacks on Columbus are ominous, because the actual target is Western civilization.

Did Columbus "discover" America? Yes--in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., to the growing, scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus' discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded--and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed.

Prior to 1492, what is now the United States was sparsely inhabited, unused, and undeveloped. The inhabitants were primarily hunter-gatherers, wandering across the land, living from hand-to-mouth and from day-to-day. There was virtually no change, no growth for thousands of years. With rare exception, life was nasty, brutish, and short: there was no wheel, no written language, no division of labor, little agriculture and scant permanent settlement; but there were endless, bloody wars. Whatever the problems it brought, the vilified Western culture also brought enormous, undreamed-of benefits, without which most of today's Indians would be infinitely poorer or not even alive.

Columbus should be honored, for in so doing, we honor Western civilization. But the critics do not want to bestow such honor, because their real goal is to denigrate the values of Western civilization and to glorify the primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism embodied in the tribal cultures of American Indians. They decry the glorification of the West as "cultural imperialism" and "Eurocentrism." We should, they claim, replace our reverence for Western civilization with multi-culturalism, which regards all cultures (including vicious tyrannies) as morally equal. In fact, they aren't. Some cultures are better than others: a free society is better than slavery; reason is better than brute force as a way to deal with other men; productivity is better than stagnation. In fact, Western civilization stands for man at his best. It stands for the values that make human life possible: reason, science, self-reliance, individualism, ambition, productive achievement. The values of Western civilization are values for all men; they cut across gender, ethnicity, and geography. We should honor Western civilization not for the ethnocentric reason that some of us happen to have European ancestors but because it is the objectively superior culture.

Underlying the political collectivism of the anti-Columbus crowd is a racist view of human nature. They claim that one's identity is primarily ethnic: if one thinks his ancestors were good, he will supposedly feel good about himself; if he thinks his ancestors were bad, he will supposedly feel self-loathing. But it doesn't work; the achievements or failures of one's ancestors are monumentally irrelevant to one's actual worth as a person. Only the lack of a sense of self leads one to look to others to provide what passes for a sense of identity. Neither the deeds nor misdeeds of others are his own; he can take neither credit nor blame for what someone else chose to do. There are no racial achievements or racial failures, only individual achievements and individual failures. One cannot inherit moral worth or moral vice. "Self-esteem through others" is a self-contradiction.

Thus the sham of "preserving one's heritage" as a rational life goal. Thus the cruel hoax of "multicultural education" as an antidote to racism: it will continue to create more racism. Individualism is the only alternative to the racism of political correctness. We must recognize that everyone is a sovereign entity, with the power of choice and independent judgment. That is the ultimate value of Western civilization, and it should be proudly proclaimed.


This is my article

Thank You Christopher Columbus
Alexander Marriott 9/20/2003

Most Columbus Days are marked by rabid condemnations of the explorer as a genocidal maniac bent on destroying the peaceful and innocent native peoples who populated the Caribbean islands which Columbus discovered. These condemnations are not only unwarranted but indicative of the hatred those delivering them have for all that Columbus stood for and brought to the primitive New World.

Two myths regarding Columbus to dispel quickly are 1) that everyone thought the world was flat while he thought it was round and 2) that the legacy of Columbus was one of death and destruction.

Columbus and everyone else who was educated in Europe knew the Earth was round, a fact which had been proven by the Ancient Greeks. What Columbus got wrong was the circumference of the Earth, causing him to think he could sail from Europe to Asia going west, which of course you can, but luckily enough for him the Americas were in his way or he would have ended up starving.

The legacy of Columbus was not death and destruction. Most Indian deaths were caused by the introduction of diseases that the Europeans brought with them unwittingly. It must also be remembered that the Indians living in the Americas were largely primitive Stone Age level savages who advanced virtually very little in the thousands of years they inhabited North and South America. The two built up “civilizations” of the Americas, those of the Incas and the Aztecs, were hardly much better, being built upon irrationality, human sacrifice, and brutal primitivism.

Contrary to the myth of the peaceful natives who Europe unleashed war upon warfare existed in plenty before Columbus arrived and it continued as the Indians clashed with the European explorers and each other.

It’s always asserted that we, like Columbus, stole the land of the Indians. Could Columbus be responsible for stealing anyone’s land, let alone that of the Indians? This seems dubious considering the nomadic nature of many of the peoples he encountered and their lack of any private property or organized settlements. What was there to steal? The land was not in use, evidenced by the pathetic level of any kind of progress, intellectual or material, on the part of nearly all Indian tribes despite thousands of years in lands of great plenty and separated from the other people of the world who could have potentially meddled with them.

So what is the true legacy of Columbus? We are. The Discovery of the New World allowed people to start anew away from the growingly absolutist and mercantilist kingdoms of Europe. As a result the ideas that could not be put into action easily in Europe, those of individual rights, individualism, capitalism, limited republican government, in short all the ideas upon which our country was predicated were allowed to flourish in an environment far away from the Kings and aristocrats of the Old World.

The Indians, forced either to join civilization or cling to their primitive savagery, became as the nomadic barbarians of the Old World. But unlike their Old World counterparts, the ridiculously low development of Indian “civilization” in comparison to that of the Europeans and the later colonists didn’t allow them to have the same devastating effects the Huns, Mongols, Vikings, Vandals, and others had had. As a result their tribal primitivism and mystical world view was supplanted by the budding fruits of human reason which eventually led to the foundation of the American Republic.

Finally, why are the condemnations of Columbus so visceral and continual year after year? We’re told in college that all cultures are equal and that to prefer our culture over any other is ethnocentrism. Of course this is absolutely absurd. If all cultures are equal then why do people move? Or why do people move, predominantly, to prospering societies as opposed to tribal primitive Indian-type societies? The answer is simply that not all societies are equal. Some are, indeed, better than others.

But the goal of such bromides as “All cultures are equal,” is to tear down cultures like ours which are, by every objective standard, far better than the savage primitives out in the middle of forests and oceans who eat other people or sacrifice them to the sun or volcanoes or practice any other such absurdity.

Humans, having the ability to reason, are in a unique position to prosper far more successfully than any other animal. Columbus was the harbinger of reason for the New World which was shockingly devoid of it, a situation which was entirely inexcusable. Similarly, any defense of the pre-Columbus condition is glorifying perpetual irrational primitivism and death while condemning the introduction of reason and the ideas that flowed from it. Columbus is thus cursed when in fact he should be thanked, not only by us, but by the descendents of the Indians who escaped conditions barely better than death that their ancestors experienced millennia after millennia.

Thank you Christopher Columbus.

Pamela Anderson and PETA Terrorize Companies
Alexander Marriott October 18, 2003

Kentucky Fried Chicken is in the crosshairs of many “animal rights” activists this week, including former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson. According to the actress, “I am calling for a boycott of all KFC restaurants until my friends at PETA tell me that you have agreed to be kindler in your practices.” Can anyone say “puppet?”

Like a typical corporation, Kentucky Fried Chicken doesn’t defend itself. They have posted on their website the following lie, “[KFC is] committed to the humane treatment of animals.” Really? Then why are you killing them? There is nothing humane about killing something and then eating it.

But then, we’re not talking about your next door neighbor, we’re talking about chickens. NEWSFLASH! Chickens aren’t humans!

The chicken is an anomaly in the animal kingdom. Without men breeding them in extraordinarily high numbers, and protecting them, could a chicken survive in the wild? No, it doesn’t fly, can’t run fast, is very small, has no real defense ability, and is entirely delicious; the chicken would be wiped out by non-human predators almost immediately. Evolution couldn’t work fast enough to save them.

The chicken has no ability to think about anything. Its brain is far too small for any reasoning abilities, like all of the animals, except for primates. Chickens didn’t formulate the concept of “rights,” man did. What rights do chickens have other than those we feel inclined to give them as our individual property? Nature would wipe the species off the planet tomorrow without man breeding and protecting them. It is by the grace of man that chickens exist at all.

PETA wants the chickens to be treated “humanely” before they are butchered and consumed. What for? Will the chicken really give a damn if you treat is nice or badly before you slit is throat, tear out its feathers, and make a KFC chicken bucket out of it? No, because chickens don’t give a damn about anything as they are incapable of such value judgments.

This would seem elementary, but some people seem to think that all non-human animals are humans and are therefore entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as well. This is just silly and degrading to those concepts that man discovered for all individual humans, not chickens.

Other restaurants, like Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s have all been shamed by PETA into compliance with their kindler, gentler treatment of the chickens they kill for food. Why? I doubt there was a great public outcry over the treatment of a bunch of chickens that are about to killed anyway. So how can such an issue, which the vast majority of people rightly don’t care about, come to force companies into compliance?

Just look at PETA’s methods in the past. PETA has funded all sorts of violent fanatics in their quest of lunacy. TheCenterforConsumerFreedom.com has documented all sorts of connections both to known Marxist-Leninist Terror groups like ALF and ELF (Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts respectively), but also to individual nuts like Kevin Jonas. For those of you who don’t know of Mr. Jonas’s exploits here is a selection: issuing death threats, attacking people at their homes with baseball bats, firebombing cars in driveways, and spraying people in the face with chemicals.

Even a PETA Vegan Campaign Coordinator back in 2001, Bruce Friedrich, said, “it would be great if all the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories and the banks who fund them exploded tomorrow.” As a caveat he added, “Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it.”

Now one might see why companies are afraid. And since these groups promote property destruction and personal violence and fund these activities with no governmental response, companies are in a situation where they either accommodate or face a full fledged terrorist boycott of their restaurants.

It is only under freedom and capitalism, where there is so much extra food that idiots like Jonas and Friedrich can run about doing nothing but complain and harass people. If they lived a thousand years ago they would either die of starvation because they weren’t producing anything, or they would have to butcher animals and “rape” the environment to stay alive. But staying alive, either personally, or as a species, doesn’t seem to be their goal.

Fee Hikes Again
Alexander Marriott October 8, 2003

A continual theme, it seems, is the ever continuing spate of fee hikes that students at this University pay year after year for many so-called “improvements.” The supporters of these fee hikes claim that a majority of the students want these improvements and are willing to pay the extra money. If this is so then why impose a fee? Why not just ask for voluntary donations from the willing and desirous students?

I’ve never seen this proposed before, which makes these claims that students are gung-ho about the “improvements” seem somewhat dubious. What are these “improvements” that are currently being used to justify our particular fee hikes?

Well there is the proposed doubling of space for the Moyer Student Union, which, we all know, needs to be done.

There is a new dorm being built. Not sure why this necessitates a fee hike, but since the wise ones in student government seem to think it’s important, I’ll go along with it.

There is a Student Recreation Center in the works which I’m sure will be nice for all those students who won’t have had to pay for it. But, it seems this is a direly needed building, so I won’t oppose that either.

All of these buildings sound interesting and will probably be fun to hang out in or use in the future. My question is why isn’t the expected cost of future constructions figured into tuition costs? It isn’t as if any of these constructions are incredibly vital. It’s not as if the University will have to close down without them tomorrow morning.

To always have continual fees and new fees imposed gives the impression that the University has realized it has a ready revenue stream they never thought about before and want to keep exploiting it until people really start getting mad.
It is not the case, that if fees aren’t imposed, that these buildings won’t get built. If there is a real demand for such facilities one can ask for donations or get a loan by presenting a viable business model to a lender. If demand for these services is as high as the fee hikers say it is then user fees should be able to cover the costs after a while and then the University can turn a profit and fund future projects more easily.

Just because this is a University doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be run as efficiently as possible and making money. The fact that fees keep going up tells me that this is not being done and that the students are the ones expected to make up for this administrative deficiency.

It is nice to see Regent Steve Sisolak pointing some of these things and trying to get people to be more involved in this process. One of the things he has brought up that is important is parking.

Anyone who commutes to school knows that parking can be problematic at certain times during the day. These projects all seem inconveniently placed within the bounds of the parking lot, eating up spaces as they progress.

Why might this be? The only thing that comes to mind, other than the paranoid fear that they are trying to inconvenience me, is that with a reduction of parking lot spaces people will be increasingly forced to consider parking at the parking complex, which is far more expensive. Also, the constriction in the supply of parking spaces, while the demand for them keeps growing with ever increasing enrollment, means that the price for parking permits will end up rising as well.

Ultimately, this represents a serious problem that is endemic to public universities. They cannot stop taking qualified students and they aren’t really worried about finances because the public wallet is always open. So there is a situation of never-ending growth in enrollment and the inability to construct buildings fast enough to accommodate the new students. This differs from the private university because they generally construct the new buildings first and then increase the numbers of people who can enroll.

This would seem to be an unsolvable dilemma, the solution to which is radical and painful, but hey, I just want these fees to stop first.

Response
Alexander Marriott October 7, 2003

When I wrote, “Christopher Columbus, We Salute You,” my intent was not to create controversy, as that already existed in respect to Columbus, but to defend a man who has been unfairly demonized by politically correct and Marxist historians like Howard Zinn and others.

The response that my article generated was what I expected it to be, not because I wanted such a response, but because I recognized that I’m in a small minority on this subject, especially among college students. To clear up any misunderstanding let me state once and for all, I stand by what I wrote and I believe the conclusions I drew were accurate, I was not writing simply to create a fuss.

As for the four Letters to the Editor that appeared in the October 6 edition of the Rebel Yell, I will answer as many of their points as I can now.

Rebeca Ramirez equated reading my article to me beating her up and then spitting in her face, which is an odd thing to feel when one reads opinions you don’t agree with. If I responded in this way I’d feel run over by a freight train all day long. She then says that I claimed “that Columbus didn’t do anything wrong.” I never said that, I merely said that those things that Columbus is usually accused of, like stealing land, or committing genocide, are entirely false. Columbus, like most of the men of his day, accepted the idea of slavery and so he did enslave Indians, but I never said I agreed with this or thought it wasn’t wrong. On the contrary, it was highly immoral and is a blight upon his record, but, to be fair, the Indians themselves took slaves amongst their various tribes, usually in the form of tributes.

She also goes on to compare me to Adolf Hitler and refers to my piece as a “Nazi article.” This is just a pathetic and unsupported smear against me. The only thing she uses as proof is that I think American culture is better than others, and Hitler thought his culture was better too, therefore I’m Hitler.

Also, I’m supposedly hateful, and by implication, a racist. I invite Ms. Ramirez to go through every article I’ve ever written and compare my ideas to those of Adolf Hitler, who claimed that races were inherently different by blood, something I neither believe nor have ever asserted. Then, please, show how Adolf and I are similar ideologically. Hitler was a socialist and a nature loving environmentalist which puts him closer ideologically to the Indians than to me.

Brian Broekemeier invokes a similar theme by terming my article an “Illusion of Bigotry.” He then goes on to sing the praises of Aztec and Inca culture, referring to them as “thriving civilization[s].” He also pleads, “Why is an empire reflecting the architectural, religious, and overall greatness of the Egyptians not good enough for you?!”

Here is the answer. First of all, being an atheist, “religious greatness” isn’t an achievement in my view, but a serious error that stymies civilization and caused the Aztecs to sacrifice hundreds upon hundreds of innocent people to the Sun. Sure that’s great assuming you aren’t the one being killed. Plus, I never said this was only an Indian mistake, Europeans and Americans have been hampered and stymied by the exact same phenomenon.

I also find nothing particularly special about Incan, Aztec, or Egyptian architecture. The Egyptians ran a slave system through which they directed the entire productive energy of their country towards the building of giant tombs to their god-kings. This isn’t an achievement, but a travesty and a sure sign of a tyrannical and backward society. Why do you think, aside from constructing giant stone pyramids, the Egyptians contributed nothing to philosophy or general knowledge? The whole culture was devoted towards death, how to care for the dead, house the dead, dress the dead, please the dead, etc. If cultures like this are a standard for greatness Hitler’s Nazis and the Soviet Communists must be viewed very favorably as well.

Gordon Ison kindly wished that I commit suicide and then derided me for not having any Indians in my family line or acknowledging them. I never brought that up, because any such comment would have been very racist indeed. What would it matter if I had Indians in my family tree or not? Individuals think or don’t, regardless of their superficial skin pigments or bone structures.

Christine Brown did a beautiful job critiquing my article except that she cited no examples, brought up no points, compared me to Tariq Aziz (Hitler-lite), and used clichés like “used stereotypes that are so yesterday.” This latter example isn’t even an argument. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, but at least have the courtesy to form some sort of cogent argument, rather than a jumble of clichés, insults, and unsupported statements.

I see several problems recurring throughout the critiques I’ve read and heard. First of all, the unsubstantiated and illegitimate attempts to compare me to Hitler, a fact that tells me that you’ve never read any of my previous work, nor did you read the Columbus article very well.
Another problem is the glorification of the Incas and Aztecs in the face of simple historical fact. Brian made both of these cultures sound like some sort of Utopian ideal, but when Cortes and Pizzaro arrived there were tribes, held in tributary bondage to both the Aztec and Incas, that were more than willing to help in toppling theses “thriving civilization[s].”

There is an invalid perception, which cannot be drawn from my article, that I have condemned the Indians, not because they were savages, but because they weren’t white. So as to prevent this argument from coming back let me give a few other examples of savages throughout history.
Christian Europe after the fall of Rome until Thomas Aquinas was populated almost exclusively by savages, most of whom were white. They were entirely mystical and backward, much like the Indians of North and South America. Vikings, Huns, and the Germanic tribes that invaded the western half of the Roman Empire were all savages also and they were mostly or entirely white as well.

Savagery is the result of persistent individual choice to do nothing and refusing to think. It is caused by the constant individual acceptance of irrationalism and mysticism that has absolutely nothing to do with skin color, location, or ancestry. It was the state of all humans, white, black, brown, and red, for most of human history. It took the actions of individuals to reason things out consistently from one generation to the next, bringing themselves out of stone-age primitivism.

Finally, if any of the four who were printed or anyone else who think I am entirely nuts wishes to go live in these great savage cultures there are still a few left, and it requires only the cost of transportation to go and live with them. The Aborigines will welcome you, Polynesia has many primitives with open arms and for a culture of white savages, the French are looking for saps to move in with them as well.

Paying the Cost
Alexander Marriott October 4, 2003

With a near one billion dollar tax increase now coming into effect, the businessmen of the state are now computing what they will have to pay to the state for nothing other than making money. One of these businessmen is my dad, and it is to him and all the other small businessmen who are being forced to hand over their money to the state of Nevada that I dedicate this article.

I remember that fateful day in August when, after such a valiant effort to halt the push towards more taxes, Assemblyman John Marvel switched his vote from no taxes to more taxes, thus given the two-thirds legitimacy needed to legally pass them. I wish to include here a letter my dad sent our Assemblyman, Mr. Conklin, because it says, more eloquently than I could, what all businessmen ought to have said in this fight, but were either too scared or unable to say,


“Dear Mr. Conklin:

I received something in the mail yesterday that compels me to thank you and colleagues personally. Sent from the Nevada Department of Taxation, it is an explanation of the Modified Business Tax due to go into effect tomorrow [October 1st]. Based upon our payroll for 2002 we anticipate a tax bill of $20,000. This represents a $17,000 increase from the head tax we previously paid. I am so glad the legislature stood on principle as I am a greedy businessman whose own needs are of no consequence compared to the poor, old and children of irresponsible parents. My own children are especially pleased that their father went into business, not to serve the needs of his customers, but to be a fount of money for others he does not even know. I just have one request from you: since you (or your colleagues) believe that need is the sole criteria for public money, I too will need money (est. $20,000) shortly. Will you represent my company to the legislature to help me? Thanks again.

Michael Marriott”


What kind of world are we living in when we penalize the people who produce the way of life we all take for granted so that we can give money to all the dregs or unfortunates in society? If you tie your happiness into giving and making sure unfortunates and bums are better off then give your own money to them. You have no moral right to use the gun of the state to expropriate the money of businesses and individuals who have nothing to do with you or your happiness.

Of course, children and old people were only a convenient excuse to try to raise taxes. The real reason why taxes “had” to be raised was because Senator Titus, Mr. Conklin, the KenGuinn, and all of the other geniuses in Carson City didn’t know how to stay within their means and therefore considered it the fault of everyone else. Thus we all have to pay for their failure and shortsightedness.

Just because I and most of you reading this don’t own businesses and don’t have to pay this particular tax doesn’t mean it won’t affect us. Hiring an employee is suddenly a very expensive proposition; both benefits and raises will be curtailed or businesses will choose not to hire nearly as many people as they would have without the taxes.

Surprisingly, not all businesses were against these anti-business punitive actions. The Casino Industry seemed to think that screwing over the other businesses in the state would somehow save it from taxation. Though the taxes they are paying have increased drastically as well, they are betting that somehow, they’ll be safe from future taxation because the rest of the businesses in the state will shoulder the burden of ever-increasing welfare roles and entitlement programs.

The Casino Industry is like the magicians Siegfried and Roy; they are both dealing with very dangerous things, the Casino Industry with the government, the magicians with giant tigers. Recently, Roy was attacked and very nearly killed when one of these tigers attacked him on stage. The only problem in the analogy though is that the Casino Industry won’t just be very nearly killed, it will be entirely destroyed along with the rest of the businesses in this state if this Soviet style tax and spend political philosophy continues unabated and unchallenged by its victims.

Black Lists as American as Apple Pie
Alexander Marriott September 29, 2003

It is always interesting when people from the “McCarthy Era” die and then the media starts in with how utterly horrible and scary that time in our country’s history was. The death of famous director Elia Kazan, who directed such films as On the Waterfront, Gentlemen’s Agreement, and A Streetcar Named Desire, is such a situation.

You see, in this period, when the House Un-American Activities Committee was in full swing trying to root out communists, Kazan, a one time member of the communist party voluntarily testified and named off other communists that he knew in the industry. Of course the popular myth is that the government, under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, began harassing people who were named and forced them into giving up acting. This is not the case.

The importance of getting the names of communist party members, which was a very secretive organization after the Cold War started, was to make sure none of these people were spies. The black list that arose from these names was an initiative on the part of filmmakers and studios to not work with any known communists.

But, it is said, “This is not American and is one of the greatest evils of the twentieth century.” Why? The Soviet Union and the communist philosophy it was based on preached world revolution and, as we now know, after the release of many secret Soviet documents, there were many paid spies in the country. Among these were Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and even Democratic New York Congressman Samuel Dickstein.

For a free country to be overthrown and replaced with a Soviet Union style dictatorship, which had been heralded in the 1930’s as a worker’s paradise, should have been of paramount importance to the American government and the American people. This is especially so after the theft of nuclear technology which Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were involved in and executed for. Their actions, in concert with those of other spies, prolonged the terror and mass slavery of the Soviet Union for nearly fifty years.

However, there is a fundamental blurring of issues on this point. The government cannot bar people from working here unless they are criminals (by imprisoning them) or persona non gratta diplomats. Private companies, such as movie studios, can bar whomever they want for whatever they want. If that happens to be for political views then so be it.
Part of being free is living with whatever consequences your physical and intellectual actions cause. If people don’t want to work with you when they find out you hate and despise individual rights and private property then that is your problem, not theirs.

No one restricted, by law, the ability of communists to start a movie company of their own, although given the tenets of communist philosophy this would have been highly hypocritical. No one said, “These people may never ever work anywhere or with anyone ever again!” People merely said, “I will never work with Actor/Director/Writer X ever again!” This is the right of everyone in this country to freely associate with whomever they choose.

Many of the named communists went on to friendlier climates in New York and some came back to Hollywood when the intellectual climate there became highly leftist. There were no mass killings or roundups of communists. The worst that HUAC could ever do was hold people in contempt of congress for not testifying which in the case of innocent people was unfortunate, just as it is unfortunate whenever innocent people are held in contempt of court.

HUAC’s holding people in contempt of congress garnered the everlasting anger of liberals, but the great socialistic liberal president Franklin Roosevelt had thousands of perfectly innocent people locked up for no reason whatsoever. Where was the outcry over that when it happened? Now it is recognized as a great error but no New Dealers were condemning Roosevelt when he did it, but these same people thought it utterly unacceptable to try to dismantle a network of spies who were selling or giving away vital secrets to the greatest foreign threat the United States has ever faced.

The ultimate aim of revisionist historians and actors, like most of the people in both political parties and most modern actors, is to prop up the idea that everyone should be hired no matter what, even if their employer despises them. Perhaps this explains why untalented hacks like Kevin Costner and Sean Penn keep getting roles in movies, which, SURPRISE!, fail to make money again and again.

Here we run into another myth, that filmmaking shouldn’t be about making money but about art. Perhaps before guys like Penn say such things they should try making some good art for once instead of unmitigated garbage like I Am Sam and Dead Man Walking.

Or we could just bring back the black list.

Do Not Call List Neither Legal Nor Moral
Alexander Marriott September 28, 2003

Not only is there no Constitutional basis for the “Do Not Call” list that the congress has created but there is no legitimate moral basis to justify the creation of any such list by any government.

The “Do Not Call” list I refer to has recently been put on hold by two federal judges, but that doesn’t mean that this list or other future lists won’t be eventually upheld and legitimized by the US Supreme Court. Of course the vast majority of the public supports this list, but public support isn’t an argument and doesn’t mean anything other than that a large majority might either be right or wrong.

The simple legal argument against the “Do Not Call” list is that there is no constitutional authority vested in the Federal Government to stop any solicitation whatsoever. Also the Federal Government is specifically prohibited from infringing upon anyone’s right to free speech, which is what they are in effect doing by fining businesses that are telling people about their products.

There have been many strained and convoluted attempts to justify the list of course. One such argument claims that telemarketers calling during dinner time infringes upon our right to privacy. But one’s right to privacy is guaranteed against the government, not solicitors. Besides, it is a giant stretch to compare the government busting your door down to see what kind of sex you are having to a telemarketer calling your house to try to sell you things. The one you can only suffer through and challenge afterwards in court whereas with the phone call you can always just hang-up.

Another attempt to justify the list is that the calls supposedly impede our right to the pursuit of happiness. This is a confused explanation, or at least it must be for it to make any sense whatsoever. What proponents of this argument must mean is that it violates our right to happiness, which is much different than the pursuit thereof. A phone call cannot impede one’s pursuit of happiness, unless we accept the necessary belief that phone calls have a mystical power to ruin our lives against our wills.

As to a right to happiness, it does not and cannot exist. If I have a right to happiness that would effectively give me license to do whatever I want to attain happiness, including stealing, raping, arson, killing, and so on.

The much more effective reason for why the “Do Not Call” list ought to be done away with is because it is morally obnoxious. What gives anyone the right to use force to prevent phone calls? One might as well ban advertisements, commercials, and billboards because they might be considered annoying by a majority of people as well.
Why are people so threatened by phone calls? All they require is that one turn the phone off, it isn’t that complicated unless you’re a complete dolt.

I think that telemarketing phone calls are very annoying and I hang-up the phone whenever they call. But to get rid of them I would never be so short-sighted as to ask the government to do it, because how long would it be before someone asks the government to stop whatever I do for a living? And how would I be able to object?

The answer is that I wouldn’t be able to object at all because I’ve already accepted and advocated the governmental interference and ruining of someone else’s industry, and I, as well as all the actual people who support this idiotic list will get precisely what they asked for and deserve.