Well, I don’t actually feel old (unlike a certain spring chicken I happen to know).
But I did turn 40 last week, and my wife turned 36 yesterday. We still feel young. Gray hair is irrelevant.
But I am tired.
So instead of a real post, even though it’s been a week, I’ll pass on some interesting articles I’ve recently looked at. I may even have read one or two.
Christopher Hitchens et al. are physically attacked. Hitchens says it’s a moral imperative to deface or destroy a swastika and he doesn’t care if he gets beaten. He apparently also doesn’t care whether the people he’s with get beaten, which is a point I’m surprised the author didn’t make.
I don’t think I’d have done what he did, and I don’t even think I’d be wrong not to. But guess what? I really am tired and that’s the only one I’m linking to. Weak? Decidedly so.
I don’t really feel old most of the time, though I feel older. As I make my way through my 40s, I admit that I’m approaching middle age, but “old” sounds so three-digit! My gray hair only showed up after my bout of heavy drug use a couple years ago; my wife’s came in during her 20s. It isn’t a good age indicator at all. I pity someone who is so decrepit before 30.
Hitchens was in the wrong, though the proper punishment would have been of the ticket-and-fine sort, not the beating. He had no right to damage the property of another, whatever his opinion of that property. If it had been in the U.S., I would have wanted to see him arrested and punished. If Nazis don’t have free speech and property rights, nobody does.
It sounds as though the people putting up the swastika didn’t have a legal right to do so. They just don’t have to follow the laws because the beat up anyone who stands up to them.
That’s my impression anyway.
You’re probably right. The related story of the reporter being beaten for filming the official sign removal supports that. However, here at least, if someone puts up a sign without required permission, it’s up to the authorities to remove it, not some passing stranger. The stranger certainly doesn’t have the right to deface the sign. Of course, if the sign owners see some criminal defacing their sign, they don’t have the right to beat him. Again, that’s a job for the authorities. Get the LAPD! It would have been fitting if Hitchens had been detained by the police for his vandalism, and had to pay for a replacement sign.
I wonder what the law is, really. If I illegally put up a sign saying that Jews suck, does any random stranger have the right to take it down? I don’t see why not. Defacing is another matter, of course.
The interesting thing here is that we don’t really have that kind of free speech here in the US either. There’s no city in the world that would allow Nazis to fly a swastika on lamp posts for an indefinite period. They usually have the right to march, of course, and to say what they want.
In the area we’re talking about, the group apparently has plenty of power. If a group in power is preaching violence and hatred against a minority, I’m not sure that I side with the law when thinking about the morality of defacing their signs.