Corrections Minister Phil Goff announced today that he’d keep an eye on the South Australian trial of banning gang membership. He said that if it works, “then I’m 100 per cent in favour of it”.

Basically, in South Australia, the government can decide (on police advice) which gangs are going to be banned, and then individual members can be ordered to not associate with anyone from the gang. Gang members can also be banned from certain events or places.

According to the Herald, “The South Australia ban has been criticised for limiting freedom of association, but Mr Goff said he agreed with [South Australian Premier] Mr Rann that the gang problem was serious enough for civil liberties to be overridden.” I disagree. I think there are very few things sufficiently serious to override civil liberties, and that this certainly isn’t one of them.

I’m generally fairly trusting that our government and our Police force are well intentioned and won’t try to abuse the powers. But I also don’t think we should get complacent just because we have a relatively peaceful and democratic society. We can’t guarantee that in future our leaders will be so benign. As they say, power corrupts.

Members of the Green party have been known to be involved in a bit of civil disobedience - Sue Bradford was arrested a few times for her protests. What if a future government decided to declare the Green party a gang? That would make it illegal to join the party, and illegal for party members to gather together or speak to each other. A government could shut down political opposition fairly effectively by declaring them a gang. Now, I don’t foresee any immediate danger of this happening, but why take the risk?

Does it really help us to police gangs if we make a crime out of gang members talking to each other? Wouldn’t we be better off if we concentrated on discovering and prosecuting actual crimes?

I don’t want to see New Zealand go down the same path as the US in slowly eroding the human rights that they have been respected and revered for. Freedom of association is right up there with freedom of speech as a fundamental human right.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I am ultimately in favour of allowing gay people to marry.  I can’t see any reason to prohibit marriage to a group of people based on the shape of their partner’s genitals.  It seems as arbitrary to me as banning mixed-race marriage.  I just think gay activists should focus on civil union first, then gay marriage after.  It’s a difference of opinion on tactics, not goals.

I see strong parallels between the process of racial equality and gay rights in the US.

I think civil unions are an important step along the way to equal-access marriages.  Even though the ultimate goal is full equality, I think the gay activists should focus on civil unions first.

You have to remember that many people today grew up in a time where marriage was a breadwinning husband and a housewife.  Homosexuality was not only condemned by the clergy, it was considered a mental illness and was actually illegal.  Many, probably most, people brought up in that era will never get past their built-in bias against homosexuality and will strongly resist the redefinition of marriage to include it.  However, they are likely to be less opposed to a newfangled civil union including gay people.   They will probably still oppose it, but not with the vehemence they will oppose a redefinition of marriage.

Social change doesn’t happen because individuals change their minds.  It happens because the people with the old ideas die, and the younger generation that replaces it has more modern ideas.

Further down the track, once civil unions are firmly established it will be much easier to have marriage opened up to everybody.

A while back, Ebs posted about how he used to be an American fanboy.  I wouldn’t put my feelings that strongly, but I’ve had a great respect for the principles on which America was founded.   I suspect that this respect for America comes mainly from reading way too many Louis L’Amour cowboy books.

I associate the founding of America with sentiments like this:

• "we hold these truths to be self-evident" Declaration of Independence
• "all Men are created equal" Declaration of Independence
• "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" Declaration of Independence
• "liberty and justice for all" Pledge of Allegiance
• "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" First Amendment
• "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" Second Amendment

America was created to provide the freedoms and rights that ordinary people lacked in England.  Everybody in America (eventually) was guaranteed the basic human rights of liberty, equality and justice.  Liberty included free speech & freedom of (and from) religion. 

I’ve always found the right to bear arms to be particularly significant (and not just because I’ve had a lifelong gun fetish ;-). 

First, it suggests the right to personal self-defence.  You were allowed to be armed to defend yourself, your family and your property.  Second, there was defence of the country.  An armed populace could be expected to defend the country from enemies.  However, since the republic maintained a standing army, this wasn’t expecially significant.

The main reason for prohibiting Congress from infringing the right to bear arms was that Congress controlled the military.   Without the general population having the right to bear arms, it would too easy for Congress to abuse its power and use the military to back up that abuse.  The right to bear arms was vital so that people could rebel and overthrow the government if it got out of control.

In some ways it is heartening that Americans still have this right.  Most people in the US can buy guns, even in Walmart.  Most states allow people to obtain concealed carry permits for handguns.  The gun lobby is extremely powerful in the US.   It’s a pity that Americans aren’t so keen on standing up for their other rights (like free speech, free press and the right to a fair trial).

Technology has possibly rendered the right to bear arms effectively useless anyway.  The populace can’t really use their arms to overthrow Congress if they only have rifles and pistols and Congress has machine guns, missiles and nukes.   But still, I think the right should be preserved for its symbolism if nothing else.   It is the right to bear arms which allows Americans to defend all their other rights and freedoms … if only they cared enough to do so.

These are just some of the patriotic posters brought to you by whitehouse.org.

Not long to go now until the mid-term elections.   Here’s some predictions from Electoral Vote Predictor:

The home page also has a great graphic mapping out the projected Senate outcome for each state.

In the unlikely event that you prefer your poll results and projections to be republican-flavoured, you can go to Election Projection instead.

"We are pressing Iraq’s leaders to take bold measures to save their country. We’re making it clear that America’s patience is not unlimited," Mr Bush said (in the Herald today).

America’s patience is not unlimited?!?   George Bush, the guy who led America to invade Iraq, is warning the Iraqis to hurry up and fix the mess that his invasion created?  Is this some lame attempt to shift the blame for the Iraq mess onto the Iraqi people in the vain hope that the Republican voters won’t realise who is really to blame for the fuck-up?

Iraq’s leaders don’t have any bold measure they can take to "save their country" because their all their infrastructure was bombed to smithereens and their country is now being occupied by the US military.  It was the US that came in and fucked the country over, so it is the US’s responsibility to fix it, no matter how long it takes.   It is the Iraqis who have every right to be losing patience.

In 1776, the American people became so fed up with the injustices of their ruler, King George, that they decided to become independent and tell him to sod off.   They felt it was a good idea to set out in writing their reasoning for this act, and so Thomas Jefferson drafted up a Declaration of Independence. 

This is the preamble:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

I think this is a beautiful document.  The American people currently are showing themselves more disposed to suffer than to right themselves.  But hopefully the train of abuses and usurpations by the current administration has been sufficient to pursuade them to throw off the current government and get some new guards.  

It is less than one month until the US midterm elections.  We can only watch and hope.

When the lid blew off the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, I supported Clinton.  I believe that where he sticks his dick is between him, Hillary and other willing partners.  Sure, cheating on a spouse is never a good thing, but it doesn’t invalidate his presidential skills.   Curiously, I’m not so forgiving towards Don Brash.

Of course, I freely confess that I am probably biased because I’ve just never liked him.  He always struck me as a bit creepy, and now he strikes me as a creepy lecherous hypocrite (as a random aside, hypocrite is one of the words I can never remember how to spell properly).

There’s the fact that this isn’t Brash’s first time being caught with his fingers (or other body part) in the wrong pie.  He cheated on his first wife with his current wife.  That was a long time ago, and he can be forgiven.  He married his mistress, so clearly it was true love blah blah blah.   But to do it again?  And to get caught again?  That shows he’s both sleazy and stupid.

The bigger issue to me is that it exposes his hypocrisy.   Despite banging the Business Roundtable babe, he and his party voted against the Civil Union bill, with that National party rhetoric glorifying family values, and prattling on about preserving the sanctity of marriage.  He accused Helen Clark of being "indifferent to the institution of marriage".  And he tried to portray himself as an honest man and a devoted husband.

Well, now we see the truth.  I seriously doubt Don Brash will ever be a Prime Minister of New Zealand.  And to me, that’s a good thing.