Daily Archives: June 28, 2007

Who’s the radical?

I was skimming through SCOTUSblog and I saw something shocking in this entry, Government calls Al-Marri ruling a threat to security:

The Justice Department, denouncing as “radical” a Fourth Circuit Court ruling rejecting presidential authority to seize and detain a civilian captured inside the U.S., asked the Circuit Court on Wednesday to rehear the case en banc, and to overturn it swiftly.

Yes, how dare the courts have the audacity to deny the president kingly powers. Any citizen should be detained by the president, if he suspects they are a terrorist. Habeas corpus, schmabeas corpus. We’re in a fucking war on terror! 9/11 changed everything.

The terrorists could be anywhere! They made the whole world a battlefield, and thus, we must take the battle to them, wherever they may be. I bet the liberal-commie-traitors would love for terrorists to be able to hide on our own soil. I bet they’d love for terrorists to hide behind our ancient liberties and constitutional safeguards. I can’t decide whether I hate them more, or the terrorists.

Descent into Pseudonymity

I’m about to start working, so lately I’ve been frightened about the prospect of people finding me on the internets. Luckily, I share the name of some Christian singer guy, but this weblog still shows up on the second page when you google my name. I don’t want to watch what I say on this weblog; I don’t want to manage my image at this young an age. I want to be as crass as I fucking want on The Chalkboard Manifesto — and I reserve the right to be offensive to anyone.

This could also be a problem if I decide to become a public figure of some sort. One cannot help but be a moron at 20 years old, and I do not want those moronic things preserved on the internets for all to see. A simple slip of judgment can be a disaster.

Things I have said can be easily taken out of context, especially when that context can sometimes be my entire life (or my personal growth during my teenage years.) I believe that people are smart enough to recognize context, but they have to be given that context in the first place. I won’t be able to defend myself.

Of course, certain public persons have recovered from much worse than I can ever do, but I do not have the skills to attempt such a recovery.

So maybe it’s best if I become anonymous, so I can do what I want to do. Alternatively, I can make this weblog private, but that doesn’t solve the Chalkboard Manifesto problem. Furthermore, there’s still the risk that information will leak out even from a private weblog. Writing under pseudonym will not sate my vanity, but that may be the price of freedom.

I’m undecided whether I should really go anonymous, but I’m certainly leaning in that direction. While it may be a tragedy to possibly erase this weblog from existence, I will at least keep records for myself.