Serious Political Discussion Thread: 16 Problems with the Left

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>>138742264


Index:

1) Classism

As a society we discriminate against the working poor. We should stop.

2) Violence

If we allow punching nazis, who gets to define what a nazi is?

3) Free Speech

If we allow the restriction of speech, who do we trust to restrict it?

4) Innocent until proven guilty

If accusation is guilt, terrible injustices will follow.

5) Immigration and Class

We should listen to the poor’s views on immigration.

6) Immigration and Politics

We should be critical of political interests regarding immigration.

7) Judicial Bias & Statistical Science

We should accept that the pursuit of truth is frequently uncomfortable.

8) Affirmative Action

There exist cogent, non-racist counter arguments to affirmative action.

9) Cultural Appropriation

There are many inconsistencies and problems with the idea of cultural appropriation.

10) Gender Wage Gap

We should be honest and fearless when studying what the wage gap is and its causes.

11) Expendable Men

We should remove the stigma surrounding addressing some problems facing men.

12) Problematic monuments

We should carefully consider how we feel regarding history and its erasure.

13) Abortion

There are two reasonable sides to this debate. We should try to understand our opposition.

14) Mao, Marx, and Stalin

We should be as critical of leftist evil as we are of rightist evil.

15) What is diversity?

We should strive for intellectual diversity as well as phenotypic diversity.

16) Pronouns and the Gender Spectrum

We should properly discuss what pronouns are before leaping to legislation.

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>>138742264

(1) Redneck, Hillbilly, White Trash, Hick, “Cousin-fucker”, and other Words to Insult the (often white) Poor

It is a truism in many liberal circles that there exists no substantial discrimination against White Americans. While this is true in some senses - especially if one endorses the Thompsonian view that racism is only impactful if compounded by institutional, social, or historic discrimination - there are, nonetheless, many words routinely used to denigrate poor whites. Consider the above: how often has one heard one’s left-wing friends scoff at “hicks’, “hillbillies”, “rednecks”, and so on? Many individuals, especially the poor, the non-urban, and the disenfranchised, are deeply - and reasonably - hurt by this type of language, which is entirely ubiquitous in television and internet media, and in everyday conversation. Hillary Clinton’s infamous (and possibly election-losing) ‘Basket of Despicables’ is, perhaps, the apotheosis of this idea. If we hope to engage in fruitful dialogue across the aisle, recognizing the full humanity of each other is important, and this process begins by avoiding language that denigrates or dehumanizes groups of people. A class-conscious critique can be added to the above, regardless of one’s political orientation: there is something unsavoury about the sheer amount and richness of vocabulary that Americans can draw upon to insult the poor. Schematically, the use of language that denigrates the humanity of a group of people by the left functionally enables the use of language that denigrates the humanity of a group of people by the right. I am particularly interested in this type of structural isometry between the rhetoric of the right and left, and fully believe that a progressive position requires the rejection of the content (eg. derogatory language towards minorities, etc.) as well as the structure (the permissibility of the use of derogatory language against any group).

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>>138742264

(2) Punch a Nazi: The Permissibility of Violence Against a Group, and the Problems of Designation

There was recently a meme circulating on my Facebook and Twitter feeds that endorsed “punching a nazi”. The spirit of the sentiment is one that many of us share: that Nazis are intolerable, that the consummation of their ideology is an existential threat to large groups of humans, and that resistance against them, including violence, is permissible. In the case of my family, several of my ancestors lost their lives either in battle or by persecution of fascists, and my house shed blood and treasure holding back the Nazis; consequently, I too hold the majority of these views, but I see two problems inherent with them.
Firstly, the endorsement of violence as a means of political activism. I imagine that the majority of us wouldn’t wish any political movement to pursue violence to achieve its aims, however laudable those aims may be - many of us value stability and peace extremely highly, and are happy to accept that change should happen slowly and democratically, without resort to violence and revolution.
Secondly, there is the issue of diagnosis. If we allow that “punching a nazi” is permissible or desirable, a question arises: Who are the nazis? Whoever has the power to designate a human as a nazi now also has the power of violence over that human. By creating a subcategory of person against whom violence is acceptable, we are opening the gates to horrific abuse. Consider that some might consider a person who wears a red MAGA baseball cap, or a certain haircut, to be a ‘nazi’: the possibility of misclassification, or rather the subjectivity of classification makes this meme exceptionally dangerous.

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>>138742264

(3) Anti-Freedom of Speech, ‘Freeze Peaches’, and the Reverse Free Speech Movement

This meme is one of the most baffling to those who have been following the Berkeley protests and controversy surrounding Milo Yiannopolous before his persecution and fall from grace. A certain group of left-wing activists consider Freedom of Speech to be an enemy of liberal/progressive values, and often mock those who defend the importance of Free Speech by using the term “Freeze Peach” or “Muh Freeze Peach”. While I imagine that the anti-free speech movement is a comparatively small subset of radicals, it nonetheless deserves address. It strikes me as almost self-evident that free speech is indispensable; however, I will detail some reasons why liberals might want to rally around its defence. Firstly, imagine that one’s personal views do not align with the current governmental administration. If the framework for extensive speech controls is in place, the government can effortlessly quell dissent. We might like the sound of that if it’s an administration that we feel represents our interests, but as soon as an administration we don’t like is in power, the ramifications are obviously bleak. For this reason alone, the mockery of Free Speech should be roundly condemned by the left. Let us consider: who do we trust to regulate speech? The Trump administration? The CIA? The FBI? The Supreme Court? Corporations? Economic elites? Chinese lobbyists? Establishing a legal framework for speech control grants an extraordinary amount of power to whichever institution can grasp it, and has consequences that we should all regard as deeply troubling. Free Speech is, and always has been, the cornerstone of progressive, liberal, and free societies, and is a mandatory prerequisite for overthrowing institutional injustice: those that oppose it should be openly condemned.

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>>138742264

(4) “Listen and Believe”: Rape culture and Survivor Claims

This meme emerges from a morally laudable part of the left-wing thinking, but nonetheless has ramifications that are extremely problematic. The essence of ‘listen and believe’ is that survivors (or victims) of sexual assault or harassment should be ‘listened to and believed’. The corrolary claim is that residual patriarchal institutions and cultural orientations routinely denigrate the veracity of sexual assault victim’s claims, shifting the blame onto the victims or directly contradicting them. While I think that this is a fair representation of our society, the solution endorsed by ‘listen and believe’ raises problems related to habeas corpus and ‘innocent until proven guilty’. To put it simply, if we believe that the aggrieved party is telling the truth, we are perforce accepting that the accused of the crime in question is guilty - to defend their innocence would, by definition, contradict the objective of ‘listen and believing’ the survivor’s version of events. However, this effectively makes an accusation equivalent to a guilty verdict. If we ‘believe’ victims of crimes, we are removing the rights of the defendant in legal trials, which grants massive (and abusable) power to the accuser. Even if we feel that no-one will reasonably abuse a policy that is clearly put in place to defend the innocent, we must be hard-headed (and, to some degree, hard-hearted) and accept that abuses will happen. However noble our intent, ‘innocent until proven guilty’ cannot coexist with ‘listen and believe’, and we must, if we desire a functional judicial system, reject the latter. I would add that current Title IX policy contradicts the legal system - a contradiction that has proved very costly for falsely (or unprovably) accused individuals who have lost their careers at public institutions.

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(5) “Everyone is welcome here”: Globalism, Migration, and the Poor

Walking through the wealthy CA neighbourhood in which I reside, I see “everyone is welcome here” posters on many of my neighbour’s doors and windows. This poster is, presumably, intended to show solidarity for the plight of migrants and for muslims who (undeniably) suffer discrimination. I’ll set aside the peculiarity of liberal endorsement of Islam for later discussion, and focus on the issue of economic migration and refugees. Overwhelmingly, the wealthy and educated support and defend refugee rights, asylum seekers, and economic migrants, while the poorer sectors of society (other than migrants themselves) oppose it. There is, however, an economic explanation for this. For landlords and business owners, increased migration is strictly beneficial: Lower labour costs, and more housing pressure. The people who put “Everyone is welcome here” posters up will never bear the cultural or social cost of having poor immigrants in their neighbourhood: obviously, those people will move to far poorer districts. However, they WILL economically benefit from this type of migration. The characterisation of working-class opposition to migration as racism is often accurate, but it also ignores and important point: It’s the working class who pay the cost, both economically (increased labour competition, higher rents), and socioculturally (foreigners moving into their neighbourhood.) The left absolutely do not recognize that the wealthy and educated are economically incentivized to support migration, and have even crafted a moral narrative around the subject that casts them as virtuous for supporting the plight of the unfortunate. We should be self-critical and seriously recognize how much our personal economic interests shape our political decisions, and abandon the ostensibly ‘moral’ arguments for supporting migration.

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>>138742264

6) Pro-immigration and Pro-reproduction Institutions and their Interests

Perhaps as a corollary of the above point, it’s worth remembering the political ramifications of migration. Ask yourselves: Which party do migrants vote for? Now ask yourselves: Which party is the most pro-migration? Plainly, the answer to both questions is the same. It might seem obvious, but a cynical perspective is important to understand political motivations: the democratic party wants to increase migration, in part at least because it estimates that migrants will consistently vote democrat. All institutions seek to increase their membership, and reproduction and migration are methods to this end. Incidentally, the right frequently endorses the same stratagem, encouraging large Christian families and discouraging abortion in predominantly Republican areas. Ever since the 1950’s eugenics and the interaction between population and democracy has been a strictly taboo topic, but we on the left - especially those of us who are committed to fearless pursuit of truth - should recognize that there is a strong political interest, within the Democratic party, in importing humans who will vote Democrat - especially if those humans statistically have many children. The social and economic outcomes of this type of importation, however, are not always positive for the host society: demonstrably, differences of values produced in heterogenous communities can lead to real strain and suffering, and not just for the “majority” group. The problems of “gerrymandering” are frequently raised by my liberal friends and colleagues, but they would be horrified at the suggestion of “demographic gerrymandering”, where one party attempts to have its base out-breed (or out-import) the opposition. However, this is a predictable outcome of democratic arrangements of power.

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(7) Judicial bias and Scientific Denialism

It is a truism among my liberal friends that whereas the right wing deny scientific knowledge, the left wing embrace science and empiricism. The left’s praise for scientific superstars such as Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson are emblematic of this trend. Similarly, the (highly justified) view that the right wing deny scientific consensuses such as evolution, the age of the earth, and climate change is often contrasted with a more scientific liberal attitude. However, there are areas of empirical study that the left disregard as much as the right disregards climate change: almost any racial breakdown of crime, academic success, etc., as well as most demographic science that touches on race, is taboo in left wing circles. Incarceration rate is one area of contradiction, where the left has been especially clumsy. Liberals frequently point to the disproportion of African-Americans in prison (versus their % of the population) as evidence of institutional discrimination against blacks in the penal system - a view that is highly justified. However, two issues emerge: First, the disproportion of men in prison should demonstrate the same thing, or at least raise similar questions. However, to suggest that men might be discriminated against by the judiciary is, in most liberal circles, a cardinal sin. Second, if the penal system is characterised as perpetuating white privilege by favoring whites in sentencing, why are Asian incarceration rates even lower than that of whites? In fact, many arenas in which white privilege is identified encounter contradictory evidence in Asian performance. Removing our biases from factual conversations is an important step if we wish to be a movement that is consistent with the best scientific practices and evidence, and correct diagnosis is indispensable if we wish to effectively solve the social problems caused by entrenched discriminatory attitudes and policies.

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>>138742264
(8) Affirmative Action

Many of us agree with Affirmative Action policies in the academy - that sites of higher education are suitable places to redress the iniquities inflicted on certain minorities. However, the practice of these policies often leads to troubling outcomes. On the face of it, normalising the ethnodemography of the University body with that of the surrounding community through admission quotas is reasonable. However, when we realise that University places are zero-sum, we also recognize that by taking steps to increase the attendance of underrepresented ethnicities, we are also artificially decreasing overrepresented ethnicities. We might instinctively think that in the USA that means ‘whites’, and that this is a reasonable price to pay for past injustice and inherited “invisible wages”. However, in practice, these policies often take the places from students of primarily East Asian descent - groups that have, historically, been brutally discriminated against (consider the internment camps, expropriations, and ‘Chink deadlines’ in California). In fact, most universities do not have affirmative action policies, but many liberals call for them. I would urge my colleagues on the left to carefully consider the ramifications of ethnic quotas for competitive and desirable positions, especially as they punish certain high-achieving (and historically, even contemporarily) discriminated groups- I would also mention historic exclusion of Jews from the academy. As a subpoint, I would say that the left has been excellent at raising the issues of underrepresentation of Afroamericans in media etc., but parallel issues of Asian invisibility or unfavorable stereotyping in media (No East Asian has ever been nominated for Best Actor/Actress) are barely touched upon, showing a peculiar bias in the treatment of US ethnic minorities - a bias that our opponents do not fail to flag as a sign of ideological inconsistency.

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(9) Cultural Appropriation and Hegemons

Many of us are sensitive about the issue of ‘cultural appropriation’; the idea that the adoption of cultural artifacts from a subordinate group by a hegemon is a form of domination that should be opposed. However, I find the definition of ‘cultural appropriation’ to be haphazard; for instance, learning a minority language or eating the foods of an ethnic minority are rarely classed as appropriation, whereas sartorial or artistic mimesis are frequently invoked as acts of epistemic (or literal) violence. It is common to hear of protests at the wearing of kimono or Indian moccasins, or to see protesters outside exhibitions by orientalist painters such as Monet or Klimt. I see four major issues with the problematization of ‘cultural appropriation’. First, by its nebulous nature, it exposes us to accusations of inconsistency and hypocrisy. Second, it makes a vice out of a virtue: surely, to embrace other cultures is a profoundly liberal value. Third, it tends to resort to ethnic assumptions of morality: specifically, that certain acts are only permissible by members of certain ethnicities. This type of personal jurisdiction, or extraterritoriality, is troubling: all criminal or anti-social acts should be the same for all people, regardless of ethnicity. Again, fuzzyness abounds: what if the perpetrator is 1/2 minority? Or 1/4? What if a member of one minority exploits the symbols of another? Finally, if culture is permitted to flow from the hegemon to the minority (As it inevitably does: think of blue jeans and Starbucks), but inhibited from flowing in the opposite direction (eg., the hegemon adopting sedge hats), we are sanctioning a form of ethnic (or cultural) cleansing: the minority culture is doomed to extinction under these conditions. If we are committed to diversity, we should embrace cultural exchange and not seek to shame hegemons who wish to celebrate - and even appropriate - minority culture.

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(10) The Gender Wage Gap and the 77%

Most liberals agree that there is still much work to be done to improve the lot of women in society; one common issue that is raised is that of the gender wage gap. This issue is mercurial, articulated in a wide variety of ways. One common representation of the issue, however, is that women earn “77% of male wages for the same work.” Even for someone sincerely sympathetic to the struggles women face, this particular statistic - which was presented frequently by the Clinton campaign - has always struck me as odd- not least because it accuses (unnamed) employers of systematically violating the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Moreover, anyone with a basic knowledge of economics can prove it wrong: if the work is the same, then employers would always hire women, since one can pay them much less! In fact, women would be in such demand that their wages would increase - and men’s wages decrease, to compete. If it was the exact same work, then we would find both gender’s pay normalising somewhere at the midpoint of 1.00 and 0.77, presumably at around 0.89 of normative male wages. This would happen fast - most companies are almost certainly less invested in perpetuating patriarchy than they are in making an 11% saving on wages. This particular statistic is not only misleading, it masks real problems women face. Moreover, it’s insulting to educated liberals who understand the basics of economics: if we are the party of the enlightenment, of science, and of empirical knowledge, to be contrasted with the fanatical dogmatism of the right, we ought to roundly condemn this type of eye-catching misdirection. Lest I be accused of revisionism, I should note that there is an enormous earnings gap, which can be explained by a variety of means, including: contemporary discrimination, residual historic sexism, work hours, overtime hours, maternity leave, career choice, etc. etc.

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>>138742264
(11) The Expendable Male Body

Men’s Rights are a thorny issue that many liberals openly dismiss. Without wanting to raise an interminable debate, I want to provide some observations that might stimulate humanistic thought among my left-leaning friends. First, that historically States have systematically claimed ownership of male bodies in the form of military conscription, and treated male lives as expendable. To ignore the horrific suffering that military conscription has inflicted upon men throughout history is to turn away from solutions to prevent future abuses of this type. We tend to imagine that patriarchal societies unilaterally favor men, but the fervor with which 20th century nation-states hurled young men into the gears of war should give us pause to think. Echoes of these acts still exist in popular culture; consider the hordes of faceless soldiers, bodyguards, and extras that are dispatched in popular action films. Those characters are overwhelmingly men, and their cinematic treatment differs little from their treatment by many governments. While men often occupy the upper echelons of our society (and in media, killing those faceless grunts), they often also occupy its lower depths; prisons, homeless, addicted, murdered, and suicides. I would urge my fellow liberals to appreciate that the position of men in our society is complex, and cannot simply be characterised as total supremacy. In some arenas, such as political power, men are favoured; in others, such as business, they seem to have higher risk spread; in others, such as incarceration or child custody, they are unfavored. We must be courageous in questioning our own assumptions about history and society if we wish to strengthen our movement. As a corollary point, circumcision is rarely discussed as a politically legitimate grievance, but I believe that any pro-choice activist should equally defend the rights of male infants to not have their body modified without consent.

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>>138742264


(12) The Problem of the Past in Left-wing thought

Recently, the past has become a major topic of public discourse.The media spotlight has fallen on the presence of Confederate statues from many US cities. I have three main issues to raise on this topic. First, do we on the left approve of the destruction of Tibetan heritage by the CCP? After all, the CCP defeated the kingdom of Tibet in a ‘civil war’ of sorts, and determined that Tibet’s theocratic slave-society was inferior to their own moral and political system. The CCP outlawing the Tibetan flag and symbols of TIbetan resistance as traitorous callbacks to the days of slavery seems cognate to the opposition to the Confederacy. Is it appropriate for victors of wars to extinguish the memory of the defeated? Second, it is unarguable that cultural mores change over time. If each generation destroys the ‘problematic’ symbols of the past, would we not be living in an Orwellian ‘eternal present’? Is this not historical censorship? Who benefits from this? Would Europe be better if, during WWII, the Nazis has more systematically destroyed the architectural heritage of cities they visited? Who do we trust to perpetually edit history? Donald Trump? Finally, it seems to me that the issues facing black people in the USA today are contemporary issues of poverty, crime, and discrimination, not historic issues. What I mean by this is that hideous discrimination occurred against the Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, and Jews, but very few advocate for special rights for those people. The reason is that those groups are now doing fine. There is no particular need for historic advocacy to remember the sins committed against the Irish, because today the Irish fare well. The left seems to confuse the present with the past. The past is very distant indeed; we should firmly turn our attention to the problems of the present, and leave the symbols of the past to educate us and mark the road of progress.

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(13) The Definition of Murder: The Two Readings of Abortion

A point that often seems lost on my liberal friends lies at the heart of the American political divide. That is: “What is abortion?”. For most on the left, abortion is a morally neutral act, which is carried out as a unilateral decision by a woman over her own body, and which has no victim. In this view, any regulation of abortion is an unconscionable overreach by the state. Hence, “Pro-choice” activism, and the term “my body, my choice.”. There is a libertarian fringe that somewhat bridges the left and the right, who more or less view regulation of abortion as impractical (leading to clandestine, dangerous abortions) or a domain of private life that should not be subject to regulation. The view on the political right, however, doesn’t particularly frame the issue as one of choice or non-choice. Rather, it is ontologically concerned with what abortion signifies morally. The main view on the right is that a conceived child - an unborn foetus at any stage of development - is a human life. Aborting a foetus, then, is murder. For individuals on the right, the issue is not so much about regulating women’s bodies, as it is about protecting human lives; it is outlawing murder. On the left, we tend to think of anti-abortion activists as archaic patriarchalists obsessed with controlling women’s bodies. On the right, there is a view that leftists are heartless murderers. There is a reason why this issue has caused a massive political rift: the two views are almost completely incommensurable, since they are based on different definitions of what a foetus is. I hope that we on the left can at least try to understand the perspective of the right, and however much we disagree on when precisely a human gains its rights, at least respect the validity of opposing viewpoints without resorting to gross mischaracterisations.

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(14) The ‘Bad’ Idols of the Left: Mao, Marx, and Stalin

At many recent anti-fascist protests - protests which, incidentally, I vehemently support, provided they are peaceful - I have seen a good deal of Communist paraphernalia and symbolism. This to me is entirely baffling. Mao Zedong is directly responsible for massive violent political repression and engineered death. In the land redistribution campaigns, in the Hundred Flowers campaign and anti-rightist movement, in the Great Leap Forward, and in the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s policies caused tens of millions of deaths. Stalin, in the de-kulakization campaign and Ukrainian famine, was responsible for several dozen million deaths, not counting the gulags and violent repression of political opponents. Pol Pot killed 30% of the population of his country; the world is still haunted by the Sovietization of North Korea, and NK is the last country on earth with large-scale political concentration camps. We on the left stand against all these things. We believe in a free press, in the opposition of tyranny, and in the fundamental importance of human dignity and equality. We are against death squads, death camps, and torture of prisoners. The fact that the hammer and sickle symbol is not regarded as the swastika is is a historical quirk: we temporarily allied with the Soviets, and after the war our academies were influenced by left-wing intellectuals, including Maoist apologists. It is only recently that the horrors of Maoist China have become known to the greater public. On the left, we must condemn brutal tyranny wherever and whenever it emerges, That includes when it emerges from the ‘left’. Otherwise, we are hypocrites. I would like to note to my overzealous friends, especially those concerned with identity politics, that Che Guevara was very critical of blacks, and that Marx said heinous things about both Jews and ‘Orientals’. Idolising these men makes us look ignorant and foolish.

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(15) What is Diversity?

As the Google controversy reveals, many institutions are concerned about under-representation of certain groups (especially women, latinx, and black people), and have taken steps to change the situation. Many have appointed administrators tasked with changing the internal demography of the organisation - equity offices. Generally speaking, these departments exist because of the beliefs that skewed demographics are bad, and that they are caused by discrimination. I believe that judging anyone based on their group characteristics is wrong. The smallest minority is the minority of one, and that is the only minority whose ‘group interests’ should be protected. I also oppose racist generalisations, antisemitism, or anti-Chinese jokes on the news. For me, being anti-generalisations is incompatible with enforced equity quotas. Statisticians may demonstrate that certain groups are over-represented in certain areas, but I challenge that anyone has the sociological, cultural, or historical knowledge to fully understand why, or if it is sensible to intervene, or what a good intervention would look like. South Asians are over-represented in medicine; is this bad? Should we ensure that there be more male nurses and female trash collectors? Or female prisoners for violent crime? I believe we should focus our efforts on ensuring equality of opportunity - through blind admissions - and on breaking up generational poverty that is the root cause of systemic inequality. Ultimately, the left needs to decide: Do we want to be colour-blind and all-inclusive in our institutions, or endlessly curate their demography? I vote for the former, and I believe there should at least be a cogent discussion of the topic. As a final point, I would note that diversity of thought is a hugely under-rated aspect of diversity both on the right and the left. If we truly want to progress, we must listen to those who disagree with us. Echo chambers cause madness.

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(16) What is a pronoun?

The recent passing of bill C16 in Canada seems to lay a legal framework for designating the non-use of an individual’s preferred pronoun as a form of hate speech. This raises an important question: What is a pronoun? Here, as with abortion, there exists a debate. Some believe that a pronoun is prescriptive, like a name. In this view, I tell you my pronoun, and I can expect you to use it, just like my name. Refusing to use it a social code violation (soon to be a legal code violation), just as refusing to use my name is. The opposite argument is that a pronoun is descriptive, like an adjective. “His” and “hers” are useful descriptors, just like “Blond”, “Asian”, or “Tall”. Most people who appear to be a “he” or a “her” also identify as a “he” or a “her”, just as most people who appear to be “Asian” identify as “Asian”. This view feels that legally enshrining pronouns as prescriptive speech is a sort of grammatical or syntactical error. Some go further, and contend that it is a form of compelled speech that should not be a law at all - there is a significant gulf between hate speech laws that forbid speech, and laws that force individuals to use certain words - the latter being troublingly authoritarian. There exists a meta-problem, regarding the existence of a ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ binary. This discussion is extremely thorny, but suffice to say that there is also debate on the science and sociology of non-binarism, and some apprehension that it is being turned into law without full debate. Personally, I simply advocate increased discussion of the topic, and the inclusion of psychological, medical, cultural, and sociological specialists from all sides of the political spectrum in the debate. Anecdotally, I once met a loathsome man who insisted that his pronouns were ‘batman’ and ‘batself’, which illustrated one possible absurd abuse of such legislation.