{"id":363,"date":"2009-03-05T07:30:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T15:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=363"},"modified":"2009-03-05T07:30:30","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T15:30:30","slug":"banning-barbie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/05\/banning-barbie\/","title":{"rendered":"Banning Barbie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good grief. A legislator from some backwater where people like to elect [<em>name that party<\/em>]s <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/washington\/2009\/03\/barbie-ken.html\">wants to ban Barbie<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Lileks <a href=\"http:\/\/lileks.com\/bleat\/?p=1334\">nails it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Now and then it seems that  banning is all they can do. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all they seem to want to do. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the problem with a free nation: you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make yourself significant by granting freedoms, so you spend your time looking for freedoms to restrict in the name of a greater good, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always a greater good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Heinlein has a great description of what, for some people, would be the perfect society:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I had seen those luxuries Earthside. Wasn&#8217;t worth what they put up with. Don&#8217;t mean heavy gravity, that doesn&#8217;t bother them; I mean nonsense. All time kukai moa. If chicken guano in one earthworm city were shipped to Luna, fertilizer prolem would be solved for century. Do this. Don&#8217;t do that. Stay back of line. Where&#8217;s tax receipt? Fill out form. Let&#8217;s see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up to pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead &#8212; but first get permit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<em>The Moon is a Harsh Mistress<\/em>, chapter six, p. 85)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good grief. A legislator from some backwater where people like to elect [name that party]s wants to ban Barbie. Lileks nails it: Now and then it seems that banning is all they can do. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all they seem to want to do. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the problem with a free nation: you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make yourself significant by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRqpr-5R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}