into-the-blue.com

Today it’s time for something different. Something unrelated to running, swimming, biking or other masochistic endeavors. It’s not even about flying or riding motorcycles. No, it’s about something that seems to be spreading like a disease throughout society.

It is about halfwits with a misplaced sense of entitlement and the unmitigated arrogance that their beliefs are an universal truth and should be imposed upon everyone else even when those beliefs fly in the face of established scientific fact. It is also about the fact that they demand protection for their beliefs while at the same time demanding the quashing of contradictory beliefs and facts.

It is about the complete abrogation of responsibility by parents of their need to instill discipline into their children and the replacement thereof with the mistaken impression that their little retarded brat is an intellectual tour de force, with the net result that said lackwits grow up with a disproportionate sense of entitlement.

It is about the enablement of mediocrity and the systematic embracing of the lowest common denominator.

It is about the complete inability, due to the intrusion of others, of people to separate their work life and ethics from their private life and beliefs.

It is about the intrusion of employers and related entities into the private lives of employees and the erosion of First Amendment rights and the hypocrisy that those standards that employers and related entities are attempting to apply to select employees does not apply to the employer or related entity.

It is about the de facto standard of guilty until proven innocent that by virtue of the cost structure of our legal system whereby you are forced to hire an attorney to garner reasonable representation to defend yourself when faced with a malicious and unwarranted lawsuit, that you are forced to bear injustices without standing your ground rather than standing up for principles that could cost you a life’s worth of savings and a career.

At its heart, it is all about censorship.

Most people who maintain an online presence are, in some way, shape or form, an employee - be it an employee of a private company, a public corporation, a government entity, or be it self-employed. As an employee you have certain rights, responsibilities and duties while acting in the capacity of employee.

The question, however, is where does one draw the line between employee and private citizen? What constitutes a violation of employment terms? In some areas this is obvious - publicly talking or disseminating private company information is a fairly common example. But what if you maintain a private blog that in no way references your employer? And what if you decide to use profanity in your posts as a literary device or to highlight a point?

Does your employer have any right to attempt to regulate your content? Do they have a right to say that your conduct as a private citizen is unbecoming of an employee of Foobar Corporation? Are they, in essence, acting as a censor? Are the rules any different for employees of government agencies versus employees of corporations in the private sector? Are you, as an employee, accountable for actions in your private life? In other words, if you use profanity on your blog are you fucked?

What happens if you’re a school teacher? Or a teacher at a college? Should you be beholden to the opinions of students or parents as to what constitutes acceptable use of your own private life? What if, instead of using profanity on your blog you decide to blog about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof)? What happens if you decide to publicly flagellate some political candidate because you disagree with their viewpoints? What if in your private time you decide to volunteer in the campaign efforts of another candidate? What if you then blog about it? And what if someone finds that objectionable?

What if some student or parent or administrator or employee or corporate official takes issue with it because they have been actively googling you and found your website? In other words, they have actively sought you out. They have invaded your privacy, albeit an online form of your privacy. And yet they feel compelled to continue reading it like someone who is offended by pornography deliberately seeking out a bookstore specializing in pornography. And being offended by it. Do they have the right to tell you to stop living your private life as you choose? By extension do you, when you become an employee unwittingly sign away the rights to your private life? Do you, as an employee, effectively give up your constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of speech?

Are we collectively incapable of limiting the continued encroaching into our private lives by our employers with their ongoing desire to increase the length of the workday, to attempt to establish acceptable behavior practices while outside of confines of the workplace and their seeming desire to start actively searching out private blogs of employees?

And does the doctrine of stupidity, of homogeneity of belief, of the slow and steady contraction of what is deemed acceptable by some minority rule the day? Have we as a society become so beholden to the insanities of halfwits and their children that we are too scared to shout from the hilltops the need for a restoration of parental discipline rather than the continued decline into parental anarchy that seems to be taking place?

And are we simply unable or unwilling to stand up and decry the seeming reversal of authority in certain sectors and blatant attempts at censorship of online media that seem to be coming from more and more directions?