In a previous entry, I wrote about the fact that democracy and the rule of the majority are not the same thing. If you have not already read this fact that is apparently not to the liking of the ignorant and stupid, then please click on the link and read up a bit on the background. I can wait, and there is a chance that what I am about to say here might make more sense.
Now, in many places, I have written that just as the right to speak up is paramount, the right to be heard is also paramount when the issue being discussed has the potential to worsen, ruin or end a person’s life. But this is the absolute valid limit of the right to be heard. The right to be heard does not include the right to spout conspiracy theories or insane pseudoscience that might have the effect of getting someone killed. Nor does it include the right to be heard when making a poor challenge to well-established facts. An example of this is in Holocaust Denial. Holocaust Deniers will argue until they are blue in the face that they have a right to be heard. In the most literal sense of this, they are correct. But the right to be heard by the public is also synonymous with the right to make a fool of yourself in public. And what is more, they have a habit of confusing the right to be heard with the right to make others hear them. All rights, whether it be the right to be heard, the right to breed, or the right to due process, have to be reviewed when they come into conflict with other rights. And if the right of a Holocaust Denier to try to make himself heard comes into conflict with a Holocaust survivor’s right to not be reminded of the darkest days of their lives, nobody who is qualified to assess the conflict is going to shed any tears when the right of the Holocaust Denier to make an fool of themselves in public is infringed.
Obviously, with rights being a complicated and thorny issue, we need to have a process by which we review the conflicts between each others’ rights and how best to resolve them. And whilst some rights are considered sacrosanct, all rights have a certain level of priority attached to them. For instance, your right to reproduce freely is currently accepted as a given (it should not be), but if it comes into conflict even more with your potential child’s right to not die early from starvation or disease, a sensible government will repeal it.
The right of the autistic to appropriate, effective, and respectful care in cases where they need it is barely even being considered. So when Autism Speaks or other curebies go on about their right to be heard, the general response from most Powell types runs along the lines of “kindly shut the fukk up”.
In order to understand who is in the right here, you need to understand something about the priorities of peoples’ rights. In any situation where a person is in a state of difficulty integrating with the group they live amongst, a number of different peoples’ rights will end up in conflict. The people that form part of the group do have a right to refuse to let the person in. They also have a right to seek some assistance to understand this person if that is necessary in order to integrate this new person into the group. And if allowing the new person into the group turns out to be a mistake that threatens the harmony of the group, they have a right to remove that person from the group. On a similar token, the person trying to integrate themselves has a right to be treated in a respectful manner whilst trying to integrate, and the right to undertake whatever peaceful action is necessary to make themselves better understood by the rest of the group. With only a small number of exceptions that only occur in a small percentage of occasions, these rights tend to be pretty harmonious with one another and only need to be implicitly understood by the group as a whole.
But when the rights of one group or person are conflicting to any degree with those of another, that is where legal process has to come in and sort it out. A person being arrested on suspicion of criminal behaviour, for instance, has a right to be treated fairly, to keep their mouth shut, and to obtain advice on how best to handle the police’s questioning of them. The police, on the other hand, have the right to ask questions, to use certain tricks or techniques within certain bounds to coax information out of a suspect, or even to respond with deadly or disabling force if a suspect should happen to present a credible threat to their life or safety.
Most rights, in any situation where two groups that differ a great deal from one another, are conflicting. Even a parent’s rights are often in serious conflict with those of their children. A parent has a right to do whatever is necessary to promote a harmonious family unit, including to a degree the disciplining of their child. But a child has a great right to grow up in an environment that is free of emotional, physical, and especially sexual abuse. And when a parent begins to believe that physical or emotional abuse is somehow necessary to promote any such harmony, they have already effectively lost it. The more they go down that path, the longer it will take them to get it back. Go far enough down said path, and a parent’s chance of getting that family unit’s harmony back whilst the children are still legally children are gone for good. Even getting harmony back when the children are young adults or approaching middle age is a tough ask, as my mother is well aware.
I have taken a long way around, but it is in the interest of making sure that I am understood. In issues concerning an autistic individual’s integration with society, their life, or their health, the right of the autistic individual trumps all. If you are a parent and not autistic yourself, if you are married to an autistic adult, if you are a curebie, if your rights conflict with those of the autistic adult, your rights can basically fukk off and die unless the autistic individual is violating them in a way that would also be illegal in other circumstances. Please do not take this as a statement that an autistic adult has the right to murder, rape, steal, or assault. If you do, you are kind of missing the point here.
All too often, we hear curebies and other ignoramuses cry about their presumed rights and cry “is this not a democracy” or similar catchcries of the idiot. And the worst offenders in this regard are often doing or allowing others to do things to their autistic relative that are utterly unconscionable. A good example of this would be parents who defend the Judge Rotenberg Centre by crying that no other place will take their disabled and/or autistic child. The series Law & Order even had an episode where Sam Waterston‘s character prosecuted the management of a similar facility for their abuses of disabled adults. One upset parent dragged their grown disabled child in front of Waterston and cried things like “will you take him?” and such. Sorry lady, but that is utterly beside the point. Although Law & Order‘s writing has taken a turn for the far worse since that time, that episode serves as a good litmus test for those who do or do not really care about the welfare of their disabled or retarded relative. A good person in such circumstances will raise as much of a stink as they can that there are insufficient facilities to take care of their relative in a manner that does not involve torture or mistreatment. A bad person will act exactly in the manner displayed in that episode.
The Judge Rotenberg Centre, and anyone who allows it to exist, do not even benefit from a conflict of rights. Psychological abuse is a form of torture, and thus it is against the law in spite of how difficult it is to effectively prosecute. Physical abuse is described in the law using the word “assault”, and has been illegal to some degree or other since Homo Whatever was sufficiently advanced to live together in groups. Torture in general, irrespective of whether the goal is to alter the behaviour of the victim or just to get kicks, is so illegal that cooperative groups of nations will even condemn other nations in the public sphere over it. So to argue for the rights of the Judge Rotenberg Centre, its staff, or those who condone its existence… well, William Devane said it best during the midpoint of Hollow Man: “wrong doesn’t even begin to describe it!”.
What we need, but will have to fight tooth and nail for…
With laws such as the Combating Autism Act (America) and the Helping Children With Autism bill (Australia) having been made law, it is very clear that we need to have a new branch of the Health Department created in order for us to interface with. Trying to invite curebie organisations like Autism Speaks to the table to talk things out with us is a useless exercise because they have no interest in promoting our wellbeing. We are nothing but a meal ticket to them, and although they do a good job of hiding this from the suckers that donate to them, they are not even making a pretense of hiding it from us.
We need to tell it to the governments of our countries like it is. We do not consider ourselves included in what they govern. And with rising levels of child abuse creating more Powell types, let us just say that it is currently a matter of when, not if, the US government gets a video message from a Powell type professing that for every day they do not overturn such laws, he will kill at least one normie. And I will be one of the ones lending them support in any way I can. The governments of Australia, the United Kingdom, and America need to be made aware that they are poking this fire very hard.
They can prevent this by having a department of autistic adults who tell them, plainly and simply, what should be done “about” the autistic. And first on the agenda should be the stripping of academic qualifications from anyone who supports curebie theories. The science is entirely against them, yet they continue to spew it, and children are getting killed for it. Hence, a person calling themselves “doctor” who continues with this should at minimum be barred from calling themselves that, and being sent to prison is only a slight step up from that. A national register of individuals who have killed children or promoted information that has led to the deaths of children should be pushed for, too. But equally important is an ultimatum to Autism Speaks et al. Either come and sit down and talk with the people your current modus operandi is hurting no end, and put their requests into action, or lose your tax exemption and pay them compensation. Oh yes, and any celebrity that does anything on the behalf of people like Autism Speaks should be told to go and look for another career. This is the extent to which the rights of the autistic trumps the rights of curebies and their supporters. Because the entities that are supposed to protect the rights of all have ignored ours to this extent, we must demand that they strip our opponents of theirs. Otherwise, Human nature and general anger is going to do that by far more disruptive means. I already regard murdering a curebie as automatically self-defense, and given that I am a long way from the only Powell type, I have severe doubts that I am the only one.
Steve Kangas wrote that when there is a failure or collapse of democracy, it is usually because there is a lack of democracy. That is very much the case for autistic people of all stripes. We must inform the governments of our world that it needs to stop. Or do they want another unruly mob like the Black Panthers, one that they cannot even easily identify? Who knows, honestly?
If you have read this far, thank you. Feel free to add your thoughts in the matter.
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