Gillespie & Welch in the LA Times: X-Men Movie Reminds Us We're All Mutants Now!

Reason's Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch in today's Los Angeles Times:

Though populated with superpowered "mutants" such as Magneto (who is able to control all sorts of metallic objects), Storm (capable of flight and creating crazy weather), Banshee (an Irish American tenor who can kill with his voice) and Raven (a blue-skinned shape-shifter), "X-Men" perfectly captures social reality and social aspirations in a post-gender, post-racial, post-mainstream, post-everything America. The multicolored, polyglot heroes and villains of the X-Men universe may be able to communicate by reading minds rather than using Skype, and they may be able to fly anywhere without booking tickets in advance, but make no mistake: That's us up there on the screen.

The X-Men have captured the public imagination in a world where we can tailor what we drink at the local coffee bar, personalize our online newsfeeds and are increasingly OK with people who look and sound and think different (to paraphrase Apple Inc.'s slogan of a few years back). That's because the X-Men incarnate what anthropologist and author Grant McCracken has called "plenitude," or the "quickening speciation of social types." No one is simply white or black, or even male or female, anymore; we revel in our ongoing mongrelization and hybridization….

It's not only easier now for all of us to let our freak flags fly, it's easier to find somebody who will help us design and produce them in the first place.

Read the whole thing.

Welch and Gillespie are the coauthors of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America, which will be published on June 28 by Public Affairs. This op-ed is drawn from material in the book. Go to Declaration2011.com for early reviews, book tour news, and to pre-order the book from your favorite online vendor. And watch this short trailer for the book now:

Reason's resident movie reviewer Kurt Loder gave X-Men: First Class a rave review. Read it here. And Peter Suderman analyzed superhero movies in an age of human enhancement here.

Comments

[rather]

If this is a review, you're not ruining this one

[rather]

I hear you are going to time travel and ruin The Crying Game next

[Sense]

Stop trying to make me.

[sloopyinca]

Man arrested for paying doctor bill in pennies.

Legal tender means legal tender, right?

[Amakudari]

Merchants may restrict the form of payment, though.

If he gets fined, however, I'm not sure whether that's true of the government agency issuing the fine.

[PS]

"Do you accept cash?"

Pennies, bitches!!!

[Actually]

He was cited for disorderly conduct, not for trying to pay in pennies.

"After asking if they accepted cash, West dumped 2,500 pennies onto the counter and demanded that they count it," Vernal Assistant Police Chief Keith Campbell said. "The pennies were strewn about the counter and the floor."
...
Officers eventually found West and cited him for disorderly conduct...

[sage]

What was that, his copay? Put those pennies in rolls, moron. Money is dirty and a doctor's office is supposed to be clean.

[Actually]

He watched one too many episodes of Seinfeld.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Yeah, you gotta either roll those pennies or put 'em in a CoinStar machine, dog.

[mad libertarian guy]

My wife, a teller at a bank, recently had to count out over $1000 in change so that a very POed man could pay his insurance premium.

[PapayaSF]

Banks don't have some sort of dump-and-sort equivalent to a CoinStar?

[mad libertarian guy]

So banks do, but many use an outside service to do it.

Because the rolls they had in the vault didn't come from the mint, but from a private service, they had to count t all by hand. Twice.

A happy woman she was not.

[zoltan]

Seriously even Best Buy has one of those (worked there once upon a time).

[GSL]

Some guy in San Diego did the same thing a couple months ago.

[sloopyinca]

Man arrested for paying doctor bill in pennies.

Legal tender means legal tender, right?

[l0b0t]

Ahh... good old DisCon, when the cops know you have done nothing wrong but want to arrest you anyway. You'll beat the rap but you won't beat the ride.

[Mensan]

The article doesn't say he was arrested, just cited. I suspect it wasn't so much the fact that he paid with pennies, as the fact that he was raising hell at the doctors office. He went there to fight over his bill, and then dumped a jar of pennies all over the counter and floor. He demanded that the employees count the pennies, and he refused to leave until they told him they had called the police. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for paying in pennies in protest, I've done it myself to pay a parking ticket, but this guy did it wrong.

Additionally, when preparing to pay my parking fine in pennies, I did some research to make sure they were required to accept it as legal tender. Turns out they weren't (although in my case they did accept them). I don't feel like looking up the citation, but I remember reading an annotation to the federal legal tender law that said that minor coins (i.e. pennies) are only legal tender for amounts 25? or less.

[Brian C]

minor coins (i.e. pennies) are only legal tender for amounts 25? or less.

That's not true anymore. That used to be the case but since The Coinage Act of 1965 all U.S. coins are legal tender.

This is seen in the very unequivocal 51 U.S.C. 5103:

United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.

[PS]

He did it twice?

[sloopyinca]

No. The second time it was allegedly a squirrel impersonating him.

The squirrel is still at large, btw.

[PS]

Speaking of squirrels, did you know Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie have a new book coming out?

[juris imprudent]

I think I heard something about that, but my brain stopped working after reading some of their LA Times piece.

[Troy]

Sloopy, you idiot. Not all legal tender is legal tender. You really need to learn the subtleties of "legal reasoning."

[Joshua Corning]

Well the medical treatment he received was obviously successful.

It would take a healthy man indeed to carry $2500 worth of pennies into an office.

[Brandybuck]

Pennies are not legal tender

[Brian C]

Yes they are:

31 U.S.C. 5103:

United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.

[obi juan]

Getting a little tired of the freaks flying their freak flag. In the past month or so I've seen a zombie march, a slut walk, and Lady Gaga be editor for a day at the free daily paper. A bit before all that were the stormtroopers marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade. Being a unique individual is kinda cool, but I get the feeling that a lot of these people are trying too hard.

[rather]

obi juan, your time has come. Run towards the fucking light

[l0b0t]

Shorter Obi Juan - Hell no, you can't have your Frisbee back; get off my lawn!

[obi juan]

Take for instance the guy who brings his kids into Boston on Memorial Day and runs into a Zombie March.
http://www.universalhub.com/20.....a-his-lawn

Is he really just being a crotchety old man, or is there something more there?

[l0b0t]

No, there is nothing more there; he really is just being a closed-minded asshole. Perhaps it's because I'm from New Orleans but getting upset about wacky parades seems like much ado about nothing.

[JoshInHB]

Zombie march in Boston.

Another teacher protest?

[Scruffy Nerf Herder]

Lighten up Francis

[Sense]

increasingly OK with people who look and sound and think different

Hahaha!

[Wiemar America]

increasingly OK with people who look and sound and think different

Of course we are!

[PapayaSF]

No, Americans are generally not OK with violent mobs, "different" or not. Should we be?

[PapayaSF]

I have a similar issue. When I read "we revel in our ongoing mongrelization and hybridization," it gives me pause. Are mongrels and hybrids always better? Are they all we want? (Yes, it's largely/ultimately up to the individual, but still.)

Hooray for liberty and all that, but headlong cheerleading for the dissolution of traditional social norms gives me pause. Maybe it's an innate conservatism, but might not Hayek agree? He was hardly a foe of liberty.

[MNG]

I like the X-men and want to see the film, but I hated how they dominated the Marvel Universe there for a while. There was a time when it seemed half of the titles were X-something and most of the heroes were mutants. It was incredibly tiresome.

I'm increasingly worried the GL film is going to really, really suck.

[Art-P.O.G.]

I share your concern.

[Pro Libertate]

What's funny is that, as a kid, Green Lantern was my favorite. I figured I had more chance of picking up a power ring than being from Krypton. Which is why I'm broadcasting into space a request for a power ring.

[zoltan]

GL looks terrible. Captain America looks promising.

[Au H20]

It probably will be, but I am still seeing it at midnight, opening night, just to do the oath with the whole theater.

[Sy]

I planned on boycotting the movie until I read Kurt Loder's piece on it. I decided to give it a shot. I just got finished watching it and must say it was well worth the eight bucks. Kurt was pretty spot on with his review.

[MJ]

"The X-Men have captured the public imagination in a world where we can tailor what we drink at the local coffee bar, personalize our online newsfeeds and are increasingly OK with people who look and sound and think different (to paraphrase Apple Inc.'s slogan of a few years back)."

The third X-men movie also showed mutant intolerance of people who did not want to be mutants. Storm's rant at Rogue for wanting to take the mutant cure despite that Storm's powers did not suck and Rogue's powers did and were making her miserable.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Storm's rant at Rogue for wanting to take the mutant cure despite that Storm's powers did not suck and Rogue's powers did and were making her miserable.

I get the feeling that if Singer had been directing that particular film, Rogue never would have had her powers taken away. The modern X-men movies (and more recently, the comics) have basically become "gay pride" vehicles where mutants are equated with gays--and humorously enough, the most destructive mutants are the ones who feel themselves the most superior. It would be very difficult for a queen like Singer, who's surrounded in his social circles by people telling him how wonderful he is, to understand that for some people who are gay, it doesn't always "get better".

[MNG]

Lots of people say the entire superhero genre is at the least 'gay friendly' in the sense that these people have double lives that they feel they must hide from others. With mutants it's more apt because they 'discover' their powers around puberty and such. But if you look at the old X-Men mags they were pretty early on heavy into the 'minority/prejudice' analogy.

[Otto]

If we're getting into the politics of comic books, I dislike the entire superhero genre - it reinforces the idea that someone with special powers can fix everything that's wrong with the world. They've become a proxy for politicians, except in reality, politicians never fix a fucking thing.

[MNG]

Lately they've played with this idea that the super-hero actually makes things worse in the long run, you might want to check some of those stories out.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Yup. And some can hide their powers, others can't. Clear metaphor for anything (the gay, race, religion, ethnicity, etc) that could make someone an outcast. Especially the gay.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Well, you'll notice that the villains never go away, despite the heroes' best efforts, Otto.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Which is basically why aspy nerds remain obsessed with the genre well into their supposed adulthood.

[Joshua Corning]

The modern X-men movies (and more recently, the comics) have basically become "gay pride"

Modern?

Anyway it was pretty obvious that as little as 15 years ago (back when i read comics) mutants were an allegory for racial minorities.

[Mensan]

The Gallup Poll began asking, for example, whether "gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal" in 1977. Just 43% then thought they should be permitted. Today, that figure stands at 58%.

Really? 42% of Americans today, think homosexual relationships should be illegal? Really? I wouldn't be surprised by that figure if the question was about gay marriage, but these assholes actually think homosexuality should be illegal?

[Actually]

Really? 42% of Americans today, think homosexual relationships should be illegal?

No. 58% of the tiny sampling group who responded to the polling language thought that homosexual relationships should be "permitted."

[MNG]

"No. 58% of the tiny sampling group who responded to the polling language thought that homosexual relationships should be "permitted.""

Inferential statistics, how does it work?

[-]

Ignorance and half-truths?

[l0b0t]

"Really? 42% of Americans today, think homosexual relationships should be illegal? Really?"

No, 420 of the 1000 people called by Gallup feel that way. Gallup then extrapolates that into 42% of our nation of 308 million.

[Tulpa]

So long as the 1000 people were randomly selected, that's perfectly valid (with a margin of error).

Did you ever wonder how GE is able to publish the "average life" of its light bulbs, without burning out every light bulb they produce to see what its life is? You guessed it: small random sample! Probably about the same ratio, too.

[Amakudari]

Right. An Gallup can estimate with a certain level of confidence what the error range for that is, and do follow-up polls. There's actually substantial volatility in their responses, which leads me to think the error bars should be pretty tall. But in general, everything is trending toward greater support for gay rights.

The most interesting part of that page, IMO:

Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian? (2011 May 5-8)

Less than 5% - 4%
5% to <10% - 9%
10% to <15% - 17%
15% to <20% - 9%
20% to 25% - 17%
More than 25% - 35%
No opinion - 8%
Mean - 24.6%

What?

[Art-P.O.G.]

Uh, good question...did 24.6% of people guess that the mean of what everyone else guessed was the percentage of gay people in the US?

[joshua corning]

Less than 5% - 4%

only 5% know the truth.

I blame Will and Grace....

That or the poll was conducted on only 13 to 18 year old boys and that group thinks everybody they don't like are "fags".

[joshua corning]

only 5% know the truth.

opps...

I mean only 4% know the truth.

That chart is fundamentally hard to read.

[rather]

WTF does I blame Will and Grace.. mean?

[joshua corning]

Homosexuals are over saturated in popular media.

Not that there is anything wrong with that....only it exaggerates the perception of how many gay people are in the population.

[PapayaSF]

Same with blacks. I remember one that showed those surveyed thought they were about 1/3 of the population of the country.

[FAIL]

[Devil's Advocate]

If TV is any indication, about 90% of police chiefs and judges are black.

[asdf]

Rofl oh wow, people are so stupid it's fantastic.

[rather]

This is only my observation but no way that is accurate. I'd say less than ten percent give a shit what gay people do. Marriage, I'd say is 70+% and climbing who think that their marriages are MYOB

[Tulpa]

And Pastor Fred at Bob Jones University thinks the poll is crap too, because everyone he knows thinks homosexuality should be illegal.

[sage]

HOMOSEXUALS ARE GAY!

[Franklin Harris]

That first graph is confusing. You refer to everyone by his or her codename (Magneto, Storm, Banshee) except Mystique, whom you call by her real name, Raven, which is a name usually associated, in comics anyway, with a DC Comics heroine, Raven of The New Teen Titans. Try not to let this happen again. Geek harder.

[Troy]

Have you ever looked at Nick's brow? He is one genetic tweak from Sasquatch.

[Actually]

And that "leather" jacket? That's his real skin!

[kennewick man]

The 4 inch spear in my hip wonders how you can mention Nick's Sasquatch brow without talking about Matt's Neanderthalian unibrow?

[COE]

Fucking Racist. We rip-rap you.

[sloopyinca]

Is it more appropriate to laugh or cry?

[Art-P.O.G.]

Cry, I guess. But still, their deaths were weirdly appropriate.

[sloopyinca]

Bill Maher makes the smartest comment of his life.

No, seriously.

[joshua corning]

I Think Anybody Could Be President In This Dumb F**king Country'

As libertarians should we not be forgiving to the results of communitarian activities such as democratic elections?

We do not blink when the "community" creates the the Tennessee power authority...nor do we blink when the free market pulls 500 million people out of bone crushing poverty...why should we blink when elections produce Obama or Bush?

Also i think people often put way to much faith in elections to solve all ills. The purpose of them is not to put the right guy in power so he can tell us all what to do and to create a perfect government. The purpose of elections is for peaceful transfer of power so as we do not have perpetual civil war.

If one uses the true purpose of what elections are meant to achieve then one can hardly call the voters dumb.

[Paul4Prez]

Ron Paul money bomb today -- help him hit a million. Ron Paul 2012 dot com

[PapayaSF]

Libertarian spam is still spam.

[Ornithorhynchus]

Banshee is Irish-American now? In the comic books he was Irish-Irish.
They made many of the foreigners American in the previous movies, too (Colossus, Pyro, Mystique). I wonder when Hollywood is ever going to confront their prejudices.

[$]

It's all about us. Never forget it.

[rather]

nothing says xenophobia like a comic book action movie 😉

[joshua corning]

Americans only like American ethnic minorities.

Also Irish-Irish are the majority in Ireland....and are therefor assholes.

[Youthful Ward Dick Grayson]

Lots of people say the entire superhero genre is at the least 'gay friendly' in the sense that these people have double lives that they feel they must hide from others.

I'll say, and boy do the nipples on this rubber suit chafe.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

Hey, Nick, how do you feel about these bits of hilarity?

http://blog.vdare.com/archives.....gillespie/

Instead of encouraging your readers to write to Gillespie and ask him, which will not be satisfactory, why not try to answer the question yourself? Here's my answer. The reason the libertarian Gillespie would welcome a far-left, Mexico-oriented president of the United States is that what really motivates Gillespie is not the belief in freedom, but the desire to undo America. In this, he is just like the feminists, who never have a critical word about the Muslim treatment of women, but side with Muslim immigration and Muslim empowerment, which will assure the spread of Muslim-type suppression of women in the West. I began pointing out nine years ago, and many other conservatives, including mainstream conservatives, have now also been saying it, that this proves that the feminists' real motive is not the advance of women, but the destruction of America. The same is true of Gillespie. His true aim, as shown by his support for a left-wing, Mexico-style president of the U.S., is not liberty, but the destruction of America.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

I think I'll state for the record that my family came to this country with the express purpose of violently ending the American Revolution and my best friends are immigrants from Eastern Europe who fled communism.

So I find the conservative-libertarian immigration brouhaha rather amusing.

[Tncm]

One of the reasons for the draconian immigration restrictions in the 30's and 40's was to prevent Eastern Europeans from coming to America and bolstering the ranks of communist organizations. But if they were so into communism why would they want to leave Soviet satellite states in the first place?

You see the same line of logic today, where the evil Mexicans will supposedly vote overwhelmingly in favor of the same socialist policies that wrecked their own country and prompted them to uproot their families and look for a better future elsewhere.

[PapayaSF]

And yet Mexicans do. People fleeing communism usually know what went wrong, but people fleeing socialism often don't understand what they are fleeing. Hence all the refugees from high-tax states who move to low-tax states, and then vote for politicians who raise taxes.

[Ornithorhynchus]

Feminists never criticise Muslims?

He said that with a straight face?

[PapayaSF]

Never? No. But they seemed a lot more vocal pre-9/11.