Harry’s Freedom Foxhole - Why Is It Illegal to Have Your Ass Out?

Because I’m a nerd, I recently watched this TEDx video where philosopher Michael Huemer delivered a short, fairly basic lecture on why government policies are so irrational, using the War on Terror and protectionism as examples of things that are inefficient and stupid from an economist’s point of view, yet get advocated for by a bunch of people. The problem is, the people in charge are even more insane and stupid than Huemer describes. Protectionism and the War on Terror may be dumb ideas to economists who make decisions at the supermarket based on game theory, but at least you can see how ordinary people would support them. The really insane—like, foaming-at-the-mouth, lighting-things-on-fire, sticking-metal-probes-up-vaginas insane—laws are passed at usually local levels, proposed by senile cranks and supported by legislators who don’t read the bills they vote on. Bills like the one just passed by the Alabama house that would ban saggy pants in Montgomery County.

The genesis of the bill came when representative Alvin Holmes—to quote Dave Barry, I am not making this up—went to a Waffle House and saw a guy whose pants were sagging low enough to put his dirty underwear on display. Holmes was like, “This is nasty!” and decided to try to ban sagging pants. Never mind considerations of whether clothing is protected by the First Amendment (it’s a little unclear; most court decisions about the matter concern school uniforms), never mind the vaguely racist undertones of banning sagging pants, one guy’s breakfast got ruined so let’s enact some almost comically oppressive ordinances! Naturally, the bill passed the House 59-0.

Those august legislators aren’t the first to ban baggy pants. Selma’s City Council passed a similar law in 2010, and Florida State Senator Gary Siplin put on his Evil Principal in an 80s movie hat and got his own anti-baggy-pants law passed in 2011 that prohibited kids from showin’ they drawers at school. Flint, Michigan, was an early adopter of anti-underwear laws, passing a ban back in 2008, while Dublin, Georgia, put baggy pants in the same category as public urination in 2010. There have been rumors of other cities banning sagging pants, including Charleston, South Carolina and Atlanta.

There are a bunch of questions, obviously, about these laws. Like: Can you not wear swimsuits (which are basically just underwear) in public in Selma either? Can you not wear saggy pants to the beach either? How the hell do clothing bans not violate the First Amendment, or are these laws just on the books until someone puts them to the test in the courts? And most importantly, what the hell? Why are these politicians so concerned with the way teenagers dress? What the fuck do they think is going to happen if they succeed in getting kids to pull their pants up? “Oh, thank god there’s no more visible underwear in this town! We’re all employed, there’s no more gun violence, and all of our gay meth-addicted sons turned straight and went into rehab!”

I don’t like people who wear sweatpants in public. I think it makes them look like lazy fatasses. But I don’t want to make sweatpants illegal because, duh, I don’t think the things I hate should be illegal. That’s, like, the fundamental great thing about America, isn’t it—that we can live together and be peaceful while also respecting one another’s right to be different from one another? Right? Oh, my mistake: Actually, the point of America is to pass pointless laws—laws that aren’t just dumb from an egghead economist’s uber-rational point of view, but are the manifestations of stray thoughts that morbidly obese, disability-collecting seniors have while they wheel their Rascals down the gun aisle at Walmart. I’m all for injecting a little bit more technocracy into our government, a la Michael Huemer, but the first step is probably to make sure we don’t elect a bunch of cranky old idiots into office.

(I called Alvin Holmes to get a comment, because I figured I should talk to the guy before I called him an idiot, but he never called back. I did find this video of him talking about beer though.)

Previously - Animals Are Smarter Than PETA

@HCheadle