Return
of Son of
“Not
a Free-Speech Issue”
One
More Time
Again
10/25/07
If you
have been paying
extremely close attention to
every
single thing I’ve said over the last several months, then by
now it may have
become possible for you to deduce that I don’t
think religious
stuff is true.* So,
if any of you ran
across the recent news item about an Iowa Community-College Instructor
being
fired for contradicting the Bible, you may have expected an essay from
1585 about
it.
*(Actually, I scream at the
top of my lungs constantly and
in no uncertain terms that religious stuff is not true.
Hence,
phrasing the opening line this way is
unexpected. The
result? Comedy!)
Well,
you were right, and here
it is.
What you may not
have expected, however, is
that my response would consist
primarily of ripping on the people who are defending
the instructor in question. I don’t think they’re wrong to
defend
him — I
just think they’re doing a shitty
job.
In order to
understand why, you’ll need to read the initial article first, so here
it is (cut-and-pasted,
instead of as a link, because whenever I post a link to a news item it
goes
dead in like two days):
*
*
*
*
Teacher:
I was fired, said
Bible isn't literal
The
community college
instructor says the school sided with
students
offended by his explanation of Adam and Eve.
By
MEGAN HAWKINS
REGISTER
STAFF
WRITER
A
community college
instructor
in Red Oak claims he was
fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and
Eve should
not be literally interpreted.
Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern
Community
College
sided with a
handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a
western
civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.
"I'm just a little bit shocked myself
that a college in good standing
would back up students who insist that people who have been through
college and
have a master's degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there
were such
things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.
Sarah Smith, director of the school's
Red Oak campus, declined to
comment
Friday on Bitterman's employment status. The school's president,
Barbara
Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would
not
comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible
reference,
saying it was a personnel issue.
"I can assure you that the college
understands our employees'
free-speech
rights," she said. "There was no action taken that violated the First
Amendment."
Bitterman, who taught part time at
Southwestern and Omaha's
Metropolitan
Community
College,
said he uses the Old Testament in his
western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic
standpoint.
Bitterman's Tuesday course was telecast
to students in Osceola over the
Iowa
Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he
said,
thought the lesson was "denigrating their religion."
"I put the Hebrew religion on the same
plane as any other religion.
Their
god wasn't given any more credibility than any other god," Bitterman
said.
"I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see
it
in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it
literally, that
you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there."
Bitterman said he called the story of
Adam and Eve a "fairy tale" in
a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students
had
threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the
students in
the class.
"I just thought there was such a thing
as academic freedom here," he
said. "From my point of view, what they're doing is essentially
teaching
their students very well to function in the eighth century."
Hector Avalos, an atheist religion
professor at Iowa
State University,
said Bitterman's free-speech rights were violated if he was fired
simply
because he took an academic approach to a Bible story.
"I don't know the circumstances, but if
he's teaching something about
the
Bible and says it is a myth, he shouldn't be fired for that because
most
academic scholars do believe this is a myth, the story of Adam and
Eve,"
Avalos said. "So
it'd be no
different than saying the world was not created in six days in science
class.
You don't fire professors for giving you a scientific answer."
Bitterman said Linda Wild, vice
president of academic affairs at
Southwest,
fired him over the telephone.
Wild did not return telephone or e-mail
messages Friday. Bitterman said
that he
can think of no other reason college officials would fire him and that
Smith,
the director of the campus, has previously sat in on his classes and
complimented his work.
"As a taxpayer, I'd like to know if a
tax-supported public institution
of
higher learning has given veto power over what can and cannot be said
in its
classrooms to a fundamentalist religious group," he said. "If it has
... then the taxpaying public of Iowa
has a right to know. What's next? Whales talk French at the bottom of
the
sea?"
*
* *
*
Okay.
Now,
granted,
the primary problem here is with the fact that a teacher was fired for
saying
the Bible isn’t literally true.
This is
a problem because the Bible is,
in
fact, not
literally true,
which
means
that the teacher who said so was, you know, right.
So,
just so I
don’t get ahead of myself
here, I'll begin with a response to the people who fired, or
supported the
decision to fire, him. Here
is that
response, in its entirety: “Of
course the Bible
isn’t literally true — what are you,
retarded or something?”*
*(For a
more detailed version
of this response, the reader
is directed to every single other thing we have ever written, or, for
that
matter, anything that has ever been written by a smart person, anywhere
on the
planet, throughout the entire history of time.**)
**(NOTE: Until
fairly
recently, some smart people had to lie, in order to avoid being burned
at the
stake by stupid people.) That
being out of the way, I can turn to my principal
agenda: delineating the ways in which, as usual, even though the
initial
conservative attack was wrong,
the
liberal response was the most inefficient, counterproductive,
ass-backwards
response possible, and has made the situation a thousand times worse. Why is
this? Because,
as far as I can tell, the liberal response was to run around yelling
“Free
Speech!”, even though the issue has absolutely nothing to do
with Free
Speech. In days
past, I've touched
once or twice on the fact that no-one seems to have any idea what Free Speech
does or doesn’t
mean, but
since apparently no-one was listening, I’ll have to do so
again. So: what Free
Speech
means is that the government can’t arrest you and put you in
jail for what you
say… AND
THAT’S IT. The
First Amendment doesn’t
guarantee you a national forum in which to say it (so the
Don Imus thing was not a Free-Speech issue), and it doesn’t
mean that people can’t be mad at you about it (so the
Michael Richards thing was not a Free-Speech issue).
And
Free Speech certainly doesn’t mean
that a
school can’t fire a teacher over what he or she
says — i.e., as a general
principle it doesn’t
mean
that this
is never
okay. Yes, the
First
Amendment means that it is
perfectly legal
to jump up-and-down
screaming “cunt, nigger,
assrape”
for an
hour, but it doesn't mean you're not an asshole if you do so, or that other people aren't allowed to be pissed at you, and it certainly doesn’t mean that a school couldn’t fire a teacher
who did so in class (only that he doesn’t also
go to jail). In
terms of
constitutional law, the Bitterman firing was no more a Free-Speech
issue than that time
your
Mom slapped you for saying “boner” during
Thanksgiving dinner. If they
have any kind of
Civics, Law, or Poli-Sci professor
at this school, then they should have known this (ideally, any given American citizen
would know
this, because it concerns what the First Amendment does or
doesn’t mean, which
is kind of important). So
why is the
default liberal response to this incident all about Free Speech? Because
most Liberals
don’t have the balls to
stand by the proper defense of “He
was right, you idiots.”*
*(They
could also go with
“In order to be an accredited
college, you can’t
teach
that
religion is true, and those weird religious colleges that do so
are not legally colleges, and their degrees are no different
from if some
guy just
started teaching classes in his basement and handed people pieces of
paper that
said Degree
from the University of Some
Guy, and by the way we
are a
public college supported with taxpayer money which makes the whole
thing a
million times worse.” That
would be good
too.) After
all, how can they? The
Academic Left has spent the last two decades
having people fired for
saying all kinds of equally
true
things (usually about gender issues) on the grounds that the statements
were offensive — and
not
that they were false,
because
remember they have also
been saying that there’s
no such
thing as
the truth — so now that
it’s finally
dawning on the Conservatives to turn
around and say “That professor’s statements offended
me — stick a fork in him, he’s done,” what
is the Left left with? The
Bible isn’t
literally true, but it sure is filled with
great metaphors: “reap the whirlwind,”
for
example. In fact, many
ancient texts are filled with great metaphors.
Here’s
another: “Hi, my name is
the Academic Left! Oh,
look! A giant
fucking wooden horse that says All
Truth is
Relative on the side! I
think I will fucking drag it inside the walls of
the fucking college!” Once
you’ve cemented
yourself to the warrant that no
opinions are superior to any other opinions — and indeed, in
some cases, that empirically
provable things
are not even
superior to empirically
disprovable
things — then you are
obliged to treat every
situation like this as though it
were no different from a high-school teacher accidentally saying
“fuck”
after
dropping his notes. The
exclamation “fuck”
is neither true
nor false,
but simply objectionable
to many
people — and once
you’ve chucked true and false, objectionable
is the only criterion left. The professor
who got
fired himself even pusses out
and defends his remarks with an
appeal to “academic
freedom.” But
what’s the
implication there? What
is “academic freedom” supposed to mean,
as a general principle? That
professors
should be able to teach whatever
they
want? Of
course not. No
teacher would actually
believe
this, because this would mean that it would be not
only acceptable
but equally
good if, for example, a Math
teacher taught that the multiplication tables were invented by koalas,
an Art professor
taught that Michaelangelo’s David
is
made entirely out of cotton candy, or a History professor taught that
Abraham
Lincoln was assassinated by the Joker. So, why
would it
not be acceptable for professors to teach these things?
Is
it because they’re objectionable? No.
If
someone told you that the David
was made of cotton candy, you
wouldn’t be offended — you
might think
it was weird,
but it
wouldn’t fuck up
your self-esteem,
because it
doesn’t
have anything personal to do with you.
The
reason that these things are, you know, bad
things to teach as opposed to good
things to teach is not
because they would offend
anyone,
but because they are not
true. Conclusion? Whether
what a teacher says is true
is
important, and whether it pisses people off is not — or,
at least, is less — important. What
Mr. Bitterman said
about the Bible not
being literal is true,
and
therefore
it was okay. Period. If
you don’t
like it, then don’t go to
college. The most
frustrating part of
all this is the
fact that, deep down, most smart people in the country know
this already, but are afraid
to point out the fact that this is all the entire situation really
amounts
to. Many
intellectuals — especially
in
academia — are afraid of the example that would be set if they
were to come right
out and say “Look, tough shit, but we’re smart and
you’re not, and I’m sorry
but this Bible stuff is a steaming load, and I know you
don’t think so, but remember three seconds ago when I said
you
weren’t smart? There you go.” We
don’t want them
to act
like that, so we
don’t act like that, even though we should
be acting like that because we’re the ones who believe
the stuff that is actually true.
It’s
like in high school, when you get in
fight that’s a push-fight at first, but then the other guy
starts punching,
only you don’t want to start punching too because you think
this will just
make it worse, so you just keep pushing even though you’re
getting
punched. But you
know what? He’s
already punching you! You
can’t “make it
worse” because he’s already
punching you! Punch
him back! Punch him
back, you pussy! He’s
not going to revert
to pushing if
you refrain
from punching, because THIS IS NO LONGER A PUSH-FIGHT! How many
times am I going to
need to say this? Anyway,
so we do the
real-issue-avoiding “Free Speech”
thing because we think that it will make them hate and fuck with us
less. But it
actually makes them hate and fuck with
us more,
because if all
we say by way of defending our
assertions is “Free Speech,” it implies that we are
effectively admitting
that what we
believe is no
better than what they
believe (when
we really know it is
better, but
are
just shy). “Free
Speech” is the
bare-minimum,
lowest-common-denominator possible defense for the voicing of a
particular
opinion. All
you are saying is that it is not
against the law to say that
thing,
which is not very
persuasive. Ideally,
you should have an
argument for why
the thing is true
or
should be believed, in addition
to
the fact that is it not against the law — unless you accept the
warrant that “all
things that are
not
against the law are good ideas,”
which you really
shouldn’t. Rubbing poop on your face isn’t
against the law either, but that
doesn’t mean it’s just as good an idea as not
rubbing poop on your face. You want
to do something to
help out with all this? Here
is what you can do to help: Stop
saying
“That’s just your opinion” about things
that are facts.*
*(Yes,
this also
applies to situations where the fact
would make someone feel bad.**)
**(In
cases where you are
unsure, ask a smart person,
or look up the answer in something written by a smart person. For
example, if we
weren’t sure about
something to do with physics, we would read a book by Stephen Hawking,
because
that’s what you’re supposed to do when you
don’t understand something — not
just decide that there’s “no such thing”
as the thing you don’t understand.***)
***(No,
this does not
make you a Conservative. It
makes you a Liberal who is not nuts.)
The
issue of whether someone is
“insistent/mean” or
“humble/nice” about their beliefs cannot
be separated from and prioritized over the question of whether they have good reasons
for believing
them. And as it
happens (you would think
this would be an advantage), we
have
good reasons and they don’t. Just
because people who
write pop songs like
to rhyme “teachers” with
“preachers” a lot, that doesn’t
mean that we are actually doing the same thing.
Their
shit is made-up, and our shit is not.
Yes,
it may seem
like the same thing to a kid who doesn’t particularly like
being made to sit still for a long time while an authority figure tells
him
what to believe, but you know what?
He’s
a damn kid,
and he’s wrong,
and it is our responsibility
to explain why, just like
it is a doctor’s responsibility to operate on people when
people require
operations, even
though having an
operation is not fun. Yes,
people have the right to
refuse the operation and die
instead. People also
have the right to drop out of
college and remain stupid
instead. But if
they choose to remain
in college,
then smart people
have to do
their fucking jobs. You
are not
“unfairly” forcing your
“opinions” onto people any more than a surgeon is
“unfairly” cutting someone up
with a knife, so get over yourselves.
It
is necessary, no-one else can do it, and you have a responsibility. This
Bitterman guy sounds
like he was one of
the good ones, but we guess he works at a gas station now, so oh well. That’s
show
busin— uh, I mean, school. If you
think my rhetoric is
too harsh here, just ask
yourself what you think the point of school
is. Your options
are as follows: Either
we make kids go there for six hours a
day for 17 years (counting college, since college is just High School
Part II
now) so they can… a) hear
things that are true
from smart people,
because it is good to know true things.
or, b) hear
random opinions from
random people for
no reason. Here’s
a hint: If you
see this as a “Free Speech” issue rather than a
“He’s right, you idiots” issue,
then that means your answer is “b,” in which case
we should just give up and
not have such a thing as school. If
you
think we should
have such a thing
as
school, then this position obliges
you to admit that certain
things are
true while other things are false — and
not to
this person or for
that person, but true or false period. If
you think that the
point of school is just
to tell people “nothing is true, so believe whatever you
want,” then why should
that take 17 years? It’s
one fucking sentence — we
could just put
up a sign someplace. Okay, I’ve sounded
“mean” for a couple of paragraphs, so
now I’ll switch things up and demonstrate how magnanimous I’m capable of
being. I’ve
never explicitly said so
before, but I actually don’t
think
that schools should teach, as an official part of the curriculum, that
God does
not exist. Surprised? You
shouldn’t be. This
is simply a
logically
obligated application
of my general position that only
facts (since we are speaking informally here, the word facts
includes theories
that
have been tested in every way possible and are thus obviously fucking
true,
so no messing around with the word theory,
wiseguy) should be officially mandated
curriculum, and that no
facts
should
be excluded
from the curriculum. Since
“God
does
not exist” is not a
verifiable fact, it should not be mandated. …Here,
however,
are some other
things, which are
verifiable facts, and so can
and should
be included: 1. There
is absolutely no
evidence that God
exists (different claim from “God does not exist”). 2. The
belief that God does
not exist is
infinitely more rationally justifiable than the belief that God exists
(different claim from “God does not exist”). 3. All
claims that have ever
been made by all
religions to the effect that their religions are true, in whole or in
part, are
either impossible to check up on or have been objectively disproven
(different
claim from “God does not exist”). 4. All
historical or
scientific claims supported
by religion that contradict secular history or secular science can
accurately
be said to be false to the same extent that the statement
“giraffes can fly”
can be said to be false (different claim from “God does not
exist”). See? None of those
claims is the same thing as “God does not exist,”
so I stand by my
magnanimous proposal that there is no need for schools to teach that
God does
not exist. But
since what the instructor
in Iowa
said is covered by fact
#4, there’s no reason for religious people to be mad.
And
to think people say I’m mean. In
fact, many people—
Hypothetical
Religious Interlocutor:
Aha! I
have
you now! Me:
Ah, shitballs. What
is it this time?
HRI:
You
admitted that
the existence of God cannot be disproven! Me:
Well,
yes, I did. But so
what? Neither
can the
existence of vampires.
HRI:
AAAHHHHHH!! VAMPIRES
ARE REAL!! RUN!! RUN FOR YOUR— Me:
No,
no, I mean… Listen,
just calm down, Hypothetical Idiot.
Forget
about the vampires. What
was it you were
going
to say?
HRI:
Well,
if you can’t
prove that God doesn’t exist, then that means it’s
possible that God exists,
which means it’s possible that God is omnipotent, which means
it’s possible
that all the stuff in the Bible really happened, since with God all
things are
possible! Me:
Really? All
the stuff in
the Bible?
HRI:
Yup. Boy,
I’ve really got you this time. Me:
Even
the really impossible
stuff, like the Tower
of Babel?
HRI:
Yes,
because with
God all things are possible. Me:
Okay,
but in the case of the Tower
of Babel,
God didn’t
want the
people to build it, so why would he have helped
them?
HRI:
Um… You’re
gay! Me:
Yes,
of course I am. See
you next time. Anyway,
as I was about to
say, a big part of the problem
now is that many people who don’t actually agree
with the Conservatives about Religious Thing X or Religious Thing Y
being true still
sign off on the
idea that those
things should not be contradicted by teachers.
The
method by which they arrive at this position, as
far as I have been
able to discern, is to look at the fact that the controversy seems new — i.e.,
there wasn’t
a ton of stuff on the news about conservative kids being
insulted by college 20 years ago, but there is
a lot of stuff on the news about it now — and conclude that the
professors must
be getting meaner, and saying a bunch of stuff they didn’t
used to say, and
that they should just go back to saying whatever it was they used to
say before
this was a problem. But
actually, smart people are
saying the same shit we have
always said (i.e., true
shit). There were
plenty of
professors saying that
Adam and Eve didn’t literally exist 20 years ago, or 30 or 40
years ago. The
actual reason that this wasn’t as big a
problem in the past is that until
very
recently, people who believed that the Bible was literally true
didn’t go to
fucking college, not counting
trade or vocational schools,
and in the cases
where someone who did
believe that
all the shit in the Bible is true somehow
wound up in a real school, they at least knew better than to openly
have a shit
fit if the teacher said that the Earth goes around the Sun, because once upon a time it was acknowledged by the
culture at large that there is such a thing as being smart, and that
smart
people are smart. Eventually, though, even
real schools realized that they
could make money
off of these
people,
since they’re all dumb and white and hence get no financial
aid, and started
admitting them in droves, and the pantheon of fake majors came into being. (Are advertising
and marketing
really two different majors? And what the fuck is communications?) Of
course, this necessitated that colleges
turn into high schools.
Lubchenko
learn
nothing.
I
realize that not
everybody wants to become a
philosopher, and that’s fine. If
there
are people who want nothing more out of college than Grammar Boot Camp
for
Future Office Grunts and a piece of paper at the end, whatever,
it’s their
life. But
over the course of their four-year grammar-boot-camp
experience, these people are occasionally going to end up in the same
classes
as people who are actually in school to learn smart
shit for the sake of smart shit — and
all we ask is
that they refrain
from fucking this up for
everyone
else.
What
the people who take the side
of the offended religious students in situations like this fail to consider is
that it was not one-on-one tutoring: there are dozens of other, non-stupid
kids in
the same class, and they
have a
right
to hear the smart
version, because
that’s what they
came for.
In the case of the
Bitterman firing, the
objecting students were watching the class on a video
feed in East
Bumfuck — so, we as smart people go out
of our way
to set up all this inconvenient shit just so you can get an education
too, and then
you get us fired
because you’d rather stay
stupid, fucking up our lives and
the educations of the other students
in the process?
Yeah, we’re
really
oppressing the shit out of you,
you
ungrateful redneck ’tard. The
next time a professor says some shit
that’s too complicated for you, how about you just space out
and doodle a
picture of Calvin pissing on whatever type of truck you don't like, instead of calling a
lawyer? And
hey, aren’t you
always saying we’re
the
ones who are “too litigious?” But the
opening of the doors to
the spoilers wasn’t the final
nail in the coffin of truth. This
was driven in courtesy of what the Academic Left decided to start doing
in the
late ’80s: subjugating education to
self-esteem — i.e., not only allowing,
but encouraging
students (as well
as the professors themselves) to make
up whatever crazy shit they wanted as long as it made them feel better. You
want to believe that
personality
differences between men and women have no genetic basis? Sure
sounds to me like it
would make people
feel better. You
want to believe that
the ancient Egyptians were “Black people” in the
modern sense, even though we
have a ton of evidence to the contrary and
it contradicts your other
belief
that
race is a social construction? Well,
there are certainly people who would like to believe this, so yeah,
whatever,
go nuts. You want
to believe that the
concepts of attractiveness and unattractiveness were invented in 1953
by an
evil corporation located on a secret skull-shaped island? Well,
that one would be
difficult to — oh, I’m
sorry, I didn’t realize you were fat; in that case, go right
ahead. You want to
believe that AIDS was invented by
the CIA? Well, it is a
good idea to distrust the
government, but learning the real
reasons why requires research, whereas making up stupid shit is easy, so best of luck to you with that. You
don’t even
know what the fuck your paper
is about, because it makes no sense?
Just
keep screaming that making sense was invented
by men,
and you’ll be
fine. I could go on for
quite a while with the funny
examples of this, but the point has been made.
Unfortunately,
however, it took quite a while for
the point to be made
to academia itself. To
be precise, this
didn’t happen until the following conversation took place, in
an unnamed
professor’s office, at an unnamed school, sometime in the
late '90s…
Religious
Kid Who Got
into College Somehow: Good
afternoon, Professor.
Professor: Hey,
what’s up? Have you
thought of a
topic yet?
Religious
Kid: Yes,
actually. I’d
like to write about how the Earth is only
6,000 years old.
Professor: Well,
I’m afraid
you can’t, because it’s
not. It’s
a shitload older than that, and
there are a million different ways to
prove this.
Religious
Kid: Well,
maybe you could have convinced me of
this once, but the thing is, I was listening when you were speaking
with that
last student, who said she wanted to write her paper about how men are
only
attracted to hot women because hot women are on TV, which you can also
disprove
a million different ways, only you
told her it was fine because science
only
serves to reinforce arbitrary social conventions.
Professor: Okay,
yes, that is
what I told her,
but…
Religious
Kid: So
which is it? Is
science true or not?
Professor: Okay,
it’s like
this: science is true, but
when ugly girls believe science isn’t true it’s a
good thing, and when
religious freaks believe science isn’t true it’s a
bad thing, so I’m going to
tell her one thing about science but
tell you a completely different
thing.
Religious
Kid: Do
you really expect me to just shut up and
not make a big deal out of this?
Professor: Would
you? Because
that’d be great.
Religious
Kid: Let
me think… um, no. (slams
door)
Professor: Oh,
well. At least
there’s only one person like that
in the whole country. What’s
the worst that could happen? By now, of
course, we know
what the worst that could happen was: all the shit that actually
has been happening in this
country for the past
six-and-a-half years, and a Left that was either powerless to stop it
or too
scared (and in case you were about to say that a lot of the
worst-that-could-happen had nothing to do with stupid religious shit,
we’ll
remind you that stupid religious shit was the only
reason Bush even got elected or re-elected, and so it indirectly
caused everything else). I’ve
already been
over a lot of the things you
could be doing to help, but in case any of you happen to have a time
machine,
there’s one more: you can go back to the late ’80s
and warn the Academic Left
about the consequences of all the stuff they’re about to
spend the next 20
years saying. They
may have trouble
understanding you, so you’ll probably want to explain it to
them in terms that
they will find familiar and comforting.
So,
here is a succinct illustration of the problem, modeled on a prominent
public-service announcement from their day.
Academic
Liberal:
Are
these your “to”s and “for”s?
Bill
O’Reilly: Wha…? No…
Academic
Liberal: My
students said they heard them on your
show.
Bill
O’Reilly: One
of the guests must have—
Academic
Liberal: Must
have what?
Bill
O’Reilly: Look,
professor, they’re not mi—
Academic
Liberal: Answer
me! How long have
you been arguing that one thing can be
true “for” one person
and another thing true “for” someone else?
That
all knowledge is
simply
“opinion” and that anyone who says
otherwise is an “elitist” who is
“biased” and “oppressing” you? Who
taught you how to do
this stuff?
Bill
O’Reilly: YOU,
ALRIGHT? I LEARNED
IT BY WATCHING YOU!
Narrator: Liberals
who shit on the
truth enable
Conservatives who shit on the truth. (fade
to black) This message was brought
to you by The 1585
and the
Partnership for a
Shitting-on-the-Truth-Free America.
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