The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Conrad Black’s FDR Idolatry

Posted on | August 19, 2013 | 58 Comments

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins

My parents were New Deal Democrats, but I grew up at a time and in a place when Republicans were extraordinarily rare. I’ve often said I never actually met a Republican until I went to college and, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until my junior year. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s that I became an ex-Democrat, and so I completely understand the quasi-religious reverence that Democrats have for FDR, Harry Truman and JFK. What puzzles me nowadays is that some conservatives seem to share that attitude.

National Review has published a column by Conrad Black which calls Diana West’s new book American Betrayal a “farrago of lies,” and I just don’t know what to say, except that (a) Black doesn’t seem to have read West’s book, and (b) is therefore attacking the straw man version of West’s argument, as presented by Ron Radosh.

As I said last week, the attacks by Radosh and David Horowitz have made it impossible “to view [American Betrayal] in an unprejudiced light,” and I fear that the resulting controversy will turn into one of those festering wounds akin to the attacks on Mel Bradford that prevented Bradford, a brilliant scholar, from becoming head of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Reagan. The whole neocon/paleocon feud can be traced to that episode and, however real the substance of the ideological dispute, it’s the vicious tactics I lament.

What you find, if you examine the history of that quarrel, is that the neocons (and by this term, I especially mean those associated with the Claremont Institute) seem to crave the authority of Platonic archons, to promulgate and defend “noble lies” about American history, to decide who are the heroes and who are the villains, so that in the place of actual history, we have instead a political myth.

Feuds over 19th-century history that attached the stigma of “controversial” to Bradford’s name are, it seems, now being replicated in regard to 20th-century history, with Roosevelt replacing Lincoln as the sanctified figure who cannot be examined critically. And just as criticizing Lincoln resulted in Bradford being stigmatized as “pro-slavery” (a ridiculous accusation to make in 1981), so now FDR’s critics are faced with the not-too-subtle insinuation that they are pro-Nazi.

Are the choices really so stark? Must we only praise FDR, or else be suspected of being Hitler sympathizers? Or was Lincoln’s statesmanship so unquestionably wise that no one may criticize “Honest Abe” without being accused of “white supremacy”?

Is it any accident, really, that both of these myths involve wartime leaders whose influence tended toward the centralization of power in Washington and development of the “Imperial Presidency”?

Yet both FDR and Lincoln were, in their own time, extraordinarily controversial figures. Once you clear away the gauzy myths that hagiographers have erected around them and examine the contemporary record — especially including the criticisms made by their political opponents — the men are perhaps not really less admirable, but their actions are seen as choices subject to second-guessing, and their philosophies of government lose much of their glow.

A preference for beautiful myth over ugly fact is a dangerous thing, and I wish people would stop to think that someday in the future, these mythmakers will be worshiping at the altar of Obama.

The controversies of our own era will eventually be reduced to a couple of pages in the high-school history textbook and, having lived through a half-century of history myself, I shudder at the thought. Already, one sees liberals trying to portray the shift of the Democrat “Solid South” toward the GOP as motivated entirely by racism when, in fact, it was controversies over Cold War foreign policy that did the most to undermine Democratic hegemony in the South, which has always been the most warlike region of America (and which was always the most fiercely anti-Communist).

The Radosh/Horowitz assault on Diana West’s American Betrayal took me by surprise because I’ve known Diana West for many years, and know she is no Buchananite paleoconservative. She is a regular Reaganite Republican, and certainly cannot be tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism that has been applied to Pat Buchanan.

It strikes me, however, that West’s critique of FDR’s foreign policy as too pro-Soviet, which would require conservatives to re-examine the standard history of World War II, might be viewed as “lending aid and comfort” to the paleoconservative enemy. That is to say, while West herself is a mainstream “movement conservative,” her undermining of the Rooseveltian mythos may pose the threat of redeeming the Robert Taft-style Old Right isolationism. So if you question FDR’s fundamental righteousness, you are a conspiracy theorist, and quite possibly (by implication) pro-Nazi.

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna offered a lengthy examination of the controversy Sunday, linking Dr. Andrew Bostom’s rebuttal to Conrad Black’s National Review article. I remain Diana West’s ally in this fight because whatever errors she may have made, from the standpoint of professional historians, she is asking important questions and calling attention to facts that have been too long ignored by those who prefer convenient myth to historical truth.

 

 

PREVIOUSLY:

 


Category: Books, History

Dog and Man at Yale: Hugo Schwyzer Is Merely a Symptom, Not the Disease

Posted on | August 19, 2013 | 33 Comments

Did you know some Yale University students have had sex with animals? Three percent of Yale students in a “sensitivity training” workshop reported they had engaged in bestiality, so it’s taken us about 60 years to go from God and Man at Yale to Dog and Man at Yale.

This was one of the weird little facts I uncovered while trying to answer the question: How did Hugo Schwyzer get away with it so long?

Hugo Schwyzer is insane and is also a college professor, and one imagines his employer using this in a promotional campaign: “Pasadena City College: You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Teach Here, But It Helps!”
Professor Schwyzer’s madness suddenly burst forth as headline news this month after he first announced that he was quitting the Internet and told L.A. Weekly he had suffered a “mental breakdown.” But then the professor went on Twitter and began spewing out a series of bizarre confessions, admitting that he was off his medication. His weird online meltdown inspired concerns for Professor Schwyzer’s safety and he was hospitalized again. He told the Daily Beast that he had been to the psychiatric ward three times in the past month and had suicidal thoughts. He told a Daily Caller reporter that he had made a “serious” suicide attempt.
As spectacular as his manic disintegration was, there had been clear warning signs for years that Professor Schwyzer was a sex-crazed lunatic. However, the red flags of mental illness were evidently ignored by the administration of Pasadena City College (PCC) and Professor Schwyzer’s peers, perhaps because sex-crazed lunatics have become so commonplace in 21st-century academia. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

UPDATE: Did you hear about the University of Georgia professor who had sex with a student during a trip to Costa Rica?

The sex was consensual, the committee concluded, though both parties “were under the influence of alcohol and/or potentially behavior-altering medication,” according to their May 2 report to Adams.

What’s amazing about this story is not that Georgia taxpayers spent money to send a professor to the tropics for a drunken sex romp with a coed. No, what’s amazing is that the professor lost his tenure over this incident. “Academic freedom” is under siege!

 

Category: American Spectator, Education, Sex

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.19.13

Posted on | August 19, 2013 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Congress Split On Cutting Aid To Egypt

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-MN; wants aid cut off to Egyptian junta

Democrats, GOP split on whether to continue military, other aid


“Freedom From Filner” Rally, Petitions Signal Recall Kickoff
Several events in city kick off drive to oust accused San Diego mayor


Death Toll Hits 52 In Philippines Ferry Disaster
Passenger ferry struck by cargo ship sinks off Cebu City



POLITICS
NYPD Facing Two New Watchdogs

NYPD Commish Ray Kelly

City plans to appeal judge’s order for body cameras; council to vote on inspector general

Trail Of Stuxnet Leak Leads To White House

Boston Gathering Exposes Rifts In GOP Despite Priebus’ Best Efforts

Hundreds Of Illegals Busted In Phoenix As Immigration Debate Continues

Feds: More Americans Selling Food Stamps For Cash

Illinois Governor Signs Law Expanding Background Checks

California Lawmaker Pulls Son From Class Over Transgender Law

House Committee Accuses Treasury Of Withholding ObamaCare Documents

Christie Eases Access To Medical Marijuana For Sick Kids

Lawsuit Challenging ObamaCare Subsidies Allowed To Proceed

Former NH Senator Bob Smith Considering 2014 Run

Obama To Meet With Regulators On Wall Street Reform Law



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Trades Slightly Lower In Subdued Trading: NYMEX $107.28, Brent $110.25
Dollar Struggles To Regain Traction, Fed Minutes In Focus
Japan Trade Deficit Worsens On Back Of Weak Yen
Thailand Cuts Growth Outlook As Economy Enters Recession
Trader Joe’s Sues Canadian Reseller
Austrian OMV Buys Key Norwegian Oil Fields For Reported $2.65 Billion
Hacker Posts Facebook Bug Report on Zuckerberg’s Wall
Microsoft Loses $900 Million On Surface Tablets, Doubles Down
Can NextGen Phones Deliver NextGen Security?
Samsung Preps Galaxy Smartwatch
B&N Cuts Price Of Nook SimpleTouch GlowLight To $99



SPORTS
Joey Logano Wins Pure Michigan 400, Makes Run At Chase

Joey Logano celebrates his win

First win of the season for Logano

A-Rod Welcomed To Boston With HBP, Yanks Rally To Win 9-6

NCAA Rules Former Marine Marine Ineligible For Playing Rec League Football

Cabrera’s 40th Dinger Leads Scherzer, Tigers Past Royals, 6-3

Kirk Gibson Has Words For “Cheater” Braun

Celebratory Kiss Or Political Statement?

Fish Edge Giants 6-5

Davis Slams #45, O’s Rout Rockies 7-2

Snakes Take Bucs In 16, 4-2

White Sox Top Twins 5-2

M’s Edge Rangers 4-3

Astros Rally Past Angels On Dominguez Dinger, Win 7-5

Mientkiewicz Sparks “Body-Slamming” Brawl As Minor League Manager

Mitch Williams Rips Phillies Front Office For Firing Charlie Manuel

With Luck, Colts WR Feels “We Can’t Be Stopped”

Doc Says Barkevious Mingo’s Injury Could Have Been Fatal

Lack Of Offense Dooms Nats Again In 2-1 Loss To Braves



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Jennifer Lopez Returning To “American Idol” For Season 13

J-Lo

Previously judge in 2011, 2012

Lady Gaga Slams “Stalker” Perez Hilton In Twitter Row: “You Are Sick”

Justin Bieber’s Mom: “It Is Hard Letting Go”

Lisa Robin Kelly’s Death Still A Mystery

Toni Braxton Wardrobe Malfunction At Concert (Video)

Katie Couric Responds To Unspeakable Armenian: “I Didn’t Mean To Hurt Her Feelings”

Shailene Woodley Cuts Off Hair, Goes Blonde

Tina Fey-Matt Hubbard Comedy Lands At Fox With Series Commitment

Chris Brown Sentenced To 1000 More Hours of Community Service

“Criminal Minds” Star Thomas Gibson Catfished

“Duck Dynasty” Star Jase Thompson Kicked Out Of NYC Hotel After Being Mistaken For Homeless Man

Studio 54’s Back

Porn Star Does PR



FOREIGNERS
Jihadis Kill 24 Egyptian Police In Sinai
Pistorius Back In Court To Be Charged With Murder
Mexico Gulf Cartel Leader Captured
35 Killed In Bihar Express Accident; Locals Riot, Burn Trains
Chicom Forensic Scientist Quits As Bo Xilai Trial Announced
Greenwald’s Boyfriend Detained At Heathrow For Nine Hours
Israel Urges West To Back Egyptian Junta
Norks Agree To Family Reunions With ROK
Abe Plans To Craft National Security Plan By Year’s End
Floods Shut Down Manila
Floods In Northeast PRC Kill 25
Merkel Open To Second Grand Coalition With SPD



BLOGS & STUFF
Leather Penguin: The Bell Tolls For WABC
Pat Dollard: EU To “Urgently Review” Egypt Ties Unless MuBros Allowed To Run Buckwild
American Thinker: No Country For Fat Men
American Power: K-Mart Back To School Ad Attacked As Racist
Jammie Wearing Fools: “Literally all hell seems to be breaking loose and President Obama is in Martha’s Vineyard having a gay old time, riding his bike, partying it up”
JustOneMinute: Back In Cairo
The Necropolitan Sentinel: A Message For Bob Beckel
Don Surber: Thank You, Professor Jacobson
Jawa Report: Oh Snap – Zawahiri’s brother Arrested In Egypt
Weasel Zippers: For Some Reason, Scott Brown Considering A Run For President
NRO Corner: Rand Paul – ‘I Don’t Think Shutting Down the Government Is a Good Idea’
Washington Free Beacon: Rep. Peter King Rips Rand Paul’s NSA Criticism
Jihad Watch: Attorney For Ft. Hood Shooter’s Victims Accuses Army, Administration Of Twisting Rules To Avoid Admitting Hasan is A Jihadist
Ed Driscoll: Two TIME Magazines In One!
Israel Matzav: Massive Exodus Of Syrians Fleeing into Kurdistan To Escape Al Qaeda
Protein Wisdom: WaPo Quest Columnist Brenda Howard On How Tough It Is To Be A Trayvon Martin Supporter Among Moral Inferiors
Power Line: Dowd’s Stopped Clock Gets It Right


Category: Live at Five

Twitter: Foreign Policy Clarity

Posted on | August 18, 2013 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

 

The argument in favor of U.S. hegemony since WWII has been “Well, who else do you trust?”

60 years on, well into the Information Age, it’s no longer clear we trust ourselves: to manage information; to budget; to tell the difference between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys.

While I’m on Chapter Four of the new Mark Levin book (which read), part of the come-to-Beevis moment our country needs is a foreign policy review. It’s hard to be the land of individual liberty AND the land of “form up and march”.

As a veteran, I’m perfectly comfortable with the notion that the best defense is a good offense. Also, post-Bretton Woods and the National Security Act of 1947, the U.S. had the ball for protecting the West against the Soviets, in exchange for the privilege of being the world reserve currency.

So, what? The Soviets are gone, the Godless Commies having seeded our rodeos and oval office with clowns, and our military is moving in the direction of incoherence.

Irrespective of consequences, I’d take the position that, if we can’t pull our own heads out of that sunless location, we can’t be much use to anyone else. Keep the Navy/Marine Corps team for traditional sea control, disaster relief, and “gentle reminders”. However, let’s just consider that, 20 years after the U.S.S.R. wheezed its last, the Iraq/Afghanistan-style power projection thing is substantially done.

Hegemony was a powerful drug. And we can support groups of allies standing up against, say, China. Fight their wars, though? Not without the thought given a proper Declaration of War, the last of which was in WWII.

Category: Foreigners

Florida: The Rape State

Posted on | August 18, 2013 | 61 Comments

Why does accused sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt think she has a “right” to have sex with 14-year-olds? Perhaps because she lives in Florida, where some officials seem to think enforcing the law is optional, and dangerous sex offenders are released to rape again:

594 sex offenders were convicted of new sex crimes after being reviewed under the Jimmy Ryce law since it took effect in 1999. . . .
For every sex offender the state has committed under the 14-year-old Ryce law, two others have been released — only to be arrested again for a sex crime.
From South Florida to the Panhandle, these men have cut a fresh trail of pain, molesting more than 460 children, raping 121 women, and killing 14.
Many offenders attacked again only days after Florida let them go. Six found new victims the same day they walked out the prison gates. . . .
[T]he head of the agency that screens sex offenders said she would investigate what changes should be made.
Esther Jacobo said the Department of Children & Families would analyze a sample of reoffenders the newspaper identified to determine what went wrong as it reviews the program from top to bottom.
“The only thing I can hope is that we come up with something better so that we get a larger percentage of these guys not to hurt people anymore,” said Jacobo, the agency’s interim secretary. “The biggest wish would be that we could stop it all. I’m not naive enough to think that that’s going to happen, but I think we can do better.”
Some changes already are under way. The department has convened a team of mental health experts to review how Florida identifies sex predators. And, on a single day in June, the agency suddenly recommended continued confinement for 19 sex offenders — as many as it had in all of 2012.
Those actions came too late to protect 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle.
This summer, Jacksonville mourned the little girl who was abducted from a Walmart, raped and strangled, her 60-pound body dumped behind a church.
Her accused killer: A registered sex offender freed three weeks earlier.

You can read the whole thing. On average, once every nine days — 42 times a year, for the past 14 years — Florida has released a convicted sex offender who will commit another sex crime.

 

Category: Crime, Florida, Sex

Barrett Brown’s Overblown Ego

Posted on | August 18, 2013 | 58 Comments

Sept. 12: Barrett Brown rants on YouTube about his plan to ‘destroy’ an FBI agent

“Uh, I’ve been on Suboxone since then, um, partly because, in fact in large part, um, in preparation for this particular day, or two days as it’s turned out, um, which I’ve also been, uh, preparing for by virtue of the last six leaks, uh, Project PM put out in the last, uh, month or so — the New York Times leaks, there’s two parts of that on Cryptome, and the LA county prosecutor leaks, there’s three parts of that on Cryptome and with more coming on both, uh, by and by.”
— Barrett Brown, Sept. 12, 2012

The Left’s ongoing attempt to turn Barrett Brown into a heroic martyr for First Amendment freedom — the latest issue of Rolling Stone calls him “America’s Least Likely Political Prisoner” — requires his admirers to overlook a lot of things, especially the vast distance between his grandiose claims and his paltry accomplishments.

Also, he was crazy.

Barrett was obsessed with the idea of “leaks,” and seemed to have the idea that he would out-leak Julian Assange, thus making himself a worldwide hero of the online anarchist community who worship at the anti-American altar of Assange, Bradley Manning, et al.

Barrett’s problem was his overblown ego, his habitual bragging, his relentless inflation of the significance of whatever occupied his unbalanced mind at any given moment. Wildly undisciplined and emotionally unstable, his “work” production was never impressive, as he wasted time on subjects that were of no real interest or importance.

Sane people could see Barrett Brown was losing his grip even before he became involved with “Anonymous.” In December 2010, when he outlined his “informational schematic” in Video 153? Go watch that rambling 13-minute video. The phrase you’re looking for is red flag. Here was a young heroin addict describing his plan to create “what should be the best means of obtaining information in existence.”

Riiiiight.

Typical of Barrett Brown’s grandiosity was what he called, in his epic Sept. 12 meltdown rant, “the LA county prosecutor leaks.” This involved Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Frey, who is the conservative blogger known as Patterico.

For years, his various enemies have been trying to get Frey fired from his day job, on the basis of his off-hours political blogging, as though it were somehow unethical — a conflict of interest — which it is not, because there is no relationship between (a) what Frey does on his day job and (b) what he does on his blog. Frey’s day job is as a prosecutor in the anti-gang unit: The Bloods, the Crips, the Latin Kings, and so forth — he puts those guys in prison for their crimes. Maybe you could speculate some kind of psycho-babble theory between that work and what Patterico writes about politics, but he never writes about any of the crimes or criminals he prosecutes. Ergo, no conflict of interest. Q.E.D.

Frey’s enemies either don’t understand this or don’t care about the truth, and so he has repeatedly been the target of various schemes hatched by Neal Rauhauser. Why? Because in 2011 (a) Patterico’s blogging about the WeinerGate scandal made him a central figure in Rauhauser’s theory of a Breitbart-led right-wing conspiracy against Anthony Weiner, and (b) Frey’s employment in a public-sector job seemed to Rauhauser to make Frey a vulnerable target.

This background is necessary to understanding why, in August 2011, Neal Rauhauser used the pseudonym “Carlito2000” in an IRC channel to sic Barrett Brown on Patrick “Patterico” Frey:

[13:50] [Carlito2000] So [Brandon] Darby is under suspicion as being the SWAT caller that triggered #Swatgate
[13:50] [BarrettBrown] And what’s Darby’s deal in particular?
[13:50] [Carlito2000] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe4NCaz4NgM
[13:51] [BarrettBrown] he’s under suspicion of doing swat call on Patterico?
[13:51] [Carlito2000] calls on Mike Stack aka @CryingWolfeBlog
6/23/2011 @Patterico 6/30/2011 @EWErickson on 5/26/2012(?)
[13:52] [Carlito2000] and alleged event for @AaronWorthing [a.k.a., Aaron Walker] on 5/29/2012, but no audio has been released
[13:52] [Carlito2000] SWAT of Stack was done to cover their tracks – they took out Weiner because he triggered the extortion investigation into former FBI agent turned Congressman Mike Grimm
[13:52] [Carlito2000] Ofir Biton, Mike Grimm fundraiser, arrested.
[13:53] [Carlito2000] 2012 calls are due to some stuff with James O’Keefe – Rauhauser appear at some hearing in NJ about him
[13:53] [Carlito2000] @Patterico dox @NadiaNaffe, Rauhauser hooked her up with @LeidermanDevine, epic lawsuit ensued
[13:57] [Carlito2000] So New Hampshire state grand jury on O’Keefe, NY
federal grand jury on Grimm, D.C. federal grand jury on O’Keefe, and Chicago cybercrime task force wants swatters, they get info on Darby
[14:09] [BarrettBrown] okay, so I’ll take a look at these links here

You don’t have to understand Rauhauser’s bizarre conspiracy theories (variously involving Brandon Darby, Mike Stack, New York Rep. Michael Grimm, James O’Keefe III and the FBI’s “cybercrime task force”) to understand what Rauhauser/”Carlito” was trying to do, namely to get Barrett Brown to write something — anything — that Rauhauser could then use as “evidence” against his enemies.

The immediate result of that provocation was a series of online chats between Barrett Brown and Frey, who was profoundly suspicious of Brown’s motives, correctly suspecting that Brown had contacted him in pursuit of a Rauhauser-inspired scheme. And my name kept coming up in these Brown-Frey chats, e.g.:

Only reason I ask [if Frey knows anything about Jennifer Emick] is that she left a comment on Robert Stacy McCain’s blog last year when he did a post about me, during such time as she was both serving as an FBI “informant” and working secretly for HBGary pursuant to their covert campaign to get me “picked up” and discredited despite the fact that I committed no crimes against them, etc.
Right now, I think the only real question I have for you is, do you know if Robert Stacy McCain might have had any discussions at all with either Emick or anyone at HBGary at any time, and do you have any correspondence in which he discusses me?

Now, if you’ll go read the transcript of Barrett’s Sept. 12 meltdown video, you’ll see how this theme of Emick as being an FBI “informant” while also working for HBGary is central to Barrett’s paranoid belief that he was the target of some kind of conspiratorial set-up:

I know what’s legal, because I know what’s been done to me and if it’s legal when it’s done to me it’s going to be legal when it’s done to fuckin’ FBI Agent Robert Smith, who is a criminal, who is involved in a criminal conspiracy that has thank god been revealed, part of which was evident, uh, months and months ago because I told the fucking FBI Agent Daniel Borsuk, who gave me a fake name when his fucking little Jennifer Emick fuckin’ informant, HBGary employees, was bragging about this shit and gave me the number, I guess he wanted to talk to me and see what I’d say. Well, his real name’s Daniel Borsuk, I know that now because of more hacked e-mails that she got that she has not refuted although she is, [laughs] the informant is now claiming she doesn’t work for HBGary even though we, again, we have the invoices, the e-mails, her ex-partner’s been in touch, it was already obvious and we have other proof of it, even besides these things that she doesn’t know about yet. Um, we don’t play all our hands, like they do. Uh, anyway, so that’s why Robert Smith’s life is over.

Four words: Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

What do I know about Jennifer Emick? Almost nothing. Never talked to her until October of last year, after Barrett Brown had been arrested for threatening an FBI agent, and Emick sent me an account of her interactions with Neal Rauhauser. Yet you see that this idea — that I was somehow part of Emick and HBGary’s “covert campaign” against Barrett Brown — was part of the conpiracy theory Brown was trying to get Frey to confirm, and was also part of the madness that led to that Sept. 12 meltdown. (See: “Neal Rauhauser as Carlito2000: How Barrett Brown Went Down,” Oct. 26.)

On Sept. 6, less than a week before his final meltdown, Barrett Brown published his “LA county prosecutor leak” — i.e., the transcript of an online chat Brown had with Frey — at Daily Kos with a prologue that included this disjointed 89-word sentence:

As noted, this leak is being conducted in retaliation for Frey’s failure to readily answer questions about a possible connection between Confederate/white nationalist Washington Times editor Robert StacyMcCain and the HBGary criminal organization as well as Frey’s decision to publicly attack an RNC protester who was arrested in possession of a weapon, with the final straw being R.S. McCain’s latest attack on Brown, whom the author and conservative stalwart denounced in public as deserving of FBI attention in 2011 — before later claiming instead that Brown is in fact an FBI informant based on his own misunderstanding of facts known even to many reporters who have covered Anonymous in the last few years.

Again, four words: Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Whatever my “misunderstanding of facts,” I always understood that Barrett Brown was a raging narcissist, and what Brown called “the final straw” — my “latest attack on Brown” — was my Sept. 4 response to Brown’s threat to sue me for libel, which ended thus:

You don’t need a lawyer, Barrett. You need a psychiatrist, or perhaps a priest to exorcise your demons. You are traveling a road to destruction, as harmful to yourself as to any of your chosen enemies. Get help.

Can I call ’em, or what? Eight days later, Barrett melted down on YouTube and was arrested by the FBI. But before he got himself arrested, Brown published his “leak” of his chat with Patrick Frey, and announced that with a Sept. 4 YouTube video:

To which America responded with a collective yawn. Who cares anything about Frey, one of dozens of lawyers employed by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office? Why would my “possible connection” to “the HBGary criminal organization” be of interest to anyone, even if there were any such connection (which there is not)? Barrett was obsessed with HBGary, as were Neal Rauhauser and various people associated with Anonymous, but in the grand scheme of things — as far as your average consumer of news is concerned — the typical response is, “HB who?”

In light of his well-deserved obscurity, what shall we say of Brown’s success in convincing his fellow anarchists that he was somebody important who was doing “journalism” that was such a threat to the status quo that he is a “political prisoner”? He has merely proven that there is a sucker born every minute, and that a lot of those gullible suckers are nowadays employed as liberal journalists.

Go read “The Kook Who Knew Too Much.” Is Barrett Brown a political prisoner? Only if insanity is a political ideology.

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Conspiracy Theories

Is Your Child’s Public School Teacher Cruising Online for a ‘Sugar Daddy’?

Posted on | August 18, 2013 | 128 Comments

Reading, writing and rent-a-dates:

SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as “the #1 online dating website for sugar babies and generous men,” is now boasting that some 40,000 public school teachers of a certain moral caliber have joined the website in an attempt to . . . seek wealthy, older men for “mutually beneficial relationships.” . . .
According to SeekingArrangement, the top five school districts in the country for sugar-baby teachers are (in order): the School District of Philadelphia, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Los Angeles Unified School District, the Clark County School District (in the Las Vegas area) and the New York City public schools.

Why aren’t you home-schooling yet?

 

Category: Education, Sex

You’re Accused: ‘Vengeance, Spite, Fear, Denial, Sadness, Insecurity, Whatever’

Posted on | August 17, 2013 | 137 Comments

‘LGBT Injustice’? Kaitlyn Hunt (center), her mother Kelley Hunt Smith (left)
and attorney Julia Graves (right) appear on MSNBC, May 22.

Did you ever read what I wrote about the gay-rights movement in 2008? There is an inherent problem in the language of “rights.” Once you adopt such rhetoric in a democratic polity, your purpose is to de-legitimize opposition: “Shut up, because equality.”

Good-bye, rule of law. Forget any question about the necessity or efficacy of any policy reform proposed by those who, speaking the language of “rights,” cast their opponents in the role of oppressors. Merely to disagree is to inflict social injustice on the victims.

This rhetoric succeeds in liberal culture because the triumphant narrative of Progress is something we are taught never to question.

“My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.”
— G.K. Chesteron, 1923

So, Ace finally took notice of the Kaitlyn Hunt story:

People who reflexively support gays will say “don’t prosecute her because you don’t prosecute straight kids in that situation and we have to do what we normally do. We can’t treat gay people worse.”
People who reflexively oppose gay stuff will say “you have to prosecute her because you routinely prosecute straight kids in that situation and we have to do what we normally do. We can’t treat gay people better.”
Well I agree with both final sentences — we cannot treat gay people better and we cannot treat gay people worse. Which means the first sentence of each claim is in contest– do we usually prosecute straight kids in this situation?
If so, we should prosecute her, just like the average kid. If not, we should not prosecute her, just like the average kid. As this all swings on a factual question I have no idea about, I didn’t weigh in.

Florida law is clear that anyone 18 or older having sex with someone 15 or younger has committed a crime. This crime is “usually” prosecuted for the same reason that Kate Hunt is being prosecuted: Parents of the minor victim discover that their young teenager is sexually involved with an adult, object to this involvement, and call the cops.

Will anyone argue that this law is unreasonable?

Is it wrong for parents to be empowered, with the law on their side, to say, “Hey, leave my kid alone, you creep, or I’ll call the cops”?

Let us stipulate that there are probably lots of 18- and 19-year-old guys who may be sexually interested in much younger teenage girls.

This is the typical scenario: A girl who is physically mature but not yet 16 becomes involved with a guy in his late teens or early 20s and this involvement is entirely voluntary — indeed, often quite enthusiastic — on the part of the girl who, in the eyes of the law, is the victim of a crime because she is incapable of legal consent.

Maybe that seems crazy to you. You may say, “But this girl is willing and eager to have sex at 14 or 15, why criminalize this guy, only four or five years older than her, for giving her what she wants?”

The answer is that this is a minor dependent upon, and under the authority of, her parents, who have a duty to supervise her behavior — to make sure she brushes her teeth and does her homework and looks both ways before crossing the street — for her own good. And if the parents of 14-year-old Heather Hotpants don’t want their daughter taking a ride on the one-eyed love monster with 19-year-old Billy the Boner, they are empowered by law to prevent it.

Maybe you think this kind of parental empowerment is a bad thing, but if you don’t have a teenage daughter, well, shut the hell up.

Parents have duties and parents have rights, and if we don’t want total sexual anarchy — horny hoodlums cruising the middle-school parking lot in search of some easy action — we’d better by God stand on the side of parents trying to protect their daughters.

Every year — every month, every week — guys are charged in Florida with violating this law. Most of the time you never hear about it, because it’s just a two-paragraph item in the cops-and-courts column of the local newspaper. The prosecutor offers the perp a plea bargain, the perp takes the deal, end of story.

This didn’t happen in the Kaitlyn Hunt case simply because her parents believed they could rally support on her behalf by claiming that Kate was a victim of homophobia, and so they launched the “Free Kate” campaign, fooled a lot of people into thinking that this was a case about “discrimination,” and rejected the plea bargain.

To such a gambit we must answer: Damn you, and damn your “rights.”

If you buy the argument pushed by the “Free Kate” crowd, anyone has a right to have sex with anyone of any age who will consent to it.

Pay attention to their rhetoric — and I’ve been following this story for three months — and you find a lot of talk about it being OK because both girl attended the same high school, or because they were “in love,” or because other kids are doing the same thing.

There has been talk about changing Florida law, and OK, so what?

In some states the age of consent is 14, and if the citizens of Florida wish to become Utah or Alabama, this 10th Amendment advocate would be obliged to respect their state sovereignty.

As it is, however, Florida’s age of consent is 16. This law is by no means secret and evidence in this case indicates that Kaitlyn Hunt knew damned well her involvement with a 14-year-old was illegal.

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT ‘JAILBAIT’?

What first drew my attention to this case was a column at NewsBusters by Matthew Philbin in which he sagely observed that Kaitlyn Hunt and her supporters are trying to make homosexuality a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for statutory rape.  But if you cannot prosecute an 18-year-old lesbian for playing Spin the Dildo with a 14-year-old girl, by the same token you cannot punish 18-year-old gay guys who want to play naked leapfrog with 14-year-old boys, nor could any of the more commonplace heterosexual statutory rapes be punished.

The bottom line of the argument, really, would be tantamount to declaring “open season” on 14-year-olds in Florida.

Honestly, I wish Kaitlyn Hunt had taken the plea deal — like the vast majority of perps in such cases do — rather than subjecting America to this divisive debate, because she’s put me in the position of arguing now that she must go to prison, or else put at risk the legitimacy of age-of-consent laws everywhere. This was the import of my first American Spectator item about the case:

#FreeKate? Movement to Normalize
Pedophilia Finds Its Poster Girl

Folks, these “Free Kate” people have brought us so close to the gates of Hell here, you can feel the heat and smell the brimstone. Once these advocates of pubsecent perversion start talking about “rights,” and accusing their critics of “hate,” we could slide down the slippery slope faster than an Olympic bobsled team. Which brings us to the “Free Kate” supporter who inspired the headline of this post:

 

“If there weren’t ridiculous laws on the books that the other parents [i.e., the parents of the 14-year-old] pushed the state to utilize out of vengeance, spite, fear, denial, sadness, insanity, whatever they may have going on in their minds this would not be up for debate.”
— Carrie Mullinax

Damn you, and damn your accusations. Should parents who try to protect their daughters be exposed to this kind of insulting abuse?

Do you see how the rhetoric of “rights” empowers perverts and thugs to impugn the motives of law-abiding citizens? Laws against sex with 14-year-olds are “ridiculous,” and parents who want the state to enforce its laws are accused of “insanity”! Lesbians have a “right” to have sex with your 14-year-old daughter and shut up, haters.

Happy 14th Birthday! (Batteries not included.)

 




 

Category: Gays, Kaitlyn Hunt
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