Category Archives: Crime

Spring Rape

Crime, Feminism, Gender, Race, Republicans

On Fox News, Dana Loesch and Megyn Kelly tried to outdo one another during The Kelly File, tonight. Each lovely lady attempted to cluck louder than the other over an apparently “shocking” video of a spring-break rape, committed in front of throngs of indifferent tender young souls. Our children, you know.

The “breaking news” promised a “video that shows two men raping an unconscious woman on Florida beach.” I strained to see what Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen described as “the ‘most disgusting, sickening thing’ he had ever seen,” likening “the scene to ‘wild animals preying on a carcass laying [sic] in the woods’. He said the sickening footage shows at least three men surrounding an incapacitated woman on a beach chair.”

All I can see is black youngsters milling about in a beach setting. One culprit’s neck appears visible.

Oh, the two women reporters tried mightily to ignore the issue of race.

UPDATE II: Libertarian Anarchism’s ‘Justice’ Problem (The Great Clyde Wilson Weighs In)

Crime, Justice, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, The State, The West

“Libertarian Anarchism’s ‘Justice’ Problem” is the current essay, slightly abridged on Praag.org. An excerpt:

To the extent the Constitution comports with the natural law—upholding the sanctity of life, liberty, privacy, property and due process—it is good; to the extent it doesn’t, it is bad. The manner in which the courts have interpreted the U.S. Constitution makes the Articles of Confederation, which were usurped in favor of the Constitution at the Philadelphia convention, a much better founding document than the Constitution.

THE SIN OF ABSTRACTION

Unless remarkably sophisticated and brilliant (as only Hans-Hermann Hoppe indubitably is), the libertarian anarchist invariably falls into sloth. Forever suspended between what is and what ought to be, he settles on a non-committal, idle incoherence, spitting venom like a cobra at those of us who do the work he won’t or cannot do: address reality as it is. This specimen has little to say about policy and politics for fear of compromising his theoretical virginity.

Suspended as he is in the arid arena of pure thought, the garden-variety libertarian anarchist will settle for nothing other than the anarchist ideal. And since utopia will never be upon us, he opts to live in perpetual sin: the sin of abstraction.

Indeed, arguing from anarchism is problematic. It is difficult to wrestle with reality from this perspective. This is not to say that a government-free universe is undesirable. To the contrary. However, the sensible libertarian is obliged to anchor his reasoning in reality and in “the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged,” in the words of columnist Jack Kerwick.

This mindset maligned here is not only lazy but—dare I say?—un-Rothbaridan. For economist and political philosopher Murray Rothbard did not sit on the fence reveling in his immaculate libertarian purity; he dove right into “the nit and the grit of the issues.”

And the “nit and grit” for this not-quite anarchist concerns the problems presented by the private production of justice.

COMPETING THEORIES OF JUSTICE

A belief in the immutably just nature of the natural law must elicit questions about the wisdom of the private production of defense, as this could, in turn, give rise to legitimate law-enforcement agencies that uphold laws for communities in which natural justice has been perverted (in favor of Sharia law, for example).

It’s inevitable: In an anarcho-capitalistic universe, fundamentally different and competing views of justice (right and wrong) will arise. And while competing, private protection agencies are both welcome and desirable; an understanding of justice, predicated as it is on the natural law, does not allow for competing views of justice. …

… The complete essay is “Libertarian Anarchism’s ‘Justice’ Problem.” Read the rest on Praag.org.

UPDATE I: The Great Clyde Wilson Weighs In.

Contra a few irate “readers” at WND, distinguished scholar and prolific author Professor Clyde N. Wilson had not the slightest hardship comprehending—even appreciating—the essay. He writes:

“A very fine column on anarchy and justice.”
Clyde N. Wilson.”

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D., provided good cheer with amusing comments about the creature, on WND, who had “graded” the essay (F) by passing it through some Internet auto-program, and who herself professed to read a dozen or so books a month.

Jokes aside, the essay raises theoretical questions that cannot be boiled down to, “Hey, this works here; and that has worked there; and these guys have proposed Y.” These are not questions of pragmatism, but of principle:

Does natural law comport with a vision of society where systems of law antithetical to natural law could arise and co-exist as a matter of principle? That’s the question. It’s a fundamental one.

UPDATE II: The great Clyde Wilson has been most supportive. He further wrote:

“The idiots are loud but soon forgotten. You have tackled something so basic that libertarians are reluctant to face it.
Best wishes, Clyde.”

Although it is a bit of inside baseball, I had imagined this essay was pretty basic. However, if “a,” “natural law” “to” and “the” are a some reader’s idea of five-dollar words; he or she should stay away from the Federalist Papers.

UPDATE II: Alan Dershowitz On Making His Accusers Pay

Crime, Feminism, Gender, Political Correctness, Sex

You’d think that rape and false accusations of rape are a political cause and not crimes to investigate. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz seldom comes up with obtuse, bad answers. But even this sharp civil libertarian ditched his initial forceful arguments from justice, when put on the spot about being falsely accused of sexual abuse. Two minutes and thirty eight seconds into this CNN interview, Erroll Barnett questions Dershowtiz as to what good it would do to jail the “troubled” women who had falsely alleged that Dershowitz and a host of other codgers sexually abused them. “What do you expect to get out of it,” asked Barnett facilely.

Instead of reiterating his initial, irate and forceful warning about the harm these habitual liars do to their victims’ reputations, standing in the community and finances; the need to punish such liars for their attempts to profit by siccing the law on their innocent victims—Dershowitz noodles on about the indirect harm a false accusation of rape does to real victims of rape.

UPDATE I: Dershowtiz did a good job until the end, of promising swift justice to this hussy. Then he waffled a bit. The crazy idea that these false accusers should not be punished was the CNN angle.

UPDATE II: Dershowitz is brilliant, hence his flawless delivery. He is also a lefty, hence his slight capitulation to the accuser.

The Grotesquely Stalinist FDR

Capitalism, Communism, Crime, Free Markets, libertarianism, Russia

“The Grotesquely Stalinist FDR” is the current column. It questions the current libertarian support (my own included) for Russia, and recounts how ‘grotesquely Stalinist’
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was. An excerpt:

… One can well understand why the medieval blood ties that tethered some Ukrainians to the Russians would have been severed by the criminal communist regime, which targeted the Ukrainian breadbasket with a vengeance. The communists robbed the Ukrainian peasants of their fertile farms, forced them into slave labor by corralling them into state-owned, collective farms, and systematically starved them by requisitioning most of their grain. The peasants had been left with a fraction of the amount of grain required to sustain life.

Yet these heroic, individualistic farmers rose up against the Reds.

The slogans of the Ukrainian peasantry, in 1919, were “Ukraine for the Ukrainians, down with the Bolsheviks and the Jews (whom they associated with the Bolsheviks), free enterprise, free trade.” Besides the standard mass executions, in order to wipe out this class of people, Stalin devised a diabolical man-made famine which killed up to 10 million .

Fast forward to Kiev, circa 2013, where Ukrainians tore down the statue of the founding father of Bolshevism and a mass murderer in his own right. But that man, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, still reposes in a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square.

Why, pray tell? …

Read the rest. “The Grotesquely Stalinist FDR” is now on WND.