Category Archives: Morality

Shades of Waco?

America, Criminal Injustice, Law, libertarianism, Media, Morality, The State

Another prosecutorial team is on the make, this time in Utah, where the state has been pursuing Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prosecutors have been egged on by a histrionic media—cable coquettes, especially, with their mangled maternal instincts.

First came District Attorney Michael Nifong of the Duke “rape” case fame. By the admission of the accuser’s co-striper, her story lacks credibility. The accused has an alibi. The DNA found on the accuser is not his. And the lineup was in violation of procedures. Yet this DA run amok forges on, oblivious to the constitutional and procedural safeguards to which an accused is entitled. (Here’s another superb source on the case.)

Mary Lacy, Boulder County’s inept DA, arrested a man in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, based on no other corroborating evidence than a confession, a practice that was once prohibited, for obvious reasons. Lacy attended Patsy Ramsey’s funeral and was clearly personally invested in the intruder-theory of the case. Lacy and Nifong appear to represent a decaying legal system festooned with incompetents, who substitute the constraints of the law with their “grand” visions.

As to Jeffs, the mindless media has always been enthralled by child-abuse crusaders. Janet Reno, one of the most murderous DAs, established her career by launching the day care child sex abuse witch hunt that gripped the nation in the 1980s. She used fabricated accusations elicited from children (who never lie, right?) with the aid of highly suggestive techniques, to imprison her victims absent corroborative evidence. These cases served as a professional stepping stone for Reno, who went on to commit even greater crimes.

Here are the Jeffs arrest warrant and affidavit. It’s ludicrous. He is charged with being an accomplice to rape, no less. Such an accusation conjures visions of Jeffs holding the victim down while another commits the act. Jeffs, however, is charged, based on hearsay, with encouraging a girl, then under 18, to submit to intercourse with her husband, who was a little older. How does urging someone to consummate a marriage amount to being complicit in a rape, a very brutal crime indeed? By this standard or test, aren’t the girl’s parents also complicit?

The sect is wealthy and owns large compounds in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, and British Columbia. Despite the fact that they live in peace and are non-violent, the federal government has described Jeffs, who was unarmed and did not resist arrest, as extremely dangerous.

The polygamist was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in May, alongside Bin Laden. In this way, presumably, when the federal and state police storm these compounds and remove the children (with a view to seizing the valuable property too, no doubt), the public, dimmed and dulled by state-worshipping media, will shrug it off. After all, it’s all for “The Children,” isn’t it?

Question: Islam permits multiple marriages, doesn’t it? I have no doubt that devout American Muslims follow the dictates of their faith here in the US. Have you ever heard of any such prosecutions against members of that community?

The Porn Aesthetic

Hollywood, Morality, Objectivism

In response to my fangs fandango, BAB Reader Pam Maltzman reminded me of something I’ve been trying hard to forget: Angelina wants to play Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. Some Objectivists, who can’t be thinking with their (unclothed) heads, favor the idea. My article, “Angelina’s Color-Coded Kids,” pretty much exposed the woman’s pretensions. In response to that piece, the colorful Michael Musto of The Village Voice wrote this to me: “I now realize she’s even more of a bimbo than I thought!” I don’t think Musto’s an Objectivist, yet he had no problem making the call. Perhaps it’s because he’s gay. (If I could have my own gays as Kathy Griffin does, he’d be the one. I’m a fan.) One or two readers wanted to know what I think of the monster mouth fashion and why men like it. Without being too indelicate, men are responding not to aesthetics but to the basest of instincts. These instincts are now celebrated and affirmed in imagery, rather than transcended. A porn sensibility didn’t always shape ideas of beauty. The sublime 1350 B.C. bust of Queen Nefertiti attests to that. As does the bust of Marianne which embodied the French’s ideal of female beauty: Catherine Deneuve.

Updated: Plagiarism

Ethics, Etiquette, Morality

The dictionary defines plagiarism as “taking someone’s words or ideas as if they were your own.” Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery. But unacknowledged, lifting a someone’s ideas without attribution is disgusting—it tells me all I need to know about a character.

I once submitted a version of “How Things Would Work in a Copyright-Free Universe” to the editor of a well-known American libertarian magazine. It had been published previously in the Canadian Financial Post. The editors there had been excited about it and were not disappointed—the piece generated a good deal of mail.

The editor of the libertarian magazine, however, replied that the thing was not comprehensive enough for his publication. A week or two later, the exact ideas appeared in his column, including a reference to one or two utterly obscure sources used in my article.

There have been other such unpleasant instances.

More recently, on March 3, 2006 in “The People Vs. Dubya & Dubai,” I observed that libertarians had joined neoconservatives to tarnish security conscious Americans as anti-Arab racists and Islamophobes for their rejection of the Dubai transaction.

On March 11, I reiterated that observation on Barely a Blog, writing that neoconservatives and their left-libertarian allies in this affair truly showed their skunk appeal, and that the Dubai debacle has served as the all-time low-life litmus test because of this lot’s self-righteous haste to substitute ad hominem arguments for substantive debate.

In the March-27 issue of a certain magazine, a member of the small and well-acquainted libertarian community of writers used the rather obscure observation vis-a-vis the neoconservative/libertarian momentary alignment to segue into a discussion of the Dubai debacle. Missing from the analysis were five words: “As Ilana Mercer has observed.”

At the time of writing, if you Googled Ann Coulter and H. L. Mencken together my name came up first. That’s how idiosyncratic my June-8 commentary on this pairing was. In his latest July-17 magazine article, the aforementioned libertarian uses the analogy (in a totally inappropriate context, mind you). Missing again are these simple words: “As Ilana Mercer has observed.”

Of course, this is not about an ignorance of the rules and etiquette of attribution, but about an unfamiliarity with morals. My

About the natural law, Sir William Blackstone noted that it “should include such precepts as that human beings should live honestly, hurt nobody, and render everyone their due” (in Conway, 2004). Clearly an instinct alien to some.

Update: a good friend and a professional writer offers that such practices are abominable, but points out that a well-known magazine gambit is to reject a query but take its ideas. Call me naive, but I once expected more from libertarians. No longer. Said writer has also directed me to Copyscape, another helpful online resource.

Gottfried on the Why of Systemic vs. Personal Responsibility

Individual Rights, Intellectualism, Morality, Neoconservatism, Socialism

Professor Paul Gottfried offers this insight as to why, “When speaking about crime and culpability (punishment is not an option), left-liberals like Jolie use the passive voice. Crimes are caused, not committed.”

I think Ilana’s observation about the widespread tendency to blame all non-white and non-Western atrocities on abstract causes such as “violence,” “poverty,” and “white racism” serves a necessary function within the context of (non-neoconservative) leftist thinking. This ascription allows the user to blame morally revolting actions on neither the perpetrator nor any specific person or group of persons belonging to the white Western world. It goes without saying that blacks, who form a martyr people within leftist victimology, cannot be called to account by white Westerners because they rape and murder each other. To do so would undermine the reigning anti-fascist, anti-racist ideology. But neither is it wise to lay the blame for Third World atrocities at the door of one’s parents and associates, assuming they are white, if one intends to maintain civil relations. Therefore the problem becomes “structural” or “economic” rather than personal. And this also suggests that everything can be set right by adopting the right socialist, redistributionist policies.

—Paul Gottfried