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.
Category Archives: Morality
Updated: Plagiarism
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
Send Us Your Con Men and Women
What do you know, a day after The Decider (Bush’s nickname for himself) praised millions of illegal immigrants for heroically forging documents and lying to employers about their status in the country, The American Enterprise Institute has opened its arms to a prominent Dutch counterfeiter, and is, evidently, sponsoring her immigration to the United States.
She’s the Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom I’ve mentioned—favorably—before. Ali’s an outspoken and brave critic of Islam. She assisted Theo van Gogh, the slain Dutch filmmaker, in exposing the enslavement of women in Muslim countries. It goes without saying that followers of the religion of peace want to kill her.
Little did I know that she is liberal only with respect to views she endorses. According to Lawrence Auster, Ali has sought to ban conservative, Christian, and immigration restrictionist parties in Europe. Writes Auster:
She was also among the 12 signers of a leftist anti-Islam manifesto in March 2006 that said, ‘It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.’ The clear implication is that Christian ‘theocrats’—which by contemporary standards means anyone who actually believes in Christianity—are Ali’s enemy as much as jihadists are.
Ali, moreover, lied on her Dutch asylum application. Duly, after being a Dutch citizen for 14 years, and a member of that parliament, to boot, immigration minister Rita Verdonk has revoked her citizenship.
I’m not saying I support this ruling. The details are sketchy, and Ali claims to have “admitted lying to win asylum in the Netherlands when she was vetted as a candidate for parliament in 2002.” What makes me even more suspicious is that “a Dutch court ruled that she must leave her home in The Hague because neighbours felt she was a security risk.” That’s preposterous! What right has the court to evict her from her home because thugs have threatened her life? Let the court banish the thugs from the country!
I’d say that Ali is a candidate for asylum in the United States, although I’m not sure she’d be better protected here than in Europe. What I question is her candidacy for a fellowship with an American think tank.
Wait a sec, what am I thinking? Having no coherent political philosophy or lacking veracity—even talent—are not always impediments to being hired by such places. For example, Rachel Marsden, a convicted Canadian stalker, worked for Paul Weyrich’s D.C. think tank, the Free Congress Foundation, which is dedicated to fighting America’s “long slide into cultural and moral decay.” I’m sure there are other examples—of lack of talent, at least, if not of out-and-out wrongdoing.
* Image courtesy Point Of Inquiry.