Category Archives: Reason

‘Gun Violence’? No! Goon Violence

Thinking logically about crime is far likelier to lead to solutions than irrational, mythical thinking. This morning, CNN’s Poppy Harlow—below an amusing thought I once entertained about her—inveighed against the “gun violence” that “took” the life of poor Deputy Darren Goforth, today.

“Gun Violence”? No! Goon violence. A very dark man—safe to say black, from the images—has been taken into custody for the execution-style murder of the deputy, at “a suburban Houston gas station.”

Police have described the suspect as a male with a dark complexion, about 5-foot-10 to 6 feet tall, wearing a white T-shirt and red shorts. Authorities did not say what race they believe him to be. …

It was not an inanimate object that murdered this innocent individual, but a malevolent man with murder in his heart and a weapon in his hand. Grasping that distinction is more truthful and hence more productive than blaming an inanimate object.

Poppy bonus:

If only a woman with the wicked wit of a Margot Asquith—countess of Oxford, author and socialite (1864- 1945)—were around to put slobbering Poppy Harlow in her proper place.

When asked by American actress Jean Harlow how she pronounces her first name, Mrs. Asquith quickly retorted: “The ‘t’ is silent, as in Harlow.”

From “Savoring Hillary’s Vow Of Silence.”

The Hispandering Effect

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Crime, IMMIGRATION, Reason, Rights

“The Hispandering Effect” counters the illogic of the La Raza Lobby. It is now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

From her bright eyes and big smile to her sun-kissed, luscious locks, Kathryn Steinle was the consummate California girl. The 32-year-old was shot dead by a proxy of the American Immigration-Industrial-Complex.

ICE, the federal wing of The Complex, was quick to blame its local branch: the City of San Francisco. San Francisco is the sanctuary city that unleashed confessed killer Francisco Sanchez. As a matter of policy, sanctuary cities commit to protecting their illegal population as they would their endangered species.

Yes, San Francisco provided sanctuary not for Kathryn Steinle, but for the likes of Francisco Sanchez. Alas, this criminal alien had accessories to the crime. The murder of Ms. Steinle was a murder-by-proxy. For regularly unleashing predators on people they swore to protect, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement is just as culpable as the sanctuary cities. Last year, reports CNSNews, ICE alone loosed approximately 30,000 convicted criminal aliens, “including those convicted of sex crimes, homicide, drunk driving, kidnapping and robbery.” Recidivism among them is proving rife.

Francisco Sanchez is the face of successive American administrations—lawmakers and enforcers; city, state and federal—who’ve refused to uphold negative rights; who’ve rejected a duty that falls perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory.” And well within the ambit of the U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Ms. Steinle joins a litany of lives lost. Criminal aliens commit crimes all the time. However, until the rise of The Donald and The Coulter duo, a few weeks back—those who determine the “conversation” du jour had been otherwise occupied in northern New York State. For three weeks, they followed a manhunt for local killers escaped. …

… Read the rest. “The Hispandering Effect” is now on The Unz Review. Read it.

The Lawless Logic Of Crime In Baltimore

Crime, Political Correctness, Race, Reason

“An uptick in crime in his city,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts blames on “looted drugs that have made their way to the streets of Baltimore.” In the April race riots, “at least 27 pharmacies and drug clinics” were ransacked.” While broadcasting this Batts fatuity, CNN showed in the background video of a swarm of sub-humans descending on a pharmacy and plundering the place.

The pharmacy employee is right: This is a joke.

Let’s trace the causal chain:

1. Criminals committed crimes called robberies.
2. Criminals came into the possession of goods called drugs through crimes called robberies.
3. Criminals bickered over loot appropriated during the commission of crimes.
3. The bickering of criminals over goods appropriated through crime escalated, resulting in injuries and deaths.

See what I’m getting at?

Drugs are not causing crimes on the streets of Baltimore; criminals are.
Drugs got onto Baltimore streets during the commission of crimes.
Criminals were first on the scene. They committed crimes. And then more crimes.

Cyril Wecht On Freddie Gray’s Likely Cause of Death

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Race, Reason, Science

Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht has been around the block a few times. Two minutes and 31 seconds into this typically tedious, CNN broadcast, Dr. Wecht ventures the following with conviction, about the Freddie Gray murder. I paraphrase:

Legs shackled and hands cuffed, placed in a prone position, face down—a position that has been banned for decades, claims Wecht—how, pray tell, did Freddie Gray run around, banging himself against the van’s interior?

The victim is yelling and screaming for help. His body is inert and the van is moving. Right there is the velocity needed to create the force for the injuries! Those injuries are not spontaneous pathological fractures; the injuries came as the body flapped back and forth, breaking the vertebrae in the neck and eventually severing the spinal cord.

Indubitably, the injuries were sustained by the police by their stopping Gray. Gray did not sustain those spontaneously. Also quite possible, says Wecht, and as I’ve hypothesized, the initial injuries were produced when police compressed and leaned into Gray’s back, to be aggravated by the flopping around in the van.