‘Sex, God & Greed’

Christianity, Criminal Injustice, Journalism, Media, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Courts

In 2003, Daniel Lyons, in Forbes, hashed out all there is to say about the sexual-abuse shakedown to which the Catholic Church has been subjected. It’s worth revisiting this exceptional exposé, now that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, lamentably, has decided to capitulate, rather than fight a racket facilitated by courts that are conduits to theft. Writes Lyons:

“….The focal point of this tort battle is the Catholic Church. The Church’s legal problems are worse even than most people realize: $1 billion in damages already paid out for the victims of pedophile priests, indications that the total will approach $5 billion before the crisis is over… The lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades. Last year California, responding to the outcry over the rash of priest cases, suspended its statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes for one year, opening the way for a deluge of new claims. A dozen other states are being pushed to loosen their laws.”

“’There is an absolute explosion of sexual abuse litigation, and there will continue to be. This is going to be a huge business,’ MacLeish, age 50, says. A Boston-based partner of the Miami law firm of GREENBERG TRAURIG (2002 billings: $465 million)…”

Lyons and Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal are the only writers I know of to have pointed out how many of these class-action claims are, if not bogus, backed by the discredited excavation of false memories. (See my “Repressed Memory Ruse”):

The repressed memory hoax “…. relies on a controversial theory that has split the world of psychology into bitterly opposing camps for more than a decade: the notion that people can wipe out memories of severe trauma, then recover these repressed memories years later…
Richard McNally, a Harvard psychology professor…. thinks recovered memories of trauma are questionable. He has conducted numerous studies on memory, particularly with sexual abuse victims. He says people don’t forget a trauma like anal rape. They might forget something like being fondled as a child, but that’s because the fondling was not traumatic, he argues. ‘It might be disgusting, upsetting—but not terrifying, not traumatic.’”

“McNally’s take on this subject has set off a hometown feud with Daniel Brown, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School who is a leading proponent of recovered memory. The two archrivals have never met, engaging instead in a ‘battle of the books.’
In 1998, when Brown won an award for his 786-page tome, Memory, Trauma Treatment & the Law, McNally wrote a scathing review that criticized Brown’s methodology. In March of this year McNally published his own book, Remembering Trauma, in which he bashes repressed-memory theory and criticizes Brown’s work yet again.

‘Sex, God & Greed’

Christianity, Criminal Injustice, Journalism, Media, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Courts

In 2003, Daniel Lyons, in Forbes, hashed out all there is to say about the sexual-abuse shakedown to which the Catholic Church has been subjected. It’s worth revisiting this exceptional exposé, now that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, lamentably, has decided to capitulate, rather than fight a racket facilitated by courts that are conduits to theft. Writes Lyons:

“….The focal point of this tort battle is the Catholic Church. The Church’s legal problems are worse even than most people realize: $1 billion in damages already paid out for the victims of pedophile priests, indications that the total will approach $5 billion before the crisis is over… The lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades. Last year California, responding to the outcry over the rash of priest cases, suspended its statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes for one year, opening the way for a deluge of new claims. A dozen other states are being pushed to loosen their laws.”

“’There is an absolute explosion of sexual abuse litigation, and there will continue to be. This is going to be a huge business,’ MacLeish, age 50, says. A Boston-based partner of the Miami law firm of GREENBERG TRAURIG (2002 billings: $465 million)…”

Lyons and Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal are the only writers I know of to have pointed out how many of these class-action claims are, if not bogus, backed by the discredited excavation of false memories. (See my “Repressed Memory Ruse”):

The repressed memory hoax “…. relies on a controversial theory that has split the world of psychology into bitterly opposing camps for more than a decade: the notion that people can wipe out memories of severe trauma, then recover these repressed memories years later…
Richard McNally, a Harvard psychology professor…. thinks recovered memories of trauma are questionable. He has conducted numerous studies on memory, particularly with sexual abuse victims. He says people don’t forget a trauma like anal rape. They might forget something like being fondled as a child, but that’s because the fondling was not traumatic, he argues. ‘It might be disgusting, upsetting—but not terrifying, not traumatic.’”

“McNally’s take on this subject has set off a hometown feud with Daniel Brown, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School who is a leading proponent of recovered memory. The two archrivals have never met, engaging instead in a ‘battle of the books.’
In 1998, when Brown won an award for his 786-page tome, Memory, Trauma Treatment & the Law, McNally wrote a scathing review that criticized Brown’s methodology. In March of this year McNally published his own book, Remembering Trauma, in which he bashes repressed-memory theory and criticizes Brown’s work yet again.

Nifonged

Business, Capitalism, Conservatism, Crime, Criminal Injustice, English, Free Markets, Ilana Mercer, Law

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With respect to readers’ comments on the crucifixion of Conrad Black being the handiwork of the Left:

Fine, so long as we agree that by the “Left” we mean Republican Party hacks as well. Under their watch the most egregious prosecutions have taken place: Martha Stewart and Conrad Black.

As I coined the verb “Nifonged,” I’ll resurrect a quote with respect to the front runner in the presidential race. “Rudy Giuliani: That’s the guy who Nifonged Michael Milken, right?”—ILANA (March 4, 2007)

Yes, let’s be clear: when we speak of anti-business (and anti-justice) prosecutions launched by the Left, we include Republicans.

On Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Old Right, Reason, The State, War

By now, my thinking on conspiracy theories should be known; they are the refuge of the weak-minded. Remember Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil? Reality is bad enough; there is no need to look beyond it. That is tantamount to conjecture and fantasy. As I said in the introduction to my book, the state presides over the disintegration of civil society, but it does so reflexively, rather than as a matter of collusion and conspiracy.

The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.

Conspiracy is not congruent with a view of government as fundamentally antagonistic to the individual and to civil society, a position I hold. I see most of what the behemoth does nowadays as contrary to the good of the individual, and aimed reflexively at increasing its own power and size. Even if government embarked on a just war, it would find ways to prolong it, since this involves the consolidation of fiefdoms. Soldiers don’t benefit, but their superiors—those “generals” everyone reveres so—do. Our government, given its size, reach, and many usurpations, is a destructive and warring entity. It is natural for such an entity to pursue war for war’s sake. The constituent elements of the behemoth continuously work to increase their spheres of control. This is why we must curtail the state’s powers.

Propensity for conspiracy is yet another facet paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians share with the hard-left. I pointed out in “Deriding Dershowitz,” and elsewhere, that the far-out right has made common cause with the far left on quite a number of fronts. That’s a shame. You’ll find no such incongruities in my thinking. By way of example, my anti-war sentiments have never strayed into these murky precincts—don’t look for any war-for-oil-&-Israel kookiness here.