UPDATED II (12/6): The Kate Steinle Verdict: A Nation Of Laws? What Laws? Cui Bono?

BAB's A List, Boyd Cathey, Ethics, IMMIGRATION, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

By Dr. Boyd Cathey

After the decision by a San Francisco jury in the Kate Steinle murder case and the acquittal on all murder charges of the five times illegal immigrant and seven times felon, Jose Garcia Zarate, American citizens—at least the ones who still care about the rule of law and about the future of this country—should be rightfully outraged. Not even found guilty of the lesser murder charge, involuntary manslaughter, which given Zarate’s defense should have been what he might have hoped for—the California jury found him innocent on all counts of murder, with a slap on the wrists for possession of a purloined firearm. That’s it. And the jury was not even permitted to take into consideration the illegal Mexican’s history of criminality—repeated felonies and multiple illegal entries (each time returning across the porous California border to commit more crimes).

Here is how Ron Woodard, of NC Listen, an immigration reform organization, characterized what happened:

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the illegal immigrant who murdered Kate Steinle in San Francisco, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges but found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm.  San Francisco has in effect urinated on our Constitution and the rule of law as Kate Steinle’s parents grieve again as the murderer of their daughter will likely serve only 2-3 years in California prison.  Assuming California does not turn Zarate lose yet again after serving in their prison, Zarate may serve a couple of additional years in federal prison for having been deported so many times, but again the total prison time given the crime is a slap on the wrist.

“I actually met Kate’s Mom in Washington, DC this past September while attending a FAIR event along with meeting with staff members of Republican members of Congress from North Carolina and Senator Richard Burr.  Please pray for Kate’s family as they suffer again due to today’s gross miscarriage of justice.

“Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and the federal government was seeking to deport him a sixth time when he was instead released by San Francisco authorities under their sanctuary policy restricting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Kate Steinle’s death was totally preventable and a stain on our judicial system.  This is another sad day for our nation.” [November 30, 2017; ronwoodard@ncisten.com]

As he has been in jail for nearly two years awaiting trial and the minimum he can get for the firearms violation is two years, possibly in a month Zarate will walk free—once again. True, the federal immigration authorities will probably deport him one more time, but, who is to say that within a month or so he won’t be back in Sanctuary City San Francisco, or at least back in Sanctuary State California, which have become like illegal immigrant Meccas in horse pastures to swarms of nutrient-seeking flies? And which new victim will die needlessly next time?

San Francisco and California have made it very clear to any and all illegals, whether violent criminals or not, that they are welcome, and that the state and municipal governments will do everything in their power to protect and coddle them, including providing top drawer legal counsel for the basest of criminals—if they are illegal immigrants.

Yet, the simple fact is this: Zarate and others like him are not American citizens. How can they—how does he—merit attorneys paid-for-by-American-taxpayers, indeed, the very best lawyers that most Americans could never afford? What kind of “justice” system is that? And what kind of system is so degenerate that, with passion and zeal, it basically drops all other concerns to spend its time, efforts and money on defending a murderer who, had he been a regular white male citizen, would no doubt have been thrown to the dogs?

But it goes further than this. After the verdict was reached and defense attorney Matt Gonzalez and his co-counsel went to the microphone to comment, they could not resist turning this judicial circus into a vicious ideological attack on President Trump and anyone who believes in protecting our borders. Indeed, instead of a case which should have been about justice for the murdered Kate Steinle, both men attempted to convert it crassly into a political circus, which undoubtedly for them it was. They launched into a defense of illegal immigration and an assault on the president and his agenda as “racist” and “bigoted.” In other words, if anyone raises even the slightest question or doubt, not just about the verdict but about illegal immigration, itself, then ipso facto, that is a manifestation of the now unforgivable sin of racism.

The jury verdict and the comments by Zarate’s attorneys were an affront to millions of hardworking, law-abiding citizens, and one more illustration of the nature of this nation’s immigration system. But they also clearly indicate the ideological significance of the country’s growing illegal population and the uses to which that population is put by America’s political elites. And it is not just limited to manipulation by Leftist Democrats searching for “replacement” voters to take the place of former blue collar Democrats in places like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania who have finally figured out where their essential interests lie, but it embraces much of the Republican establishment and “conservative” movement and their inability to actually deal with the problem (or if they do, to basically cave to Open Border zealots or to the enticements from Big Business).

Thus, it is no exaggeration to state that the blood of Kate Steinle and thousands like her does not just weigh down on and indict the legal system and leaders of San Francisco and California, it also is an indictment of culture traitors like Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, and the reprehensible Thom Tillis from North Carolina, securely snuggled away in the deep pockets of the Chambers of Commerce and big agri-business, with their reassuring belief in “universal equality and human rights” as somehow conservative values. Their misplaced “humanitarianism” and their subservience to their major donors is both shameful and potentially fatal to the very existence of the American nation.

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~ DR. BOYD D. CATHEY is an Unz Review columnist, as well as a Barely a Blog contributor, whose work is easily located on this site under the “BAB’s A List” search category. Dr. Cathey earned an MA in history at the University of Virginia (as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow), and as a Richard M Weaver Fellow earned his doctorate in history and political philosophy at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. After additional studies in theology and philosophy in Switzerland, he taught in Argentina and Connecticut before returning to North Carolina. He was State Registrar of the North Carolina State Archives before retiring in 2011. He writes for The Unz Review, The Abbeville Institute, Confederate Veteran magazine, The Remnant, and other publications in the United States and Europe on a variety of topics, including politics, social and religious questions, film, and music.

UPDATE (2/12):

UPDATE (12/6):

UPDATE II (12/18): Why All Three South-African Presidents Supported Robert Mugabe

Africa, Colonialism, Democracy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, History, Race, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN, “Why All Three South-African Presidents Supported Robert Mugabe,” is on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

On November 21, after 37 years in power, Zimbabwe’s dictator, Robert Mugabe, resigned in infamy.

By contrast, the late South African leader, Nelson Mandela, was revered in the West. His successor, Thabo Mbeki, was well-respected.

Yet over the decades, both Mandela and Mbeki lent their unqualified support to Mugabe.

When the baton was passed from Mbeki to the populist polygamist Jacob Zuma, the current leader of South Africa’s dominant-party state, little changed in the country’s relationship with Zimbabwe.

Why?

And what is the significance of the support Zuma and his predecessors, Mandela and Mbeki, have lent the Zimbabwean dictator over the decades?

Wags in the West love to pit the long-suffering African people vs. their predatory politicians. As this false bifurcation goes, the malevolent Mugabe was opposed by his eternally suffering people.

While ordinary Africans do seem caught eternally between Scylla and Charybdis, the government of Zimbabwe—and others across Africa—doesn’t stand apart from the governed; it reflects them.

Consider: Early on, Mugabe had attempted to heed “a piece of advice that Mozambican president Samora Machel” had given him well before independence. As historian Martin Meredith recounts, in The State of Africa (2006), Machel told Mugabe: “Keep your whites.”

Mugabe kept “his whites” a little longer than he had originally envisaged, thanks to the Lancaster House agreements. These had “imposed a ten-year constitutional constraint on redistributing land. … But in the early 1990s, with the expiration of the constitutional prohibition, black Zimbabweans became impatient.”

Nevertheless, noted African-American journalist Keith Richburg, “Mugabe remained ambivalent, recognizing, apparently, that despite the popular appeal of land confiscation, the white commercial farmers still constituted the backbone of Zimbabwe’s economy.”

Restless natives would have none of it. Armed with axes and machetes, gangs of so-called war veterans proceeded to fleece white farmers and 400,000 of their employees without so much as flinching. In the land invasions of 2000, 50,000 of these squatters “seized more than 500 of the country’s 4,500 commercial farms, claiming they were taking back land stolen under British colonial rule.” (CNN, April 14, 2000.)

These Zimbabweans assaulted farmers and their families, “threatened to kill them and forced many to flee their homes, ransacking their possessions. They set up armed camps and roadblocks, stole tractors, slaughtered cattle, destroyed crops and polluted water supplies.”

The “occupation” was extended to private hospitals, hundreds of businesses, foreign embassies, and aid agencies. The looting of white property owners continued apace—with the country’s remaining white-owned commercial farms being invaded and occupied.

This may come as news to the doctrinaire democrats who doggedly conflate the will of the people with liberty: These weapons-wielding “mobs of so-called war veterans,” converging on Zimbabwe’s remaining productive farms, expressed the democratic aspirations of most black Zimbabweans. And of their South African neighbors, a majority of whom “want the land, cars, houses, and swimming pools of their erstwhile white rulers.” Surmised The Daily Mail’s Max Hastings:

“[M]ost African leaders find it expedient to hand over the white men’s toys to their own people, without all the bother of explaining that these things should be won through education, skills, enterprise and hard labor over generations.”

At the time, former South African president Mbeki had chaired a special session of the United Nations Security Council, during which he ventured that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. Some American analysts had therefore hastily deduced that Mbeki, who was president of South Africa from 1999 until 2008, was “a sidekick to the man who ruined Zimbabwe.”

How deeply silly. And how little the West knows!

Mbeki led the most powerful country on the continent; Mugabe the least powerful. The better question is this: Given the power differential between South Africa and Zimbabwe, why would Mbeki, and Mandela before him, succor Mugabe? Was Mandela Mugabe’s marionette, too? Yet another preposterous proposition. …

… READ THE REST. “Why All Three South-African Presidents Supported Robert Mugabe” is on Townhall.com. 

UPDATE I (12/2):

UPDATE II (12/18):

A Traditionalist Lesson For Laura Ingraham About Rap (Hint: It’s Not Music)

Art, Music, Objectivism, Pop-Culture, The West, The Zeitgeist

Is Laura Ingraham always a loud, boorish, boilerplate Republican?

I caught The Ingraham Angle last night, for the first time, and was appalled. First, Ms. Ingraham appeared a little loopy, as though she were, well, high.

The woman was loud, shouting over her guests in an unedifying manner, just because she could; just because she had the microphone. Not once did Ms. Ingraham puncture a Guest’s attempts to speak with meaningful argument, as the great Tucker Carlson does.

Tucker listens, he doesn’t talk over someone unless that someone is babbling. And Tucker, flaws and all (for he’s not pure Old Right, but he’s the best we have), is very sharp. He pierces a Guest’s case with good argument. (And his spontaneous laugh is adorable.)

Ms. Ingraham, on the other hand, is all wrong. Unconservative, unthinking, and yesterday, plain dopey, grinning inanely.

In particular, during the segment about rap lyrics, Ingraham declared, un-conservatively, that she loved all music. A serious conservative might have distinguished music (based on objective elements of composition) from rap.

And a methodical thinker—there are none on Fox News—would understand that while in older, contemporary American music, popular composers were smart enough to write gorgeous lyrics—lyrics are not music.

Put it this way, if the greatest composer ever, Johann Sebastian Bach, set his divine, godly cantatas to the naughty lyrics of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, would I decry these sublime compositions as immoral? Of course not. The music would still be sublime.

Rap is BAD, and not only because of the filthy lyrics. Rap, simply put, is not music.

Conservative emphasis on lyrics is confused. First, separate music from lyrics. Then, make the conservative case that you cannot endorse rap qua music, because it isn’t music. Rap might be street theater, but music it isn’t. Then, as a side issue, add that rap theater and dance is set to filthy grunts and coitus-like movements.

That’s my own traditionalist case against rap. Ms. Ingraham, on the other hand, is a multiculturalist who loves all “music,” including some rap. And being a broadminded broad, she errs in considering rap to be music.

Ethical Ignorance Guarantees Voters Won’t Detect Transgressions In Their Candidate Or Collect On Campaign Promises

Democracy, Donald Trump, Elections, Ethics, Intelligence, Morality, Reason

Republicans—blind followers of the Big Man—often lack even an elementary idea of what’s ethical and what’s not. Take the fact that former daytime talk show host Geraldo Rivera is a bosom buddy of Sean Hannity. The fact of the two’s friendship makes a mockery out of their canned TV “debates.” Differently put, it’s intellectually dishonest to rotate your friends on your opinion show. You shouldn’t hire your friends.

A talker should feature interesting, independent opinion and avoid in-house hires. You could say Geraldo Rivera is a Hannity friend with benefits. Responses to this no-brainer on social media tell me that people no longer grasp elementary ethics.

Ethical practices entail keeping your (journalistic) work and friendships APART—just as you should keep your wife out of the office of the president (Mugabe) and your kids out of the White House (Trump). Avoiding conflicts of interest, and the commitment to intellectual honesty implicit in your relationship with your audience (Hannity’s): These were once understood by people. I think the populace is too dumbed-down and consequently corrupted to have a feel for these finer points.

Certainly when it comes to their guy, Trump (or Bush) voters lack a basic sense of what’s ethical and what’s not. This ethical ignorance and hyper-partisanship guarantees voters will be powerless to detect transgressions in their candidate or collect on campaign promises.

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