Wendy McElroy On The Invasion Of The Libertarian Body Snatchers

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism

Libertarian theorist Wendy McElroy worries that she might have to leave the movement she practically founded, because, to use a biblical quote, “there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.” A new generation of self-styled libertarians that doesn’t know the meaning of libertarianism has arisen, according to which Wendy, and certainly myself, are deemed “brutalists.”

I wrote “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fem, I Smell The Blood Of A Racist” about one of their luminaries, before I understood the extent of the revisionism in which the “humanitarians” were engaged.

So numerous are the libertarians who condemn me that I have long since stopped giving a damn. Most are like the proverbial (or metaphysical) tree falling in the woods. We know they say stuff, but nobody wants to stick around to hear them make the tedious sounds they make.

Over to Wendy, who is heartbroken over “the attempt to change the ground rules of libertarianism through introducing left-leaning attitudes and concepts”:

… the absurd and manufactured debates [is] about “”thin” and “thick” libertarianism – the “humanitarians” versus the “brutalists.” It is an attempt to introduce political correctness into libertarianism so that it is not enough to advocate nonviolence; you have to advocate it for the right reason, as defined by those who provide themselves as moral filters. They call me a brutalist. This means I will never violate your rights; your children, your property are safe in my presence because I respect your right to live in peace. But I don’t protect your children for the right reasons. For this, I am to be excoriated. This is the second approach to a new definition of libertarianism: People wish to analyze society not according to whether it is voluntary but in order to ferret out signs of power and privilege which they self-righteously condemn. Consider open source software. It has been castigated as a realm of privilege because it predominantly consists of white men. Open source software is source code that is thrown into the public realm so that anyone can modify and enhance it. It is a pure expression of free speech; the product is available to everyone for free; there are no entry barriers or requirements other than caring enough to learn code. Learning code is also available and free to all.

I think it was the condemnation of open source software that made me crack. Out of the goodness of his heart, my husband has devoted substantial time to what amounts to an intellectual charity. He pursues it for the same reason he repairs and gives computers for free to underprivileged children; he believes in the power of technology to lift people out of poverty. (BTW, I strongly suggest no one criticize my husband to my face on this point; I am likely to render the most Irish of all responses.)

Open source software is condemned for no other reason than it involves few women or minorities. This reflects nothing more than the choice of those women and minorities. It costs nothing to learn coding. Tutorials are available for free to all and everywhere. Correction: It does cost time and effort. The individual has to exert him or herself. I’m not willing to make the investment but neither do I blame the first white guy I see for my own inertia. If there is something in the culture of women and of specific minorities that prevents them from rising, then blame the culture. Don’t blame a white man like my husband who is falling over himself to provide a free service. (Correction: my husband is Hispanic … but that won’t give him a free pass. I mean, after all … the genitalia. And the grand critics of society don’t really care for accuracy.)

Last night, I contemplated my exit from a movement that considers me to be a “brutalist” after years of unpaid work promoting nonviolence. I found myself engaging in an emotional release that I’ve used for many years. I wrote a letter to my father. My dad died when I was ten years old. I loved him. …

Read “A Letter to My Father” By Wendy McElroy

To Make Cops Love Communities They Police, Communities Ought To Be Lovely.

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Race, Racism

“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”—Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

A variation on Burke’s theme is what I get from the words of former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson: To make cops love the communities they police, the communities they police ought to be lovely. And indeed, Wilson seems to have found aspects of the rough community he policed lovely. But that’s not enough for his inquisitors.

CNN transcripts:

JOHN BERMAN: New this morning, former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson breaks his silence in a revealing new interview. The 29-year- old who shot and killed unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, tells “The New Yorker” he wanted to get back on the streets of Ferguson but was told he would be a liability. He says he can’t get another police job anywhere despite being cleared of any wrongdoing in Brown’s death.

KATE BOLDUAN: He also tells “The New Yorker” that he ended up working in Ferguson because policing black neighborhoods would be a good way to advance his career. He says this as well, “If you go there and do three to five years, get your experience, you can kind of write your own ticket.” And Wilson says he enjoyed his time on the force. He also is saying this, “I didn’t want to work in a white area. I like the black community. I had fun there. There’s people who will just crack you up.”

CNN’s Boris Sanchez is joining us, and Boris is taking a look at much more of this.

It’s a long and revealing interview.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly. He says quite a bit in there. One of the things you find out is he says he doesn’t think about Michael Brown. He hasn’t even read the Department of Justice report about the systemic racism in Ferguson. It’s really interesting because he kind of — the piece is meant to humanize him but, in a lot of ways, some of what he says brings up questions about his perspectives and his relations with the African-American community. At one point, he asks a fellow officer who helped train him for help in relating to some of the people in the community because he said he felt culture shock.

We’ll take a look at what he said. He asked Mike McCarthy, “Mike, I don’t know what I’m doing. This is a culture shock. Would you help me because you obviously have that connection, and you can relate to them? You may be white, but they respect you, so why can they respect you and not me?”

[11:15:26] Another thing Wilson says, as you mentioned, Kate, that he enjoyed policing in the African-American community because people there cracked him up. So he tries to paint this picture that he’s not a racist. At the same time, he goes on to say other things that many, including Michael Brown’s family, say kind of show that he has some prejudice. We’ll go to the other full screen now. He’s describing a blind mom in Ferguson apparently whose kids were running amok. He says they were causing trouble in the neighborhood. He said, “They ran all over the mom. They didn’t respect her, so why would they respect me?” He then goes on to say, “They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than — what I’m trying to say is the right culture, the better one to pick from.”

Now, the reporter wanted to find out if this was coded language, if this was somehow referring to race in kind of a subtle way. So the reporter pressed him. He said that Wilson struggled with an answer, going on to say, “Pre-gang culture where you’re just running in the streets, not worried about working in the morning, just worried about your immediate gratification.” And then he goes on to say, “It is the same younger culture that’s everywhere in the inner cities.”

Obviously, these quotes, the article, meant to humanize him, kind of bringing up more questions about his perspectives.

[SNIP]

The presstitute are still gunning for Darren Wilson.

Dragons’ Dragnet Ensnares Innocent Teen Boys

Criminal Injustice, Feminism, Gender, Sex

Feminists pushed for an all-out war on men as a class of oppressors. Be they innocent boys—hundred of thousands of them—or seasoned sex offenders; men have been swept up in this dragon’s dragnet. Now the dragons realize, belatedly, that these kids who have sex with other kids are their sons and grandsons; just hormonal, normal teens whose lives they’d helped wreck with ideologies that rape reality. CNN’s Kyra Phillips investigates how a nerdy teenage boy landed on the sex offender registry:

Zach Anderson is 19 and a typical teenager. He’s into computers and wants to build a career around his love for electronics.

But those plans and any semblance of a normal life are for now out the window. Under court order, he can’t access the Internet, go to a mall or linger near a school or playground. His parents say because he has a 15-year-old brother, he can’t even live at home any longer.

Why? He’s been placed on the sex offender registry after a dating app hookup.

It began, Zach and his family say, when he went on a racy dating app called “Hot Or Not.”

He was at his home in Elkhart, Indiana, when he met the girl, who lived across the state line in nearby southern Michigan.

The girl told Zach she was 17, but she lied. She was only 14, and by having sex with her, Zach was committing a crime. He was arrested and convicted.

He was given a 90-day jail sentence, five years probation and placed on both Indiana and Michigan’s sex offender registry for the next 25 years. …

My guess is that this feminist, one among many rabid reporters at CNN, may have some regrets, now that she has a son of her own. More.

UPDATED: Wonkette, AKA Ana Marie Cox, Waffles; IS Media Strumpet Apologizing?

Democrats, Journalism, Media, Morality

It’s not quite an apology for being part of the “the circle jerk of power brokers that is American journalism,” but it’s as close to expiation as one can expect from a professional ditz like Ana Marie Cox, aka “Wonkette Emerita”:

… The richness of our language about Trump as a man exposes the poverty of our analysis of him as a phenomenon. His refusal to go away exposes the superfluousness of our predictions. The churn of “Trump takes” is a real-time erosion of confidence in our ability to provide the only real service punditry provides: to make sense of what’s happening. His survival has shown how ephemeral narratives can be, and how permanent biases are. Our failure to adequately explain Trump, to tame him, reveals machinations and mistakes that usually go unnoticed. The Trump candidacy is the media’s ongoing hot mic moment. What we talk about when we talk about Trump is ourselves.

More verbal diarrhea (I think I’ve captured the gist of the litany).

IS this media strumpet apologizing to Trump supporters?