Well, the NARRATIVE Supports This, Of Course

I Didn't Believe It Was This Bad

Sexual assault and harassment is closer to the norm than decency is, it appears - at least in LeftyWorld. The blow-up quickly went from Hollywood males and their female enablers to Sacramento politicians, TV news, and now to NPR. Prior Lefty sex pervs include Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and of course gropy-Uncle-Joe Biden. Not to ignore establishment Republican George HW Bush who gropes from his wheelchair. And now it is released that Congress maintains a slush fund to pay off sexual assault accusers of Congress pervs as well. In fact, Congress passed a bill intended to protect Congressional pervs from the consequences of their perversions.

Well, what is to be expected when a nation rejects objective morality in favor of "if it feels good, do it" as the moral directive. For the Left it is power that feels good, because power enables all sorts of other abusive behaviors which "feel good" to the powerful, at the expense of their victims. And make no mistake, the Left craves power, goes insane when deprived of power, and immediately abuses the less powerful when they have it (never forget how ObamaCare got passed).

To mangle a phrase, "Power corrupts, especially when the corrupt seize power".

The Left has never been the "principled opposition"; not from the French Revolution, and not from the American pro-slavery Leftist. From the Democrat Party inception in 1828 to the present the Democrat focus has been suppression of dissent and Will To Power, both of which have been used through the violence of the KKK, Jim Crow, seditious terrorists, killers and bombers such as Bill Ayers, and now Antifa (the same as the German communists pre-WWII). But the internal violence against women by powerful Leftist men has been merely rumored until now. It does help explain the moral pass given to Muslims in their treatment of women.

The rumors of pedophilia are leaking faster out of Hollywood now, as more ex-child actors come forward. So how far will the pedophilia strain of virulent corruption extend? Clear to Congress and DC, probably. And starting with the Clintons and other riders on the "Lolita Express" to Pedophile Island.

Again, when morality is defenestrated, corruption of the heinous sort is guaranteed to follow. And that corruption is called the new morality.

A Lone Sane Voice: Victor Davis Hanson on the Smug Generation

Historian: The Hypocritical Statue Obsession of a ‘Smug Generation’
Victor Davis Hanson slams progressives who 'pick and choose their type of outrage for political purposes'

Military historian and political columnist Victor Davis Hanson said the “moral smugness” of this current generation allows it to “pick and choose their type of outrage for political purposes,” all the while adhering to a “double standard,” during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

In the aftermath of Saturday’s violent Charlottesville rally, Hanson, a Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno, pointed to the progressive liberal protesters increasingly clamoring for the removal of statues and monuments honoring Confederate soldiers and leaders. In Durham, North Carolina, a group of protesters toppled a Confederate statue Monday night, while other cities are calling for the removal of such statues.

"This generation has decided that it's the most moral and ethical in history and has the right to go back and pick winners and losers," Hanson said. "I think it's a progressive project in which they pick and choose their type of outrage for political purposes in the present."

The problem, however, is that these protesters and activists don't feel the need to apply the same filters and standards to themselves, he argued. When far-left Antifa activists or Black Lives Matter protesters repeatedly took to the streets calling for retaliation against police officers following high-profile shooting deaths of African-Americans, Hanson noted that such standards weren't applied to these groups.

"They all have this moral smugness, but it's not evenly applied and it doesn't apply to themselves," Hanson said. "This smug generation feels that human nature works like an app on their phone that has to be perfect. But I don't think that people who march in the street and say, 'Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em,' are the moral adjudicators of anything. And yet they think they are."

Hanson noted that many several prominent Confederate leaders did not personally support or condone slavery at the time of the Civil War, and yet because they fought for the South, this current generation views all Confederates as "100 percent bad."

"In other words, we give no room or no allowances that people are human and that they make mistakes in history's tragedy," he said. "It's not melodrama where we go back and judge people as a hundred percent good or a hundred percent bad. And yet that's what we're doing."

Hanson noted that the Left doesn't slime the memory of other icons and heroes because of imperfections in their life.

"Are we going to say that we can't honor Martin Luther King because he was known to be a little bit rough with women? Is that a sin that cancels out all the good that he did?" he asked.

"[The Left doesn't] have political power … but they, in recompense, they really exaggerate cultural influence," Hanson said, noting that the Left holds universities, the media, and Hollywood captive and "use that to counteract their political impotence."

"And they're very successful at it because they either force conservatives to apologize or to virtue-signal among one another who's the more moral or ethical or ready to concede a point," he added.

LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham brought up her sparring match Tuesday night with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News' "Special Report," in which the two clashed over President Donald Trump's Tuesday press conference.

The president had doubled down on his Saturday comments in which he blamed "many sides" for the violence in Charlottesville. On Monday, Trump specifically condemned "white supremacists" and "neo-Nazis." On Tuesday, he blamed both the Alt-Left and the Alt-Right for contributing to the violence.

Krauthammer dubbed Trump's Tuesday press conference "a moral disgrace," saying that Trump "reverted back to Saturday" and undermined his strong Monday statement because it wasn't really "in his heart."

Hanson said Krauthammer was applying a certain double standard to Trump.

"I agree that [Trump] should have said it earlier. But the fact is, he did say it, and I don't think it was because it wasn't in his heart," he responded. "I do think he's not a racist by any means. And I don't understand Charles Krauthammer, because after the policemen were killed by a racist sniper, people asked Barack Obama to condemn the type of movement that had led to that, the Black Lives Matter. And he said the problem was guns."

"And in Fort Hood, that person yelled 'Allahu Akbar' as he killed and mowed down and butchered 13 people. And Obama said, 'Let's not rush to judgment,'" Hanson added. "If Trump had said, rather than blaming both sides for the cycle of violence, 'Let's not rush to judgment,' people would have been outraged."

Hanson advised both the Never-Trumpers on the Right and the Never-Trumpers on the Left to "step back and see that people, for a variety of reasons, have a deep antipathy for Donald Trump, and that clouds their empirical judgment."
Ingraham and Krauthammer Clash Over Trump’s Rocky Press Conference

"A lot of people just can't get over that fact. And then they find out that the more that they automatically slander and smear Trump, the more that they feel they accrue virtue and acknowledgment, influence," Hanson said. "I think they're creating a landscape in which we all want to jump and damn Trump because they feel that, either career-wise or moral-wise or I don't know what-wise, but it makes us feel good. But we don't look at it empirically."

Hanson also jabbed Krauthammer, saying that the panelist "could have reminded people" that "Barack Obama invited a rapper to the White House [Kendrick Lamar], whose album that week came out with a dead white judge with his eyes x'd out with African-American rappers toasting his demise on the White House lawn."

"And no one said, 'Should the president of the United States be condoning or promoting a rapper who celebrates the murder of a judge?' And that was a racist thing, that album was abjectly racist," he said.

"But a lot of kids, our new generation, they look at that and they think, 'Wow, there's a double standard.' And nobody wants to say that because if you say that, then all of a sudden everything in your career, everything in your life, everything in your atmospherics — you pay a price for that," Hanson concluded. "And that is how brilliantly the Left has done."

When Your Morals Are A Huge Void

This is what results...

Caution: They Don't Mean YOUR Morals

Because the Left is predominantly Atheist (including faux Christians), their term, "morals" means just whatever they want it to mean, today, and today only. Tomorrow will be different, with all new moral imperatives to beat up the cis-Normal herd with. And no morals apply to themselves, either, as the past 3 months has shown. Their "morals" are their weaponized invention which is to be applied to cis-Normals with a heavy hand.

Weaponized Morality

Weaponized Morality

Indeed, the only people who actually do seem to believe the ideals underlying liberal democracy on their own terms are American conservatives, who are eternal losers that can serve only as gullible fools or controlled opposition.

This is not to say we are without idealism. We have a vision of hierarchy, of glory, of the upward path. But in what used to be our country, what should be sacred is cast in the dirt and what belongs in the gutter is trumpeted as an ideal. Our idealism is fueled by this terrible sense of betrayal, the raging fury that the institutions and figures who were supposed to secure our future have abandoned their responsibility and betrayed their duty.

Donald Trump, for all his faults, is a better man than anyone in the political class. Our own supposed leaders proudly boast they are plotting our deliberate destruction. The people who talk the most about “propriety” and “tone” are the same people who have unleashed death and chaos in pointless wars around the world.

“Morality?” Today, it’s just a shit test on a global scale, a public relations campaign, a marketing scam. To see a “Republican strategist” or a Beltway journalist pontificate about decorum is self-discrediting. To see the same people who celebrate the Folsom Street Fair suddenly clutch their pearls is revolting. It’s not about being “beyond good and evil” or denying standards. It’s about not falling for this same old con anymore.

Movement to Normalize Abnormality Targets Judge Roy Moore

It might have been funny when Tom Hanks did it on TV. That was then. But nowadays a cross-dressing homosexual is not funny. Take the case of "drag queen Ambrosia Starling", who is focusing his/her sights onto Judge Roy Moore.

Alabama drag queen is suspended chief justice's nightmare

"Wearing big hair, loads of makeup and high heels, small-town drag queen Ambrosia Starling is the new worst nightmare of suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Moore has called out Starling twice by name in recent days while defending himself against allegations of violating judicial canons with his opposition to same-sex marriage. During a news conference and in a written statement, Moore cited the cross-dressing entertainer as a reason he's at risk of losing his job for the second time since 2003.

That's fine with Starling, who helped lead an anti-Moore rally on the steps of the Alabama Supreme Court building in January. Opponents that day filled out more than 40 complaints against Moore, who already was the subject of other complaints and now faces removal from office if convicted of violating judicial ethics.

"If it takes a drag queen to remind you that liberty and justice is for all, here I am," Starling said Tuesday between sips of coffee.

Moore contends the effort to oust him is unfounded and politically motivated.

Born and raised in the southeast Alabama city of Dothan, Starling is a gay man who dresses up like a woman to perform drag shows. Most days, the 43-year-old Starling dresses like a male and goes to a regular job, referring to himself as "he."

But the entertainer prefers the pronoun "she" when dressed as Ambrosia Starling, a stage name for drag shows. Fearful of losing his day job or endangering others in a Deep South state where many gays still fear violence or discrimination, Starling agreed to an interview on the condition that only the stage name was used.

"I have a 71-year-old mother who lives with me that I have to worry about," Starling said. "Her well-being and safety is No. 1 for me."

Starling wore her drag outfit to that demonstration against Moore outside the Supreme Court five months ago. In a long blue dress and light-colored coat, Starling referred to Moore as a bigot and asked crowd members to submit complaints against Moore to the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission, which accused the Republican Moore of wrongdoing on Friday, resulting in his suspension.

The complaint filed by the Judicial Inquiry Commission accuses Moore of willfully failing to respect the authority of federal court decisions that cleared the way for gay marriage, which Moore opposes on the basis of faith and the law. He issued an administrative order to state probate judges in January that said state laws against gay marriage remained in place months after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized gay marriage nationwide."

This, like all of the Leftist assaults on western civilization, asks the question: "what sort of emotional abnormality does NOT supercede a state's right not to recognize it as having unlimited rights of behaviors and access?" There currently is no limit on the rights of abnormalities, except the hated religious rights of those hated religious people, who are now the minority abnormals (yet still the Oppressor Class) in the eyes of the messiahs of the Left. Those fundamental constitutional rights are eagerly abrogated at every turn of the Left's imagination. The First and Tenth Amendments mean nothing to those pimping the ascent of the perverse.

Tolerance Of Absolutely Everything, Except Dissent

UnAmerican ESPN

What a joy it must be to be a leftist knucklehead. There's your opinion — and then there's hate. There's free speech for all — except those who disagree with you. There's tolerance for everyone — except the opposition. There's every kind of diversity — except diversity of thought.

It's a terrific system. You never have to prove your point, you only have to bask in the glow of your own unassailable virtue. You never have to explain how it is that, after decades of pure left-wing governance, Detroit is in ruins and Chicago is following after. You never have to try to understand why, after living under your wonderful non-racist left-wing policies, black people are deserting your cities in droves. You never have to confront the fact that after years of Feminism Triumphant, women are killing themselves in record numbers. Every time reality proves you wrong, all you have to do is point your finger at a conservative and make that noise Donald Sutherland makes at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Then you all congratulate each other on a job well done and go back to laying ruin to the world.

Brand New Social Justice Hate Crime: Misgendering.

NYC Will Fine You $250,000 For ‘Misgendering’ A Transsexual

Did you call a transsexual person “he” or “she” when they preferred to be called “zhe?” According to a newly updated anti-discrimination law in New York City, you could be fined an eye-watering $250,000.

In the latest, astonishing act of draconian political correctness, the NYC Commission on Human Rights have updated a law on “Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression” to threaten staggering financial penalties against property owners who “misgender” employees or tenants.

Incidents that are deemed “wilful and malicious” will see property owners face up to $250,000 in fines, while standard violations of the law will result in a $125,000 fine. For small business owners, these sums are crippling.

It’s not as simple as referring to transmen “he” or transwomen as “she,” either. The legislation makes it clear that if an individual desires, property owners will have to make use of “zhe,” “hir” and any other preferred pronoun. From the updated legislation:

The NYCHRL requires employers and covered entities to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun and title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification. Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles.

Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir

Other violations of the law include refusing to allow individuals to use single-sex facilities such as bathrooms that are “consistent with their gender identity,” failing to provide employee health benefits for “gender-affirming care” and “imposing different uniforms or grooming standards based on sex or gender.”

Freaking insane. Punitive Progressive Totalitarianism. Legislating and protecting from butthurt.

Saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.

I have quoted the Qur'an; This is from the Old Testament:

13 For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.

14 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.

15 They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.

16 Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, “We will not walk in it.”

17 Also I raised up sentinels for you: “Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!” But they said, “We will not give heed.”

Jeremiah 6.

NYT Admits That US Government Social Engineering Backfired in Africa

U.S. Support of Gay Rights in Africa May Have Done More Harm Than Good

"Since 2012, the American government has put more than $700 million into supporting gay rights groups and causes globally. More than half of that money has focused on sub-Saharan Africa — just one indication of this continent’s importance to the new policy.

America’s money and public diplomacy have opened conversations and opportunities in societies where the subject was taboo just a few years ago. But they have also made gay men and lesbians more visible — and more vulnerable to harassment and violence, people on both sides of the gay rights issue contend. The American campaign has stirred misgivings among many African activists, who say they must rely on the West’s support despite often disagreeing with its strategies.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, the final passage of the 2014 law against homosexuality — which makes same-sex relationships punishable by 14 years in prison and makes it a crime to organize or participate in any type of gay meeting — is widely regarded by both supporters and opponents of gay rights as a reaction to American pressure on Nigeria and other African nations to embrace gay rights."

The Left's New American Slavery: H2 Visas

Bernie Sanders supported H2 Visa expansion: thinly veiled American slavery of foreign workers.

The New American Slavery:
Invited to the U.S., Foreign Workers Find a Nightmare

"Guest workers often toil in conditions that are unsafe, inhumane, or simply exhausting, wielding dangerous machinery beneath a scorching sun or standing for hours on end in sweltering factories. And at the end of their shift, many workers retire to grim, squalid quarters that might be little more than a grimy mattress on the floor of a crowded, vermin-infested trailer. For such housing, some employers charge workers extortionate rent.

Though it is against the law, employers often exert additional control over guest workers by confiscating their passports, without which many foreign workers, fearful of being deported, feel unsafe leaving the worksite. Some employers extend their influence over workers to extremes, screening their mail, preventing them from receiving visitors, banning radios and newspapers, or even coercing them to attend religious services they don’t believe in. Some foremen sexually harass female workers, who live in constant fear of losing their jobs and being deported.

The world has become accustomed in recent years to hearing of guest worker abuse in countries such as Qatar or Thailand. But this is happening in the United States. And the problem is not just a few unscrupulous employers. The very structure of the visa program enables widespread abuse and exploitation.

The way H-2 visas shackle workers to a single employer leaves them almost no leverage to demand better treatment. The rules also make it easy to banish a worker to her home country at the boss’s whim. And guest workers tend to be so poor — and, often, so indebted from the recruitment fees they paid to get the job in the first place — that they feel they have no choice but to endure even the worst abuses.

Court documents and interviews revealed numerous cases where workers who tried to speak out said they received threats to their lives. Many others claimed they were blacklisted by employers, losing the opportunity to get jobs that, however miserable, give them more money than they could earn in their own countries.

The government has been warned repeatedly over almost two decades that the guest worker program is deeply troubled, with more than a dozen official reports excoriating it for everything from widespread visa fraud to rampant worker abuse, and even calling for its elimination. Since 2005, Labor Department investigation records show, at least 800 employers have subjected more than 23,000 H-2 guest workers to violations of the federal laws designed to protect them from exploitation, including more than 16,000 instances of H-2 workers being paid less than the promised wage.

Those numbers almost certainly understate the problem, as the federal government doesn’t check up on the vast majority of companies that bring guest workers into this country. The Labor Department noted in its statement that it has limited resources, with only about 1,000 investigators to enforce protections for all 135 million workers in the U.S. Still, it said, it recovered more than $2.6 million in back wages owed to roughly 4,500 H-2 workers in the 2014 fiscal year. In that year, the agency said, it found violations in 82% of the H-2 visa cases it investigated.

Kalen Fraser, a former investigator for the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division who specialized in H-2 visa cases, said that while some companies stumble over complex rules, a substantial portion “maliciously” violate worker protection laws. “There’s a big power imbalance there, and the worst guys get away with everything.”

Atheism and the Culture Wars

Contrary to what any and probably every Atheist might claim, there is no such thing as a common set of “Atheist moral principles”. Atheism is purely a rejection of the source of morality and normative institutions for western culture. And the rejection is done without any logical argument or empirical evidence in support of that rejection, and it is thus not based in rational principles, but is merely rejectionism.

When an Atheist claims a set of moral principles, those principles are always those which the Atheist either creates for himself, or which the Atheist has co-opted from somewhere because those principles are compatible and congenial to himself. The Atheist is not stressed in any manner to meet his own specifications for his own behaviors. Whatever principles he adopts for himself are congruent with his existing behaviors, and further, the principles can be amended immediately when a different behavior is desired. What the Atheist does consider to be fixed and rigid are his principles for the behaviors of others who are not himself or his tribe. These are not to be violated or invalidated, and to do so will be met with righteous indignation suitable to the Atheist’s presumed moral superiority.

The rejection which characterizes Atheism extends to all worldview principles, including the principles of Truth. For the Atheist, any declaration of truth is subjective, regardless of its substance and validation, unless it is a truth uttered by the Atheist himself. This leads to the de facto declaration that “it is true that there is no truth”, which under traditional, Aristotelian and Enlightenment thought is a self-refuting, paradoxical fallacy. But for the Atheist, for whom truth is not so determined, it is easily accepted as a First Principle.

There being no truth, hence there are no lies; and there is also neither good nor evil, except that which is so designated by the Atheist. There is nothing new about this; it was fully explored by Friedrich Nietzsche well over a century ago, and is fully explained in his book, “Beyond Good and Evil”. It is not an arbitrary declaration which he makes; it is an inevitable condition of Atheism.

”But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson; Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” 1791.

Atheism is more than a mere rejection of the culture and norms of western civilization. It is also a simultaneous rejection of logic and morality, neither of which the Atheist wants applied to himself. Because the Atheist sees onerous restriction on himself by such logic and morality, he must reject everything which attaches to either. So logic and morality, having been rejected, must be inverted in order to avoid them in their standard forms. That is the genesis of Leftism, the rejection of Enlightenment principles.

“When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was false”.
Samuel Johnson, quoting Goldsmith; “Boswell’s ‘Life of Samuel Johnson’”, 1791.

To be sure not all Atheists are Leftists, although most of them are. Christopher Hitchens was the standard bearer for non-Leftist Atheism. But what we see in common between them is the strident illogic with which both sides are afflicted due to their basic, same rejectionism of all prior normative standards.

Atheists usually respond, “You don’t know anything about Atheism”, and that right after (or before) having claimed that “Atheism is nothing but a lack of belief”, which itself is a claim of several facets: first, notice that there is no claim of morality attached to the “lack of belief”. Next, notice that they will not admit to having rejected any contrary arguments or evidence, which is because they don’t want to defend their own lack of arguments and evidence as well as find themselves required to use actual logic and/or science in their own defense of their rejections. In fact, the “lack of belief” concept is perfectly extensible to all “onerous” forms of “repressive” institutions which are rejected without rational cause.

Rejectionism extends to Free Thought, as well. Free Thought is anything but free; it is the Hegelian antithesis of free. Free Thought is just a name for a particular dogma. Free thinkers do not accept much thought at all, certainly not if it does not conform to their self-derived principles. The dogmatism of Free Thought is obvious and palpable. Normative cultural principles are not even acceptable topics for Free Thinkers except as objects of ridicule and hatred.

Which brings us to normative cultural principles and their treatment by Atheists, Leftists and Free Thinkers.

The primary normative cultural principle under attack today is the principle of “tolerance”, originally the Voltairian principle of defending the right to disagree, no matter to what degree. As they commonly do, the Atheist, Leftist, Free Thinkers use the word in an inverted fashion. What tolerance means to them is that all of their antics, regardless of the extent of purposeful insanity and provocation, must be tolerated to the point that those antics are the New Norm, fully accepted by everyone without exception. This naturally morphs into a moral position, and the contrary of that moral position (dissent) becomes the only evil known to the Atheist, Leftist, Free Thought self-designated moral policing juggernaut. Dissent must be eradicated by the defenders of the New Morality. These view themselves as Messiahs who are morally obligated to produce salvation through purges. And all prior normative institutions and their subscribers qualify is being purgeable as opportunity presents. Tolerance, the Votairian version, is swamped by self-righteous assertion of censorship.

Which brings us to the concept of “Free exercise of religion”, a phrase so potent and incorruptible that has had to be changed – to “freedom of worship”, the new Leftist term which conceptually is far different. Those afflicted with allegiance to the prior normative institutions and their meanings are now confronted with having to worship only as they are allowed, under “positive liberties” to worship, namely where such worship does not make the Atheists and Leftists physically ill and cause lawsuits such as the dozens of “cross” lawsuits filed by the FFRF, in the attempt to destroy by bankruptcy those who dissent from the all new cultural progress.

Thus the corruption of the language of moral principles, starting with corruption of the concept of tolerance into intolerance, and moving into the corruption of any other principle at the whim of the Atheist/Leftist, becomes the driving provocation of culture war, the war to eliminate all prior notions of morality and logic and to obtain total assent to the new inversions.

The second response to this revelation is always, “that’s not true”, “you are deluded”, and other useless denials. Notice that the response is never one of accommodation in the form of actual tolerance. Nor is there any logic, grounded and testable argument presented, nor are there any empirical experimental results presented. That is because they have none, and they know they have none.

If Atheists could refute all of this using science and logic, they would. But they can’t and they don’t, because their faith in science is a fallacy – ideological Scientism – and their use of logic is inverted into self-refutations. So what they resort to, again, is merely intellectual intransigence: the avoidance by redefining who they are, into who they are not: holders of non-beliefs.

Boswell: “He is totally unfixed in his principles, and wants to puzzle other people. I said his principles had been poisoned by an infidel writer, but that he was, nevertheless, a benevolent, good man.
Johnson: ”We can have no dependence upon that instinctive, that constitutional goodness which is not founded on principle. I grant you that such a man may be a very amiable member of society. I can conceive him placed in such a situation that he is not much tempted to deviate from what is right; and as every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts, I can conceive of him doing nothing wrong. But if such a man stood in need of money, I should not like to trust him; and I should certainly not trust him with young ladies, for there is always temptation. Hume and other skeptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food for their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. ”
Samuel Johnson; Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson”

Weaponized Sexual Abuse Law

Megan McArdle:

'Affirmative Consent' Will Make Rape Laws Worse

"The "tough on crime" posture is going out of style, even on the right, except when the crime in question is rape. Advocates complain that it is too hard to lock up predators. And so, according to Judith Shulevitz, the American Law Institute, an influential, invitation-only body that publishes model codes and other suggestions for legal reforms, has been considering how we could make the law harsher.

Here is a hypothetical that some concerned members of the group have raised:

Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B’s hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint. Person A is guilty of ‘Criminal Sexual Contact’ under proposed Section 213.6(3)(a).

Okay, we can all agree that this is nutty. But as Shulevitz goes on to point out, this is what happens when you combine two principles designed to make it easier to prosecute sexual assault: affirmative consent and "enlarged definition of criminal sexual contact that would include the touching of any body part, clothed or unclothed, with sexual gratification in mind." The result is that "if Person B neither invites nor rebukes a sexual advance, then anything that happens afterward is illegal."

Defenders of the thinking behind this proposal might say no prosecutor is going to bring such a silly case, but that's the opposite of comforting. Who would pass a law intended to be unenforced in almost every case? It's eerily totalitarian: a sort of blanket mandate convenient for targeting undesirables and threatening suspects.

Prosecutors often add minor crimes to major ones, like forcible rape, then pressure people to plead down to the less serious charge when there's not enough to convict on the more serious crime. Juries may be willing to convict on any charge, if they think the accused is a bad guy who probably did something (and let's not forget how often race and class play into assuming someone is "a bad guy who probably did something").

Moreover, as I've pointed out before, the legal process itself can easily become a punishment. That's why courts have a lot of procedures to weed out frivolous lawsuits and prosecutions. But under the proposed standards, these charges will not be frivolous; the behavior, however common or hard to prove, will in fact be against the law.

In fact, I'm struggling to know how a man (or a woman) could ever be fully sure that they were not breaking the law. Even affirmative consent can, after all, presumably be withdrawn at any time -- without a clear "no," under the prevailing thinking about affirmative consent. I'm reminded of a joke about a hypochondriac going to the doctor because he's worried about a silent heart attack, which is to say, a heart attack with no symptoms. The doctor runs a bunch of tests and says: "You're fine, sir. I did all the tests, and you haven't had a silent heart attack." The patient looks at him and says: "Yeah, but what about now? I still have no symptoms." If silence does not signal consent, does it signal consent has been revoked? You see the mess this approach creates."

This is not a response to factual rape statistics; it is driven by Leftist feminist hatred of men... and the lesbian control of the both the narrative and the physical, legal war theory which all of the Left is obliged to obey or be expelled from the Leftist tribe.

This will not be stopped until one power lesbian charges another power lesbian under this totalitarian legal warfare law. But of course that is not RAPE-rape, under the Leftist code for themselves.

Finally Recognizing That It Is, In Fact, War

In case you haven't paid attention for the past quarter century:

Welcome To Culture War 4.0: The Coming Overreach

"For those Americans who hoped the culture wars would finally end, the month of June reminded us they’re just getting started.

Within hours of the Supreme Court’s resolution of the battle over same-sex marriage—the triumph of a generation of gay-rights activists—some were already calling for further steps to take tax exemptions away from churches, use anti-discrimination laws to target religious non-profits, and crack down on religious schools’ access to voucher programs. We learned media entities would no longer publish the views of those opposed to gay marriage or treat it as an issue with two sides, and the American Civil Liberties Union announced it would no longer support bipartisan religious-freedom measures it once backed wholeheartedly. A reality TV star pushed the transgender rights movement into the center of the national dialogue even as Barack Obama’s administration used its interpretation of Title IX to push its genderless bathroom policies into public schools. And we learned that pulling Confederate merchandise off the shelves isn’t enough to mitigate the racism of the past—we must bring down statues and street signs, too, destroying reminders of history now deemed inconvenient and unsafe.

On college campuses and in the workplace, across mass media and social media, for American celebrities and private citizens, every comment, act, or joke can make you the next target for a ritual of daily attack by outraged Twitter mobs. It is now an unavoidable fact of life that giving money to the wrong cause, making a “clumsy attempt at humor,” or taking the wrong side on a celebrity, religious debate, or magazine cover can lead to threats of violent death, end your career in an instant, or make you the most hated person in America for 15 minutes—longer if you bungle the apology.

Whether you care about the culture war or not, it cares about you."

And there is this:

"But the test of liberty isn’t what happens to people who agree with the intent of a particular edict. The test is what happens to people who disagree.

That brings us to the reason why gay rights advocates insisted on the government granting same-sex unions the title of “marriage.” The theory behind this was that homosexuals suffer from a lack of social acceptance, and gay marriage would put the government’s imprimatur on their status as social equals—along with the promise that this equality is to be backed by government force.

The theory behind gay marriage, in short, was the theory behind the entire secular left: society and the state are the all-powerful forces on which the life of the individual depends, and the most important political task—indeed, the most important task in life—is getting this irresistible power on your side. Once you gain social and political power, you hold on to it by making your preferred views mandatory, a catechism everyone must affirm, while suppressing all heretical views. In this case, to gain social acceptance of homosexuality, you make the affirmation of gay marriages mandatory while officially suppressing any dissenting religious views.

Hence, the Secular Inquisition, which we should have expected all along."

Politico Immediately Primes the Pump for Polygamy

With homosexuality normalized, protected with extra punishment, and now dictated by judicial fiat to usurp marriage as a moral institution, the next horizon for the SJWs is, as some have predicted, polygamy. According to the Leftists on SCOTUS, its all about love and not wanting to be lonely. The obvious solution to loneliness is marriage in the eyes of the state. The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution is no barrier to Leftist "feelies" and feelguud legislation by the court. Most of the declared SCOTUS feelguuds would apply also to anybody who loves anybody else, regardless of the quantities or genders involved, and maybe regardless of whether "anybody else" is even human. I fully expect a group wedding between a large consortium of SJWs and Gaia, with tax breaks for all. But for now, it's just polygamy:

"It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy

Why group marriage is the next horizon of social liberalism.

"Welcome to the exciting new world of the slippery slope. With the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this Friday legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states, social liberalism has achieved one of its central goals. A right seemingly unthinkable two decades ago has now been broadly applied to a whole new class of citizens. Following on the rejection of interracial marriage bans in the 20th Century, the Supreme Court decision clearly shows that marriage should be a broadly applicable right—one that forces the government to recognize, as Friday’s decision said, a private couple’s “love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family."

With the removal of morality, common sense as well as any constitutional restrictions on the SCOTUS justices, there is no longer any limitation at all, outside of whatever the justices create for the Law Of The Land. The "love" argument should apply equally to all, shouldn't it? If you claim "love", then you qualify... to marry your brother and grandma and her goat, with marriage privileges all around.

The "love" argument can easily be combined with the "tolerance" argument in order to weaponize this type of slogan-lawmaking against dissent. It's already got a fair grip, and it won't take much to turn "free exercise of religion" into "free exercise of love and tolerance of all prior abominations without exception, or else: hate crime". And that's already underway on large portions of the web, with dissent by the justices not approving the gay's judicial legislation being labelled as hate criminals:

"Justice Scalia Is a Homophobe

By BARNEY FRANK

June 26, 2015"

The execrable Barny Frank is a perfect example of homosexual egregiousness, scofflaw attitudes, and intolerance. And he is always in the vanguard of desecration and destruction which homosexual activists and the "progressive" Left wish upon the USA. It should not be mistaken that they are in the business of advancing freedoms; they are in the business of tearing down uncomfortable civilized behavior restrictions which they don't like, in order to allow and even ennoble destructive behaviors which they do like. They see themselves as elite iconoclasts. All that needs be done is to redefine the ignoble behaviors as normal yet noble, and dissenters as ignoble X-ophobes (suddenly "mentally disordered" without any logic to, or recourse in, their Class designation). This is cynically done in order to both eviscerate dissent and to reverse the charge of mental illness which actually applies to the deviant behaviors of homosexuals and not to heterosexuals (or those who defend heterosexuality as normal).

I think this war is not over; it is just heating up. Whites, heterosexuals, Christians and conservatives, as well as logic and morality have been under attack from the Obama administration and SCOTUS for a long time, and all their targets have tolerated it... so far. We'll see where it goes from here.

Truly Insane

The Left usually lies quite well about its actual core beliefs, which means that actions must be abserved instead of listening to them. But sometimes their core slips right out of their mouths as well.

CNN Anchor Refers to Dallas Gunman’s Actions as ‘Courageous and Brave’

"During a discussion on the Dallas Police headquarters shooting this afternoon, CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield appears to have really misspoken in referring to the gunman’s actions as “courageous and brave.”

Whitfield was speaking to CNN legal analyst Philip Holloway when she said this:

“It was very courageous and brave, if not crazy as well, to open fire on the police headquarters, and now you have this scene, this standoff. So you believe these are the hallmarks of more than one person’s involvement.”

We have reached out to CNN for comment."

For the Left, it's guns that kill people, not people. So she's talking about characteristics of the guns, which in the minds of the Left are sentient agents. Perhaps in this specific case, however, the person holding the gun (thereby enabling the gun to do what it wanted to do) was brave in enabling the gun. Either way, the targeted police are obviously the enemy of both the courageous and brave gun and its enabler. I know that some pressure cookers are courageous and brave sentient agents as well, as evidenced in the Boston marathon bombing, where the pressure cooker sacrificed itself valorously. Perhaps it will get 72 virgin saucepans in heaven...

Death of Monogamy

WashPost Promotes the 'Evolution' of 'Forsaking Monogamy'

"Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey’s beat is the Internet. But her big piece on the front page of Wednesday’s Style section is about something broader: “Forsaking monogamy: The evolution of relationships has made affairs less clandestine and less combustive. And of course there are Web sites to help match tryst-seekers.”

This being the Post, there is no space for critics of the "evolution" of online adultery Web sites or their users. Dewey promoted the “non-monogamous dating site Open Minded,” where her married female subject, Jessie, advertised, “I’m into building deep and loving relationships that add to the joy and aliveness of being human.” She talked her husband into “ethical non-monogamy.”

The Post also used the term “monogamish,” the cutesy term of radical gay sex columnist Dan Savage to describe the married-but-cheating lifestyle.

The online headline was “Are new dating apps killing monogamy? Or has it always been dead?” Dewey pushed (B). Or monogamy is an old “agricultural” tradition that’s fading away in the modern age. Adultery is the new mainstream, according to Open Minded founder Brandon Wade:

Open Minded is a new kind of dating site for a newly mainstream lifestyle: one in which couples form very real attachments, just not exclusively with each other. He expects swingers, polysexuals and experimental 20-somethings to use his site. But he guesses that most of his 70,000 users are people like Jessie: Those in committed, conventional relationships, who realize that, statistically speaking, few modern couples stay with a single person their whole lives.

“If you look at marriage, it developed as a survival strategy and a means of raising kids,” Wade said. “But relationships are no longer a necessary component of life. People have careers and other interests — they can survive without them.”

That’s not wrong, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and one of the world’s leading relationship researchers. In the caveman days, humans teamed up in non-exclusive pairs to protect their children. Later, as people learned to plant crops and settle in one place, marriage became a way for men to guarantee kids, and for women — who couldn’t push heavy plows or carry loads of crops to market — to eat and keep a roof over their heads....

In fact, given the history and prevalence of non-monogamous relationships throughout cultures, it’s not scientifically correct to say the human species mates or pairs for life. Dogs mate for life. Beavers mate for life. Humans have one-night stands, paramours and a 50 percent divorce rate.

Fisher dubs it a “dual reproductive strategy”: We’re biologically programmed to form pair-bonds, yes, but some people — many people — are also programmed to seek out variety.

So, if you stay true to your spouse, you’re more like a dog or a beaver than a human. To the Post, this is about empowering the ladies, not the men..."

The destruction of monogamy began in the '70s with no-fault divorce which allowed people to marry with the knowledge that they could get out without too much trouble. Marriage went from irrevokable to revokable overnight, and has been losing ground as a viable institution ever since. The main problem is that government got involved, and removed the institution from a religious contract basis to a purely legal basis. Possibly there should be two separately understood institutions, legal marriage for governmental purposes (regulation of first cousins, taxes, visitation and inheritance), and the different but equal institution of matrimony, which is a three way contract with a deity.

BECAUSE #DIVERSITY!:

From Instapundit:

And, you know, #tolerance! A thought police diversity officer at Goldsmiths, University of London has once again revealed the modern progressive movements’ ugly, racist core. I wrote about Bahar Mustafa’s nasty “no white males allowed” event at the university before. In response to the outrage Mustafa’s previous comments triggered, she now defends herself thus:

I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men, because racism and sexism describes structures of privilege based on race and gender.

And therefore women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist because we do not stand to benefit from such a system.

In order for our actions to be deemed racist or sexist, the current system would have to be one that enables only people of colour and women to benefit economically and socially on such a large scale and to the systematic exclusion of white people and men, who for the past 400 years would have to have been subjected to block colonisation.

We do not live in such a system, we do not know of such a history, reverse racism and reverse sexism are not real.

There, there, sweetie–it’s okay. It’s those big, mean, privileged white men who are the racists, not you!

I’ll give Ms. Mustafa some credit: At least she is being forthright about the contents of the rotten, festering, racist and sexist cavity where her brain would normally be.

If you are a full-bore Messianic Class Savior, you cannot have any faults; Messiahs are without sin. They will explain that to you.

Deconstructing Erdely, Rolling Stone, and Messianic-Culture-War-as-Journalism

The web is chock-a-block with analyses of the now infamous Erdely-RS-JackieRape Debacle. The fact that this has hit the big time is significant in the continuing culture war.  The Social Justice Warriors have demonstrated that no matter how seriously they lose, no matter how seriously their irrationality is revealed and broadcast to the world, they are still righteous, still correct thinkers, still saviors and messiahs in charge of salvation of their Victimhood Classes.

 

The following, by Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review, is excerpted from a good overview:

"The harshest charge that one can level against Erdely and her associates at Rolling Stone is that they knew full well that their story was full of holes, but that they considered their political objectives to be of greater value than were the facts in question. (When Sabrina Erdely proposes bizarrely in her “apology” that her job is to “weigh my compassion against my journalistic duty to find the truth,” she opens herself up to this charge.) The softest assessment, by contrast, is the one that was offered by Coll himself: namely, that the “main fault” of those involved with the deception was that they were “too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault.” 

 

Ostensibly, these options seem to be a world apart; in truth they are merely different sides of the same coin. Even if we suspend our disbelief and give Erdely an extremely generous benefit of the doubt – if we assume, that is, that she made all of her mistakes in a good-faith attempt to spare the feelings of her source – we will still come up against a considerable institutional problem: that being that whether or not they are setting out to deliberately mislead their audiences, journalists writing about claims of rape are operating under rules of engagement that have been set by zealots. Certainly, it is feasible that Erdely is a conscious fabulist, in the mold of her classmate at UPenn, Stephen Glass. It is possible, too, that she was genuinely taken in by Jackie, and that she intended only to do right by her. And yet, here’s the thing: It doesn’t especially matter which one is true. Ultimately, it is downright impossible to divorce Erdely’s conduct from the cultural pathologies that informed it. At UVA, at Rolling Stone, and within the media in general, the malleable specter of “rape culture” is prompting good people to behave like fools.

 

Over the last decade or so, we have witnessed the rise of a political movement that hopes to set the investigation and punishment of sexual assault outside of the limitations that are imposed by respect for due process, for rational inquiry, and for common intellectual decency. By and large, this movement is populated by people who despise the truth if it contradicts the narrative; who regard evidence and process as tools of oppression; who interpret skepticism and questioning as acts of hostility; and who, at least as it relates to “rape culture,” consider unthinking credulity as a virtue and not a vice. Think back, if you dare, to the first few weeks of the scandal – more specifically, to the point at which a handful of skeptics began to ask penetrating questions about Sabrina Erdely’s account — and ask yourself what happened to the dissenters. Were they thanked for their contributions, or were they screamed at, mercilessly? 

 

The answer, sadly, is the latter. In the Washington Post, Zerlina Maxwell argued that “we should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser [of rape] says,” for “the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.” This view was seconded by the lawyer and journalist Rachel Sklar, who confirmed for posterity that she considers “women who speak of their own experiences” to be automatically “credible,” and anybody who asks questions to be a rape apologist. On Twitter, meanwhile, Slate’s Amanda Marcotte concluded that anybody who has questions about a given account must by definition be engaged in a dastardly attempt to demonstrate that no rape stories are ever true, while CNN’s Sally Kohn grew angry at Jonah Goldberg when he asked for more evidence. Perhaps the best example of the all-zetetics-are-heretics presumption came from the remarkably ungracious Anna Merlan, who rewarded Reason’s Robby Soave for his investigative work by throwing an epithet at him: “idiot.”

 

Now, none of this is to say that Sabrina Erdely is not responsible for her own mistakes. Clearly, had she and her colleagues followed the established rules of journalism, they would not be in this position. But it is worth noting that, by so steadfastly refusing to do her due diligence, Erdely was in fact behaving exactly as a good portion of the “social justice” Left believes is proper. Her initial instinct — to find and to trump up a story in order to illustrate a supposedly broad problem — was that of the frustrated activist who, irked that his favorite injustice is not getting the attention that he just knows that it deserves, takes it upon himself to invent or to overstate or to falsely peddle a dramatic tale that will garner the requisite amount of attention and change the world for the better. Her methodology — more specifically, her failure to properly investigate her primary source for fear of vexing her or of “discouraging” other victims — has been widely endorsed by a good number of feminist commentators. Even her apology — such as it was — followed a classic path: To wit, “I’m sorry for getting the details wrong, but I hope you won’t think this means it wasn’t true.” 

 

Taking up this lattermost point, the lawyer Scott Greenfield observed today that Erdely has “not only failed to apologize to those she wrongfully smeared in her story, but used it as a vehicle to further promote the very cause that blinded her from truth.” He is correct. Indeed, the most notable feature of this whole saga has been the “rape apology” crowd’s spectacular unwillingness to recognize that there were two potentially bad outcomes here, not just one. It would, of course, have been terrible if Jackie’s story were true but nobody believed her. But it would also have been awful if the charges were untrue and the alleged perpetrators had been unfairly maligned. That it never crossed the minds of the howling mob that their targets may in fact be innocent — and, indeed, that Sabrina Erdely cannot bring herself to apologize to those whose lives she has damaged — is perhaps the most worrying, and illiberal, thing of all."

[Emphasis added]

Intellectual integrity is the first to be jettisoned from the Social Justice "journalist's" procedural principles. It is a WAR, after all, and principled behaviors get in the way of fighting. But even before that, the objectives of the war - the targets - must be defined outside the bounds of rational thought, and with actual evidence fully ignored. For Messiahs, the war and its targets are defined ideologically first, and then given "immoral" attributions as necessary in order to justify the Messianic warfare and the mob rule.

They will not, cannot, ever apologize for being Messiahs, nor for any consequentialist tactics used in their Messianic wars. To do so would strip them of their very self-anointed identities. And being stripped before the world, with their morally vacant, intellectual emptiness revealed would destroy them, leaving them no self-identity at all. So it cannot be allowed to happen. Because morally vacant, intellectually empty is precisely the sum total of who they are.

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

"Erdely and her editors had hoped their investigation would sound an alarm about campus sexual assault and would challenge Virginia and other universities to do better. Instead, the magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations. (Social scientists analyzing crime records report that the rate of false rape allegations is 2 to 8 percent.) At the University of Virginia, “It’s going to be more difficult now to engage some people … because they have a preconceived notion that women lie about sexual assault,” said Alex Pinkleton, a UVA student and rape survivor who was one of Erdely’s sources.

There has been other collateral damage. “It’s completely tarnished our reputation,” said Stephen Scipione, the chapter president of Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity Jackie named as the site of her alleged assault. “It’s completely destroyed a semester of our lives, specifically mine. It’s put us in the worst position possible in our community here, in front of our peers and in the classroom.”

The university has also suffered. Rolling Stone’s account linked UVA’s fraternity culture to a horrendous crime and portrayed the administration as neglectful. Some UVA administrators whose actions in and around Jackie’s case were described in the story were depicted unflatteringly and, they say, falsely. Allen W. Groves, the University dean of students, and Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean of students, separately wrote to the authors of this report that the story’s account of their actions was inaccurate. [Footnote 3]

In retrospect, Dana, the managing editor, who has worked at Rolling Stone since 1996, said the story’s breakdown reflected both an “individual failure” and “procedural failure, an institutional failure. … Every single person at every level of this thing had opportunities to pull the strings a little harder, to question things a little more deeply, and that was not done.”

Yet the editors and Erdely have concluded that their main fault was to be too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault. Social scientists, psychologists and trauma specialists who support rape survivors have impressed upon journalists the need to respect the autonomy of victims, to avoid re-traumatizing them and to understand that rape survivors are as reliable in their testimony as other crime victims. These insights clearly influenced Erdely, Woods and Dana. “Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting,” Woods said. “We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice.”

Erdely added: “If this story was going to be about Jackie, I can’t think of many things that we would have been able to do differently. … Maybe the discussion should not have been so much about how to accommodate her but should have been about whether she would be in this story at all.” Erdely’s reporting led her to other, adjudicated cases of rape at the university that could have illustrated her narrative, although none was as shocking and dramatic as Jackie’s.

Yet the explanation that Rolling Stone failed because it deferred to a victim cannot adequately account for what went wrong. Erdely’s reporting records and interviews with participants make clear that the magazine did not pursue important reporting paths even when Jackie had made no request that they refrain. The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie’s position."