Note that additional essays plus several letters have been added since this essay was first posted. The correspondence with Joe the Skinhead was originally included in this file, but became so voluminous that it had to be placed in a separate file HERE.
As The World's Most Controversial Author, I spend most of my time contemplating questions of race and ethnicity, primarily those about Jews. I rarely touch the subject of sex, and then usually only in conjunction with my main subject; and even more rarely do I touch the subject of kiddie sex. In fact, except for one article entitled "Adult-Child Sex: What's Wrong With It?" which appears in my book Bryant's Law and Other Broadsides, I have not written on kiddie sex at all. In the online catalog of my books, however, I list a number of articles from Bryant's Law including the one on adult-child sex, and this has apparently served as grist for a rumor mill that has produced some remarkable public statements from the Chattering Classes -- the gnomes of the Net's forums, bulletin boards and other back alleys -- including the following:
* "Birdman's not too popular here because of his amoral posture on other issues, such as advocating - or at least condoning - child sex." (Quoted by Ellen, secretary to Jeff Rense of rense.com, from an unstated source, probably Stormfront)
* John Bryant is a member of Tampa Bay Mensa and American Mensa, Ltd. However, TBM wishes the casual web-surfer to understand that neither TBM nor AML in any way condones Mr. Bryant's long-standing and frequently bruited opinions favoring (for example) adult sex with children, the separation of the races, and rape, or against (for example) Judaism, liberalism, tolerance, or the imaginary "Illuminati conspiracy." (From the 'Warning' page of the Tampa Bay Mensa website that intervenes between the Member Sites page and my own.)
Needless to say, there is no citation in any of these squibs of my actual views -- no citation, because I have not placed my views on this subject on the Net, as far as I can recall. But NOT posting my views seems to be a hot-rod engine for GENERATING statements of my views -- an amazing feature of human communication which is no doubt the subject of exhaustive psychological analysis in some hefty academic tome.
But because the subject of kiddie sex keeps popping up -- indeed, I was asked about it by a TV reporter several years ago when I was being interviewed during one of the several public flaps that has occurred over my practice of feeding pigeons -- and because it seems to be one surrounded by considerable emotionalism, I have decided to actually give a statement of my views and place it permanently on the Net. I realize, of course, that it is far too late to stop the negatively-charged axe-grinders, the turkey gobblers and the other Creatures of the Blog Lagoon, but at least it will give me the satisfaction of seeing my views stated correctly, with the hope that they may sometimes be quoted, and occasonally used as a hammer to pound down the Mindless Munchkins that keep the rumor mills agrind.
To begin, let me first say what I am NOT going to say, namely, repeat the article on adult-child sex which appears in Bryant's Law. If the reader wants to know what I said there, he is free to obtain the book and read it. (FYI, Mike Gunderloy, founder and editor of the popular perodical Factsheet Five, called this article the fairest and best treatment of the subject he had ever seen.) You can also read my book Mortal Words, which has a number of quotations from this article in the chapter on sex.
So with the above preliminaries out of the way, here are my real, valid and officially-certified views on kiddie sex:
As I characterized it several years ago in a contribution to an article in the official publication of the Libertarian Party, LP News, libertarianism is the view that the government should stay the hell out of our bedrooms, our medicine cabinets and our pocketbooks. As a libertarian, my basic view on adult-child sex is the libertarian one: The question of what a child does sexually or with whom he does it should be a matter for the parents to decide, and not the State. From this, of course, the Creatures from the Blog Lagoon have lept to the conclusion that I 'endorse' it or at least 'condone' it, but this of course is a non-sequitur. What I am speaking of in characterizing my view as libertarian is not about my personal likes or dislikes for adult-child sex, but rather about the question of HOW THE MATTER IS TO BE DECIDED. (Yes, Vagina, there is a difference!) And in their conclusion-jumping, the Creatures have ignored the other side of the coin altogether, namely, that to have the government regulating the activities of one's bedroom is fascism of the worst sort -- a Big Brotherism that perfectly matches the Telescreen nightmare of Orwell's 1984. This, of course, would enable me -- should I desire it -- to jump to the conclusion that my critics are fascists -- and indeed, many of them are -- but I rather suspect that the real problem is that they just haven't thought the matter thru, and that, because they don't like adult-child sex (or say they don't, anyway -- tho a surprising number of hakenkreutzers have been homosexuals, who have somewhat of a reputation for liking kiddie sex), they immediately draw the conclusion that the State should make it illegal.
But if it is up to the parents to decide, then what decision do I think they ought to make? Obviously this is completely a matter of personal taste, but let me just state the obvious: Nature has arranged things so that people are sexually attracted to others only at the 'proper time' (after puberty), which means that nature pretty well takes care of things, and we really don't need to worry much about it.
This, however, runs up against some pretty hefty opinions from both liberal and conservative sides. The conservatives, for example, demand that kids remain virgins till marriage -- generally thought to be some time after the man has set up a thriving career -- and until that time, parents should bind the hands of their kids to the bedposts so they will not be in danger of 'touching themselves'. In my view, however, that is pure BS -- when kids achieve puberty, that may be just the time to let them set up households or other sexual relations, since it would go far in alleviating the mind-bending difficulties of teenagehood (and the existence of teenage hoods), and would reduce the stress of the generation gap by getting Junior and Missy the hell out of the house. As for keeping the brats in school, most education is redundant and constitutes wasted effort; and as for the kids who can use it, let them have scholarships, or simply give them a library card and some free time.
As for the liberals, we have the Talmudists, who think that adult-child sex is just fine as long as the kid is at least 3 years of age, and we have the better-known but more conservative Rene Guyon society, whose motto is 'Sex before 8 or else it's too late.' Now we have to admit that these sexual prescriptions sound pretty bizarre in terms of what we are accustomed to, and indeed to what even most LIBERALS are accustomed to; but we also have to admit that nothing is really known about early-age sex, because not many do it, and those who do it don't usually talk about it because of the penalties involved. If we follow the libertarian directive, however, there would undoubtedly be some parents who would permit adult-child sex, and this, then, might eventually permit some informed conclusions about the good or evil of this practice. My guess is that we would discover that Nature was wisest after all, but it is nonetheless possible that we would discover some things that just might knock conventional opinions for a loop.
Which brings us to the matter of kid-kid sex, a phenomenon which has always been around in one form or another, but is now starting to draw attention as a result of highly-sexualized negroes in a highly-sexualized and racially-integrated society showing their true colors among their white comrades. But there is no need to blame everything on diversity, since all kids whose growth is not excessively stunted by four-fucks-a-year mothers and maiden-aunt teachers engage in sex play with their comrades when they can find a free moment behind the barn. And while I cannot say that I know much about kid-kid sex, I do find it interesting that the one major contribution by negroes to the English vocabulary is 'mother-fucker', since this may be an indicator not only of what kids can do, but of what mothers are WILLING to do. And if mothers do it, you can be pretty sure that the fathers do too; and if the mothers and fathers are doing it with the kids, it is not far to find that the kids are doing it with each other.
In reflecting on the matter of kiddie sex, it seems clear that much of the problem, so called, is that our society suffers -- like all societies -- from being culture-bound, so that anything which is beyond the pale of cultural normality is seen as obscene. I say this because there have been other cultures in which kiddie sex has been part of the norm -- in ancient Greece, and in present-day India, to name just two. In addition, there seems to be a worldwide subculture of kiddie sexers, if the regular trickle of porn busts, priestly pokery, and reports from such investigators as John DeCamp and Jon Rappoport, and victims such as Cathy O'Brien, are to be believed. Even Nabokov's Lolita must have appealed to a segment of the American heartland, if its popularity is any measure of its genuine audience. For myself, I am a preservationist as well as a libertarian, because I think that important lessons may be learned from persons and cultures which differ significantly from the norm; and this is why -- purely aside from libertarian considerations -- I am willing to let people follow the Crowleyian commandment of 'Do as thou wilt', because either they will end up in life's dumpster as a result -- thereby solving the problem of what to do about their behavior -- or else they will create something wild and wonderful that we may at least be entertained by, even if we do not care to join in. And while I would not stop great land or water projects just to preserve such evolutionary losers as the spotted owl or the snail darter, I would be quite satisfied to leave undisturbed the head-hunters of Papua New Guinea, the blustery Yanomamo of the South American rainforests, the property-destroying conspicuous consumer Kwakiutl of North America, the bovine-menstrual-blood-eating savages of Africa, and the wife-swapping and amanita muscaria-eating Siberian Esquimaux, subject only to observation by properly-qualified academics.
Now that an establishment professor -- Peter Singer of Princeton -- has made it into respectable print by waxing eloquent over the virtues of human-animal sex, it appears that the last sexual frontier to be explored is kiddie sex, and especially adult-child sex. While I consider myself basically negative on adult-child sex, we are faced with a world increasingly characterized by leisure time and a search for entertainment, coupled with worldwide cross-culturalism, high-status for minorities, a highly sexualized society, a burgeoning population of randy negroes and other darklings, enforced race-mixing, immigration by the tankerload, and Jews eager to scatter the last vestiges of gentile and Christian morality to the winds; so that with all these converging circumstances, it is difficult for me to see how the world is going to escape the kiddie sexual revolution. So maybe we should learn to 'stop worrying and love the bomb', even if we don't quite, really. After all, isn't death a lot easier if you're relaxed?
Kids and Animals: The Last Frontiers of Sexuality
Birdman expands and elaborates his views on kiddie sex
Having now overcome most of the social and legal barriers to sexual 'deviance' -- masturbation, adultery, divorce, cohabitation, prostitution, pornography, anal and oral sex, sadism and masochism, nudism, wife-swapping, group sex, homosexuality, birth control, abortion, STD prophylaxis, interracial sex, and perhaps a few other things -- there now remain only the taboos and laws against animal and kiddie sex as barriers to achieving the Everest of more-or-less complete sexual freedom -- or complete sexual dissipation and social ruin, if you believe the opposition. Personally I believe that both animal and kiddie sex will eventually become socially respectable, not because they are 'right', but simply because there is no practical limit or barrier to their performance, and because there are a significant number of people who very much want these kinds of sexual experiences.
In the matter of deviant sex, and particularly kiddie and animal sex, there is a nexus of moral issues which are interesting in their own right, but which I doubt anyone will pay much attention to because of the emotions involved -- either that of sexual attraction or that of repugnance. One key issue, however, is whether the government should attempt to regulate such behavior -- a question which I have always answered in the negative because I believe the government has no business attempting to regulate the private affairs of its citizens, and because, in the case of kiddie sex, the parents are more motivated to understand and make decisions in their children's interest than is the government.
While most people recognize that those of a puritanical mindset are the ones who are going to be most vociferous in opposing sexual 'deviance', the ironic thing about this situation is that sexual repression, which the Puritans advocate so eagerly, is the very thing which is most likely to bring on sexual deviance. This is not really surprising, of course; for it is just another case of pushing something down in one place only to have it pop up in another, as in detritus under a rug. The general rule is that -- to paraphrase Shakespeare, 'Sex will out', so that if normal sexual relations are stymied, either because of a puritanical outlook, or by a physical impossibility, as men going off to war, then sexuality is likely to manifest itself in an abnormal form, whether in homosexuality or in something even more beyond the norm. In recent years we have had some very public examples of this in the behavior of fundamentalist preachers who rant about sexual deviance but are found to be deviants themselves: Billie Sol Estes, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, to name only the best-known; and this is to say nothing of the many Catholic pedophile padres whose scandalous behavior decorates the front pages of newspapers on a regular basis.
I stated above that I did not believe in government regulation of private sexual behavior because it is not the business of government to manage the personal affairs of its citizens. But there is an even more important reason for government to follow a hands-off policy, and that is that repression of not-clearly-harmful sexual behaviors by the government -- just as history has demonstrated in every other instance of the repression of 'vice' -- does not end the targeted behavior, but only makes it go underground, with the unintended consequence that the judicial system is corrupted while the victims -- if that is what you want to call them -- are made worse-off. Pedophilia is a prime example of this: Investigations from the 1980s to the present have made clear that this practice is widespread, but because its practitioners are often men of wealth and power, the pimps and other providers in this business receive protection at the highest levels of government -- so much, in fact, that a recent series of articles strongly suggest that the Western world is actually ruled by a group of pedophiles (See the series by David McGowan on the7thfire.com website). And the victims -- the children, and their parents -- are worse off as a result of the laws against pedophilia because the children are often kidnapped and killed, something that would not happen if pedophilia were in the open and involved only voluntary transactions among adults.
But if pedophilia and other forms of kiddie sex are to be legalized, there are several stumbling-blocks that must be overcome. One of the greatest of these is the notion that kids' 'innocence' must be protected. In my view, however, this is a complete myth. For one thing, kids are in fact sexual beings -- boys have erections on a regular basis while still in the womb, and -- as I know from my own experience -- kids are eager for sexual interaction with the opposite sex at a very early age. This is reflected in the fact that black children are known for their pre-pubertal sexuality, and there have been many reports of full sexual intercourse among these children. Indeed, the principal term that blacks have added to the English vocabulary is 'mother-fucker', and there is some reason to believe that this phrase has its roots in the notorious libertinage of black behavior (Hey, what's a welfare mother to do when her man is off drinking, pimping or in jail?) Sex theorist Rene Guyon was one of the first to acknowledge early sexuality, as reflected in the motto of the pedophiliac Rene Guyon Society which paraphrased his beliefs: "Sex before eight or else it's too late." We may, I think, safely assume that Dr Guyon was not referring here to the dinner hour.
While parents may protest that they want to protect childhood 'innocence', the more likely motive is that they want to protect themselves from having to deal with their children's sexuality. I can appreciate this problem -- it seems unnatural to talk with someone about sex unless you are planning to have sex with them -- but it is really not that difficult to solve: Just provide the brats with some instructional books or videos. Back in the Bad Old Days when most people lived on farms, the same problem was solved by kids' familiarity with the barnyard, or even with their own parents when they were forced by poverty to sleep in the same room or even the same bed. Now that the housing situation has improved and sex books are widely available, it behooves parents to see that their kids get good instruction before they get an off-color version from the gutter.
Another important stumbling-block to the legalization of pedophilia and other forms of kiddie sex is the belief that pre-pubertal sex is harmful. In a sense this is true: Kids are less sophisticated than adults, and may well pick up STDs, suffer injury from sex with adults, and -- most importantly -- suffer emotional harm from behavior which is supposed to act as a bonding mechanism, but which is pursued only as recreation. These are important objections, and indeed are my reasons for regarding kiddie sex -- or at least adult-child sex -- as undesirable; but on the other hand, serious as they are, I do not believe these objections are sufficient reason to impose government restrictions on private sexual behavior for reasons already given. I will confess, however, that our state of knowledge about the effect of sex on kids is deficient at best, so that passing judgment on such matters in a state of ignorance is less than ideal.
But if we are profoundly ignorant about kiddie sex, it is possible that this ignorance could be reduced significantly by studying other cultures where kiddie sex has been allowed. This includes several Southeast Asian countries -- Thailand and the Philippines, for example, which serve as the destinations of sexual 'tours' for rich Westerners -- and also India, where some investigation has already been undertaken. What we cannot learn from, unfortunately, is the Western world's experience, whose victims have been far too devastated by the brutal consequences of suppression to allow any reasonable conclusions to be drawn.
The 'Horror' of Rape and Pedophilia
There are some things in this world which are genuinely horrible. War and torture are perhaps the two greatest, with certain forms of sickness -- severe intractable headaches and severe breathing difficulties, for example -- running a close third. But there are also a lot of things in this world which are REGARDED as horrible, but which are not really horrible at all except in the sense that people have been psychologically conditioned to regard them as horrible. The two which I have in mind are rape and pedophilia, tho some would include certain other sexual acts, eg, homosexuality and bestiality.
So why don't I regard rape and pedo as horrible? First, let me clarify my terminology. By rape, I mean ordinary sexual acts, but done under compulsion, altho not involving any significant physical violence or other obvious harm, ie, where the rape occurs because of physical overpowerment, or by threats of harm or some other consequence which is even less desired than sex. By pedo I also mean ordinary sexual acts, but with the consent of the child, and not involving any kind of violence or injury. I am not here going to 'get legal' about the matter of consent: By consent I just mean that the child says he will do it, and does so without significant complaint.
The reason why I do not consider rape to be horrible is simply that IT DOES NOT INVOLVE ANY PHYSICAL INJURY. (I am speaking here of female rape. Male rape, which happens all the time in our wonderful egalitarian prison system, where black equals white and weak equals strong, is often accompanied by injury to the anus.) OK, maybe the victim is traumatized, but more than likely, she pretty much gets over it after a few days and after she has had her Wasserman test and maybe her penicillin. (As the San Francisco Chronicle's gossip columnist and wit Herb Cain was known for saying in a takeoff on Tennyson's famous line, "Better to fail your Wasserman test/Than never to have loved at all.") Yes, being traumatized by rape can happen, but this is rare as far as I know, and is certainly not something that compels us to classify rape in general as 'horrible'. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, until recent times most women were introduced to sex by the act of rape: A woman was regarded as the husband's property, and was married under the directive to 'obey' him, and indeed was married in a ceremony accompanied by the husband's 'best man', who turns out to have traditionally been the 'best man' the husband could find to help him ABDUCT HIS BRIDE. Accordingly, it seems that rape has found an honored place in our society, and has turned out to be something which most women have learned -- if not to crave -- then at least to follow the traditional advice to all potential rapees: Just relax and enjoy it.
So much for rape.
But if rape is not horrible, then surely pedo cannot be, because pedo (as we have defined it) is CONSENSUAL. More specifically, a person would have to be WILDLY IRRATIONAL to call an act which is consensual 'horrible'. Of course it is also true that those who believe pedo is horrible -- hereinafter designated as TWBPIHs, or just Twibs for simplicity -- go thru gigantic contortions in their attempts to justify their position; but it is easy to show that such contortions are merely self-serving non-sequiturs. For example, Twibs claim that pedo is 'rape', but we have already excluded acts generally regarded as rape from our definition of pedo. As a second example of contortion, Twibs put forth the view that pedo is 'statutory rape', which is true in a sense, except that statutory rape is merely a legal fiction cooked up in a smoky back room, and based on the myth that a child 'cannot consent'. The fact, however, is that the child CAN consent, in the commonsense meaning of the term which we have adopted, and indeed would at least sometimes do so if given the opportunity. The reality is that the MEDDLESOME NANNY STATE does not consent, and this is where the cooked-up legal fiction of being 'below the age of consent' emerges into the light.
The real problem here, as I have made plain elsewhere, is that the law effectively gives ownership of the child to the State, which means simply that it is the State which makes the decision of whether the child can have sex. This is bad practice, however, because the State is a ham-handed owner -- it has no knowledge about the conditions of any particular child, and merely sets down rules in a one-size-fits-all Procrustean bed into which nobody really fits, and in which the discretion of generally-loving parents who know their child better than anyone else is peremptorally rejected. Certainly the ham-handedness of the State has been shown time and again in the activities of the so-called 'Child Protective Services', where children get taken away from loving parents by the government for no good reason, usually because the parents are 'politically incorrect', ie, they adhere to non-mainstream practices or beliefs such as Christian fundamentalism, home-schooling, vegetarianism, spanking, nudism, natural healing, political conservatism, or else they refuse to cooperate with bureaucratic surveillance and intrusion into their personal and family lives. More generally, the notion that the State should regulate the highly-personal details of its citizens' lives is totally contrary to the tradition of personal liberty created by the Founders and enshrined in our Constitution. But since people are so little educated nowadays in the matter of liberty, and so insensitive to the work that the Founders wrought at the risk of their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, that people accept outrageous intrusion by government into their personal lives instead of telling the prudes, the totalitarians, the bureaucRATS and the police to stick it up the place 'round which the moon always grinds.
But if pedo is not horrible by any reasonable measure -- and in fact is often enjoyed by the child, as many pedophiles claim -- then it remains to ask why there are so many people who regard pedo as horrible. The answer, I believe, is rooted in Victorian morality, where everything having to do with sex was regarded with -- if not horror -- then at least an emotion only a tick or two short of horror. It was Victorianism, you may recall, that forced the suppression of even so innocent an expression as 'leg', which became 'limb' under Victorian prudery, and avowed such a shock at things like piano legs that these items actually had to be covered with frilly little 'leggins' (I once owned an ancient piano which still had these absurdly silly things on them.) Indeed, the era of Queen Victoria -- a lady by no means a virgin like the Faerie Queene Elizabeth, who wasn't a virgin either, altho she was supposed to be, as memorialized by the name of the state of Virginia -- was an era of 'smelling salts' in which young ladies had to be revived from swooning by this obnoxious combination of ammonia and who-knows-what-putrid-else at the mere mention of something nearer than two divisions and a firing squad removed from sex. And the absurdity of Victorianism showed itself quite plainly, producing not merely such infamous tomes of debauchery as Frank Harris's My Secret Life and John Cleland's Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure, but such push-down-pop-up-elsewhere phenomena as Algernon Charles Swinburne's Whippingham Papers which described the relief from sexual impulses by means of brothelated sadomasochism, the ruination of lower-class women who were forced by penury to serve the impulses of upper-class men who couldn't get relief from upper-class girls, and of course the Victorian 'pubic' school system in which the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton only because the boys of Eaton had learned that the playing fields' tall grasses were a good place to relieve themselves in the lower classmen's anuses.
The horror of pedo is an expression of Victorian prudery, but ironically, the very existence of pedo is also in some sense an expression of that prudery. The reason is basically that, as suggested above, where normal sexual outlets are available, then abnormal ones do not ordinarily emerge: As "The Bawd" might have said in his own un-Bowdlerized defense, "Sex will out." But since Victorianism restricted normal sexual outlets, this increased the frequency of abnormal ones, including pedo. It is true, of course, that we are not by any means NOW living in an age of Victorian prudery, and have not done so since the 50s; but it remains a fact that there are still a large number of people who grew up in that era who have never been liberated from its irrationality, and it is these people who go into mouth-frothing eclamptic ectoplasmotics when anything less than "Ain't it awful" is repeated in the presence of 'That cursed spite/That they were surely born to now set right.'
But Victorian attitudes are not the only thing that have midwifed the emergence of pedo. Another is sexual openness, which, in combination with the Victorian strictures that inhibit normal sexual outlets, tend to shoehorn sexual activity into this forbidden but still relatively available realm, particularly for child-care professionals. Yet another pedo midwife is feminism, which has set up legal pitfalls for men, and which has therefore made many men very wary of females who may try to get revenge for unhappy relationships with charges of date rape, attempts to take men to the cleaners in a divorce action, or false charges of physical abuse or even pedophilia itself. Yet another midwife for pedo is television, and particularly the Disney channel, for this medium sports a procession of beautiful children that most normal men would find at least marginally sexually attractive, a fact which suggests that such images may well interest some men in the younger set.
The matter of beautiful children on television brings us to an important fact about pedophiliac desire, which is that it is not an 'all or nothing' function, but rather a matter of degree. What, for example, makes the beautiful children on television sexually attractive? It is evidently not T&A, which are the standard attractants for adults, but rather such things as facial beauty, sweetness of personality, and vivaciousness; so what this means is that sexual attractiveness is a collective effect of several different features which, as a general rule, will have different degrees of development in different children. Beyond this, another feature which impacts on sexual attractiveness is the attraction of the child to the adult. This feature is particularly important, because nowadays children grow up in a very sexualized culture, and because of it, children are much more likely to behave in a sexual way, even tho they may be a considerable temporal distance from puberty. Consider, for example, that most children want desperately to be 'grown up', and will often imitate adults in order to make it seem as if they are. We see this in such activities as children 'playing house' or playing with dolls (little girls want babies of their own), wearing lipstick (girls) or 'shaving' (boys), or -- for both girls and boys -- secretly smoking and drinking. Because of this desire to be 'grown up' in our sexualized culture, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that both girls and boys will try to seduce adults whom they like if they are given the opportunity; and needless to say, the adult -- and particularly the young randy male -- may readily respond to being seduced. The question then, in all these cases, is, What is the difference between pedo and normal sexual attraction? My point, of course, is that there are many cases where adults are attracted to individuals who may be children in a calendrical sense, but who are adults in other ways; and to say that such attraction constitutes the 'infernal crime' of pedo is a stretch at best, and just one more argument why this matter should be in the hands of the parents rather than the State.
There is an old saying -- so old that it goes back to Roman times at least -- which says that 'there is no argument about taste'. This is pretty clear to most people in the case of rootabagas or Stephen King novels -- you either like them or you don't, and there is no reason to criticize you in either case. But when it comes to certain other tastes, such as homosexuality or pedophilia, the common sense and irrefutable logic of the quoted saying goes directly out the window, and suddenly the situation of boys liking boys, or adults liking children becomes 'immoral', 'sick' and -- What else? -- 'horrible'. It is, of course, one thing for a man to sexually like other men or children, and another entirely for him to act on those desires, but when society demands that deeply-held desires are not to be satisfied, as opposed to leaving matters to market forces, parental discretion and the like, this then sets the stage for some very nasty situations such as those described in John DeCamp's The Franklin Coverup, Noreen Gosch's Why Johnny Can't Come Home, Cathy O'Brien's The Trance-Formation of America, Bryce Taylor's Thanks For the Memories, and many other writings. My point here is that while the impulse of those who disapprove of pedo may be to outlaw it, there are negative consequences to such a strategy -- kidnapped, dead and tortured children, among other things -- not the least of which is to support the commonly-held illusion that making something illegal will eliminate it.
In closing, I think it is appropriate for me as a philosopher to point out how wildly irrational people can become when their beliefs are challenged, particularly when these beliefs bear upon matters of great emotion. I have certainly seen this in the case of race and ethnicity, where my non-mainstream views of these matters as discussed on my webpage have guaranteed me a steady flow of hate mail, not infrequently mouth-frothing in format. But if the loony left-liberal corner of the universe has been the source of racial hate mail, the Blight Wing has been an equal source of heavy tremors on the rictus scale regarding pedo. One of the most interesting arguments against my position -- happily put forth in a civilized manner by its proponent -- was the claim that ancient Greek civilization, which explicitly embraced pedophilia for a thousand years, wasn't 'really' the foundation-stone of Western civilization, but only the foundation of 'Latin' culture which presumably involved only those crazy Italians and Greeks, and had now been stamped out anyway. But if this were a wildly irrational attempt to wiggle out of acknowledging our civilization's roots and "the glory that was Greece" as Poe described it, even wilder was the reaction of a fellow who challenged me to a 'duel to the death' over my 'promotion' of pedo. What is especially interesting about this latter case is that this fellow was ready to commit an act of MURDER for the 'sin' of my simply holding an OPINION. Even the Jews, whom this fellow detests with a fiery passion, have not gone so far as to demand the death penalty for advocates of their two biggest hobgoblins, 'antisemitism' and 'Holocaust denial'. I guess we have to leave it to the Blight Wing to be really ridiculous.
This, however, leads to the very important point that whether something is regarded as 'horrible' is as much a matter of cultural habit as it is of any intrinsic quality of the things which are said to be horrible. For example, witchcraft and blasphemy were said to be 'horrible' up until about the 18th or 19th century -- horrible enuf to require burning or tongue-boring as a punishment -- but now blasphemy is heard everywhere and witchcraft is regarded as quite harmless, and indeed is actually practiced as a religion by small numbers of people around the world. Likewise, as already noted, pedophilia was practiced in ancient Greece for a thousand years and embraced as an institution of the State, but it is now regarded as 'horrible' by Blight Wingers and ambitious prosecutors. Again, torture was a State institution as late as the 1950s, when Delaware finally repealed its statute on whipping, whereas nowadays torture is regarded -- rightly I believe -- as the worst sort of barbarism it is possible to have -- except, that is, by Jews, for whom it is an institution in Israel, and fundamentalist Christians like George Bush, who are trying to make it an institution in America. So just as there has been a complete reversal of opinion on so many major moral issues over the centuries, it is my speculation that pedo is headed for a revival, and that within 50 or 100 years it will become as commonplace and of as little concern as it was in ancient Greece.
Times change, and it is high time for the Blight Wing to get over it.
Ed:
My general reaction to your letter is that I disgree with just
about everything in it, and furthermore, that most of it is
pretty much irrelevant by way of responding to me. I will go over
the relevant parts in detail and respond with my comments, but
first let me describe the pattern of activity which I see your
letter falling into, and which I see as a very destructive one
for the Movement. That pattern, for lack of better terminology,
is what I shall call the 'Drum the Bastards Out of the Movement'
Temptation, or the D-BOM Temptation for short. What I am getting
at is that just about everybody who has influence or a position
of leadership in the Movement has his enemies who are eager to
drum him out of the Movement for this or that reason. Sometimes
these reasons are serious, sometimes not, but most are what I see
as basically just human falings which do not rise to the level of
requiring an anathema. For example, Revilo Oliver wanted to drum
Willis Carto out, Carto wanted to drum Bradley Smith out, Harold
Covington wanted to drum William Pierce out, Walter Mueller
wanted to drum me out, Mark Weber wanted to drum Carto out (and
vice-versa), Richard Barrett wanted to drum you out, Jim Giles
wanted to drum Barrett out, and so on and so on. What I see going
on here is a lot of little ego trips which turn on the axiom that
a man can make himself taller by cutting someone else down. So
when I see two basically-good Movement men -- Kevin Strom and Joe
Fields -- being pushed down the same rat hole, I have to raise an
eyebrow. To which I would add that the New Orleans Protocol,
which I did not endorse, was at least half-right in recognizing
that there was far too much internecine warfare going on, and
that there was something seriously pathological about it.
OK, so much for D-Bombs. Now let's examine the particulars of
what you say. My comments are interleaved with your text and
marked *******.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 2/9/07 at 9:30 AM Edgar J. Steele wrote:
>John -
>
>I am literally stunned by your trivialization of - and, since
we're
>"get(ting) real about pedophilia," let's call
pedophilia precisely what it
>is - the rape of children.
****** You are playing with words, Ed. Having actually
communicated with a pedophile some years ago, I was told -- and
can believe -- that kids can and often do enjoy sex with adults,
and I have received confirming information from other sources. I
can see clearly that you do not want to admit this, but it is a
fact. My point, then, is that if a kid enjoys it (hence consents
in some sense), it is not rape, because rape is non-consensual.
Of course you are going to argue that a kid "can't"
consent, but you are just redefining 'consent' so you can draw
the conclusion you want, ie, that kiddie sex is rape. Sorrie, no
workee!
>
>Rape, close kin to torture, is one of the most horrifying
crimes one human
>being can visit upon another.
******* I don't think so at all. For one thing, it has only been
in very recent times that women have had much to say about who
their sexual partners would be. If you don't remember your
history (women have been mostly property, and had no property
rights), then just think of the traditional marriage, in which
the woman agrees to 'obey', and where the 'best man' is an
integral part of the ceremony -- in the Bad Old Days, he was the
'best man' that the groom could find to help him ABDUCT HIS
BRIDE. Got that, Ed? Abduction. Rape. Obey. And don't forget the
inimitable JBR Yant's remark, "Rape is the cave man's way of
saying 'I love you'". But if that sounds harsh, don't forget
the old but true saw about never underestimating the power of a
woman. A woman may begin by being raped, but evolution has
arranged it so that she is the civilizer of the brute who raped
her. If you don't know that, then you haven't had a good
marriage. (I have -- 41 years this month!)
But there's more. Did you ever notice that, in war, it is the MEN
who are killed, but the WOMEN who live ... BECAUSE THEY HAVE A
HOLE THAT ENEMY SOLDIERS CAN SHOOT INTO THAT WON'T KILL THEM. As
historians Will and Ariel Durant have pointed out, in all of
recorded history there have been only around 300 years of peace,
and as JBR Yant remarked, those years were used for GETTING READY
FOR MORE WAR. So war ye always have with ye, and Nature has come
up with a way to deal with the de-population factor of all that
war -- the victorious soldiers impregnate the women of the
losers, and that allows the women to upgrade the DNA of their
offspring. Cute trick, huh -- and all because of that demon
lurking in the Id -- rape. Cool shit, man! So get over it.
>
>Here is a small part of what I had to say about rape in an
essay I wrote
>two
>years ago, in which I also discussed your primary concern,
prison rape, at
>length ("White Rape,"
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/rape.htm ):
>
>-------------------------------------
>"Feminists like to say that rape is an act of violence,
of hostility, with
>little sexual motivation. Aside from those occurrences we
trivialize with
>the classification of "date rape," I agree.
>
>"From the rapist's perspective, rape is a degrading
exercise of raw power
>over another, a unique demonstration of physical mastery and
the
>penultimate
>manifestation of the corruption of absolute power.
******* I think this is complete nonsense, aside of the fact that
you misuse 'penultimate'. For one thing, I know how horny I can
get, and that is pretty damned horny -- horny enuf to commit rape
if it weren't for a certain patina of civilization which keeps my
activities restrained. So I know first hand and from personal
experience that, when Mr Wiggly gets up a head of steam, rape is
a definite possibility, and it hasn't a damn thing to do with
'power'.
But if personal experience makes rape understandable (which is
not the same as 'justified'), there is another point against your
notion that rape is a manifestation of power. That point is that
a person's enjoyment of power over someone cannot be had in an
act which lasts only a few minutes. Power, instead, is
appreciated only as a sort of milieu which stretches over long
periods of time. A man who wants power doesn't get off with
specific acts of exercising that power, but only with living in
an aura of power. More specifically, the act of rape just doesn't
fit the behavior of those who seek or enjoy power. For example,
Congressmen and governors -- those most driven by power-seeking
-- don't rape -- on the contrary, their power gives them EASY
ACCESS TO SEX. They don't HAVE to rape -- easy sex just comes
with the territory. Ambitionless -- ie, non-power-seeking --
negroes, on the other hand, rape all over the place. And it is
negroes who have the greatest sex drives.
Bottom line: I have presented two major arguments which explain
rape as sex-drive rather than power drive. On the other hand, you
have presented no argument whatsoever to support your contention
that rape is a power drive, except to cite the feminists.
Methinks you lose pants-down.
Those unfortunates who
>are raped experience violation at a level so personal as to
be
>unapproachable by other crimes, including murder or, even,
torture.
>
>"Because all experience serves as a lens through which
future experience is
>perceived, the younger the victim, the more heinous the crime
of rape.
>Child rape victims go their entire lives, weighing and
measuring all of
>reality through their experience of horrifying brutality at
the hands of a
>deranged adult. That is why I believe the death penalty
should be
>automatic
>for even a single act of child rape.
>
>"Not that adult rape is any the less horrifying. On the
contrary. But an
>adult rape victim has experience gleaned from a life
untainted prior to
>being raped. All future experience, of course, is viewed
partially through
>the experience of being raped but mostly through the clearer
lens provided
>by a prior life spent unviolated at so personal a level.
>
>"With therapy and a loving, supportive environment, an
adult rape victim
>can
>learn to lead a somewhat normal life. For child rape victims,
no amount of
>therapy will vitiate the effect of their horrifying
experience; they are
>marked for a life of "apartness," of being
different from others. Some
>will
>act normal, yet never will they know what it means to be
normal. To a
>degree, I suppose, the same can be said of anybody raped at
any age.
>
>"Prison rape perhaps is the most blatant form of rape.
Totally lacking a
>sexual component, prison rape is entirely about power and
humiliation. It
>occurs in numbers far greater than commonly believed. And it
almost
>exclusively is a crime committed by black inmates upon white
inmates,
>according to reports from past clients and correspondents who
are and who
>have been incarcerated."
******* A simpler explanation of black-on-white rape is that
blacks are more free to do to the out-group (whites) what they
are less free to do to the in-group (other blacks). The Law of
Parsimony requires that science accept the simpler explanation
which accounts for the facts, even without considering the fact
that you have provided no support for your assumption that rape
springs from a power drive.
>-----------------------------
>
>Nor does it matter if a child does not protest his or her
molestation by
>another. A child is incapable of appreciating the
significance of what has
>occurred.
******* Yeah, yeah, yeah -- no matter what a kid says, no matter
whether he enjoyed it, you automatically discount it, and that
proves your argument. Well, Mr Steele, there is a Latin phrase to
describe that kind of argument: Argumentum No Workee!
Witness how often children blame themselves for being raped by
>their fathers.
****** What you apparently mean by 'appreciating the
significance' of adult-child sex is willingness to buy into your
Big Assumption, namely, "Ain't it awful?" (Sorry, no
sale.) What makes adult-child sex so 'significant' is not the act
itself, but all the hyperventilation that goes on by
Right-(un)thinking people.
>
>Not a crime? As always, John, I hesitate to cross verbal
swords with you
>because you so tenaciously refuse to give ground and so often
are
>borderline
>venal in your response to critics (a classical technique, I
might note,
>used
>to great advantage in subduing and silencing others, cloaked
in the guise
>of
>"rational discourse"). However, you should be
ashamed of yourself for this
>one, John.
>
******** A simpler explanation of why you hesitate to cross
swords with me is that I usually beat hell out of you. Remember
the Law of Parsimony? And yes, pedophilia is not a True Crime. It
is hard to notice that you continue to maintain I am wrong on
this without presenting any evidence that I am wrong. It's a
great way to argue, I guess, if you can get people to believe it.
But you won't get ME to believe it.
As for tenacously refusing to give ground, I never give ground
unless I feel I am wrong. Would you have me violate my own
conscience and give ground when I did not feel it was justified?
Am I 'borderline venal'? Hey, that's a new one! Are you sure you
didn't mean 'borderline ANAL' as in 'asshole'? If so, you would
be right, because I am sure that I take on the visage of a
humongous asshole when I best you in an argument. But all joking
aside, your labeling me 'venal' is just name-calling -- it's a
lot like calling me a bigot or antisemite for my racial views. It
is not an argument -- unless, that is, you mean an Argumentum No
Workee. (Note: My dictionary defines 'venal' as 'ready to sell
honor or principle, or to accept a bribe; mercenary; purchasable;
said of persons'. If you are serious in your charge, kindly
explain it; if not, apologize. (Yeah, I know, it'll be a cold day
in Hell...))
Subduing and silencing critics? That is simply a damned lie, Ed.
There is no one on this planet who gives his critics more of a
forum than I do. Virtually every critic gets his letters posted
with my Weekly Letters. 'Silencing and subduing' implies an
unethical act on my part, whereas my critics have just as much
ability to silence me as I do them, since I give them just as
much of a forum as I have. The fact that I am right and can
summon an argument to show it is not unethical -- it is precisely
how the free exchange of ideas is supposed to work. Care to
apologize? I thought not...
You say that my 'venality' is 'cloaked in the guise of rational
discourse'. To this I say two things: (1) I challenge you to find
even one example; (2) I have found all kinds of emotings in your
letter which are cloaked in the guise of rational discourse, but
which, upon my analysis, simply show themselves to be -- dast I
say it? -- argumenta no workee.
You say I should be 'ashamed of myself'. Good heavens, Ed. Are
you going to rap my knuckles, or will it be ok just to stand in
the corner?
[Ed did not respond]
Feedback from the (Above) Weekly Letter on Pedophilia
So far we have had four letters, 3 negative, one positive (or at least positive in the sense of criticizing Ed Steele). Of the three negative letters, two were from long-time correspondents and were respectful, but the remaining letter was anonymous and violently negative. I reporduce the latter below, followed by my response.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 2/11/07 at 6:05 PM Anonymous wrote:
>You are a pervert, a birdaphile so to speak.
>Your CuntSpeak is about your BirdHole.
>The empty cauldron you call your mind.
>
>You like to hear yourself chirp.
>
>Chirp for BirdSeed, but alas, NO BIRDSEED.
>
>Yes, the CUNT vs the Man of Steele.
>
>Signed,
>the BirdWatcher
[Birdman responds:]
(1) Insult is the last refuge of the out-argued.
(2) Those who write critical letters but won't sign their name are COWARDS.
(3) For someone who presumes to speak for purity and accuses others of IMpurity, your language certainly raises a few questions about your own purity.
(4) I find it most strange that you would call me a 'cunt'. You must have a very curious conception of what pedophilia involves.
(5) You are clearly hysterical, or almost so. This is demonstrated not merely by your language, but by the bizarre references to 'bird hole' and 'bird seed' that don't make good sense.
(6) There is just a bit of irony in your saying "Yes, the CUNT vs the Man of Steele." After all, I was the one that gave Mr Steele the moniker 'Man of Steele'. That is, if I am a 'cunt', should you be relying on my characterizations of your 'hero'?
(7) The fact that you are so upset leads me to ask, What kind of person gets so upset about a sexual or moral issue? My view is that it can only be someone with a LARGE PERSONAL STAKE in the issue, most likely one who is deeply afraid of his own dark desires -- indeed, probably someone who has indulged them and now feels deeply guilty about it.
Please feel free to write again. I am sure that whatever you choose to say will turn out to be most amusing.
[Anonymous did not respond]
On 2/12/07 at 8:37 AM Mark R wrote:
>The simplest answer to why pedophilia is wrong is because
"we say so", we
>being the inheritors of western civilization. There are many
examples of
>this, all of which point to a higher social or cultural
elite, but have no
>basis in logical argument. Why we eat salad with a salad
fork, why we
>don't wear a black belt with brown shoes, why we don't use
sticks or cow
>dung to fix up our hair. In nature, the alpha male gets all
the girls, and
>the lion steals the kill from the jackal; but we choose to be
monogamous (
>in priciple, if not in practice) and don't take candy from a
baby.
>
>When I argue with liberals, I try to illustrate why something
is offensive
>by turning the tables on them, to show how they would react
if they were
>the ones offended. This tactic does not usually work, though,
because
>liberals are not offended by anything (except by people like
me). But I
>learned that if one does not feel in their heart and in their
soul that
>something is wrong, no amount of debate will persuade them
that it is.
>
>I am not calling you a liberal, of course; but you share that
trait of not
>being offended by most sexual behavior. Most white
nationalists are
>offended by pedophilia, incest, bestiality, homosexuality,
and interracial
>sex, because we know, without anyone having to explain it to
us, that
>it's wrong. Even though other times and other societies have
embraced them
>all, they cannot exist in a healthy, normal society.
>
>Civilization requires that man resist his basest impulses
without limiting
>his freedom to pursue healthy impulses. And that requires the
people to
>know the difference.
>
>Mark
[Birdman replies:]
Dear Mark:
I see that you are objecting to my position on pedophilia, but I
am not entirely certain what your objection is. I will try to
respond, however.
To begin, your major argument, such as it is, is that you know
pedo is wrong because you intuit (ie, 'feel in your heart') it to
be so. Now that is interesting for two reasons. First, because it
is reminiscent of old Potty Stewart's remark that he couldn't
define pornography but he knew it when he saw it (ie, intuited
it), and second -- and most importantly -- because it is a
confession that you have no rational argument in favor of your
position, so you just have to take a Pascalian Leap of Faith and
say it is wrong by intuition. Needless to say, the fact that you
have abandoned rational argument in favor of just saying you know
by intuition means that there is no way I can argue against you.
That's a clever tactic, I suppose, if you can get anyone to buy
into it. Perhaps the feminists would, since they think that women
have a different way of knowing, and, of course, that way is
intuition.
But there is another problem with your argument, which is that
you claim the mantle of Western civilization for your intuition.
This, however, seems clearly mistaken, because Western
civilization has pulled ahead of all other civilizations by the
fact that a fundamental element of that civilization is the
dependence on rationality and scientific scrutiny. The Western
tradition of rationality began with Socrates (the 'Socratic
method') and Aristotle (logic), and continued in greater or
lesser forms up thru the Middle Ages until it became thoroughly
fixed in the traditions of Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon and Newton.
In short, Western civilization has succeeded by REJECTING
intuition IN FAVOR of rationality. So defending your position by
the Potty Stewart method is strictly Argumentum No Workee.
Besides what I have already mentioned, there are some important
confusions in your letter. Perhaps the most important is your
confusing toleration with embracing. For example, you imply that
I embrace pedophilia, bestiality, incest, etc, whereas the most
you can truthfully say is that I believe in the great guiding
principle of liberty, which is to LEAVE OTHERS ALONE. This is the
great problem with both Right and Left -- neither believes in
liberty. They have just GOT to inject themselves -- usually in
the form of the Dad Gummit -- into everybody else's lives. The
Right wants to meddle with sex and religious practices, while the
Left wants to stamp out racism, sexism and the free market, and
as a consequence, both are just as meddlesome as the old gasbag
that lives down the street. As a libertarian I can only say, A
pox on both their houses. Or to put it slightly differently,
let's stop trying to regiment everyone, and instead allow some
DIVERSITY!
Another important defect in your polemic is your glib declaration
that the way you want the world to be -- viz, free of pedophilia,
incest, bestiality, etc -- is 'healthy and normal'. The problem,
however, is that YOUR definition of 'healthy and normal' may
differ radically from someone ELSE'S definition. That's why the
issue needs to be debated. And that's why I have chosen to debate
it.
Another point I wish to make is contained in a quote by the
inimitable JBR Yant: "To a philosopher, there is nothing so
beautiful as the ugly truth." Or to put it another way, the
purpose of philosophy is to explore the corners and limits of
man's mind and man's experience -- corners and limits which are
often dark and frightening, and in fact so dark and frightening
that most people throw rationality to the wind and often become
literally hysterical when they approach these corners and limits
too closely. That is what we see practically every day in
examining the Holocaust, and it is what we are seeing now in
examining pedophilia, as witnessed, for example, by the letters
from Steele and Anonymous.
In closing, perhaps it would open your mind to recall that the
font of Western civilization, ancient Greece, explicitly embraced
adult-child homosexual sex, and in fact idealized it. There has
apparently been a conspiracy to eradicate knowledge of this, but
it remains a fact, and tomorrow (Tuesday) I will be posting the
lengthy Wiki article on the subject, found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece
Thanks for writing. -j
I have marked my paragraphs with [J], yours with [M]
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 2/13/07 at 8:06 PM Mark wrote:
>John Bryant <jbryant@lzy.net> wrote: Dear Mark:
>
>[J]I see that you are objecting to my position on pedophilia,
but I am not
>entirely certain what your objection is. I will try to
respond, however.
>
>To begin, your major argument, such as it is, is that you
know pedo is
>wrong because you intuit (ie, 'feel in your heart') it to be
so. Now that
>is interesting for two reasons. First, because it is
reminiscent of old
>Potty Stewart's remark that he couldn't define pornography
but he knew it
>when he saw it (ie, intuited it), and second -- and most
importantly --
>because it is a confession that you have no rational argument
in favor of
>your position, so you just have to take a Pascalian Leap of
Faith and say
>it is wrong by intuition. Needless to say, the fact that you
have
>abandoned rational argument in favor of just saying you know
by intuition
>means that there is no way I can argue against you. That's a
clever
>tactic, I suppose, if you can get anyone to buy into it.
Perhaps the
>feminists would, since they think that women have a different
way of
>knowing, and, of course, that way is intuition.
>
>[M]Thing is, Stewart's obsevation, though often ridiculed, is
not really
>wrong. Can you say why a joke is funny, a book is good, or a
painting is
>beautiful? Or do you just "know it when you see
it"?
[J] Potty's position IS wrong, and that is because it proposes an
intuitive standard dependent on Potty. You cannot have legal
judgments based on intuitive standards, or else legal judgments
become basically arbitrary. The whole point of having a written
law in the first place is to let people know in advance what they
can and cannot do legally. When the law is based on Potty's
intuition, that is impossible.
>
>[M] I don't accept your description as "intuition".
But I agree that we cannot
>resolve this with argument. Someone once said (it may have
been Mr. Ed
>Steele) that there are no differing opinions, but rather only
differences
>of what constitutes fact. To use a tired example, no
pro-abortion person
>would ever advocate killing babies, and no anti-abortion
person would deny
>a woman the right to make decisions about her body.
[J] Wrong. I advocate killing babies that are defective, unless
the parents or other private persons want to take responsibility
for such babies' welfare.
[M] The arguments go on
>forever, but the only actual dispute is one of fact: the
fetus is a human
>child, or it is not. So, is pedophilia a natural human
attraction that has
>been suppressed by puritanical morality, or is it an
unnatural and
>unhealthy weakness?
[J] Again, you miss the point, which is not whether pedo is
'good' or 'bad', but whether the Dad Gummit should regulate
people's sex lives. The libertarian answer -- my answer -- is a
resounding NO.
>
>[M] Here's a true story about which I would like your input.
When I was
>young, about 1970, I knew a 17-year -old fellow who
deliberately
>deflowered as many 14-year-olds as he could. It was not
especially
>difficult to con the young girls into giving in, and he was
quite proud of
>himself. The rest of us thought he was horrible, and,
although we too
>could have scored in the same way, none of us did. Now,
that's not even
>pedophilia. But it's definitely not very nice. And I know for
a fact that
>at least some of the girls felt used and cheap, and really
regretted it.
[J] I don't see that it was a big deal. It was certainly not
'horrible'. I think casual sex is not a particularly good idea,
and for the kids' sake, parents need to implant this idea, but,
like shit, casual sex happens.
>
>[M] I can't believe if the girls were 8, and the man was 60,
there is any way
>they could be happy about it. But then, that's just me.
>
>[J] But there is another problem with your argument, which is
that you claim
>the mantle of Western civilization for your intuition. This,
however,
>seems clearly mistaken, because Western civilization has
pulled ahead of
>all other civilizations by the fact that a fundamental
element of that
>civilization is the dependence on rationality and scientific
scrutiny.
>The Western tradition of rationality began with Socrates (the
'Socratic
>method') and Aristotle (logic), and continued in greater or
lesser forms
>up thru the Middle Ages until it became thoroughly fixed in
the traditions
>of Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon and Newton. In short, Western
civilization
>has succeeded by REJECTING intuition IN FAVOR of rationality.
So
>defending your position by the Potty Stewart method is
strictly Argumentum
>No Workee.
>
>[M] But the problem we have always faced is the more
successful we become the
>more fertile the environment for rot. Just look at the US
today. Is it not
>only our 200 years of history of doing the right thing that
made us rich
>and powerful enough to do so much wrong in the last 40 years?
The national
>debt and the trade deficit, massive third world immigration,
outsourcing
>our industry, interference in and bullying the other
countries of the
>world - are they the result of "favoring
rationality"?
[J] They are the result of Lord Acton's axiom: Power corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not to mention da jooz.
>
>[M] Every previous empire has fallen. Perhaps it is because
they all abandoned
>the principles that got them there. And perhaps acceptance of
pedophilia
>is one of those principles, the "canary in the
mine", if you will.
[J] The Greeks practiced 'Greek love' for a thousand years. I
don't think pedo had anything to do with the survival of the
Greeks, except perhaps to enhance it. Remember Plato's remark
that an army of men and their catamites would fight furiously so
as not to be shamed in their lovers' eyes, and thereby would
'conquer the world'.
>
>Besides what I have already mentioned, there are some
important confusions
>in your letter. Perhaps the most important is your confusing
toleration
>with embracing. For example, you imply that I embrace
pedophilia,
>bestiality, incest, etc, whereas the most you can truthfully
say is that I
>believe in the great guiding principle of liberty, which is
to LEAVE
>OTHERS ALONE. This is the great problem with both Right and
Left --
>neither believes in liberty. They have just GOT to inject
themselves --
>usually in the form of the Dad Gummit -- into everybody
else's lives. The
>Right wants to meddle with sex and religious practices, while
the Left
>wants to stamp out racism, sexism and the free market, and as
a
>consequence, both are just as meddlesome as the old gasbag
that lives down
>the street. As a libertarian I can only say, A pox on both
their houses.
>Or to put it slightly differently, let's stop trying to
regiment everyone,
>and instead allow some DIVERSITY!
>
>[M] As a self-described right-winger, I do not agree with
your definition.
[J] I didn't offer any 'definition', but merely observed that
'Blight-wingers' were just as big control freaks as lefties, the
difference being only in the kind of behavior they wanted to
control.
>[M] Except when a crime has occurred, the most you would get
from me is
>disapproval, and my disapproval does not infringe on your
rights at all. I
>am not a Republican, or even a conservative, who are actually
what you are
>describing.
[J] Ah, but there's the rub -- what is a 'crime'? Is pedo? The
Blight wing certainly thinks so. But maybe you are enlightened
enuf to grant that it is not -- ie, not a True Crime.
>
>[M] So now we're back at the beginning. To clarify our terms,
pedophilia is
>not rape, and it's not performed through violence or threat
of violence.
>It's consensual sex between an adult and a child, and the
issue in dispute
>is whether a child can consent. There are other times when
children cannot
>legally consent: they cannot sign a contract, they cannot
accept certain
>jobs, they cannot drink or smoke, they cannot choose to not
attend school.
>We believe they are too young and too immature to make their
own decisions
>about certain very significant things. We think their naivete
can be
>exploited by suave and mature operators, and they can be
swindled into
>making very bad choices. So we protect them as best we can
with our laws.
[J] Here we go again. You are going to 'protect the children'.
Yeah, Just like Ronnie was famous for saying, "We're from
the government and we are here to help you." No thanks,
Jack. As I have said from the outset, children are far, far
better off as the property of their parents, not of the State,
and if you know anything about Child Protective Services, you'll
know why. (You can ask Ed Steele about that one.) Under normal
circumstance, the parents will do just fine. If not, then their
DNA will be consigned to oblivion.
>
>Another important defect in your polemic is your glib
declaration that the
>way you want the world to be -- viz, free of pedophilia,
incest,
>bestiality, etc -- is 'healthy and normal'. The problem,
however, is that
>YOUR definition of 'healthy and normal' may differ radically
from someone
>ELSE'S definition. That's why the issue needs to be debated.
And that's
>why I have chosen to debate it.
>
>[M] Ah, but therein lies the rub. We cannot change each
other's minds. We can
>only hope to pass our values onto the next generation and try
to win that
>way.
[J] Bool Sheet! If I didn't believe people's minds could be
changed, I wouldn't be running thebirdman.org, and neither would
da jooz be running their media empire. Nor would you be trying to
change MY mind.
>
>[M] Do you think that a western woman who moves to a
fundamentalist Islamic
>nation could ever be convinced it is unhealthy and not normal
to show her
>face? She might wear a burqa so she would not get beat up or
put in jail,
>but could she ever be shamed if a man got a glimpse of her?
If you don't
>feel something is wrong, no one can tell you that is; and if
you know it's
>right, no one can tell you that it's not.
>
[J] I thought we had laid the intuition issue to rest.
>Another point I wish to make is contained in a quote by the
inimitable JBR
>Yant: "To a philosopher, there is nothing so beautiful
as the ugly truth."
> Or to put it another way, the purpose of philosophy is to
explore the
>corners and limits of man's mind and man's experience --
corners and
>limits which are often dark and frightening, and in fact so
dark and
>frightening that most people throw rationality to the wind
and often
>become literally hysterical when they approach these corners
and limits
>too closely. That is what we see practically every day in
examining the
>Holocaust, and it is what we are seeing now in examining
pedophilia, as
>witnessed, for example, by the letters from Steele and
Anonymous.
>
>[M] Fair enough, but Mr. Yant should also consider that
sometimes there's
>nothing so ugly as the ugly truth, too. And if it's truly
ugly, we are
>completely justified in reacting hysterically to its
potential acceptance.
[J] You don't get it, do you? Hysterical reactions are those in
which the party has LOST CONTROL OF HIMSELF. Nothing justifies
that, tho, like shit, it happens. Women do it habitually --
'hysterical' comes from the greek word for 'womb'. But men are
supposed to be better than women who, in the words of GK
Chesterton, are but 'children of a larger growth'. Hey, speaking
of pedo...
>
>In closing, perhaps it would open your mind to recall that
the font of
>Western civilization, ancient Greece, explicitly embraced
adult-child
>homosexual sex, and in fact idealized it. There has
apparently been a
>conspiracy to eradicate knowledge of this, but it remains a
fact, and
>tomorrow (Tuesday) I will be posting the lengthy Wiki article
on the
>subject, found here:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece
>
>Thanks for writing. -j
>
>[M] That may be true, but remember that the most most
powerful nation in the
>history of the world embraces feminism, homosexuality,
brain-dead
>conformity, ruinous economic practices, interracial mixing,
varying
>degrees of socialism - I could go on. Maybe a thousand years
from now a
>Jewish economist will recommend massive national and personal
debt because
>the mighty US had it at the peak of its power, so it must
have been a
>contributing factor.
[J] As I said before, the Greeks practiced pedo for a THOUSAND
YEARS. Feminism and the rest, on the other hand, are relatively
recent phenomena imposed on us by ZOG. There is simply no
comparison with ancient Greece.
[Mark responds; Birdman's comments are market with ***** and interleaved with Mark's text]
On 2/14/07 at 11:23 PM Mark R wrote:
>At the end of the day, it comes down to this: our prohibition
against
>pedophilia is the result of attempts to create a better
world, or it's a
>narrow minded irrational prejudice that prevents us from
achieving a
>better world.
>
>Well, I have tried to explain why I think it's an evil thing,
and although
>you have repeatedly discounted each of my arguments, you have
not offered
>any reason why it's a good thing.
****** I never said it was a good thing. I doubt that it is in
most circumstances, but I am openminded because of the fact that
there is so much we don't really know.
From what I can determine, your case
>consists of your belief that it's not really harmful to
children, and most
>of them would enjoy it; and the Greeks did it. And you
wrapped it up in
>personal freedom, trying to make it a difficult argument to
refute.
****** I didn't TRY to make it a difficult argument to refute, I
SUCCEEDED in making it an argument that was IMPOSSIBLE to refute.
That's why you haven't refuted it.
>
>But the whole libertarian idea has no appeal to me. I
envision a
>libertarian world as a human jungle, where every person
behaves much like
>animals do, pursuing their own selfish desires in every
possible way. It
>would be a world of not only rampant sexual activity but also
one where
>cheating, swindling, lying, gambling, exploitation of people
and resouces,
>and drug use would be not only rampant, but would be defining
examples of
>personal freedom. The hordes of people who couldn't cope
would just be
>left to die alone, and the sooner the better, too, since they
were
>obviously unfit to survive.
>
********* From your comments it is clear that you think that
liberty (in the sense of minimal government) is silly and
unnecessary. (That's the 'libertarian idea' in case you didn't
know.) Which is just what I was saying about the Blight Wing --
they don't want liberty, they want regimentation, especially
about sex and religion. But the fact is that societies of whites
(and possibly yellows) who possess an abundance of liberty are
much happier and wealthier than societies which possess little
liberty. That's a historical fact. But you -- like the rest of
the Blight Wing -- don't love liberty, you love regimentation.
Doesn't matter that it doesn't work well, and doesn't make people
happier. You and the rest of the Blight Wing just love those
crisp uniforms and jackboots and whips. You just want to tell
people what to do. But of course you don't want OTHER people to
tell YOU what to do. Which is to say that you want liberty for
you -- the liberty to regiment -- and no liberty at all for
anybody else. Oh, but of course it is for a 'better world', just
like 'We're from the government and we're here to help you.'
Yeah, right. That is what totalitarians always say -- if we do it
for your own good, then we are morally justified in doing
anything. Riiiiight. And btw, that's Bush's argument for torture.
Guess it doesn't bother you a bit.
>The ultimate problem of governance is how to get people to do
the right
>thing without making the wrong thing illegal, since we don't
want an army
>of petty, unwise bureaucrats deciding what's right for the
rest of us.
>That can only be done when societal pressures keep the folks
in line. You
>may chafe under such a system, but most people need
boundaries. They need
>to belong, and they need to know that their choices are
acceptable and
>proper. They can more easily resist their temptations if they
believe that
>everyone else is resisting them, too.
******* In my view, the 'problem of governance' is to produce the
greatest happiness for the greatest number. Freedom does that;
regimentation does not.
>
>I could not make your understand color if you were blind, or
explain music
>if you were deaf. Likewise I cannot make you understand basic
morality if
>you are missing whatever internal piece is used to determine
it.
******* You do have gall, don't you Mark? I have written plenty
on morality, including a number of essays posted on my website,
and a well-received book, The Most Powerful Idea Ever Discovered.
You most likely have not bothered to read an iota of it, and
don't have the vaguest idea what this material is about, yet you
presume to imply that I don't understand anything about morality.
And that is on top of your being unable to muster a rational
argument for your beliefs, but instead relying on intuition. You
have gall, Mark. Chutzpah. You and Potty.
I will
>never change your mind, but I think it is you who have the
greater
>challenge. And frankly, as you are sending your message
mostly to white
>nationalists, I doubt you could have scarcely found a more
unreceptive
>group to present it to.
******* Of my 3 or 4 critics,you are the only one to require more
than one exchange of views. Either people think I am right, or
they at least realize that they cannot summon an argument. I
would say that is a pretty good record against an 'unreceptive
group'.
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