Mike Huckabee projects such an aura of cuddly friendliness, and in reality he is such a vile, bloodthirsty creep.
Just saw him favourably quoting these words from MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
Huckabee conveniently omitted the lines that follow – “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” – presumably in order to leave the impression that MLK would be down with Huckabee’s thumping-select-portions-of-the-Bible method of determining the content of the moral law.
The occasion for Huckabee’s foray into natural-law jurisprudence was his protest against the restrictions on political advocacy that churches have to follow in order to qualify for tax-exempt status.
Then after finishing up the tax-exempt issue, Huckabee immediately segues into a denunciation of “illegal” immigration, even to the point of condemning the placing of canisters of water in the desert where immigrants can find them. ’Cause nothing expresses the moral law better than laws requiring people to leave their neighbours to die of thirst.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
I was going to ask why you were watching Huckabee in the first place…then I realized that Fox plays his show right after Stossel. I should open a libertarian detective agency!
Clever deduction, but mistaken in this case. I wasn’t watching Huckabee, my mother was. I was just collateral damage.
(Not that she’s a fan either, but her tolerance for him is higher than mine, and he was the only newslike thing on at the time that wasn’t the Zimmerman trial.)
Well, the detective agency isn’t off to a great start. I can just see the celebrity endorsement ad…”Roderick T Long says the Libertarian Detective Agency is, ‘Clever but mistaken.”’
Or: “Roderick T Long says the Libertarian Detective Agency is, ‘Clever …'”
I remember a book by Cracked magazine that had a fake endorsement on the back, reading: “There is no limit … the public will buy [it].”
the hypocrisy of this Professor. this is not left vs right, GOP vs Dems, Socialism vs liberty. This is war against White people.
Why do hostile globalist elite defend Israel as a Jewish ethnostate with Jewish only immigration, but ravage White majority Europe/North America into a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Gulag with non-White colonization?
The world is 93% non-White, only 7% White. But 3rd world colonizers, Muslims, Sikhs, Hispanics, are aggressively advancing their agenda to annihilate gullible Whites, just as China annihilates Tibet.
How long will gullible Whites cuckold for murderous anti-White elite, who confiscate our guns, infiltrate/subvert our banks/FBI/CIA, indoctrinate White kids in academia/mass media, plunder White jobs/wages, & butcher White soldiers in bankrupting wars?
“Native” Americans invaded from East Asia. Yellow & Brown races committed 10-times more genocide, slavery, imperialism than Whites. Since Old-Testament, Whites have been victims of Jewish/Crypto-Jewish, Turkic, Muslim, N.African imperialism, slavery, genocide.
Gullible Whites should reject subversive ideologies- libertarianism, feminism, liberalism- & reject hostile slanders of racism. Peace to all humanity, but White people must organize to advance their interests, their fertility, their homelands. Spread this message. Reading list: goo.gl/iB777 , goo.gl/htyeq , amazon.com/dp/0759672229 , amazon.com/dp/1410792617
Oh. You’re one of those.
Are you finished your insane rant now? I lost count of how many times you used the word “white”, but it has to be a record of some kind.
the hypocrisy of this Professor
Gullible Whites
So am I hypocritical or gullible? How do I tell?
Why do hostile globalist elite defend Israel as a Jewish ethnostate with Jewish only immigration
I can’t recall doing that.
“Native” Americans invaded from East Asia.
It was a pre-emptive strike! Those tricky Asians, invading our future homeland!
Hey guys, let’s keep it real.
Sheldon’s comment and my response.
A similar statement is coming out from C4SS shortly.
I wonder how this guy defines “white”. Many hispanics, arabs and jews appear pretty “white” to me, just to mention some examples…
‘Anti-semitism’ should be treated the same way ‘anti-white/reverse racism’ is treated – as a justifiable hatred of historical oppressors. But the idiotic white paranoia has nothing to do with anything. The Jews basically are just top-tier rich white people. They’re not trying to destroy whitey, unless you count Arabs as white.
Are you saying anti-semitism is a justifiable hatred of historical oppressors? Please tell me I misunderstand you…
Just curious. Who here disagrees with anti-semitism-as-justifiable-hatred-of-historical-oppressors?
Well, I visit this site fairly often, but haven’t in a few days; I guess I still count in some sense as “here.”
I absolutely reject the idea that anti-Semitism is justifiable hatred of anyone or anything. I actually agree with Leonard Peikoff on this one: there are inherently dishonest ideas, i.e., ideas such that their endorsement requires dishonesty on the part of the person avowing the idea (cf. his “Fact and Value”). His example is Nazism, but I would include anti-Semitism on the same list.
For a discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism, I’d recommend Neil Kressel’s recent book The Sons of Apes and Pigs: Muslim Anti-Semitism and the Conspiracy of Silence. Kressel is a social psychologist at William Paterson University of New Jersey (Wayne, NJ). I’ve endorsed the book (inside cover), and I’m proud to say that it features a series of quotations from me based on correspondence with the author and on stuff I’ve written on the subject.
I’ve taken pains to distinguish a responsible form of anti-Zionism from all forms of anti-Semitism here.
And I’ve criticized people like Tariq Ramadan, who affect an anti-Zionist posture but are soft on Nazis here.
I’ve written elsewhere on the subject as well. But the basic gist of all of my writing and activism has been the same: anti-Semitism cannot be justified as hatred of historical oppressors. In fact, hatred of historical oppressors cannot itself be justified (see Roderick’s piece on his website on “Thinking Our Anger”). And modern-day Israelis/Jews cannot literally be equated with “historical oppressors” (or even “oppressors”). At a certain point, a discussion of this subject has to start invoking facts and not consist in half-assed hand-waving of the sort JOR has indulged in on this page.
Contrary to some posters here, I do think Israelis bear collective responsibility for Israel’s policies. Israel is a democracy, at least within its pre-1967 lines. It couldn’t put its policies (e.g., its settlement/occupation of the West Bank) into practice in literal defiance of the will of its population. Yes, some of its population consists of conscientious dissenters, and those dissenters cannot be held responsible for the government’s policies. But if all Israelis were conscientious dissenters, the policies would themselves be different. Israel has been engaged in systematic expropriation of the Palestinians now for decades. So it’s not plausible to suggest that Israelis are, en masse, opposed to Israel’s policies. It’s not that most of them are actively complicitous in injustice, but most of them are apathetic about and indifferent to what the Israeli government is doing in the West Bank and elsewhere. That apathy has enabled the more zealous rights-violators among them to get away with systematic rights violations.
Americans are the same way about Guantanamo and the use of torture in interrogation of terrorist suspects. If we really opposed both en masse, neither would exist. They exist because we don’t oppose them, at least not en masse.
Having said that, I would insist neither anti-Semitism nor terrorism (aka “armed struggle”) are justified responses to Israel’s policies. The apathy and indifference of the Israeli public is itself a response to the insane strategy of appealing to anti-Semitism/terrorism as a form of “resistance” to Israeli policies. But terrorism and anti-Semitism are not forms of resistance. They’re forms of nihilism, and have accomplished nothing but mass death and the creation of mass despair. Their only discernible result in Israel has been to frighten Israelis to such a point as to convince them that the pursuit of justice is futile. Who has suffered the most under this dispensation? Palestinians.
This insanity really must end. And in my view, a good part of the answer lies in Ayn Rand’s principle for living a rational life amidst irrationality: one must never fail to pronounce moral judgment. If we followed that principle consistently, it would end.
Three weeks ago, I stood in the Arab village of Ma’asara and confronted a heavily armed Israeli patrol there blocking a road in the middle of the village. I stood in front of the soldiers one foot in front of their faces–faces obscured by riot shields–and asked them to reconsider what they were doing. My hope is that they did reconsider it. One soldier at a time, my hope is that actions like mine may well get the IDF to reconsider its policy of supporting the settlers, and then get the Israelis as such to reconsider Israeli policy. But how likely are they to reconsider their mission if they think that my speech to them was motivated by bigotry like JOR’s? Not likely.
So a message for JOR: those of us who have worked for peace reject you. Go find some other sandbox to play in, but leave the cause of Palestinian rights to those who believe in rights. We don’t need you. No one does.
I don’t hate Jews, nor do I think it is (ideally) justified. I just said it’s understandable that many people (Palestinians and people who sympathize with them) would. And it’s not pro-Palestinians who’ve done the hard work of removing any distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. Jews made that bed; let them lie in it.
Likewise, there are people fighting for Palestinian rights who reject your views and would describe them as appeasement and collaboration. I think they’d be wrong to describe them that way, but I understand why they’re frustrated with people who keep telling them to stop being so uppity and just be nice to their oppressors.
If Palestinian armed self-defense (“terrorism”) were the main reason Israelis support oppression, then there would never have been any oppression to begin with, as the Israelis started it. Of course, whether it’s justified or not, Palestinian armed self-defense is ultimately not going to be successful; nothing is. The Palestinian cause is doomed. I won’t blame the ones that refuse to die off quietly.
I agree with Charles Johnson over Roderick Long on the matter of hate, though I disagree with the particular substance of his feminism.
I’ll also note that Rand was an enthusiastic Israel-apologist and a proponent of the genocide of the Palestinians.
I thought it was just Randroids that were Israel apologists. Rand herself was?
“Whatever rights the Palestinians may have had – I don’t know the history of the Middle East well enough to know what started the trouble – they have lost all rights to anything: not only to land, but to human intercourse. If they lost land, and in response resorted to terrorism – to the slaughter of innocent citizens – they deserve whatever any commandos anywhere can do to them, and I hope the commandos succeed.”
Note the inherent dishonesty of this statement, by the way. She doesn’t know “what started the trouble” but she’s sure that Palestinians deserve to be wiped out because they resorted to slaughtering “innocent civilians” (off-duty soldiers). If it occurred to her (and it must have, because she wasn’t stupid) that the Israelis had resorted to terrorism first – indeed, that the traditional way of taking other peoples’ land always involves terrorism – she didn’t follow this to the logical conclusion: that Israelis are fair game for whatever ‘commandos anywhere can do to them’.
It’s as justifiable as hatred of white people (so, ideally, not justified, but understandable, and in practice mostly only harmful to people who deserve it, i.e. Israelis and their enablers).
in practice mostly only harmful to people who deserve it, i.e. Israelis and their enablers).
Given that most of the Israelis I know are strongly opposed to the policies of their government, this blanket talk of “Israelis” having it coming to them seems crudely collectivist.
Israelis that you know are not typical. I’m sure most of the white people you know are against racism even in its more socially acceptable forms (prison-industrial complex, etc.) That doesn’t mean white folks as a class don’t deserve to be hated (including the “good” ones). Same applies to Jews (including Israelis). They’re basically just white people with an extra layer of entitlement, anyway.
Further, most Israelis are at best innocent threats to Palestinians (and others), regardless of their opinions. Innocent threats are fair game, as you know. Israelis who are not a threat to innocent people are more likely to suffer at the hands of their own government than at the hands of ‘anti-semites’.
To paraphrase Brand Blanshard: some positions cannot be reduced to the absurd because they are already there.
Everything is an absurdity to someone.
That argument (that “everything is an absurdity to someone”) presupposes absurdity-as-a-subjective-matter. It takes as given that there is no such thing as objective absurdity, that unreasonableness is only a matter of opinion or point of view. You imply that reasonableness itself (along with its absence) is a matter of opinion. And so, every argument you make holds (and claims!) no truth-value. You’re not even wrong. And it’s better to be wrong than to walk in circles, “believing” you’re going somewhere.
Just to remind you of your own words: On July 11, you said that anti-Semitism (which you put in scare quotes) was “a justifiable hatred of historical oppressors.” By July 16, you’ve backpedaled to: “I don’t hate Jews, nor do I think it is (ideally) justified. I just said it’s understandable that many people (Palestinians and people who sympathize with them) would.” Sorry, but you didn’t just say it was understandable. You said it was justifiable. Actually, it’s neither, and what you’ve said in defense of the confused conjunction of the two claims isn’t even worth laughing at, whether as a defense of either claim or the conjunction. But I’m happy to leave the matter there.
As for appeasement and collaboration, I’ll leave it to readers to decide which of the two represents a better option for Palestinian resistance: the rejection of anti-Semitism and terrorism in favor of justice and rights–or the open advocacy of mass hatred in the service of mass death. I don’t think it’s a tough call. I guess you don’t, either.
I was responding just above to JOR.
Sorry, but you didn’t just say it was understandable. You said it was justifiable.
Ditto. And “understandable” is ambiguous. It can mean “predictable,” or it can mean something more like “sympathisble-with.” I’ll grant it in the first sense but not the second.
A question worth asking is how people like Huckabee come to achieve (if that’s the word) the stature they have in our culture. How can someone so utterly devoid of intelligence or moral scruples become nationally prominent? Is his prominence an indication of support for him (or views like his) in the wider culture, or is he prominent despite lack of widespread support?
Sorry, I meant “devoid of intelligence and moral scruples.”
Yes.
Also, I’ve seen no evidence that he lacks intelligence. Not that it matters. Intelligent people aren’t less likely to be wrong or stupid than unintelligent people, they just tend to be wrong and stupid in more elaborate ways.