When a liberal race-hustler likens the killing of Trayvon Martin to the torture and murder of Emmett Till he is not exaggerating, but lying shamelessly. To appreciate this one need only know the essentials of each case. Here are a couple of videos to bring you up to speed on Emmett Till.
On Race, ‘Progressives’ Are Stuck in the Past
It is a bit of a paradox: so-called 'progressives,' i.e., leftists, who routinely accuse conservatives of wanting to 'turn back the clock,' are doing precisely that on the question of race relations. They yearn for the bad old Jim Crow days of the 1950s and '60s when they had truth and right on their side and the conservatives of those days were either wrong or silent or simply uncaring. Those great civil rights battles were fought and they were won, in no small measure due to the help of whites. Necessary reforms were made. But then things changed and the civil rights movement became a hustle to be exploited for fame and profit and power by the likes of the race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
At this point I hand off to Shelby Steele. Excerpt:
The purpose of today's civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism. This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a "poetic truth." Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth in order to put forward a larger and more essential truth—one that, of course, serves one's cause. Poetic truths succeed by casting themselves as perfectly obvious: "America is a racist nation"; "the immigration debate is driven by racism"; "Zimmerman racially
stereotyped Trayvon." And we say, "Yes, of course," lest we seem to be racist. Poetic truths work by moral intimidation, not reason.In the Zimmerman/Martin case the civil-rights establishment is fighting for the poetic truth that white animus toward blacks is still such that a black teenager—Skittles and ice tea in hand—can be shot dead simply for walking home. But actually this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth—the authority to tell the larger society how it must think about blacks, how it must respond to them, what it owes them and, then, to brook no argument.
Two comments. First, pace Steele, what he is calling a "larger and more essential truth" is better described as a brazen lie. Second, the iced tea and Skittles that the 'child' Trayvon was carrying were presumably to be added to Robitussin to concoct a drug variously known as Purple Drank, Lean, and Sizzurp. See here:
Trayvon, with his hoodie up, grabs two items from the shelves of 7-11. One is the Skittles. The other is Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail. The media avoid the name of the real drink — possibly because of the racial implications of the word "watermelon," but possibly to avoid probing the real reason for Trayon's trip.
Trayvon, in fact, had become a devotee of the druggy concoction known as "Lean," also known in southern hip-hop culture as "Sizzurp" and "Purple Drank." Lean consists of three basic ingredients — codeine, a soft drink, and candy. If his Facebook postings are to be believed, Trayvon had been using Lean since at least June 2011.
On June 27, 2011, Trayvon asks a friend online, "unow a connect for codien?" He tells the friend that "robitussin nd soda" could make "some fire ass lean." He says, "I had it before" and that he wants "to make some more." On the night of February 26, if Brandy had some Robitussin at home, Trayvon had just bought the mixings for one "fire ass lean" cocktail.
Black ‘Bash Mobs’ on the Rampage in Southern California
Here is the story from The Los Angeles Times.
Nowhere in the article or in the video is it mentioned that the rioters are black. You can see that they are from the video.
The liberal media falsely portrayed the Hispanic, George Zimmerman, as white in order to fit him into their 'America is racist' script; but they refuse to report the truth when blacks rampage.
No surprise: the truth would not fit the liberal-left 'narrative.'
'Narrative' is one of theose POMO words that a conservative should be careful about using. As I have said more than once, only the foolish conservative talks like a liberal.
The Lunacy of the Left
Here is yet another example of leftist lunacy from the editors of The Nation:
The real problem is not that jurors were willing to accord Zimmerman the presumption of innocence—a bedrock of our justice system. It is that Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, was never accorded the same presumption—and that so many defendants who look like him are denied this right every day.
This is just breathtakingly idiotic. First of all, it is not up to the jurors to will or not to will to accord the accused the presumption of innocence. It is required that they do so. It is one of the constitutive rules of our legal system that in a criminal proceeding such as a murder trial the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Being a constitutive rule, the presumption of innocence is not something jurors have any say about.
Second, it is the accused who is presumed innocent until proven guilty, not the victim. For it is the accused who is on trial. Zimmerman was on trial, and he was accorded the (defeasible) presumption of innocence, a presumption that was not defeated. Hence he was exonerated. Martin was not on trial, hence presumption of innocence did not come into play in his case.
Third, Martin was not the defendant in the case; Zimmerman was the defendant.
Fourth, Martin's being an unarmed teenager is irrelevant to the question whether Zimmerman acted lawfully in shooting Martin. The aptronymically appellated Charles Blow opined in a similarly moronic manner when he mentioned the 'disproportionality' of armament as between Martin and Zimmerman. Again, utterly irrelevant.
So there's the Left for you: willful stupidity, verbal obfuscation, lies, agitprop.
Addendum: Chad McIntosh, upon reading the above Nation quotation, subsumed it under what he calls the Madman Fallacy.
Outside Help
The religious realize not only that they need outside help to live aright, but also that they need outside help to achieve this realization.
If Obama Could Have Been Trayvon Martin . . .
. . . then most of us could be the next George Zimmerman.
It cuts both ways, Mr. President.
Besides, if you could have been Trayvon 35 years ago, what does that say about you? Did you go around thuggishly attacking people, breaking their noses, pinning them on the ground, pounding and grounding, slamming heads into pavements, threatening 'crackers' with death?
Better Unwed Than Ill-Wed
The title is mine to the following observation of Paul Brunton (Notebooks, vol. 5, part I, p. 106, #240):
It is true that men who are lonely or young or romantic are likely to marry a young woman with whom propinquity has brought them in touch. In such cases he puts an illusion around the woman to the pressure of desire. When the illusion goes and the facts show themselves he is left alone with the hard lesson of discrimination. The situation can repeat itself with the victim being the woman.
A bit of important wisdom that unfortunately comes too late for too many.
Helen Thomas
Had she not disgraced herself about three summers ago, she would be better remembered now.
Spencer Case
I was relieved to hear today that Spencer Case, long-time friend of MavPhil, and Middle Eastern correspondent, is once again safely Stateside after a nine month stint in Cairo as a Fulbright fellow researching Islamic philosophy. I say 'relieved' because of the Andrew Pochter case. Spencer tells me that he writes a monthly column for a conservative collegiate publication, The College Fix. His latest column is Bipartisan Efforts to Hasten Elections in Egypt Bad Policy.
Welcome home, Spencer!
Hitchens on Conversion
Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, Twelve, 2012, p. 91:
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
Witty unto the end. But in the end, what does wit get you? One last vain flash of brilliance and then extinction — or judgment.
Six Types of Death Fear
1. There is the fear of nonbeing, of annihilation. The best expression of this fear that I am aware of is contained in Philip Larkin's great poem "Aubade" which I reproduce and comment upon in Philip Larkin on Death. Susan Sontag is another who was gripped by a terrible fear of annihilation.
There is the fear of becoming nothing, but there is also, by my count, five types of fear predicated on not becoming nothing.
2. There is the fear of surviving one's bodily death as a ghost, unable to cut earthly attachments and enter nonbeing and oblivion. This fear is expressed in the third stanza of D. H. Lawrence's poem "All Souls' Day" which I give together with the fourth and fifth (The Oxford Book of Death, ed. D. J. Enright, Oxford UP, 1987, pp. 48-49).
They linger in the shadow of the earth.
The earth's long conical shadow is full of souls
that cannot find the way across the sea of change.
Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead
and give them a little encouragement
and help them to build their little ship of death.
For the soul has a long, long journey after death
to the sweet home of pure oblivion.
Each needs a little ship, a little ship
and the proper store of meal for the longest journey.
3. There is the fear of post-mortem horrors. For this the Epicurean cure was concocted. In a sentence: When death is, I am not; when I am, death is not. Here too the fear is not of extinction, but of surviving.
4. There is the fear of the unknown. This is not a fear with a definite object, but an indefinite fear of one-knows-not-what.
5. There is the fear of the Lord and his judgment. Timor domini initium sapientiae. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Proverbs 9:10, Psalms 111:10) A certain fear is ingredient in religious faith. Ludwig Wittgenstein was one who believed and feared that he would be judged by God. He took the notion of the Last Judgment with the utmost seriousness as both Paul Engelmann and Norman Malcolm relate in their respective memoirs. In 1951, near the end of his life, Wittgenstein wrote,
God may say to me: I am judging you out of your own mouth. Your own actions have
made you shudder with disgust when you have seen other people do them." (Culture and Value, p. 87)
Wittgenstein had trouble with the notion of God as cosmic cause, but had a lively sense of God as final Judge and source of an absolute moral demand.
6. Fear of one's own judgment or the judgment of posterity.
The Importance of Self-Control
There is so much to learn from the Trayvon Martin affair. One 'take-away' is the importance of self-control. If Martin had been taught, or rather had learned, to control himself he would most likely be alive today. But he didn't. He blew his cool when questioned about his trespassing in a gated community on a rainy night. He punched a man in the face and broke his nose, then jumped on him, pinned him down, and told him that he was going to die that night. So, naturally, the man defended himself against the deadly attack with deadly force. What Zimmerman did was both morally and legally permissible. If some strapping youth is pounding your head into the pavement, you are about to suffer "grave bodily harm" if not death. What we have here is clearly a case of self-defense.
Does race enter into this? In one way it does. Blacks as a group have a rather more emotional nature than whites as a group. (If you deny this, you have never lived in a black neighborhood or worked with blacks, as I have.) So, while self-control is important for all, the early inculcation of self-control is even more important for blacks.
Hard looks, hateful looks, suspicious looks — we all get them from time to time, but they are not justifications for launching a physical assault on the looker. The same goes for harsh words.
If you want to be successful you must learn to control yourself. You must learn to control your thoughts, your words, and your behavior. You must learn to keep a tight rein on your feelings. Unfortunately, liberals in positions of authority have abdicated when it comes to moral education. For example, they refuse to enforce discipline in classrooms. So liberals, as usual, are part of the problem.
But that is to put it too mildly. There is no decency on the Left, no wisdom, and, increasingly, no sanity. For example, the crazy comparison of Trayvon Martin with Emmet Till. But perhaps I should put the point disjunctively: you are either crazy if you make that comparison, or moral scum.
Two Million Pageviews
This morning the Typepad version of Maverick Philosopher shot past the two million pageview mark. This, the third main version of MavPhil, commenced operations on 31 October 2008. The first main version took off on 4 May 2004.
To be exact, total pageviews at the moment are 2,000,523. That averages to 1161.74 per day with recent averages well above that. Total posts come to 4433, total comments to 6502.
I thank you for reading.
My pledge: You will never see advertising on this site. You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field. I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.' This is a labor of love and I prize my independence.
I also pledge to continue the fight, day by day, month by month, year by year, against the hate-America, race-baiting, religion-bashing, liberty-destroying, fascists of the Left. As long as health and eyesight hold out.
I will not pander to anyone, least of all the politically correct.
And I won't back down. Are you with me?
The Rage of the Wolff
Robert Paul Wolff here vents "a rage that can find no appropriate expression" over "The judicially sanctioned murder of Trayvon Martin . . . ."
"Meanwhile, Zimmerman's gun will be returned to him. He would have suffered more severe punishment if he had run over a white person's dog."
What fascinates me is the depth of the disagreement between a leftist like Wolff and a conservative like me. A judicially sanctioned murder? Not at all. A clear case of self-defense, having nothing objectively to do with race, as I have made clear in earlier posts. And please note that "Stand Your Ground" was no part of the defense. The defense was a standard 'self defense' defense. Anyone who is not a leftist loon or a black race-hustler and who knows the facts and the law and followed the trial can see that George Zimmerman was justly acquitted.
Wolff ought to be proud of a judicial system that permits a fair trial in these politically correct times. But instead he is in a rage. What would be outrageous would have been a 'guilty' verdict.
Was the blogger at Philosopher's Stone a stoned philosopher when he wrote the above nonsense? I am afraid not. And that is what is deeply disturbing and yet fascinating. What explains such insanity in a man who can write books as good as The Autonomy of Reason and In Defense of Anarchism?
Does the good professor have a problem with Zimmerman's gun being returned to him after he has been cleared of all charges? Apparently. But why? It's his property. But then Wolff is a Marxist . . . .
It is sad to see how many fine minds have been destroyed by the drug of leftism.
Piers Morgan on the Zimmerman Case
Piers Morgan and many others think that someone ought to 'pay' for Trayvon Martin's unfortunate death, and that that person ought to be George Zimmerman. Morgan demands justice for Trayvon and thinks that this can be achieved only be convicting Zimmerman of some crime. But what murk and muddle in Morgan's mind makes him think this?
I conjecture that he is failing to distinguish among three senses of 'responsibility,' the causal, the legal, and the moral.
There is no doubt that Zimmerman caused, and is therefore causally responsible for, Martin's death. There was no 'whodunit' aspect to the trial. It is clear 'whodunit.' But it doesn't follow that the Hispanic is either legally or morally responsible for the black youth's death. As we saw from the trial, Zimmerman was acquitted. There simply was not the evidence to convict him of murder two or manslaughter. To say it one more time: the probative standard is set very high in criminal cases: the accused must be shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Zimmerman was found to be not legally responsible and so not subject to any legal sanctions.
What's more, the judgment was correct. To be found not guilty is not the same as to be not guilty –remember the O. J. Simpson case — but in the Zimmerman case he was not only found not guilty, but in reality is not guilty, as any objective observer should be able to see.
But suppose you disagree with the last thing I said, namely, that Zimmerman is not guilty of the crimes with which he was charged. Still, that doesn't matter for practical purposes. The jury has spoken and we all must accept the result, just as we must in the Simpson case.
The result, again, is that Zimmerman is not legally responsible for Martin's death. I conjecture that Morgan cannot grasp this because he fails to distinguish causal from legal responsibility.
Does Zimmerman bear any moral responsibility for Martin's death? Some will say that he does and some that he doesn't. But it doesn't matter for practical purposes. All that matters is that Zimmerman was acquitted in a fair trial.
It is worth saying again that the purpose of a criminal trial is not to secure justice for the victim. If that were the purpose, every such trial would have to end in a 'guilty' verdict. The sole purpose of a criminal trial is to secure justice for the accused. Nobody can be made to 'pay' for Martin's death since the only person who could is not guilty of any wrongdoing. Zimmerman was merely defending himself against a deadly attack. If anyone is to blame for Martin's death, it is Martin himself for attacking Zimmerman.
In case you missed it last night, here is Larry Elder attempting to pound some sense into the the benighted Piers Morgan.