Peter Melzer
To Progressives, protecting the “free speech rights” of admitted perverts like Peter Melzer (pictured above) a former NYC public schools teacher who is an admitted member of NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association – a pedophile’s Union), who has acknowledged that he was drawn to teaching because of the access to children and that he’s traveled to other countries explicitly to engage in sex with young boys, is paramount.
The “free speech rights” of those who oppose excessive taxation (above a 25% total tax burden for anyone), who support strict border enforcement and their innate right to self defense...those, they’re not as passionate about.
Back in the mid-1990s, an investigation into his behaviors cited his "enthusiastic championing of pedophilia, including child pornography and child prostitution" as being among the grounds for dismissal.
Then in 1995 Attorney General Dennis Vacco and Secretary of State Alexander Treadwell sought to revoke the corporate status of Zymurgy Inc., whose directors included "an ex-Bronx teacher (still employed in the Board of Education’s “Rubber Rooms”) who, they claimed “advocated sex between men and boys and still works for the Board of Education.” "
Zymurgy was incorporated in 1994 to "foster" and "advance greater knowledge and understanding of human sexuality" through workshops and lectures, according to papers filed with the state.
Treadwell said, that "it now appears" Zymurgy "is a front" for the controversial group known as the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which favors consensual sex between men and boys.
By posing as a legitimate group, Vacco said, Zymurgy was "seeking to promote an offensive agenda, while promoting illegal activity."
One of Zymurgy's directors was Peter Melzer, who’d been removed from his post as a Bronx teacher in 1993, after Board of Education investigators learned he was an editor of the NAMBLA newsletter.
Despite his advocating for pedophilia, Peter Melzer, charged in a Board of Education investigation in 1993, he was held in the Board of Education’s so-called “Rubber Rooms” until 2000 and his dismissal wasn’t finalized until a decision, made public on July 17th, 2010, in which the panel ruled that Peter Melzer, a teacher at the Bronx High School of Science for more than 30 years, had been justifiably dismissed by the Board of Education in 2000.
NAMBLA was founded over three decades ago, when in December of 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb of Revere
Staff members of the homosexual newspaper Fag Rag believed the raid was politically motivated. They and others in Boston Boise , Idaho
On December 2, 1978, Tom Reeves of the Boston-Boise Committee convened a meeting called "Man/Boy Love and the Age of Consent." Approximately 150 interested people attended. At the meeting's conclusion, about thirty men and youths decided to form an organization which they called the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA for short.
Ironically enough, Peter Melzer has actually lived in the Yonkers
”Not all people are bad, but not all people are nice and you don't know when it's a stranger," said local resident Anna Chamberlain.
Of course vigilance, police said, must stop short of harassment despite neighbors' opposition to Melzer's way of life.
It isn't merely that the vast majority of Americans (over 98%) oppose "Melzer's way of life," fact is, Melzer's way of life, like "progressive values" are antithetical to American values.
30 comments:
The NAMBLA is a bunch of sicko perverts. How can an 8-yr-old give consent to sex? They're sickos taking advantage of those who can't protect themselves. This has nothing to do with homosexuality or "alternative lifestyles" - this has to do with perverts taking unfair advantage of children.
It should be astounding that a group of "adults" would actually set up a group to devote their time trying to rationalize one of the most horrific crimes imaginable, of course given the state of the modern West....sadly, it's not.
And you're 100% right....under the age of 18, you can't enter into a contract, because you're considered unable to give fully informed consent.
Sex with someone 15 to 18 is a crime called "Statutory rape." Sex with someone under 15 y/o is sex with a child....pedophilia....a perversion and (SHOULD BE) a life-without-parole felony.
Early Light and JMK, you're both missing the point here. The sexual liberationist ethic that led to the normalizing of homosexuality has no stopping mechanisim, nothing to restrain it.
Yes, MOST people view pedophilia as abhorrent, but 40-50 years ago MOST people viewed homosexuality the same way. Yet, after a generation of agitation by gay activists it's now a near crime to object to the gay lifestyle. You will be called a Nazi if you support normal marriage. Who, 40-50 years ago, could have imagined an America like that? Yet here we are.
Gays put the ax to the tree of traditional, Bible-based values in order to promote the normalization of their abberrant sexuality. Now that that tree is gone, what's going to provide the moral authority to oppose the normalization of other abberrant sexualities?
The legitimization of pedophilia/pederasty isn't as farfetched as you might think. Remember that school system in Maine that wanted to give birth control to students as young as 11? Why would it do that unless the adults running the system tacitly believed that a child as young as 11 could consent to sex?
What about the popularity of the book "The Vagina Monologues", which includes a "good rape" of a 13-year-old girl by an older woman?
What about Hollywood rallying to the defense of Roman Polanski last year, calling his forceable rape of a 13-year-old girl a "little mistake"?
What about the book "One Teenager in Ten", published about 20 years ago, that included a positive portrayl of yet another 13-year-old girl being seduced by a woman? If I'm not mistaken, that story was removed from later editions of the book, but the question is why was it included in the first place?
The above is anecdotal evidence to be sure, but I think it shows that the foundation of our society's current disdain for adult/child sex isn't as firm as we'd like to think. Cracks are appearing, and they'll only get bigger if we don't return to our traditional sexual ethic. That might sound scary to gays and their allies, but if we continue down the sexual liberationist road we'll end up in a nightmarish brave new world.
Sorry, but I don't want to go there.
JMK,
It's easy to go too far. The way things are going these days, it is not unheard-of for a sixteen-year-old to have "consensual" sex with a fourteen-year-old. While I think that is wrong and foolish, I don't think the sixteen-year-old deserves life-without-parole for this.
Seane-Anna,
Your concerns are certainly understandable.
I would like to point out, though, that there are states in this union where defense-of-marriage acts have been passed defining a marriage as an institution between a man and a woman.
States correctly anticipated that, once homosexual marriages are permitted legally, someone will want be able to marry children, and someone else will want to be able to marry a companion animal. Sick, but true.
The trouble will now be in the legal definition of man and woman. Sorry to say, these concepts are now under attack.
Once "alternative lifestyles" begin, there is no telling where it will stop.
Having said that, NAMBLA are a bunch of perverts, pure and simple, and go out of bounds, even for "alternative lifestyles".
EL, thanks for your thoughtful response to my comments, but I still think you're missing the point.
You write that the NAMBLA folks "are a bunch of perverts" who "go out of bounds" even for alternative lifestyles. The problem you miss is that our culture NO LONGER HAS BOUNDARIES thanks to the deliberate destruction of our traditional moral system by the cultural Left, particularly gays and feminists. So by what standard can the NAMBLA people be called perverted, immoral or wrong?
Call a pedophile or pederast perverted and he can respond with social liberalism's standard retort: Don't impose YOUR morality on ME! And in our culture corrupted by moral relativism, who can object to that?
That's why "defense of marriage" laws are ultimately doomed without a return to traditional values. They will be struck down as intolerant, and maybe even as violations of the Establishment Clause; and age-of-consent laws will follow, mark my words.
Our country is in for very, very dark times.
No, I don't think I'm missing your point.
You ask: "by what standard can the NAMBLA people be called perverted, immoral or wrong?"
The answer: By pretty much everybody's standards but their own. That's why there are still laws against this kind of perversion, even in states that permit same-sex marriages.
And yes, we most certainly do have a right to impose our society's morals on these people.
They are not allowed to steal or to commit murder. These are moral judgments codified into legal boundaries. If they want to steal or murder, they need to go somewhere else. These are moral judgments imposed upon them, and if they don't like it, too bad.
The trouble is, as you point out, the ax is at the root of our traditional society, so either we surrender and let it get axed, or we take it back.
What these perverts are doing is wrong. I most emphatically have not just the right but the reponsibility to impose a degree of morality on them, via legally-established peaceful means, and if they don't like it, they can fight back any way they want (there are legal means to deal with anything they do) or they can take their perversions somewhere else (Hell comes to mind in this context).
:)
EL, I see your point. The problem is that EVERYTHING you said about the NAMBLA folks is EXACTLY how MOST people ONCE thought and felt about gays in America and the West generally. But now our culture's view of homosexuality has DRASTICALLY changed. It has done a 180 so that now, if you oppose homosexuality YOU are the pervert, the bigot, the hater, the Nazi. And what's truly frightening EL, is that there is NOTHING to prevent the pedophile/pederast crowd from doing the same thing the gays have done.
EL, you write that we do have a right to impose morality "on these people". You mean like we used to impose morality on homosexuals?
The traditional moral/familial values on which laws against homosexuality were based have been undermined to the point of near total impotence. With those values gone and replaced with the "progressive values" JMK wrote about it, it's only a matter of time before pedophile rights become respectable and those who object to them are demonized as intolerant.
EL, you are totally right that the only choice before us is to either surrender to the destruction of traditional values or fight to take our culture back. But do conservatives have the will to fight? I already know some of them don't. Some of them are mere fiscal conservatives who willingly ally with the social Left in the culture war. I don't know how we conservatives should deal with the fifth columnists among us, but we'd better figure that out soon or there'll be nothing of our culture left to save.
"Conservatives"?
What is being conserved?
The status quo, wherein big business rapes us economically, then gets our money via government bailouts?
The status quo, wherein our children are dumbed down in government-run schools for which we must pay regardless of whether we use them or agree with them?
The status quo, wherein corrupt government officials trample on our Constitutional rights in the name of national security, while selling out our national security to the highest bidder?
I am not a conservative.
I am a revolutionary.
It gets clearer and clearer to me: the Democrat Party has become not only the Party of Whores (as votes are bought in CONgress); it is the party whose broad tent is that for criminals and criminal activity. ID theft, illegal immigration, perverts, ACORN, a growing propensity to lie under the guise of "the ends justify the means" -- the ends being marxist socialism, controlled by the elitists -- yes, Zell Miller tagged this party accurately in '04, and his reasons for leaving it.
How any reasoned individual can remain a member of such a party is beyond comprehension.
Good people can be Democrats the same way good people can be Republicans. Too many on both sides of the aisle know only about the crimes from the other side of the aisle. The good people who actually care and try to learn about what is going on are thus busy pointing fingers across the aisle.
And the real criminals want it that way - divide and conquer.
Skunkfeathers, you're smarter than the average bear, and you know how to think for yourself. That's the kind of person JMK's blog attracts. Do an internet search for "Sibel Edmonds" and start learning about her case. Both sides of the aisle are committing blatant treason, selling this country out to foreign organized crime and foreign intelligence services, and covering up their crimes against national security by obstructing justice, claiming secrecy serves the interests of national security. But, when you follow the money, it all boils down to lots of illegal activities and lots of ill-gotten money.
Sibel Edmonds worked for the FBI, and has suffered extensive retribution as a whistleblower for trying to call attention to the fact that the FBI was infiltrated with agents of foreign organized crime, and that these agents were colluding with highly placed officials of the US government, both elected and appointed, both Republican and Democrat, to cover up illegal, treasonous activities.
"Sibel Edmonds" - let me know what you find out.
EL: read it. An interesting, sordid story. Not one that totally surprises me. If we could peel back the veils that shade a good deal of what goes on in our government, I'm sure most of us would be sickened by it. Life-long bureaucrats are little better than pond scum, and almost like a mold when allowed to grow without serious oversight.
Granted, I tend to hammer much more aggressively on whom I refer to as "libtards" -- they seem to, if not have a corner on corruption and dishonesty (and I know they don't), be at the leading edge of a good deal of it, especially in the last decade.
Bottom line for me, I prefer less government to more; individualism vs collectivism; encouraging humans to be all they can be, vs dividing them in classes, and encouraging them to think "victim" and "entitlement". All of those basic concepts are anathema to the current Democrat Party, and to the Rockefeller wing of the Republicans.
I have my own thoughts on 9/11, but know that the "classified" stuff -- other than that which was public before it got retroclassified -- will likely never be mine to analyze and assess. So, being a student of history, and a follower of news as it happens, I'm left to my own devices to sort out 'fact' from 'spin', and make up my own mind as to who did and didn't do what, contributing to what did and didn't happen.
The history of intelligence services -- military and civilian -- here is one of huge missed signs and opportunities, time and again. From WWII forward, there are 'dropped balls' that dot important events in history. It would be easy, I suppose, to assign a conspiracy theory to each dropped ball; but I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist. I'm more a believer in "flawed humans" and people too stubborn/egotistical to admit mistakes.
But, your point on both sides at fault is taken, and not disagreed with.
I'm sorry that I was away and missed so much of this discussion.
First off, EL, I thank you for th kind words for both my blog, SF and the other readers here, "Skunkfeathers, you're smarter than the average bear, and you know how to think for yourself. That's the kind of person JMK's blog attracts."
But, statutory rape IS infinitely different than pedophilia. A teenaged boy could be charged with the former but generally not the latter.
Moreover, teen promiscuity itself is a serious problem that can't merely be "educated away," as some propose.
For the most part I agree with Seane-Anna (except for "missing that point"....I too don't believe that I did), that the "slippery slope" began with the sexual liberation/promiscuity of the 1960s and has progressed at a pace that should be frightening even to the most heathen of infidels.
I also agree with the view that BOTH Parties have done some very terrible things. The "political class" have been both divorced and alienated from the productive class for eons and they must ultimately be brought to account and to some sort of real accountability.
Having said that, I also agree with SF that the Liberals in BOTH Parties (liberal Dems and "Rockefeller-wing Republicans") are the most vile members of the political class and no one outdoes the liberal Dems in that regard.
Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Rangel, Kucinich, Conyers, Waters et al make up a veritable rogue's gallery of the political class.
For the record, I have noted many times that I consider the Muslim penalties for pedophilia - a grisly, public spectacle of a death, to be "somewhat more "enlightened" than our own." I really do believe that.
"Muslim penalties for pedophilia"?
Their "prophet" was a pedophile, marrying a six-year-old girl, and having sex with her when she was nine or ten. In the Islamic world, Mohammed is considered a perfect example of humanity.
And it's not just with young girls that devout, exemplary Muslims "do the deed". Check out Kandahar Journal; Shh, It's an Open Secret: Warlords and Pedophilia, dated February 21, 2002:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan— Back in the 19th century, ethnic Pashtuns fighting in Britain's colonial army sang odes talking of their longing for young boys.
Homosexuality, cloaked in the tradition of strong masculine bonds that are a hallmark of Islamic culture and are even more pronounced in southern Afghanistan's strict, sexually segregated society, has long been a clandestine feature of life here. But pedophilia has been its curse.
Though the puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture, now that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is gone, some people here are indulging in it once again.
"During the Taliban, being with a friend was difficult, but now it is easy again," said Ahmed Fareed, a 19-year-old man with a white shawl covering his face except for a dark shock of hair and piercing kohl-lined eyes. Mr. Fareed should know. A shopkeeper took him as a lover when he was just 12, he said.
An interest in relationships with young boys among warlords and their militia commanders played a part in the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan. In 1994, the Taliban, then a small army of idealistic students of the Koran, were called to rescue a boy over whom two commanders had fought. They freed the boy and the people responded with gratitude and support.
"At that time boys couldn't come to the market because the commanders would come and take away any that they liked," said Amin Ullah, a money changer, gesturing to his two teenage sons hunched over wads of afghani bank notes at Kandahar's currency bazaar.
Most men here spend the vast majority of their time in the company of other men and rarely glimpse more than the feet of any woman other than their mother, sister or wife. The atmosphere leaves little room for romantic love, let alone recreational sex between men and women. But alternative opportunities are not hard to find.
The hard-core Muslims are about as sincere as the Libtards railed on here. (Agreed with your rogue's list of Dems, BTW.)
Islam is opportunistic. It oppresses sexual relations among the masses of faithful, while permitting the rich to have four wives and as many concubines as their right hands possess. Most men are hoping to get the opportunity to rape 72 virgins in paradise because they're not satisfied with what their right hand possesses, and this sexual frustration helps motivate a slew of suicide bombers.
Whatever the people in power want, there is some kind of justification for it. Rules are for the masses - just like with the Libtards.
Maybe that's why these two groups in fact get along so well together.
"Muslim penalties for pedophilia"?
Their "prophet" was a pedophile, marrying a six-year-old girl, and having sex with her when she was nine or ten. In the Islamic world, Mohammed is considered a perfect example of humanity." (EL)
You're addressing and taking issue with the hypocrisy of Islam,. That is true enough, BUT they're punishments for pedophiles (yes, I suppose "non-sanctioned pedophiles," or pedarists who are not politically connected) is quite draconian.
In Iran, of all places, one pedophile was lashed, then the mothers of his victims were allowed to come up and spit on him and whip him before he was hung from the end of a crane by a slip know.
I know there are those in the West who claim that "draconian punishments are NOT deterents to such crimes," but the evidence does NOT support that view.
Today, seven of the ten countries in the world with the lowest homicide rates are Muslim nations.
In Elizabethan England, violent crime was rampant and "highwaymen" (that age's street muggers) lorded over the public roads.
Queen Elizabeth issued a decree that "Since we cannot make them respect the law, we will make them fear it." After that follwed a period of extremely grisly public executions. In some cases, "drawing and quartering" was brought back. The English were masters of torture back in the day.
It was the Elizabethan period that created such a peaceful England that the Police (Bobbies) were able to patrol the streets until very recently without guns.
Public and very draconian punishments DO tend to work.
Do they "damage a nation's soul?"
I suppose that can be argued in the affirmative, but then again, doesn't widespread, random violent crime damage a nation's soul and shake the people's faith in "the rule of law" even more?
It's not so much the hypocrisy of Islam as it is the hypocrisy of humanity. The people in charge are always happy to have draconian laws that they know will never be applied to themselves.
I support our Constitution, including provisions against cruel and unusual punishments. I believe some of the interpretations of that provision have become extreme, and are being used to prohibit punishment itself, not just punishment that is cruel and unusual. However, I support our Constitution.
Since I support our Constitution, and quote the founders of this country, that makes me a candidate to be a right-wing terrorist.
Since I meet these criteria, I must be some kind of enemy combatant.
Since I am an enemy combatant and terrorist, I can be tortured to divulge information that will prevent an attack on the US.
Since I would never do any such thing, no such attack will occur and, once I have been subjected to rendition and torture, the fact that no attack has occurred will be proof that the draconian and unconstitutional methods used were a success, and that Constitutional protections against them are counterproductive.
So, can we try to help the government employees, whom I accuse of corruption, treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors, find me quickly and begin the waterboarding? The sooner we get this started, the sooner we can prove how well this lovely new system works.
And don't try to say that wasn't where you were trying to take this, because, once this Pandora's box is opened, your desires are irrelevant, as what you have chosen is at hand. That is exactly where this is going - an out-of-control government beholden to affluent and powerful special interests keeping its people in subjugation to maintain the tyrrany of a status quo - and the founders of this nation knew that very well.
By the way, the homicide statistics from these exemplary Muslim countries... do they include honor killings and stonings as homicides? Or is that conveniently overlooked as the price one pays to have a moral society free of pedophiles like the "prophet" who started it all?
Islam is only against raping children the way the Bush-43 administration is against torture: they conveniently define what they do to be legal, despite all evidence to the contrary. Such is the abuse of power against which our Constitution guarantees the right to defend ourselves - if we have the wisdom and the courage to do so.
Well, apparently we disagree over the very definition of "torture" as well.
I define torture as the use of extreme duress that inflicts permanent physical debilitation.
In my view, water-boarding doesn't meet that definition, as it inflicts no permanent physical disabilities.
Neither does, say, a police officer taping two phone books to the head of a suspected cop shooter....I worked with a guy who did just that for over five years ("intensive interrogations") as a cop in NYC.
I'm sure there are many who'd consider THAT torture. Perhaps THAT was, even by my own definition, given that some of those who were "bloodlessly concussed," did suffer the serious mental disability once called being "punch drunk."
So, we've all lived in such a society for all our lives. It existed even before most of us were born.
About a decade ago Court TV (now "Tru TV") ran a documentary show called "The Interrogation," which showed parts of lengthy interrogations, many lasting over 60 hours straight until the suspect was finally tripped up and "broken." In the process most of those interrogated were kept up for days on end....routinely over 60 hours, with loud noises and bright lights (ironically enough, many of the SAME things the ACLU called "torture" when used on enemy combatants held in Gitmo).
Now, the ACLU is certainly aware that these practices have long been common in police departments across the country, and worse - the threat of virtually assuring the suspect of getting raped when put into a cell with larger, more menacing cellmates, etc.
How do such things happen?
people forget that when government is empowered an army of bureaucrats and various bureaucracies are empowered and they actually deliver or act upon what is written as law.
Everywhere police are charged with and demanded to reduce crime. Well, there's no easy way to get hardened, experienced criminals to give up information....ergo, they find ways to manipulate the minutia of the laws...
...The greatest threat of big government is bureaucracy and the destructive power unleashed when various bureaucracies inevitably push blindly for things perceived to be in their (at least short term) best interests...BUT if those bureaucracies aren't given (or take) some leeway, nothing would ever get done.
Certainly no convictions would be made if violent thugs were actually allowed to simply refuse to cooperate with police.
That's almost certainly why the police are allowed to do things no civilian could get ever away with - lying, misleading, intimidating and otherwise applying psychological duress to, for instance, get a suspect to erroneously believe that he/she has been "given up" by their associates.
Absent that kind of "skirting around the intent of the 5th Amendment," it would be virtually impossible to convict all but the dumbest 1% of criminals.
You seem to believe that we once held the Constitution dear, but that has always been subject to how adhering to the Constitution impacts us.
Hell, many of us still do, at least when it suits us, say being able to sue for money damages, but not so much when a mugger or rapist who attacked a friend or family member can't be convicted due to "technicalities."
Moreover, America's Founders obviously didn't consider hanging, firing squads, which were the primary methods of applying the death penalty before the advent of the electric chair, the gas chamber and ultimately lethal injection. What's more they applied the death penalty to a relatively wide array of crimes (somewhere around 13, I believe).
They also seemed to have little problem with tar and feathering, which was also in relatively common use during their day.
Tar and feathering - stripping the convicted naked in public, pouring hot tar over his body, followed by a generous amount of feathers...many of those subjected to this punishment for "lesser crimes," did ultimately die from their wounds (extreme burns) or the infections that set in afterward.
What I'm noting is that such standards are subjective, to say the least.
1) Regarding waterboarding, it was defined as torture in the aftermath of WWII. For example,
(AP) Republican presidential candidate John McCain reminded people Thursday that some Japanese were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding.
"There should be little doubt from American history that we consider that as torture otherwise we wouldn't have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans," McCain said during a news conference.
He said he forgot to mention that piece of history during Wednesday night's Republican debate, during which he criticized former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney after Romney declined to publicly say what interrogation techniques he would rule out.
"I would also hope that he would not want to be associated with a technique which was invented in the Spanish Inquisition, was used by Pol Pot in one of the great eras of genocide in history and is being used on Burmese monks as we speak," the Arizona senator said. "America is a better nation than that."
I have some issues with Senator McCain, but he is right on the money here. America is better than that.
And, America used to be smarter. When one is subjected to waterboarding, or any other kind of torture, one will eventually say whatever one needs to say to get the torture to stop, regardless of the veracity. That is why torture is so unreliable as a method of interrogation. The only thing torture works well for is to prove who is in power.
Clinton would hold the record for damage done by a President to this country, had it not been for Bush-43. And, I think history will show, Bush-43 would hold the record had it not been for Obama.
2) As for tar and feathering, etc., you of course aware that at that time, the founders of this country still tolerated slavery, and women were denied the right to vote. I know you are not suggesting that we tar and feather people (although if we were doing so, I shamefully admit there are some candidates I could suggest for the procedure), just as I know you are not suggesting that we re-enslave people of African descent or deny the right to vote to women. (If I were a Libtard, that is exactly what I would be accusing you of right now.)
3) Regarding hanging and the firing squad, as I pointed out earlier:
I believe some of the interpretations of that provision have become extreme, and are being used to prohibit punishment itself, not just punishment that is cruel and unusual.
With some of these sicko criminals, it is easy to say hanging is too good for them, but do we really want to bring America down to the level of Iran, North Korea, Communist China, and so on, or is America, as Senator McCain said, "a better nation than that"?
4) The police have a tough job. They have a few moments, often under fire, to make decisions that lawyers will argue for years afterward. Despite that, our police forces are some of the best in the world. While we have problems with brutality and corruption, generally our police are honest and brave, and we should be proud of our thin blue line. While we can forgive occasional lapses of judgement, we need to look harder at patterns of misconduct.
Did taping phone books to the head of the cop-shooter result in someone we knew was guilty getting off? I know Bush's idiotic policy of "enhanced interrogation" (an Orwellian name if I ever heard one) has resulted in terrorists we know are guilty now being beyond prosecution due to the way evidence was acquired, as well as people who turned out to be innocent getting tortured. Those two reasons alone are enough to condemn the practice, unless one is in favor of torture as an interrogation technique, in which case it is just a matter of time before people like you, the kind of people who make this country great (and I mean that), get accused of something, and falsely admit to it to stop the interrogation.
Anyone who considers himself a Christian and is in favor of this kind of interrogation might want to run her/his beliefs past Jesus, Who, I am sure, has useful input on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation".
“Regarding waterboarding, it was defined as torture in the aftermath of WWII.” (EL)
(AP) “Republican presidential candidate John McCain reminded people Thursday that some Japanese were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding.”...
...of course, they also included disemboweling prisoners, conducting crude and often lethally, torturous “medical experiments” on prisoners and cannibalizing same.
EVERY U.S. Special Forces member is waterboarded as a part of their training. Again, I would ask, is waterboarding worse than a cop duct-taping two telephone books around the head of a cop-shooting suspect, then taking a baseball bat to those phone books to “bloodlessly concuss” the thug into confessing?
Such extreme techniques have long been used to extract critical information. The police who’ve used such techniques KNOW that they do NOT deliver “unreliable information.” They deliberately keep some aspects of each crime from the public. In virtually every case, those subjected to such techniques (and those brought in, are NEVER brought in on any kind of vague suspicions – they’re almost always brought in based on blood or fingerprint evidence that put them at that scene) not only implicate the others involved and what theirs (and their own) roles were, but they give back many if not all of those hidden details of the crime...which all but assures investigators that they “have the right guy.”
Yes, I’m less squeamish than many people today. I have no trouble seeing those who treat others brutally, treated brutally themselves. That DOES NOT diminish a society, it ennobles it, in my view...but again, that is an area of subjective opinion and reasonable people can disagree.
So, I’m not debating the definition of “torture.” As I noted, I have my own definition, which I believe is quite reasonable.
Standards change over time. Today’s Western standards are at the least laughable in their overweening compassion for those with bad-intentions, and at the worst, indicative a perverse self-hatred that would hold the Western man to standards that are neither respected nor upheld in the rest of the world...in most quarters they are actually laughed at.
The West is (hopefully) recovering from a fifty or more year period of “anything goes” permissiveness. We strain to avoid “punishing” criminals, instead focusing on “rehabilitation,” when all studies show that ONLY advancing age and infirmity really slow down the vast majority of violent felons.
A return to the days of prison-work camps that aged a convict thirty years for every five spent “inside,” wouldn’t be a bad thing...again, in my view.
With the recidivism rate at or above 90% for most violent offenders, the idea of actually “rehabilitating” or changing a person via “supportive, outside stimuli” is the idea that based on all evidence seems whimsical.
Better to “grind up” those who cannot peacefully coexist with their fellow men and wage a private war on society.
Look, even today, THAT is exactly what the Western “criminal justice system” exists to do – to create a myriad jobs for various “public servants.” Violent crime is big business for big government. Judges, court officers, court stenographers, police officers, corrections officers/prison guards and a host of other “good honest professions” exist because violent crime flourishes...and it flourishes, in part, because we allow those who are innately criminally inclined to enter prisons that have become “Colleges for crime,” where they can workout ad nauseum, use the library facilities to become more familiar with the laws and its loopholes and come out better, more effective criminals.
Everyone associated with that system knows this to be true and they know that “rehabilitation” doesn’t work (no one would consider a 90% recidivism rate evidence of a working system), but we perpetuate this system because it creates so many good and in some cases (judges, for instance) prestigious jobs/careers.
Given that ALL the prevailing evidence suggests that our permissive, less draconian approach to violent crime hasn’t worked, in fact, we have seen such crime increase tremendously since the start of this more permissive period (somewhere around the late-1950s to the mid-1960s...places like New York City were well “ahead of the curve” on this score), we should be open to admitting it’s been a failure and opting to revert to a somewhat more effective route of crime control.
“As for tar and feathering, etc., you of course aware that at that time, the founders of this country still tolerated slavery, and women were denied the right to vote.” (EL)
Yes, standards change, but NOT because “we are better people.” If anything, we are merely weaker people.
The ONLY reason chattel slavery does not still exist is because industrialization cannot run on slave-labor, while a rudimentary agrarian economy virtually requires it, which is probably why Europe and the United States are two of the only places in the modern world where chattel slavery does not exist, at least not as a government-sanctioned policy. Sub-Saharan Africa is rife with chattel slavery, so is the Arab Mid-East and huge tracks of Asia.
Industrialization made chattel slavery obsolete NOT any improvements in man’s temperament or human nature. Consider that virtually every notable abolitionist of the 19th Century came from the comfortably industrialized north.
The same can be said for women’s rights, as well. Today, women are still “property” in about 2/3s of the modern world if not more...and again, it is industrialization that allows that and NOT any improvements in human nature.
We today, are every bit as abominable as those who’ve come before us. We’ve been able to hold onto a thin veneer of “refinement” while squandering an inheritance earned by previous generations.
Please, I hope you acknowledge that should, for any number of reasons, man is reverted back to his agrarian past, that all men everywhere would act as those before us did...I don’t simply believe that, I KNOW it to be so.
“...just as I know you are not suggesting that we re-enslave people of African descent or deny the right to vote to women. (If I were a Libtard, that is exactly what I would be accusing you of right now.)” (EL)
Which is why liberals, despite their professed good intentions, can never make actual, affirmative arguments for their views. You can, though you seem far more Libertarian than anything else. Libertarians generally do make very compelling arguments for their case.
Something else must be noted, Africans weren’t the only ones enslaved in this country. Through 1725 there were more Irish slaves (NOT indentured servants, but slaves) than there were African slaves. Moreover, since the British, under Cromwell, in particular, got their Irish slaves free, via kidnapping orphaned children and widowed women from the streets of Ireland and wounded Irish in battle, those were the slaves used as “ballast” – when they had to dump cargo, they always dumped the free Irish over the side, never the Africans they paid for.
I know that’s a part of our history many are unfamiliar with, but it is a part of that history none-the-less.
SEE: http://www.articlesbase.com/history-articles/an-account-of-the-irish-slave-trade-642619.html
AND: http://www.giftofireland.com/IrishSlaves.htm
AND: http://www.afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html
...for more information on that.
“With some of these sicko criminals, it is easy to say hanging is too good for them, but do we really want to bring America down to the level of Iran, North Korea, Communist China, and so on, or is America, as Senator McCain said, "a better nation than that"?” (EL)
No, I believe McCain is wrong on this point. This is also the America that machine-gunned Japanese soldiers as they fled the caves and dug-outs they were hiding in, in flames after being hit with flame-throwers. The America that justifiably dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in order to save an estimated million U.S. servicemen from death, invading that country and taking it street by street. It’s the America that killed more people than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined when it fire-bombed the German city of Dresden.
We are NOT “better people.” We merely aspire to a better moral code, but that code has had many, MANY loopholes when it’s been convenient for us to find them.
Claiming that using harsh corporeal punishment is barbaric is akin to claiming that anti-smoking crusades and even the most benign environmental statutes are bad because they both began in Nazi Germany! It’s an argument by invidious comparison.
Another way to put it is that we already HAVE the harshest of death penalties – being beaten to death with a hammer, being dragged by a car or truck until your body falls apart, being forced to drink Drano at gunpoint...THESE are the types of Capital Punishment carried out every day by citizens against each other. Our acceptance of that speaks more ill of us than throwing a thousand convicted murderers and child molesters into a snake pit. We bear a responsibility for those outrages because our permissiveness and our compassion for those with bad intentions has allowed that to flourish.
Why would McCain feel that a convicted murderer should get an easier death than most cancer patients get?
Again, the same people who take it on faith that violent felons should be placed in “prisons” where they can workout as much as they like and have access to extensive libraries, cable TV and free medical care, are the same folks that feel that no matter how human a given thug has treated some of us (his victims) we must remain aloof and compassionate, to the point of assuring that he feels no pain even when subjected to the “ultimate PUNISHMENT.”
How perverse is THAT?!
We are suffering from a cancer in the West and we’d better get a handle on it and take the harsh medicine required to ablate it, or we’re doomed.
“... Anyone who considers himself a Christian and is in favor of this kind of interrogation might want to run her/his beliefs past Jesus...” (EL)
I probably agree with you there, although in MY case, I am not a Christian. I WAS once, but stopped at around age eleven when my dad let me stop going to Church...long story that I’ve been considering putting together in some sort of allegorical or “factional” account under “They Called Me JC”...JC was my nickname growing up, because most people naturally assumed my last name began with a C rather than a K.
I am pretty much a non-denominational Deist. I recognize atheism as being as much faith-based as any religion and have my own well outlined spiritual views.
I consider Jesus a great, albeit impractical philosopher, whose code of conduct runs counter to human nature itself. After all, Jesus said we should embrace and love those who despise us and offer another cheek to those who’d spit on us...and he admonished his followers to “treat others BETTER than they treat you.”
Most self-professed Christians I’ve met treat people the way most pagans do – as those people treat them. I would agree with Jefferson who claimed that “most of those who claim to be Christians are really Paulists.”
But that is NOT an indictment, I’m merely pointing out how virtually impossible it is to live within the code of conduct Jesus laid down. And by the way, Jefferson’s Bible, in which he took out ALL of Jesus’ actual words and sermons and removed all the miracles from the New Testament accounts is both a wonderful book AND proof that one of our primary Founding Fathers (Franklin was another) was not a Christian...although, our accepted moral code was based (loosely) upon “Christian principles.”
Much of our current problems seems to stem from the fact that the American experiment walks a very fine line. Big government feeds big bureaucracy and ultimately stifles and chokes off all growth and future progress, but too little government, too lax an enforcement of the laws necessary for us all to peacefully coexist leads to civil disorder and unrest and ultimately the dissolution of any "union" we have forged. It is a very difficult balancing act.
CORRECTIONS:
"Through 1725 there were more Irish slaves (NOT indentured servants, but slaves) than there were African slaves...in the Western Hemisphere."
"Again, the same people who take it on faith that violent felons should be placed in “prisons” where they can workout as much as they like and have access to extensive libraries, cable TV and free medical care, are the same folks that feel that no matter how INHUMANE a given thug has treated some of us (his victims) we must remain aloof and compassionate, to the point of assuring that he feels no pain even when subjected to the “ultimate PUNISHMENT.”
Oh and here is a link to The Jefferson Bible on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Morals-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/1451597509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273250448&sr=8-1
AND it's online at: http://www.jeffersonbible.com/Home.php
I think the bottom line is that people are people. That was what was truly horrific about the Nazis - they weren't some invaders from some alien planet, they weren't some genetically-engineered monsters, they were people - not unlike ourselves. But, I think America is a better nation than to torture its prisoners of war - at least we were.
We are allowing ourselves to be dragged down to a lowest common denominator.
I am in favor of harsh punishment for violent criminals. I think death rows should have a higher turnover rate than they do, especially California's; criminals thrive on society's tolerance. I suspect that in many cases you and I disagree not fundamentally, but on where we draw the line.
I'm not sure what all you have come up with on McCain. As I said, I have issues with him. However, I agree with him that we should not waterboard prisoners of war. Furthermore, I loathe the Bush-43 Administration for its Clintonite slickery in declaring these people to be detainees, to keep them in a part of Cuba over which Cuba has no control, and to redefine certain methods of torture as techniques of enhanced interrogation. Bush-43 is no better than Clinton, and, as a Republican who voted for him, it irritates me to no end to have to say that.
I do not condone the way some of the Japanese were treated in some instances where they were trying to surrender, but given how barbaric the combat in the Pacific had become, and given the fact that it was not the US and our allies who made it barbaric, neither would I condemn those who were involved.
I have defended the atomic bombings of Japan far better than you have here, though I know that if I threw that out as a challenge, you could do a more thorough job. You are probably aware that more people died in the fire-bombing of Tokyo than in either atomic bombing.
I look forward to the day when Americans once again seek to rise above human weaknesses and shortcomings, to the day when we once again are a beacon of hope for all the world. What we are becoming is a cesspool of decadence and corruption, where criminals thrive, where Presidents lie under oath in an era when "character doesn't count, it's the economy, stupid"; I miss the America when George Washington was elected because of his character, not despite it.
I think your final paragraph is a nice place to end this debate (?):
Much of our current problems seems to stem from the fact that the American experiment walks a very fine line. Big government feeds big bureaucracy and ultimately stifles and chokes off all growth and future progress, but too little government, too lax an enforcement of the laws necessary for us all to peacefully coexist leads to civil disorder and unrest and ultimately the dissolution of any "union" we have forged. It is a very difficult balancing act.
Agreed. We can haggle over the details in the comments section to your future posts? :)
It seems your frustration stems from the fact that human nature is what it is.
It is ineluctable.
To expect men to give up, for instance, the tribalism that’s been genetically encoded into our DNA, a tribalism that finds endless ways of dividing us into the “ins” and the “outs” cannot be undone by willpower any more than a chemical imbalance that creates an inability to process alcohols and sugars, leading to various addictions, can be undone by mere willpower.
In the Armed services, troops will always remark that when the U.S. and another nation’s troops are in port together, it’s the Americans against whoever, when it’s just the American Army and Navy it’s Army versus Navy and when just the navy is in port it’s the aviators versus the CBs, etc.
There have been both good and bad that have sprung from that part of our natures and there’s no way to throw out the bad without also losing the good.
A lot of us like to THINK we’re “better than that,” that “we’d never do that,” but that tends to be done from the comfort of NOT being confronted with what police, military and intelligence officers often have to do – extract critical information from unwilling subjects.
There really should be no reason to defend the U.S. dropping those atomic bombs on Japan at the end of WWII. I don’t believe it’s “opinion” on whether or not it was morally right for the U.S. (it wasn’t Truman, it was the USA) to drop two atomic bombs on an Imperial Japan determined NOT to surrender. It saved an estimated 1 MILLION U.S. lives...“Better them than us” is the only proper morality in such instances at all times and ALWAYS, anything else amounts to an almost treasonous disrespect for our fellow countrymen.
Same in the case of the war on terror, if you have a Khalid Sheik Mohammad (the “mastermind of 9/11” and major planner for al Qaeda) and you feel he has information you need to save American lives...you do WHATEVER it takes to get that information.
Anyone who’d suggest that “We try to reason with him and if that doesn’t work, then just look for other ways of interdicting the planned attacks,” is equating American lives with those of “the others.” That is, in effect, a treason against our own people.”
Moreover, people assigned to extract information from such people, simply aren’t programmed and trained to “give up,” when the subject “fails to cooperate.” What goes on after that, 99% of us probably would rather not know...and should not know.
“...I loathe the Bush-43 Administration for its Clintonite slickery in declaring these people to be detainees, to keep them in a part of Cuba over which Cuba has no control, and to redefine certain methods of torture as techniques of enhanced interrogation.”
Actually, the Geneva Protocols provide for the exception of “non-uniformed enemy combatants.” The Geneva Accords only apply to “uniformed military personnel.” Spies, general contractors, recon scouts out of uniform and behind enemy lines are NOT covered by the Geneva Protocols.
Militia and other non-uniform fighting personnel are routinely killed when met by uniformed forces.
What the Iraqis did in Fallujah (the killing of the Blackwater personnel, not the mutilating, burning and hanging the bodies from the bridge) was actually within the bounds of the Geneva Protocols – you are allowed to kill foreign military support personnel out of uniform...even if they’re unarmed and looking to surrender. Likewise our treating of foreign nationals captured on various battlefields as “Enemy Combatants” and detaining them without representation or charge is also within the guidelines of the Geneva Protocols.
More than THAT, America wasn’t founded on the idea that “mankind is some sort of brotherhood.” Our “innate and God-given rights” were NOT intended to be applied to citizen and non-citizen alike. Non-citizens actually have no basic “Constitutional Rights” that must be recognized. Yes, that’s a “technicality,” but it is reasonable not to afford foreign nationals things like Miranda rights, Habeus Corpus, etc., on the grounds that most other nations do not accord those same rights to us.
Why would we argue over a foreigner’s right to access our civil courts, let alone a suspected terrorist? Many argue that they have no “Constitutional Rights” that must be recognized, as they don’t adhere to our Constitution, the Constitution does not adhere to them.
Yonkers is a hot-spot for gays. Child Molesters like Timmy Spaun and Anthony Delbene. I mention them because I was molested by them at age 10 in Yonkers on the grounds of Sacred Heart church. I was to ashamed to tell anyone. So they got away. I dream of getting them everyday for what they did to my childhood.
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