Tuesday, August 19, 2014

A DREAM DEFERRED.

In my Voice column I mentioned some folks who thought Ferguson would prove a libertarian inflection point for conservatives, and I see some of them are still at it. Under the headline "Ferguson Is The Beginning Of The End For Conservatives’ 'War On Crime,'" BuzzFeed's Evan McMorris-Santoro offers the testimony of Grover Norquist and Chuck DeVore, two conservative factota who think they see an opening here:
“On the crime stuff, a Republican can stand up and challenge the aggressiveness of the cops,” said Grover Norquist, top dog at Americans For Tax Reform and a supporter of criminal justice changes. “Democrats are surrounded by the images of people who defend Mumia or whoever that guy is who killed those cops"... 
“If our policies were in place,” DeVore said, Ferguson might not have the some of the divides he sees as at the root of the turmoil this week. 
“Perhaps there would be lower unemployment,” he said. “Perhaps there would be more two-parent households.”
The opportunistic tone, at least, is convincing. But I fear the moment is passing. As I said yesterday, take a look at National Review to see which way the stagnant wind blows. Charles C.W. Cooke, who has been among NR's stronger civil-libertarian voices on this subject, has retreated to his comfort zone -- i.e., nuh-uh-you-stupid-liberals, America still rules  -- as his colleagues go full lawn-order all around him.

The latest such salvo comes from Victor Davis Hanson, who is enraged that some measure of order was brought to Ferguson's streets, because it was New Black Panther Malik Shabazz who brought it. Imagine, when Jesse Jackson freed Navy Airman Robert Goodman from Syria in 1984, even Ronald Reagan said "you can't argue with success" -- but for Hanson, Shabazz's assist represents "at least a partial erosion of legal authority in Ferguson," which he finds "emblematic of our times in which the sanctity of established law exists only to the degree that it is considered useful in promoting a more egalitarian agenda. In the matter of the recent influx at the southern border..." You can smell it coming: the lawless-Obama shtick, and how all his crimes from Benghazi to immigration have led to this moment:
And so we get the disreputable Malik Shabazz as a Robespierre-like street arbitrator of calm or violence in Ferguson, various ethnic pressure groups as de facto legislators adjudicating who will be granted access to the United States, and the current administration able to pick and choose which particular existing federal law is deemed fair and useful and which discriminatory and counter-productive — and rendered therefore null and void. 
In all these cases, any particular law at any particular moment can be judged obsolete and an impediment to social justice — and so it can be replaced immediately by a sort of revolutionary justice with the full backing of the administrative state.
Did I miss something? Was the cop who shot Michael Brown lynched? Or even arrested?

If none of that means anything, then let's just make it this:
Blacks and whites have sharply different reactions to the police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo., and the protests and violence that followed. Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to say that the shooting of Michael Brown “raises important issues about race that need to be discussed"... 
Reactions to last week’s events in Ferguson divide the public by partisan affiliation and age, as well as by race. Fully 68% of Democrats (including 62% of white Democrats) think the Brown case raises important issues about race that merit discussion. Just 21% of Democrats (including 25% of white Democrats) say questions of race are getting more attention than they deserve. Among Republicans, opinion is almost the reverse – 61% say the issue of race has gotten too much attention while 22% say the case has raised important racial issues that need to be discussed.
Contra Norquist, "challenging the aggressiveness of the cops" has got nothing to do with it. The plain fact is, Republicans (and the conservatives for whom they serve as avatars) can't back off law-and-order because their cracker constituency demands it.

But don't worry -- you'll hear all these arguments again, only louder and unanimously, if someone tries to arrest Cliven Bundy.

UPDATE. In comments, Jay B responds to Hanson's fantasy that under the Kenyan Pretender "any particular law at any particular moment can be judged obsolete and an impediment to social justice":
What law was judged obsolete and by whom? The people of Ferguson, who believed in the Right to Assembly and Free Speech only to meet with the Hermann Goering Division, Mayberry Company? Or the cops themselves, who saw fit to murder a kid, then go ballistic on the people who got mad about it? Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of law left at the particular moment, but thanks for being racist, VDH. It's clarifying. 

156 comments:

  1. Halloween_Jack10:17 AM

    I've already seen someone in my Facebook feed repost the bit about how some white girl was killed by black guys but whites didn't riot, as if the two were even halfway equivalent, and made the mistake of looking at the comments. If this guy isn't the same person who used to (and maybe still does) bomb your Veev column comments with racist copypasta, he's a brother in spirit.

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  2. The latest such salvo comes from Victor Davis Hanson...

    Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them.
    ~

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  3. M. Krebs10:29 AM

    "The Cracker Constituency" would be a great name for a country band.

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  4. Matt Jones10:33 AM

    "In all these cases, any particular law at any particular moment can be judged obsolete and an impediment to social justice — and so it can be replaced immediately by a sort of revolutionary justice with the full backing of the administrative state."


    Oh wow, for a second there I thought VDH had suddenly realized that his fellow traveler's love affair with nullification was bullshit.


    Then I noticed the mention of "social justice", wingnut code for "using the power of the state to help people who aren't rich".

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  5. Cato the Censor10:34 AM

    "And so we get the disreputable Malik Shabazz as a Robespierre-like street arbitrator ..."
    What ho, then. Does Mr. Shabazz traipse through the streets of Ferguson in an elegant, sea-green, 18th century suit with ruffles and bows? He must be a nonpareil of elegance and class. He's undoubtedly incorruptible as well. Who better to solve the nation's racial unrest?

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  6. DN Nation10:34 AM

    Get government out of healthcare! Don't get rid of Medicare! Lower taxes! Raise consumption taxes! Stop the militarization of police! But I hope they shoot the blacks!

    For a shrinking tent of a party, the GOP certainly contains multitudes.

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  7. Fats Durston10:35 AM

    Another in a long line of terrible historical analogies from "historian" VD Hanson.


    An actor representing the state, funded and instructed in part by an institution called Homeland Security, executes a "dangerous" citizen. Robespierre, a member of the Committee for Public Safety, i.e., the main executive body of mid-1790s France established to deal with internal enemies, ordered the execution of "dangerous" citizens. And Shabazz gets labeled as Ferguson's Robespierre?! What the fuck?


    I'd say stick to the classical period, but we all know that VD sucks at that, too.

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  8. stepped_pyramids10:40 AM

    Norquist is already unpopular with the social right because his wife is a Muslim. His motivation has always been tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.

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  9. glennisw10:44 AM

    “If our policies were in place...Perhaps there would be lower unemployment,” he said. “Perhaps there would be more two-parent households.”

    Which policies are those? Tax cuts for the rich? Seriously?

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  10. edroso10:47 AM

    But he's not sea-green, if you know what I mean.

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  11. Homer: Not a riot in sight. The tax cuts must be working like a charm.
    Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
    Homer: Thank you, dear.
    Lisa: By your logic I could claim that defunding Obamacare will bring that chainsaw that was stolen back.
    Homer: Oh, how does it work?
    Lisa: It doesn't work.
    Homer: Uh-huh.
    Lisa: It's just a stupid election meme.
    Homer: Uh-huh.
    Lisa: But you did get a new chainsaw for your birthday didn't you?
    [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
    Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your meme.
    [Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ellis_Weiner11:04 AM

    (Wounded voice): I said PERHAPS.

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  13. grover norquist is married? neat!


    [sticks gun in mouth, splatters brains up against wall]

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  14. Ellis_Weiner11:09 AM

    "at least a partial erosion of legal authority in Ferguson,"


    Uh-huh. The cops shoot (and hit six times) an unarmed man, then show up in Fallujah-ready war kit, and it's one guy trying to calm everyone the fuck down who's eroding legal authority. Maybe Hanson's column would at least deliver some entertainment value if read in Monty Python's barking-mad-retired-Colonel's voice, but I doubt it.


    Meanwhile, I'm reminded of a brief Firesign Theatre bit as a promo skimmed past while scanning the dial:


    ANNOUNCERS: POLICE STATE! POLICE STATE! POLICE STATE!
    (SFX: Sirens, gunshots)
    FRIGHTENED WOMAN: Help! It's the police!

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  15. BigHank5311:11 AM

    Perhaps I'd be commuting to my twelve-hour-a-week, $400k job on a chrome-plated unicorn, too. Who can say?

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  16. Brian Schlosser11:17 AM

    His wife already took a bullet for womankind. No need for you to do so as well...

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  17. Brian Schlosser11:18 AM

    Ol' Yellowstain files another column

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  18. “On the crime stuff, a Republican can stand up and challenge the aggressiveness of the cops,” said Grover Norquist, top dog at Americans For Tax Reform and a supporter of criminal justice changes. “Democrats are surrounded by the images of people who defend Mumia or whoever that guy is who killed those cops"...


    Free Mumia? Wow, what a timely reference. Maybe the rest of that quote was "...and dimbulb actors screaming 'Free Tibet.' And why does the President keep trying to force busing on us?"


    I can remember the last time I saw the "Free Mumia" guys (other than one of those websites where the 90's never ended, I mean). It was at a street protest in D.C., after 9/11 but before the drumbeat to invade Iraq started up. Needless to say, this particular protest was neither as large nor as cohesive as the ones that would come a year or so later. As I'm sure you're all aware, liberal demonstrations can be real crank magnets, drawing people from every left-wing crackpot group with any membership at all. At this one, the cranks completely overwhelmed the central theme of the march, whatever it even was (if there was one at all). There were at least a dozen causes represented just in the few minutes I watched, and Free Mumia was one of them.


    So, 12 years ago. And before that, it was a casual reference in some songs recorded by left-wing musical groups. Yes, "surrounded by images," truly.

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  19. tigrismus11:38 AM

    the sanctity of established law exists only to the degree that it is considered useful in promoting a more egalitarian agenda

    So we should treat laws as sacred and inviolable even if they're unjust in nature or in application?

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  20. Derelict11:39 AM

    The Right's psyche is a hydra-headed thing. That's why it can hold so many conflicting thoughts at once.

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  21. Do white people have to riot to get justice done? Do the families and friends of murdered white girls get tear gassed when they try to hold a candlelight vigil or a protest memorial for their murdered friend?

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  22. Derelict11:41 AM

    But of course!
    And don't ask VDH to explain why it's just A-Okay for Bundy to point loaded guns at Federal officials, but the beginning of the end of civilization for Black people to yell things at the cops.

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  23. RogerAiles11:41 AM

    FOX News convened a law enforcement panel on Ferguson which featured racist scumbag Bo Dietl and convicted felon Bernie Kerik.

    My first thought was: When did Mark Furhman die?

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  24. Well, but for VD, the real authorities and the real state were represented by Marie Antoinette and the soi disant roi. After them its robspierres all the way down.

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  25. I love it that he can't even be arsed to remember his own example. "...or whoever that guy is who killed those cops...[or whatever...]"

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  26. It's that goldang welfare that ruined everything. See, black families used to be doing just great. Then a liberal asshole walked up to each household, crammed a envelope full of food stamps into the mother's hand and said, "NOW YOU'RE ON THE DOLE." And on the way out, he held open the door so the father could leave and shack up with someone else. And this all happened in that permissive, liberal dominated period of...the 80's.


    Look, it makes perfect sense if you don't think about it.

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  27. RogerAiles11:50 AM

    I believe he's thinking of David Koresh. Or Tim McVeigh. Or perhaps Richard Poplawski. Does Eric Rudolph refresh his memory?

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  28. swearyanthony11:50 AM

    Pretty sure VDH gets his ideas of "authority" from repeated viewings of "300" these days.

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  29. I'm rewatching the Sopranos and I've just reached the season where one of the Mafia guys, Ralphie Cifaretto, is obsessed with Gladiator and keeps repeating various stupid lines sonorously and pointlessly. Eventually they are going to cap his ass for doing this, as well as for other crimes. I imagine VDH doing the same thing in front of the mirror with the dialogue from 300.

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  30. Somebody--maybe even somebody here--put up the comparative chart of how dangerous various professions in the US are in terms of deaths per 100,000. You will be suprised to find out that workers, average workers like fishermen, taxi drivers, electricians and miners have a higher death rate than Cops. Fishermen were something like 168 deaths per 100 thousand while Cops were 16.5.

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  31. Yelling is so uncivil. Should have used bullhorns and just relied on sympathetic interviews with Fox News peronalities.

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  32. Some say that this has already happened.

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  33. montag212:20 PM

    It would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

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  34. eohippus12:26 PM

    Wait a minute. 'Raise consumption taxes'? Keep your nanny state outta mah Big Gulp, RINO!

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  35. M. Krebs12:30 PM

    Furhman, Michael Baden... They're putting the old OJ trial band back together. Say, what's Marcia Clarke been up to for the last 20 years?

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  36. Derelict12:31 PM

    You don't want to know about his workouts with his short sword!

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  37. Has he read Antigone?

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  38. "Robespierre-like"? No matter how much or how little you agree with the guy's politics, there were people on the scene last night reporting on how he prevented executions.

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  39. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume12:49 PM

    Oh, that doesn't surprise me a bit. The way we have a three-day Kennedy funeral every time a cop dies, complete with John-John saluting the casket, I could have told you it doesn't happen very often.

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  40. redoubtagain1:00 PM

    "Folks, here's a story 'bout Shabazz The Moocher. . ."

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  41. promoting a more egalitarian agenda

    Yeah. What a stupid concept! Where the Hell did THAT come from?

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  42. redoubtagain1:07 PM

    Perhaps there would be more two-parent households.
    At least until one or the other parent got "sold South".

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  43. redoubtagain1:11 PM

    Hermann Goering Division, Mayberry Company
    Hande hoch, nicht schiessen

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  44. PulletSurprise1:12 PM

    The logic behind having a 9.25% sales tax on everything -- food included -- in Tennessee is that people can just cut their own taxes by not spending money. (There is no state income tax, because freedom.)

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  45. Gromet1:13 PM

    “If our policies were in place,” DeVore said... “Perhaps there would be more two-parent households.”


    "I considered marriage. But then I thought about food stamps. I decided I just wasn't in love."

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  46. drspittle1:21 PM

    “On the crime stuff, a Republican can stand up and challenge the aggressiveness of the cops,” said Grover Norquist, top dog at Americans For Tax Reform and a supporter of criminal justice changes".


    And these would be the same cops whose pay and benefits Republican governors and legislators have tried to cut with their assault on public workers' unions? And Grover's strategy would be don't be mean or we'll reduce your pay?

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  47. mgmonklewis1:30 PM

    His example is really Jonah-nesque.

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  48. mgmonklewis1:31 PM

    And farming, for the people who operate the dangerous heavy equipment.

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  49. “Perhaps there would be more two-parent households."


    Mr. DeVore, you know I usually have the greatest respect for your work. So it actually pains me to say this, but: Slowly choke to death on heaping helping of salted dicks while lying in a gutter being pissed on by vagrants, you miserable fuck.

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  50. mgmonklewis1:34 PM

    Oh heavens no. He's a scholar.

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  51. Gromet1:37 PM

    Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, a wildfire displaced some people near San Diego, and my TV interviewed one of the Wildfire Refugees. She was a caucasian lady in her 50s and she made a point of smugly pointing out how orderly she and her neighbors were during the evacuation. She had an amazing, magical way of making it very clear she meant "Not like Those People in New Orleans" without actually saying the words. Anyway, it clearly had not occurred to her that 2,000 middle-class suburbanites moving to high school gyms 25 miles away for a long weekend is very different from a whole city moving to… wherever... indefinitely. I also remember that she was talking in front of her hundreds of dollars' worth of camping gear. It didn't seem to occur to her that most people don't have an REI membership. How did none of anything occur to her?


    Racism is goddamn mind-boggling to me.

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  52. Shabazz's assist represents "at least a partial erosion of legal authority in Ferguson,"


    Hey, Vic, you know what else constitutes a partial erosion of legal authority? The legal authorities shooting an unarmed kid to death for jaywalking.

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  53. Ask 'em what white folks did when Joe Paterno got fired for covering for a pedophile. Some rioting that night, but no tanks in response.

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  54. TGuerrant2:01 PM

    Well, Robespierre actively opposed slavery and favored universal suffrage, so Shabazz ought to take a bow, slap a RoboSpear vanity plate on his car, and bait VDH into next calling him Ferguson's Toussaint L'Ouverture.

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  55. Helmut Monotreme2:02 PM

    Grover's strategy would be to fire the police, and let everyone buy all of the security and justice they can afford on the open market.

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  56. susanoftexas2:08 PM

    If you don't have anything you don't need security, do you? If you are innocent you don't need access to the court system. And divorce is bad for the children. Honest people don't get sued. The police are our friends.
    It's funny how right-wing morality supports the policies of the very rich. It's almost like they use it to bludgeon people into silence while they drain the economy and people die.

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  57. Helmut Monotreme2:08 PM

    If you're going to shoot yourself, please let it be over a bigger outrage than Norquist's marital status. Being a uniquely horrible person is not a trait linked to the Y chromosome. Comfort yourself with this: he's married to a woman who thought it would be a good idea to marry Grover Norquist.

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  58. TGuerrant2:11 PM

    Just a coincidence. Move along.

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  59. bekabot2:18 PM

    And VDH is the one who's atrabilious.

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  60. mortimer20002:21 PM

    Surprise! VDH's comment section is a cesspool. Among the nostalgia for shooting looters on sight it has lines like this:
    ...the militarized local police will never be called out to preserve law and order against the punks, thugs, Trayvons, street miscreants, etc. The enemy of the Tyrant is the freely assembled and peaceful, Godly and armed Tea Party.
    But my favorite is the one with this:
    Before Russia’s KGB underwent its sex change operation, they would have made short work of the Ferguson festival goers, happy looters would have been whisked off to Lubyanka prison for a brutal session of show and tell and then from there to Club Hard Labor Camp somewhere in sunny Siberia.
    He then goes on to show some love for The People’s Republic of China's crackdown on Falun Gong.
    Fun stuff in the playpen of William F. Buckley's legatees.

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  61. bekabot2:22 PM

    Because when Cliven Bundy points guns at cops that's like something out of Owen Wister (which made more of an impression on VDH back in the day than Sophocles did) but when black people yell things at cops it's more like something out of Thomas Dixon, and in each case VDH knows what to think. That's why he's a critic, after all.

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  62. ...the militarized local police will never be called out to preserve law
    and order against the punks, thugs, Trayvons, street miscreants, etc.
    The enemy of the Tyrant is the freely assembled and peaceful, Godly and
    armed Tea Party.


    Wow. That's actually 100% opposite of what really happens.

    Otherwise, great comment!

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  63. PulletSurprise2:26 PM

    How is a Trayvon distinct from a punk, thug, or miscreant? I've seen that kid's name used as a pejorative several times the last week or so. (I would think that the practical distinction is that a Trayvon for these folks is a "black kid dead at the hands of a vigilante" but typically, dead people aren't a law & order problem.)

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  64. gocart mozart2:29 PM

    Randy Weaver - Aggrieved cons got a congressional hearing over that shooting and guns were involved as well as a dead lawman.

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  65. bekabot2:37 PM

    Trayvon was never proved to have been a punk or a thug or a miscreant, but Trayvon was an irritant, to at least one onlooker with a gun.


    Ergo —


    Criminals-cum-shootable =
    1. Thugs

    2. Miscreants
    3. Punks
    4. Irritants (Trayon)


    See how that works?

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  66. AlanInSF2:38 PM

    "for Hanson, Shabazz's assist represents "at least a partial erosion of legal authority in Ferguson..."

    Wait a minute, isn't this exactly what libertarians want? Damn, what a confusing ideology.

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  67. How is a Trayvon distinct from a punk, thug, or miscreant?
    He's not a distinct category so much as a brilliantly subtle way to identify the most salient characteristic of the other categories.

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  68. The enemy of the Tyrant is the freely assembled and peaceful, Godly and armed Tea Party.


    I've frequently had some harsh things to say about NRO commenters and their intelligence (or lack thereof), but this is actually a pretty good translation from the original German.

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  69. PulletSurprise2:44 PM

    Reminds me of the time I told my aunt I was dating a woman named LaDonna. First question: "Is she... black?" No, auntie. She's southern.

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  70. redoubtagain2:46 PM

    So to get them out from their parents' basements and stoked with anger all you need to do is burn down a Reichstag QuikTrip. Good to know.

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  71. PulletSurprise2:53 PM

    O Officer Koon, where art thou?

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  72. ColBatGuano2:55 PM

    You don't remember Kerry's Free Mumia shout out at the 2004 DNC?

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  73. montag22:55 PM

    I'd watch out for this guy when driving, because when his left turn signal is on, he's definitely going to turn right.

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  74. montag23:00 PM

    I would guess that slashing the tires on the pizza delivery car would prompt much the same sort of outrage.

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  75. Mooser3:12 PM

    My Antidotes on me. But now Antigone.

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  76. Jay B.3:25 PM

    They certainly left the probe.

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  77. mrstilton3:35 PM

    "Hände". So viel Zeit muss sein.

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  78. Based on what actually happened, the enemy of the Tyrant is Occupy.

    And no surprise, NRO is totally on Team Tyrant's sideline, flapping its pom-poms.
    ~

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  79. BigHank533:41 PM

    She's also married to Grover in the USA, where she enjoys considerably greater rights than either Kuwait or Palestine.

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  80. sharculese4:13 PM

    Pretty much the only thing Norquist is good for is some hilarious if predictable pre-CPAC foodfights, as Pam Geller and Frank Gaffney ritually assert they will have nothing to do with a known thrall of the caliphate, and then get politely and then not politely asked to leave.

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  81. Well, she might still be with us if she hadn't caught a chill because you hid her nightgown.

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  82. BigHank534:33 PM

    Norquist has always struck me as your usual small-time grifter who hit it big with his no-tax-hikes pledge. He's been riding that horse for twenty years. He looked visibly rattled last year when the loony caucus of the GOP started talking about defaulting on the national debt, so he at least has a clue about what a catastrophe that would be. Or else he owns a lot of T-bills.

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  83. KatWillow4:36 PM

    Their name is Legion! Why is there never a herd of pigs around when you need it?

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  84. KatWillow4:39 PM

    That's why government and media don't tend to make a "big deal" of a RW group killing, or plotting to kill cops. They're scared of them. Is it the guns?

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  85. KatWillow4:40 PM

    So should fishermen and miners carry pistols and tasers and pepper spray?

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  86. Derelict4:40 PM

    You just don't understand Republican policies of maximum, absolute freedom. It's simple:

    For you as an individual (especially if you're one of those minority type individuals), Republican policy is to assign you a minder from one of your local (born-again) churches. Your minder would be with you from cradle to grave, and would be charged with making certain your morality is up to snuff at all times. So, no sex if you're not married, no masturbation, and certainly none of that gay sex (although lipstick lesbians may apply for in-person exemption provided they agree to displaying private proof of their proclivities). And if you do get married, your minder will make sure you only copulate in the missionary position when the female half of your union is at maximum fertility. They'll be watching, so don't think you can sneak some anal or oral in there!

    For corporations, Republican policy is to use the state to supply whatever force is needed to keep the workers in line, keep the raw materials cheap, and keep the external costs (e.g., pollution, dead workers, etc.) from ever impacting the bottom line.

    So, yeah--chrome-plated unicorns for everyone.

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  87. Derelict4:41 PM

    Fishermen: Tasers only, and limited to when they're fishing for electric eels.

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  88. Derelict4:42 PM

    More likely because pointing out that rightwing groups kill police and federal officials is held up as proof of extreme liberal bias.

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  89. realinterrobang4:43 PM

    I will always upvote Cab Calloway.

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  90. Derelict4:46 PM

    For all his "drown it in a bathtub" talk, Norquist has come to understand that having no government would allow an awful lot of people he doesn't like (and who wouldn't like him) to make an easy meal of him and his kind. Worse, achieving his goal means no more insanely cushy gig, no more being sought out for favors by the rich and powerful. Two months of that and the only thing people will associate the name "Grover" with is a dead president or a muppet.

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  91. realinterrobang4:47 PM

    I knew a guy who got his pants leg caught in a grain auger. I arrived for my riding lesson just after they took the body out.

    And I grew up sufficiently rural to have seen way too many of those War Amps videos about how farm machinery and trains could take your limbs Just Like That. Seems to me they don't make similar videos for police academies.

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  92. Derelict4:51 PM

    The other thing most White middle-class people can't grok is that poor people have a lot of trouble with transportation. Many don't own a car--or even know someone who owns one. They rely on municipal transit or walking to get around.

    That makes evacuating your city a bit problematic. Especially since all the public transit lines end within the city.

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  93. Derelict4:54 PM

    The practical distinction isn't "black kid dead at the hands of a vigilante." It's more like "black person needing to be shot because they're not being invisible."

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  94. realinterrobang5:02 PM

    I remember making that argument to people at the time. At least I have a trump card -- I'm a middle-class white person and I don't drive (for various reasons), which meant that I was able to confront some of that stuff head-on.

    "Those stupid people who didn't leave..."
    "Yeah, like I'm stupid because I don't have a car and I wouldn't be able to leave if there were a hurricane coming, either..."



    *sigh* Some people have absolutely no ability whatsoever to look at anything from any perspective other than their own. I'm not even talking about empathy; it's more basic than that.

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  95. Yes, someone at Daily Kos put up a picture of the riots after Paterno was fired. And there have been quite a few riots after sporting events. But riots are, of course, the purview of the lower orders. Here's a lovely comment from a newspaper about the Leo Frank lynching:






    "We are proud, indeed, to say that the body hanged for more than two hours aid a vast throng and no violence was done, Cobb county people are civilized They are no barbarians." (From the Marietta Journal and Courier.)

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  96. satch5:53 PM

    And fishermen have it doubly tough since it's so much harder to exact revenge on cod and haddock. No wonder they're so opposed to quotas.

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  97. satch6:07 PM

    Yep. Remember the displaced New Orleanians who tried to escape the Katrina flooding by walking across the Crescent City Connection, the bridge to nearby Gretna, only to be turned away by police firing shotguns over their heads? I'll bet THEY haven't forgotten.

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  98. parsec6:14 PM

    Well, there is the "Hall Tax" but you almost have to try hard to pay it. Or be a retiree living off investments.

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  99. Derelict6:18 PM

    Nor have the relatives of those who were gunned down on that bridge.

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  100. philadelphialawyer6:30 PM

    VDH:

    -----"In some sense, Ferguson is emblematic of our times in which the sanctity of established law exists only to the degree that it is considered useful in promoting a more egalitarian agenda. In the matter of the recent influx at the southern border, we were told that the crisis atmosphere, and the perceived just cause of impoverished foreign nationals seeking to cross the border, made existing immigration enforcement either unfair or irrelevant. A new policy of open borders then emerged with the power of law and the resources of federal enforcement to give it effect."

    ----Since when has "sanctity" been an attribute of man-made, positive law? I could perhaps buy it if Hansen were talking about some sort of "natural law" or "natural rights," but immigration and naturalization laws hardly fit that bill. Nor, actually, do curfew laws. Sanctity means "holy" or "sacred," or, at the least, "inviolable" or "of utmost importance."

    -----Most laws are not "of the utmost importance," never mind sacred or holy. They derive their legitimacy from their democratic enactment and their non violation of individual rights. But their usefulness is most certainly a proper matter for public debate. And I see nothing wrong with having egalitarianism as a criteria for judging that usefulness. Congress passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act; the Missouri legislature passed the curfew act at issue (or its chartered body, the municipal government, did so). Moses did not bring either law down from Mount Sinai, nor did Jesus promulgate either of them. Nor is either law actually necessary under a system of "natural law."

    ---Of course democratically enacted, constitutional laws should be obeyed(especially by the police, one might add), unless a proper case can be made for civil disobedience. Still, it is simply false to claim that there is any "sanctity" associated with that. Driving on the right, rather than the left, is the law in the USA, but that is hardly a distinction between holiness and Satan!

    -----And it is not only false to claim otherwise, but to a believer (which I assume VDH purports to be), it is actually blasphemy. Much like the unthinking, and theologically grossly incorrect conflation, among some American Christians, between their God and their country, secular authority's rules are most certainly not seen as sacred under the teachings of Jesus, nor under orthodox Christian theology. Secular law is to be obeyed, yes (in most circumstances), but it is not for one moment to be confused with God's law.

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  101. redoubtagain6:31 PM

    "Beam me up Pknckflkzx, there's no intelligent life in there"

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  102. smut clyde6:48 PM

    Who gets stabbed in the bathtub?

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  103. smut clyde6:52 PM

    the fucking end
    There are no right answers.

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  104. smut clyde7:03 PM

    various ethnic pressure groups as de facto legislators adjudicating who will be granted access to the United States
    The most vocal people recently have been right-wing loons holding court on whether US citizens who contracted Ebola virus overseas should be allowed to return. Perhaps I am missing something.

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  105. Ok, I tend to get kind of repetitive when I'm reading something new but I'm reading Whiteness of Another Color (Matthew Frye Jacobson) and one of the things that is really clear is that "various ethnic pressure groups" have always operated as "de facto legislators" and at the very least pressured legislators when they weren't identical to legislators about who will be granted access to the United States. What the fuck were the slaveowners after 1790 except an "ethnic pressure group" pressuring the government to allow them to control who would and would not be permitted to have "access" to the US and under what status?

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  106. Yes, they shot people. They didn't shoot "over their heads."

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  107. ken_lov7:25 PM

    Hanson beautifully illustrates the ideological incoherence on the extreme right. On the one hand the state is a terrible thing, run by corrupt liberals who lust after power for its own sake. Which means all right-thinking people should despise and defy the state, yes? But when a bit of good old-fashioned anti-state violence breaks out, then Hanson deplores that it can't be suppressed by "state authority" ... as if we should all be in thrall to Leviathan.


    Conservatives really have no idea what they want. They only know what they are against.

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  108. So, yeah--chrome-plated unicorns for everyone.


    Waitaminute... Didn't you say something about "no anal"?

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  109. Put a fork in him, he's done.He was probably done when he blew off pustulent theocratic fuckwit Bob Vander Plaats' latest "The Handmaid's Tale is aspirational" Iowa shindig. And he blew it off to hang around Alec Baldwin. At a fundraiser in the Hamptons. For a library. Full of books that aren't the Bible (Protestant remix).

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  110. So, like many NRA members, they'd carry loaded pistols around just for the halibut?

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  111. davdoodles8:47 PM

    "The enemy of the Tyrant is the freely assembled and peaceful, Godly and armed Tea Party."
    "May all your enemies be paunchy, wheezy, worried old white talk-radio listerners in pastel-toned polyester golf pants with rusty old snub-noses in their sock drawers somewhere" doesn't have quite the fearsome ring to it that they might imagine.
    .

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  112. SenJayBulworth8:50 PM

    "In the matter of the recent influx at the southern border..."

    Who writes in this presumptive Edwardian style anymore? Hey Vic, what century do you think this is, man!

    It's like walking in on Christopher Morley stretched out on the divan in the parlor, diddling himself. Blisters the eyeballs, dude!

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  113. davdoodles8:58 PM

    "How is a Trayvon distinct from a punk, thug, or miscreant?"
    Unlike their other Ooga-Boogiemen, he's dead. So presumably they must be expecting hoards of Ghetto Zombies or somesuch...

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  114. Al Swearengen9:02 PM

    When I picture Grover saying “If our policies were in place,” I imagine an accompanying handlebar mustache-twist and wink.

    “Perhaps there would be lower unemployment,” he said. “Perhaps there would be more two-parent households.”

    I'm sure if every disadvantaged person in St. Louis County were Republicans, they'd win the lottery and shit tiny, sparkly ponies, too.

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  115. “Democrats are surrounded by the images of people who defend Mumia or whoever that guy is who killed those cops"


    You can tell he cares so much.



    "Some black guy who did something bad. You know the one."

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  116. satch9:25 PM

    That was the way Ed Bradley reported it, probably to attempt to put a shine on an otherwise disgraceful incident.

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  117. Yes, it would be much better to have a respectable person such as Cliven Bundy or Sarah Palin in there.

    It's a cute mental trick though - "Your efforts to obtain justice and peace are illegitimate because one of the people who helped out doesn't meet my 500,000 point test for respectability."

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  118. satch9:34 PM

    "In some sense, Ferguson is emblematic of our times in which the
    sanctity of established law exists only to the degree that it is
    considered useful in promoting a more egalitarian agenda."


    And here I was thinking that an "egalitarian agenda" was synonymous "Equality Before The Law", and was a tenet of our democracy. Clearly, I need more edumacation, and I think Hanson is just the man for the job.

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  119. drspittle9:48 PM

    Rethugs (and their media minions) possess big, powerful "Daddy' traits, like "law and order" (big in the late 60's/early 70's), "war" (the ever popular), spending ("fiscal responsibility" unless "war" is involved) and fear and loathing of "the other" (Southern Strategy, Willie Horton, bucks buying T-Bones, blah blah blah world without end amen). The Democrats remember possess the "Mommy" traits, so they have to stay in the kitchen and make sure people are fed, clothed, housed, etc. And, no, Mommy cannot get involved with big people "Daddy" things. Ever. So that is why a Democrat could never go to China. The End.

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  120. Pope Zebbidie XIII10:38 PM

    That's because there's no more white whales in the ocean. Neighbourhood's gone all to hell.

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  121. Revenge is a dish best served cod.

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  122. AGoodQuestion10:42 PM

    In that sense, even the old racial warhorses Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have become passé, as we’ve evolved now well beyond the misinformation and racialist politics of the Tawana Brawley carnival, the Duke Lacrosse caper, and the Trayvon Martin controversy.


    This litany of bogus "street theatre" events contains a couple of fake happenings and some that were all too real. Still, to VDH, none of the victims were real. And isn't that what's really important?

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  123. All of them, katie.

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  124. How did Duke become a "caper" and in what way was the Prosecutor really Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton?

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  125. AGoodQuestion10:47 PM

    Eventually they are going to cap his ass for doing this, as well as for other crimes.
    I just thought about Victor Davis Hanson working for Tony Soprano and smiled. Thank you.

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  126. Pope Zebbidie XIII10:47 PM

    And battered.

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  127. AGoodQuestion10:52 PM

    Yeah, I don't know. Maybe in the bad sung-through stage musical that seems to be his memory they conducted kangaroo court show trials. I'm sure he is nostalgic for the late eighties/early nineties, when canned outrage over black urban misdeeds was the height of fashion.

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  128. AGoodQuestion10:57 PM

    Mark Fuhrman is proof that America loves a redemption story. Redemption is the same as making shitloads of money off being a violent authoritarian racist scumbag, right?

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  129. AGoodQuestion11:07 PM

    That second comment is some unhappy result of doing magnetic poetry blind, right? It makes absolutely no sense.

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  130. AGoodQuestion11:13 PM

    Before, during and after the trial it was... illuminating to see how many people out there thought that Zimmerman was an innocent victim in the whole thing. And yes, that means that Traevon was the villain in their story, along with the prosecutor. The details of what Traevon Martin was guilty of varied in the telling, but the gist was pretty consistent.

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  131. AGoodQuestion11:19 PM

    and we wouldn't hear the fucking end of it.
    From him or them?

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  132. AGoodQuestion11:38 PM

    In the middle of the crowd, hands pull off Rand Paul's latex mask. Underneath is the face of H Rap Brown.
    "I'd have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling neo-confederates."

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  133. BigHank5312:15 AM

    "Hey, eminent domain, baby! Finders keepers! You can have your probe back when you pry it out of my cold, dead--"

    Author contemplates metaphor, turns off computer, fixes exceeding large drink, retires to bed to stare at ceiling and contemplate futility of existence....

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  134. BigHank5312:38 AM

    If he keeps scurrying away from even the mildest of confrontations (like the Dream Act student last week) he won't even make it to the primaries. The GOP base wants a weasel that can stand up and look people in the eye when he lies.

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  135. billcinsd12:38 AM

    AT the end of which VDH asks, "Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?"

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  136. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:53 AM

    Help, I'm a cop!
    Help, I'm a cop!

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  137. montag21:20 AM

    And, speaking of pom-poms, a golden oldie that never gets old....



    Definitely flappin' sumthin'.

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  138. Gabriel Ratchet3:20 AM

    "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."

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  139. Gabriel Ratchet4:19 AM

    Or, alternatively, only Nixon could go to China because he was the only person who could do it without being publicly denounced as "soft on communism" by Nixon.

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  140. Gabriel Ratchet4:39 AM

    "They say love is blind, but there are a lot of people out there who can see a hell of a lot more in their loved ones than I can."

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  141. drspittle5:03 AM

    How could I forget "soft on Communism", the ultimate 50's Ooga Booga? Good times.

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  142. If memory serves, this was filmed in D.C.'s stuffiest suburban 'hood, which makes it 10 times funnier.

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  143. Derelict7:57 AM

    That's NOT how you ride a unicorn!

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  144. tigrismus9:27 AM

    It's the white people bitching about central American children he means, surely.

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  145. glennisw10:05 AM

    She was on Lawrence, I think.

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  146. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:06 PM

    Before Russia’s KGB underwent its sex change operation, they would have
    made short work of the Ferguson festival goers...


    What the F!K is with the Right's newfound Russophilia? Seriously, this Pootie-Poot pudscarfing is some bent shit. It's so obvious now that all this "Liberal fascists!!!11!" bullshit is cover for their own jackbooted wet dreams that I wonder why they even bother anymore. As always, of course, It's Always Projection With These Motherfuckers...(IAPWTM for us 2-finger typists)

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  147. Demosthenes1:14 PM

    Mr. Cooke wrote an excellent fair minded piece this morning called "Six Shots". I recommend folks go to NRO and read it.

    I'm not kidding. It's a solid, fair minded piece that should appeal to people of all political stripes

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  148. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person2:05 PM

    It is in the Tweechie Zone...

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  149. Smarter than Your Average Bear6:23 PM

    They're all chowing down at the local donut shop

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  150. freq flag1:10 AM

    ...while singing "way-oh, way-oh, wa-a-a-a-a-y oh, way-oh."

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  151. freq flag1:13 AM

    Man, it's a drag being a cop.

    I think I'd rather be the mayor.

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  152. freq flag1:25 AM

    And leave us not fergit them two nice white kids in Vegas a few weeks ago who not only murdered a couple of cops (after paying their dues as members of a "well regulated militia" out t'the Bundy hootenanny), but who also murdered a fellow good-guy-with-a-gun in the local Walmart (their final resting place).



    But, hey, they was just defending the ol' "Don't Tread On Me," so it's all good...and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!!!

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  153. freq flag1:31 AM

    Yep. "Hey" from Jerad & Amanda Miller (late of Las Vegas, NV).

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  154. freq flag1:35 AM

    It's gonna take Martial Law
    (curfew ain't gonna get it)


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lTVPVbA8W0

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  155. freq flag1:41 AM

    The details of what Traevon Martin was guilty of varied in the telling

    It's all in the hoodie...he was wearing a HOODIE!
    Get it?

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  156. SenJayBulworth3:27 PM

    Now Hammett! That sonofabitch could write!

    ReplyDelete