Moral failings of the "libertarian" left
Ryan Calhoun asks me why I call C4SS's post about the Brad Spangler affair disgusting. The context: Brad co-founded the organization 8 years ago, and was its original Director until 2011 or 2012; he stopped being active since 2012 (though he did occasionally handle information system administration issues). For some time now, he openly assumed his taste for underage women; yesterday though, he publicly admitted to sexually molesting a ~10 year old girl under his care over ten years ago. My answer to the C4SS statement follows:
[What makes your post disgusting?] Making exaggerated displays of insincere outrage. Failing to take responsibility, by censoring his articles from your site rather than amending them with a note. Taking the opportunity to be self-serving instead of apologetic and attempting a callous political recuperation of a private crime. Making a [public] display of "charity", as pathetic as miserable. [I'd now add: not caring the least about the victim, or about libertarian principles of justice, instead whining about the effect on [your] image, and bullshitting at length about [your obsession,] identity politics. It's all "me, me, me!"] In general, writing for effect [rather] than for truth. But typical of C4SS in each and every one of these aspects, so I suppose it's par for the course.
Yet, since you're asking for details, I must acknowledge that this is not the worst thing I've seen. C4SS is misguided, but still basically honest - at least no more dishonest with others than they are with themselves, and less dishonest with themselves than the majority, I suppose. Still quite a mediocre standard.
What I further do not expect you to ever, ever attempt, is a reflection on what defects in Brad's personality made him both a criminal and someone attracted to your ideas, and how you can help address those defects in those who are attracted to your ideas for the same reason - and in the ideas that they have influenced you into adopting.
Since you're unlikely to come up with a valid answer, let me tell you the intellectual failings of the left, libertarian as they may lean: the denial of individual responsibility; the desire to think what pleases [] others rather than [what] is true; making everything a political question instead of defusing politics [i.e. conflict]. These defects can be found in everyone, including myself - but the left (including the "libertarian" left) amplifies (and sometimes celebrates) these defects rather than attempts to correct them. Shame on you.
Of course Ryan C and George G thereafter accuse me of trying to make a political point out of a [private] tragedy, never mind that the bottom of their own post, more than half of it, is a cut-and-paste piece of [leftist] political propaganda, even without arguing about the rest. George G even tries to ridicule me for making a "connection between left libertarianism and pedophilia", when the connection I make is between left "libertarianism" and blaming society for the crimes committed by individuals. Despicable fools.
Note that I previously responded to Spangler's left "libertarian" ideas (so far as I can tell shared by C4SS) on my blog: Thou shalt not steal, not even from the State, and Why you should NOT care about Israel and Palestine. His crime as such certainly does not invalidate the arguments he either repeated or contributed, but it does cast a doubt on them and invites those who fell for them to carefully reexamine them. And of course, the "libertarian" left is vastly nicer, more rational and less criminal than the left that isn't even libertarian at all. But that's a low, low bar.
Regarding the crime scandal itself, I'll say that the lynch mobs that revel in calls for violence with much fake outrage make me sympathize with the poor wreck - just like the (actually violent) socialist censors in France managed to make me sympathize with right-wing anti-abortionist nuts or an idiot islamic humorist, all of them peaceful if misguided (and fantasizing about acquiring the State's impunity to not at all peacefully enact their favorite policies). You won't see me agitating pitchforks, here or anywhere. Brad Spangler is no present threat to anyone but himself (that I know of), and therefore no legitimate target for violent police action (though quite legitimate object of ostracism). What this rapist deserves is whatever his victim wants to inflict upon him... nothing more, nothing less - OK, something less if she demands too much, but nothing more: Justice is (or should be) a private affair. My thoughts thus go to the poor girl, whom he identified, and whose life has been crushed a second time, this time all too publicly; she won't be able to get any compensation whatsoever from a man now promised to government cages at taxpayers' expense. As George Donnelly remarked, by making a public display of his crime and appealing for state police action against himself, Spangler yesterday not only betrayed his victim a second time, in addition to having raped her ten years ago, he also betrayed the beliefs he still claims to hold in a stateless justice system. For the political establishment has my complete trust to not-so-swiftly and much-onerously serve total injustice.
As to those who emitted doubts that Brad's admission of guilt was real, my answer was and is: Actually, his Facebook account was hacked by a special unit of the NSA, then the FBI abducted him, to be rendered in Guantanamo under a fake identity, all that because his activism was the #1 threat to national security, far beyond anyone else that the shadowy Washington conspiracies haven't thus silenced yet... not.
Update: Among the C4SS organizers, at least Tom Knapp shows some decency in dissociating himself from most of the official C4SS statement. In the comments to his post, he gives a pretty reasonable explanations for the behavior of C4SS, that would have usefully featured in their official statement. But he seems isolated in the organization. Instead, the way the affair is handled by Carson & al. is despicable. Interesting how these leftists act with a mix of collective guilt and self indulgence - because they won't fully recognize individual responsibility.
Second update: Not only was the admitted child rape case confirmed by the victim, there are rumors of more victims having now spoken up. I fear that I was wrong presuming he's no present danger - then he needs to be put away from society, at his own expenses. I'm told there are small towns where sex-offenders congregate. Assuming he didn't do enough wrong to forfeit his right to live, he could live there with a location device and be a danger no more. Give him all the child porn he needs to not go on a rampage (punish those who made such porn if real, of course), and shoot him dead if he's ever found roaming free anywhere near children or away from authorized zones. Maybe then he can be a productive member of society again, and most of his disposable income can be transferred to his victims as damage payment. Or then again, maybe he can't be trusted to do right, or he did enough wrong to enough victims that his life is forfeited.