Palmer on Rodney King

More of Palmer's outright lies. He has no compunction about outright dishonesty in smearing those he hates. In this thread about torture of terrorists, Palmer manages to dredge up Lew Rockwell's 1991 comments about Rodney King. Now before I turn to that let me note that Palmer says in his post:

If you have a captured terrorist (and it seems that some of those who have been released were not terrorists, although there is evidence that   others have indeed turned out to be), is it out of bounds to threaten such a humiliation if the information you get might break up a terrorist cell? It’s shocking. It’s degrading. It’s disgusting. Is it immoral? It’s not obvious to me what the answer to the last question is.

I.e., he at least entertains the possibility that torture of prisoners is okay.

Now, in Rockwell's letter he writes:

Did they hit him too many times? Sure, but that's not the issue: It's safe streets versus urban terror, and why we have moved from one to the other.

"street criminals ... have the time preference of depraved infants. The prospect of a jail sentence 12 months from now has virtually no effect.

As recently as the 1950s -- when street crime was not rampant in America -- the police always operated on this principle: No matter the vagaries of the court system, a mugger or rapist knew he faced a trouncing -- proportionate to the offense and the offender -- in the back of the paddy wagon, and maybe even a repeat performance at the station house. As a result, criminals were terrified of the cops, and our streets were safe.

Today's criminals know that they probably won't be convicted, and that if the are, they face a short sentence -- someday. The result is city terrorism, though we are seldom shown videos of old people being mugged, women being raped, gangs shooting drivers at random or store clerks having their throats slit.

What we do see, over and over again, is the tape of some Los Angeles-area cops giving the what-for to an ex-con. It is not a pleasant sight, of course; neither is cancer surgery.

Liberals talk about banning guns. As a libertarian, I can't agree. I am, however, beginning to wonder about video cameras.

Palmer calls this "Rockwell's sickening thesis," and says:

Quite a nice picture, isn't it? And a bit awkward for someone who now complains about brutality against captured prisoners. (And, no, I am not saying that the fact that Lew Rockwell favors torture of American citizens makes it ok or makes brutality against captured foreigners ok; it's bad in both cases. But Lew Rockwell favors it when the person nabbed on the street and not charged with a crime is beaten senseless in the back of a paddy wagon, especially if he's one of those people prone to having high time preferences, the ones who are like big children, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, the ones who used to be called "boy" in the successor states to Rockwell's beloved Confederate States of America, if you know what he means. It does undermine his credibility at least a bit, as a critic of mistreatment and as a "libertarian." And that's not even mentioning his remarkable suggestion that video cameras -- one of which captured the beating of Rodney King on film for all the world to see -- be banned.)

Note how dishonest this is. First, with the "boy" comment, he is clearly implying Rockwell is here calling for cops to beat blacks. This is a sickening libel. What Rockwell was talking about--explicitly--was street criminals.  Here we have the constant resort of the "serioso and dimwit libertarians" (as Rothbard put it) to the tired old cries of racism to smear those with whom they have substantive disagreements. Palmer is still at it, of course; he seems not to have noticed that the '80s and early '90s are over--he and his ilk have cried wolf too many times, and no one pays any attention to their cries of "bigotry".

Second, he writes--Oh so serioso--Rockwell's "remarkable suggestion that video cameras -- one of which captured the beating of Rodney King on film for all the world to see -- be banned".  Thereby demonstrating another failing of the left and left-libertarians--their utter lack of humor. Of course Rockwell was joking. You could not expect the dour, grim, thought police libertarians to realize this, however. It's only acceptable to make fun of paleos, Southrons and "breeders," you see.

What is also remarkable about Palmer's criticism of Rockwell's views about proportionate beatings of actual street criminals  -- is that it appears in a post in which Palmer himself muses about whether torture of possibly innocent foreign prisoners of a unjust and illegal war is possibly moral! I.e., in a column where he dabbles with justifying torture he dares to criticize Rockwell's defense of non-lethal, non-torture force used to apprehend an actual street criminal resisting arrest! The chutzpah is just amazing! (If use of that word won't get me accused of anti-semitism by the schoolmarm and cocktail party libertarians.)

Comments

[Irfan Khawaja]

Actually, Kinsella, you're the one who's lying, and the fact is nearly self-evident from the passage you've quoted. Palmer is not entertaining the possibility of torturing in the sense of causing physical pain, but of humiliating in the sense of playing on psychological vulnerabilities without causing physical pain. The distinction is both obvious from what he says, and obvious conceptually.

What we learn from this pathetic charade, then, is that after all those laborious years collecting all of those difficult-to-obtain degrees you've elsewhere described in such loving detail, you still haven't acquired the capacity (a) to read English, (b) to make simple distinctions, or (c) to tell the truth. You are a pathetic slander machine, and the only interesting questions your slanders raise are ones about motivation: why would someone insist on repeating behaviors that made him look like such a fool?

Stupidity is a very plausible hypothesis--stupidity of a sort that is not likely to be cured by acquiring any more degrees, or to be ameliorated by the ones you have acquired. We're talking self-induced stupidity, and the cure for that, alas, has got to be self-induced as well.

BTW, I've suggested to the editor of HNN that you be banned from the website. Don't know if he'll take my advice, but if Allah wills it, it will happen.

Salam alaikum!

[Chris]

Jeez, I'm glad "Irfan" (as in IrfanView, one of my picture viewers for my computer) isn't resorting to ad hominem attacks. Please grow up.

[Stephan Kinsella]

Khawaja:

1. Thanks for visiting the Palmer Periscope! We appreciate your support, and -- not to speak for Mr. Palmer, but I'm sure he does too.

2. Thanks for pointing out that Palmer is flirting with the idea of psychological torture. And here I thought Mr. Palmer was a good internationalist. The Geneva Conventions prohibit "torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental" (Art. 75(2) of Protocol I; emphasis added for Khawaja's benefit).

Silly me. I can see how obvious it is, now, that it is not at all hypocritical to be in favor of a type of torture proscribed by the Geneva Conventions to a possibly innocent prisoner of an illegal war, and to simultaneously censure a fellow libertarian who favors proportional punishment being administed to an actually guilty criminal to prevent or stop a crime or to apprehend the criminal. God, I must have lost my sense of proportion.

(Of course, in my comment above, I only said Palmer was toying with the idea of "torture," which includes mental torture, so my statement was not even incorrect, much less a lie, as Khawaja bizarrely maintains.)

3. Here is a blunt, honest summary of things, Khawaja. I and others who defend Hoppe would have been happy to go our merry way. We defend liberty in our way; you in yours. I would never think to be nasty to someone unless called for.

But you people are relentless in your attacks. The prominence of the Mises Institute and its widespread base of admirers and supporters, obviously drives you insane.

Make no mistake: thousands, if not tens of thousands or more, libertarians in America and around the world regard the Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, Hoppe, and Rothbard (et al.) as a beacon of liberty and economic education. True, many of them, and others, feel similarly about Cato. There is no reason there cannot be many fronts on the fight for liberty. Mises Institute et al. is doing its part and a quite significant part it is.

And this must be what bugs you guys. It is YOU that went on the attack. It is YOU that launch personal smears and repeated lies and stupid grudges no one gives a rat's ass about. It is YOU that make statmeents so ridiculous that virtually all of the thousands of admirers and supporters of the Mises Institute shake their heads in incredulity at; statements so clearly driven by a vendatta and unreasonable, unfair, uncharitible, mean, and nasty, as to not be believed even by many people with only a passing familiarity with the Mises Institute.

You ... people ... have the temerity to personally attack the character of a noble, decent man who has devoted his life to fighting for what you wolves in sheep's clothing pretend to value--individual rights and liberty. You betray the paucity of your arguments by constant resort to personal attacks on Hoppe's character; by your callous indifference to statements that might damage some undeserving target; by sweeping, ridiculous statements about Hoppe's scholarship and libertarianism, when not a one of you can come close to matching his following, output, breadth of knowledge, impact, or scholarship in political theory or economics. You people remind me a bit of the feminist studies movement--no purpose left anymore but to revel in you PCness.

You have shown yourselves to be dishonest, and not decent people, and unprofessional. You attack; we merely defend, and for this, you want to equate us. We are not at all equal.

You continue to use absolutely revolting and pathetic tactics in debate--like labeling anyone who holds a certain view of the War to Prevent Southern Independence as some kind of neo-Confederate slavery supporter. Shame on you! How dare you utter assholes make such statements about fellow libertarians! You who say these things ought to be ashamed; what you are saying is about as low as you can go. There are literally billions of genuine statists out there... yet you will outright lie and claim fellow libertarians are slavers and racists, despite their denials.

Thanks God you have become so impotent. Your increasing shrillness is proportional to your desperation; your increasing willingness to lie, smear, libel, and character assassinate is correlated with the lack of your success in persuading people on the merits of the issue.

To be thought of as a fool by the likes of you--the type of Princess with the Pea where the Pea is anyone who does not follow your silly little egalitarian rules--is high praise indeed! Please, insult me more!

If you wonder why I don't act as if I take you all seriously, it's because, well, I don't take you all seriously. You are just a nest of self-congratulary, nasty, politically correct pit vipers. But silly ones, in that you all take yourselves so seriously.

You people have lost; no one cares about your nattering and chirping. You have shot your collective PC wad; you are simply ridiculed and laughed off now. Do you sham intellectuals believe that any of Hoppe's thousands of admirers care that you do-nothing nobodies "pronounce" on his economic or libertarian bona fides? Ha! You wish. Unfortunately for you people, Hoppe's influence, fame, and students will only continue to grow. This Thursday's appearance on O'Reilly can only help this--be sure to tune in!

P.s.: sorry my achievement and education bugs ya'--funny, if you can't pick on someone for being ignorant and uneducated, you types desperately try to turn an asset into a liability. You little fellas are just too cute--now shoo, shoo, back into the sandbox.

P.p.s.: if you think being banned from your nest of wooping hyenas bugs me more than I mind a scab falling off, you are mistaken. Any group so craven and corrupt as to have the judgment to reject me is one that I have no wish whatsoever to be associated with, as they thereby demonstrate their worthlessness. Remember, and remember well--it may gnaw at you, it may bug you, but I have the face without pain or fear or guilt. I am not afraid of you; I see you for the social roaches that you are.

[Stephan Kinsella]

Interesting that Khawaja and his ilk question whether Hoppe is a libertarian. I see now, it's because they are not libertarians at all, yet apparently want to pretend to be. Therefore, they have to try to purge the real ones.

Khawaja is apparently Executive Director of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS). The mission statement of which says:

We endorse the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Human Rights without qualification.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights [sic] (2) is a veritable socialistic manifesto:

Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

The International Covenants on Human Rights include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which provides for similar welfare rights.

These treaties are socialistic abominations. They recite a whole host of positive welfare rights; but they also recite some negative rights (even a stopped clock is right twice a day). I will note that Art. 5 of the Universal Declaration does provide: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." This provision--which Khawaja endorses "without qualification"--seems to be aimed at the type of "mental torture" Palmer was flirting with and that Khawaja defended him from. Eeenn-tah-resting, Meester Khawaja.

[Hoppean]

We know 'Irfan Khawaja' is a pseudonym, Mr. Ambassador, to discredit Muslims for Bushian purposes. Shame!

[Stephan Kinsella]

Followup posted here...

[awful]

Glad to see those remarks by Rockwell. A lot of people forgot he made them and brought shame to the entire libertarian movement by even calling himself a libertarian. I suspect they put something in the water in Auburn because there are a reall pack of crazies down there claiming to be libertarians while flirting with lunatic theocratics like North or individuals who speak out at conferences on white supremecy, or run white supremacy publications.