Wednesday, May 27, 2015

What if Josh Duggar were Roman Polanski?

Josh Duggar has admitted to molesting underage girls when he was a young teenager.  He’s apologized and apparently his victims have forgiven him.

Josh’s acts are indefensible but good people can disagree on what the punishment should be for him and any who enabled his actions.  Conservatives are not so liberal as to try and simply sweep this under the rug, circle the wagons and say “nothing to see here move on”.  We know this because Nixon resigned under pressure from Republicans and Clinton served out his term with support from Democrats.

In addressing the Duggar case conservatives should be open to inputs from the left as to the severity of Josh’s teenage actions.

We should note that what Josh apparently did, fondling the victims genitalia, seems to fall under liberal hero Richard Dawkins definition of “mild pedophilia”.  According to that same liberal icon “mild pedophilia” is not bad; although when confronted with push back Dawkins did attempt to reset his comment.

While sane people don’t agree with Dawkins liberals didn’t disown him when he espoused his strange perspective on molesting children.

Similarly Roman Polanski who drugged and raped a 13 year old girl when he was an adult, and hence was presumably more mentally competent than a young teenager, is feted by the Left.

And then there’s Lena Duham.  Lena admits, in her book, to bribing her younger sister to kiss her on the lips for extended periods and to touching her younger sisters genitalia.  In Lena’s words :

‘As she grew, I took to bribing her time and affection: one dollar in quarters if I could do her makeup like a “motorcycle chick.” Three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds. Whatever she wanted to watch on TV if she would just “relax on me.” Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying.’ 

While there have been a few nattering the reality is that the liberal world still accepts her as an ok person; no demands that her show be cancelled.

Last but not least there’s the patron saint of modern Democrats Bill Clinton.  He sexually harassed a subordinate at work when he was governor of Arkansas and lied under oath to avoid punishment. Yet liberals said it was ok, everyone lies, and attacked the victim.

Why this difference in how the liberal media treats these cases?  The answer is that liberals believe in an “enhanced” version of Christ’s command to forgive others as you wish to be forgiven.

For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offences. Matthew 6:14

In the liberal mind what Christ meant to say was:

For if you will forgive men who agree with you on welfare, big government, religion, gay marriage etc their offenses against others your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offenses

Apparently in the mind of liberals crimes by liberals don’t count while any failure by a non-liberal is punishable by unlimited consequences.

For example liberals think fining Christians $135,000 for not participating in a so called gay wedding is reasonable while thinking it’s really unfair that Roman Polanski has to live in exile in France. After all Polanski only raped a 13 year old girl while those bakers forced that poor gay couple to go an extra block to find another baker.

The “enhanced” view of forgiveness touted by liberals also allows liberals to simultaneously work hard to ensure that crooks can escape punishment through the use of legal technicalities while demanding the harshest of penalties for anything non-liberals do.  One wonders if Josh were brought to trial and found innocent due to tainted evidence if liberals would rethink their support for unlimited criminal rights? Nah.

It’s also interesting to note that the same liberals who are whining about the horror of convicted criminals, especially under age ones, being in jail can wax enraged that Josh is allowed to walk free.

As conservatives we can’t adopt the liberal attitude that political utility trumps everything, if we did Nixon wouldn’t have had to resign, because we believe in moral principles and government by law not by men.  Josh Duggar and any others who helped him should be appropriately punished for their actions.

But we can push back against the liberal media’s attack by association on all conservatives.

Liberals are not wasting this crisis; they’re using it to tar all conservatives for Josh’s sins.

The Duggar case is a smaller version of the media’s attack on the Catholic Church.

Clearly priests who molest children belong in jail and any prelate who tried to hide the priests actions belongs there with them but the reality is that only a tiny fraction of priests ever did anything wrong. Further when they did molest children they were going against the faith they hypocritically professed every Sunday.  Yet the media has worked hard to smear the whole Catholic Church for the sins of a few.

We know this is not out of a hatred of child molestation by the liberal media for we know that public school teachers are much more likely to molest children than are Catholic priests and the media is silent. 

Even the NY Times reports that school districts often let offenders go so long as they leave the district. Yet the media attacks Catholic Bishops who accepted medical reports that offending priests had been “cured” while staying silent about public schools transferring teachers when they knew the teachers hadn’t been “cured”. Clearly the offending priests, and any Bishops who shielded them, needed to be exposed and dealt with but eliminating child molestation was not the liberal objective for if it were the media would be going after public school teachers too.

The “enhanced” forgiveness concept also comes into play when gays are involved. The North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)—which advocates sex with 3 year old boys—was a welcomed participant in the San Francisco gay pride parade for many years.  Similarly the vast majority of Catholic priests who molested children are gay.  Yet there has been no outcry in the liberal media about the association of some gays with child molestation.  Of course conservatives agree that most gays are not child molesters but according to liberal logic all conservatives are tainted by Duggars actions which would imply that all gays are tainted by gay child molesters. Thank Heaven, literally, that conservatives hold to a higher standard.

As conservatives we need to push back and retake the narrative lest the no nothings err the low information voters accept the liberal smear as truth.

When some liberal uses Duggar to attack conservatism bring up Roman Polanski, Lena Dunham, Richard Dawkins, gay acceptance of NAMBLA, and Bill Clinton and ask if their crimes show all liberals are evil.


Feel free to follow tom on Twitter