The sacred right to rape children
I knew after hearing of the raid in El Dorado that it was only a matter of time before the Doughfaces at Lew Rockwell.com stood up for the sacred right to rape children without the interference of government. Butler Shaffer has done them proud, in a post which hems and haws a little bit but comes to the expected conclusion.
His logic goes like this: because the United States federal government sends troops to foreign lands to fight wars, and because these troops engage in violence and sometimes to terrible things to innocent people, therefore the police officers of Texas have no right to point fingers at religious wackos who think God wants them to rape little girls. Indeed, although “there is no moral defense one could possibly make” of raping children, nevertheless, it is “difficult to tolerate” the “self-righteousness” of the state police or prosecutors who would insist on intervening to protect children from rape, given that federal officials sometimes endorse violent warfare. After all, the U.S. has “killed over one million” people in Iraq (we’ll put aside asking where that number comes from) and is now threatening “innocent” Iran*—and “such practices appear to be occurring, once again, on the plains of Texas.” Shaffer, of course, isn’t defending child rapists, no no. He’s just calling them “innocent” victims of unfair government aggression.
Once again, this is not libertarianism. This is an unprincipled, childish hostility to anything done by government, even if it is acting in defense of the rights of the innocent against the nastiest imaginable assaults. This is the absurd principle, sacred to the paleo-cons at Lew Rockwell.com, that if one person wishes to enslave another no third man should object.
*-Innocent Iran! He really says that!
