The anti-Libby arguments; and a discussion of anti-Semitism

Randall Parker at ParaPundit opposes President Bush’s clemency of Lewis Libby. I posted this comment:

I must disagree with Mr. Parker on this. I think the Plamegate investigation was a hideous outrage from the start. The facts are well known, the most important being that the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew when he was appointed three years ago (or was it six or nine years ago, it seems so long), that the leak came from Armitage in the State Department and that the leak was innocent. Yet Fitzgerald, like some kind of Soviet or Kafkaesque figure, did not tell the public this and did not stop the investigation. He had to get SOMEONE, and Libby was that someone. I don’t understand how people could think that this years-long investigation into what the invesigator KNEW FROM THE START WAS A NON-CRIME was proper.

Also, the question of whether Libby’s record disqualified him to be chief of staff to the VP is entirely separate from the question of whether he should go to jail. Mr. Parker almost seems to be suggesting that because he thinks Libby was unqualified for his position, therefore Libby deserved to go to jail.

In reply, a commenter at ParaPundit wrote:

Auster is a jew, of course he thinks Libby is innocent. Bush, on the other hand, is just doing what his masters tell him to.

And people ask what I mean by anti-Semitism and tribalism on the right….

In another response to the Libby clemency, Maureen C. writes:

Byron York writes at NRO: “Clinton got to work, issuing what was undoubtedly the worst series of pardons in history. He infamously pardoned the fugitive tax-evading financier Marc Rich (whose attorney was one Lewis Libby)…”

This bit of information about Libby’s own lawyerly sleazy shenanigans-for-cash considerably dampens my sense of outrage at Libby’s having been targeted for partison political prosecution. Sometimes “what goes around comes around”—although it takes a few more turns of the dirty, money-grubbing political wheel before payback shows up.

To which I replied:

What’s the connection between the one and the other?

I ran into similar resonses regarding the Martha Stewart case. I wrote that the prosecution of her was wrong. Some people replied that they didn’t like Martha Stewart! As though their personal DISLIKE of her justified the government’s PROSECUTION of her. Or, even if they weren’t saying that the prosecution was justified, they still seemed to be suggesting that their personal dislike or disapproval of her determined their own response to the case.

The logic is:

1. Party X is being prosecuted and jailed by the government for untrue statements made under oath.

2. Many people say this prosecution is unjust for certain reasons.

3. But I dislike Party X for such and such reason, having nothing to do with the present prosecution.

4. Therefore I support/am not bothered by the prosecution and jailing of Party X.

For the record, I am sickened by Bush’s refusal to pardon the two Border Patrol agents, a typical expression of the fact that Bush is more loyal to Mexicans than to Americans. But that has nothing to do with the Libby case.

- end of initial entry -

Maureen replies:

This isn’t just a matter of not liking someone (as in people’s envy of Martha Stewart or their irritation at her tantrums), but of the fact that that Libby evidently does not have clean hands himself when it comes to “using the law” for evil means. This makes it difficult for him—“a pot”—to “call the kettle black.” This is in a different, less moral area than that in which Martha Stewart found herself, when she, who evidently had never systematically attempted to manipulate the stock market to her benefit, fell into the trap her broker inadvertently set her.

My dislike of Libby’s using his legal skills to get “unjustice” for Rich does not negate my dislike of Libby’s having been the target of a misuse of the law for the sake of a political persecution. And I would still support combatting the political injustice of this kind of misuse of the law. But I cannot summon the same level of moral sympathy and outrage for a “pot who suddenly finds himself a kettle.”

Morally speaking, in addition to the objective application of man’s “legal” rules, there is at work in people’s lives a “Bigger Justice.” While we, as human beings, are often all too busy worrying about finding and helping our “perceived” victims—and trying to set things straight for these “victims” to the best of our worldly lights, I also believe—based on what I’ve seen of people’s fates—that the Mills of Big Justice have a larger perspective on “human victimhood” and are grinding slowly in their own “exceedingly fine” way. Libby’s fate may well be a manifestation of that Big Justice.

* * *

The following exchange took place between me and a friend who, though a native New Yorker, has, to my exasperation, some weird block against being able to identify Jews from their names or physical appearance. The insulting language should be understood as friendly banter.

Correspondent writes:

I didn’t realize that Libby is Jewish.

LA replies:

“Lewis Libby” not Jewish? _____, you’re pathetic.

Correspondent replies:

I’m an American, innocent of Old World rivaries and hatreds.

LA replies:

HA HA.

That’s really funny. Your sense of humor makes up for your idiocy—almost.

Correspondent replies:

Go ahead and scoff, like a jaded British Graham Greene character, at my innocent, Audie Murphy type Americanism

LA replies:

I know what it is, you assumed from his nickname, Scooter, that he had to be WASP, like Brick’s friend Skipper in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Correspondent replies:

At last, you descend from Mt. Parnassus to acknowledge us mere mortals.

* * *

Tom S. writes:

Certainly Lewis Libby is a sleazy lawyer who had no business being in a decent Republican Administration—but the last time I checked, being a sleazy lawyer wasn’t illegal in this country. If it were, half of the presidential candidates of both parties, 3/4 of Congress, and all of the extra-constitutional “Special Prosecutors” would be in the dock. Libby is certainly reprehensible, but he’s no worse than Armitage, Powell, Rice, Baker, and the rest of the “Washington Insiders” who have brought us the brilliant policies of the last sixteen or so years, as opposed to “amateurs” like Reagan and Eisenhower. Regardless of Libby’s own lack of scruples, the Libby prosecution was absurd political theater, and Bush was right to commute his sentence. Of course, I guess that makes me a Jew, as well, which will come as quite a shock to my family, but what the hey…

The paleocons never cease to amaze me, by the way. A lot of them are casting away the “I’m just opposed to Israel” pretense, and just going for straight blood libel. It’s largely thanks to their creepy Jew hunts that we have made so little progress on immigration and the National Question in the last ten years. Now that we finally have things moving our way, just watch them try to throw it all away. The paleos are like their buddies the Palestinians; they “Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.

Happy Independence Day!

LA replies:

It’s funny that you bring up “paleocon,” since in a note I wrote to Randall Parker, I had, in the subject line, used the word paleocon myself in describing the anti-Jewish poster at his site. I wrote:

“And people ask what I mean by anti-Semitism and paleocon tribalism”

To which Mr. Parker replied:

“But I’m thinking you are jumping to conclusions by labeling this guy a paleocon.”

Which I thought was a fair comment, so in my comment at VFR I changed the sentence to:

“And people ask what I mean by anti-Semitism and tribalism on the right.”

Yet, though I had deleted my own reference to paleocons, you independently then brought up the paleocon connection again.

So it’s a question we can’t get away from, and it’s a fair question: Granted that paleocons are not all or mostly anti-Semites, the question remains, where is the dividing line between them? Where do paleocons clearly distinguish themselves from anti-Semites? Where do paleocons clearly denounce and exclude this kind of anti-Semitic speech, which one runs into all over the right-wing precincts of the Web? My impression is that rather than utterly denouncing and dismissing the anti-Semites, in many cases they co-exist with them.

And by the way, if anyone reading this is thinking, “There goes Auster again, concerned about anti-Semitism, but not about anti-black racism,” the fact is that there is no comparison between the two. There is no anti-black speech in the right wing today that objectifies and dehumanizes blacks the way the anti-Semites routinely objectify and dehumanize Jews, so that any statement of any Jew (or any person of Jewish ancestry) on any subject is seen as having no rational content but as an expression of pure tribalism (e.g., “Auster is a jew, of course he thinks Libby is innocent”), or, worse, as simply the expression of a genetically commanded war waged by the Jews against gentile whites in order to gain power over them and destroy them.

The irony is that in reducing Jews (or “jews,” as they charmingly call them) to tribal automatons incapable of objective thought, the anti-Semites reveal that their own state of consciousness is that of tribal automatons incapable of objective thought, which they then project onto the Jews.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 04, 2007 08:48 AM | Send