The Paris Hilton Hilton
That should be the new name for the Los Angeles jail where the monkey-faced blond socialite would have been spending time if she were not a celebrity. Taki once commented (ironically) on one of my pieces that I had failed to mention Paris Hilton. This is my attempt to make remedy the deficiency.
I cannot turn on the radio, pick up a newspaper, or go out to dinner without hearing about Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton. Yes, it is all true. She is ugly white trash. Ordinarily I would say of a spoiled young party girl that she deserves to be spanked, but I do not even like to think about getting that close--though Ozzy Osbourne's son is bragging about being among her thousands of casual--what shall we call them?--orgasm-exchangers. Yes, she needs to be punished--perhaps a fine of several million dollars would do some good--but jail? Nobody, but nobody except a child rapist belongs in jail.
If ever there were a cruel and inhuman form of punishment forbidden by our Constitution, it is incarceration. Of course, some prisoners must be held for trial, others for execution, but prisons as a form of punishment were invented by moral perverts (Quakers) who presumed the right to change other people's lives. The state has the right to exercise vengeance against evil-doers but not to change their character. Last weekend I was having dinner with some very nice people in Baton Rouge, and, after some initial joking, they agreed that jail time was too severe for Miss Hilton, but one of them balked at a mere fine: "I'd prefer Community Service, which might do her some good." First of all, I doubt that it would, but, more importantly, it is not our job or Los Angeles' job to do good to strangers. Let her pay, say, $10,000 per day for every day of her sentence she does not serve, and turn the money over to some unworthy cause like public education. (See, modern governments cannot do anything right..)
The appropriate penalties for white collar crimes are confiscatory fines; more violent criminals should be beaten and subjected to public ridicule. Crimes against the people, such as acting in Steven Spielberg movies, producing the Shawn Hannity show or promoting free trade and open borders, could best be punished with a sentence of exile. Capital crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping, and arson should entail (not necessarily in all cases) execution. A wife who kills her husband may deserve to die, but not to become the slave of bureaucrats and the sexual psychopaths who are taken care of in our state prisons.
Paris Hilton is a spoiled rich celebrity who has tried to stay out of jail. Who wouldn't? If we have to have prisons, at least let them be reserved for violent criminals who can rape and kill each other. Listening to the talkshow Jeremiahs gleefully predicting sex slavery and regular beatings for Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby, I begin to wonder what kind of people I am living among. The pat on the wrist given recently to the wife of Paris Hilton's prosecutor, who was arrested on a nine year old warrant for the same crime as Miss Hilton, has only made the conversation worse. Imagine, a man with political power does not want his wife treated the same way as other criminals! Yes, Mr. Delgadillo was wrong in all the other cases, but he is certainly right to protect his wife.
The populist rabble are calling for Paris Hilton's blood, the libertarian rabble are whining about Michelle Delgadillo. In the midst of the moral outrage two simple points are obscured. The first is one of justice: ordinary scofflaws who run up traffic tickets and library fines should not be threatened with the most degrading form of punishment ever conceived by totalitarian-minded religious fanatics. The second is one of humanity: Paris Hilton and Michelle Delgadillo are human beings, and to gloat over their misfortune or desire their degradation is to join the bigoted rabble that hate and kill the human fellows who belong to a different race or social class, practice a different religion, or simply have connections. When someone knows someone who knows someone who can get her out of jail, I say God bless you!
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Excellent and varied comments. Even--or especially--the points of disagreement are enlightening.
I lumped together kidnapping, arson, rape, armed robbery with murder because in each case except arson the criminal threatens to kill the victim, if he/she refuses to do his bidding. In the case of arson, the criminal is either deliberately causing death or at the least showing a reckless disregard for human life, as well as property. Obviously, there are lesser and greater crimes. A young man who gets too demanding with an underage girl he is more or less engaged to, should simply be required to marry her. A guy who burns down his own shack in order to collect the insurance but has taken precautions to keep the fire from spreading should not be treated the same as someone who torches a neighborhood. Some provision might be made for first-offenders in armed robbery, but the principle is not only valid logically but also reflects historical custom. 100 years ago, rapists and horse thieves were routinely hanged--horse thieves because in the West, it was claimed, the loss of a horse could mean death for the victim.
On criminal intent, there is some room for compromise. A comparatively small part of the population is responsible for over 50% of the violent crime, and of that small part many belong to one or another criminal conspiracy. While I am not ordinarily in favor of reimposing status categories on the law--special privileges based on social class, religion, wealth, profession, color, etc,--I do not see why members of the Latin Kings or Folk Nation should not be treated prima facie as possessing criminal intent. Thus for them possession of either pseudephed or fertilizer could be a crime.
Of course, we know that this is not going to happen, simply because blacks and aliens belong to a privileged class. If we had the will to go after the gangs, we would not be the people we are.
Finally, Chronicles used to do, almost annually, an issue on crime in which many arguments were advanced in favor, for example, of corporal punishment and self-help and against incarceration. I quit doing these issues partly because I ran out of new things to say and partly because conversation did not seem to resonate with conservatives who, in the 1990's, took the position of "back the police" and get tough on crime. One former editor of ours used to say that we would never get anywhere because in America, a prophet is someone who is six months ahead of the curve of public opinion, while Chronicles is 10-20 years ahead, and by the time the experts catch up, they will claim all the credit. I don't see that such considerations matter much for a magazine whose editors are interested in changing the discussion and have no illusions about our power to change the world. I'll look up some of those old issues and have some articles posted in coming weeks.
It's shame we have to dirty Chronicles' website with trash like Paris Hilton, but her prison sentence does say something about how society views jail in this day and age.
Dr. Fleming is right that most citizens and most law enforcement officers expect sexual slavery, rape and beat downs to be a part of the punishment that jail offers. This is to be a deterrent to crime, right? Unfortunately this is no more a deterrent than any other form of punishment is a deterrent short of terminating life altogther (which would alleviate the problem that states are having right now dealing with repopulating sex offenders back into local communities).
Of course all of this goes back to the phony populism that supposed makes us feel better. Miss Hilton has been brought low by the system. There is justice after all. Just like Martha Stewart right? No rich person is above the law. Given that most people will not have a mob of paprazzi follwing them when they get out of jail, just a few bucks, their clothes and bans on enployment and voting, this of course is utter nonsense. If anything, going to jail is now becoming status symbol of our new celebrity aristocracy. If princes and nobles can dirty themselves by going to war, then celebrities can go to jail and be with the little people for a month or so. It humbles them, makes them more "human" and of course, fills the time on cable TV news.
Quakers as moral perverts? Do tell....
To Evan Pankrator gladly a rejoinder would make I, provided to the aid of my self-acknowledged and self-blamed language-talentlessness and -incompetentness some kind-hearted soul come would, and Pankrator’s above-standing about-me-referring most-recent remarks into the E n g l i s c h language translate would. Or German. Thanks in for-out.
"The overwhelming majority of prisoners are POWs of the war on drugs."
As a 22-year-old who is on the border (not the frontlines) of such a conflict, I just have to throw in a couple of cents. I agree that the buzzword "War on" anything is ridiculous and a political ploy, and that drug incarcerations as is are seriously misguided. That said, a huge number of my peers use weed, cocaine, meth, ecstasy, etc. in the United States and a growing number in Europe and the effects are devastating for the future of our society. My generation is already really far gone, reared as they were by television, radio, the teachers' union, American academia, and of course parents who came of age in the sixties and got divorced half the time whether or not they were ever hippies; but the chances that they can be redeemed for the future are seriously hampered by the use of mind-altering chemicals. I do not believe we merit the liberty to make that kind of choice; we have already proven it is well beyond our ability to do so.
Of course the problem goes much deeper than substance abuse, and the collapse of morality and social hierarchies was what led to the crisis first in the United States and now in Britain and Ireland. But these drugs reinforce the hedonistic youth subculture that in turn tempts the young away from tradition and truth: it's a constant negative feedback loop. I know what's being done in the U.S. is about as effective and lasting as the Fascists' "suppression" of the mafia in Sicily, but this has got to be addressed.
Let's not be too hard on the Duce. He pretty effectively shut down the Mafia, but our own duce, FDR, with the help of Charles "Lucky" Luciano and his boys, restored the status quo.
We cannot, in a country like the US, legalize a vice without legitimizing it and giving it affirmative action rights; on the other hand, the campaign to eliminate drugs, doomed from the start, has corrupted the police and completed the ruin the prison/criminal justice system. There is no solution that would not involve a social and moral revolution that the regime exists to prevent.
The reason the "War on Drugs" has done nothing to stem possession and use of illegal drugs is because it's a half measure. We could certainly eliminate the use and possession of drugs if we wanted to bear the consequences of it. Possession and use are rampant because a) it's hard to get caught and b) the penalties are weak. How many times does a person who can afford even a half-decent attorney have to be caught with possession of cocaine to see the inside of a prison? I'd say at least 3. How about for marijuana? I'm not sure ever. Furthermore, being caught using marijuana won't even disqualify you from employment let alone making a run at the presidency. You want to see drugs eliminated from society? First offense for possession, 10 years in prison. I can assure that all of the potheads in college I knew (and know) would never have touched the stuff.
With that said, no one who reads Chronciles and not even some of the most ardent supporters of a harsher penal code would ever support something like that because quite frankly it's insane. Therefore, the best option is to go the other way: non-enforcement. Do not legitimize by legalizing but save us all the expense of the half-enforcement and the attendant social disfunctions it causes through non-enforcement. Ending drug use should be the prerogative of the family, community, and church.
Nor can I really agree that drugs are destroying the minds of America's youth. I know plenty of people whose minds are no worse off after moderate marijuana use throughout college. It was no different than moderate drinking and probably better than the binge drinking that went on virtually nightly. As for other drugs, not enough people use them regularly to merit much attention (unless we're talking about the underclass, where crack cocaine and heroin use is rampant).
At Chronicles we have been advocating non-enforcement--and therefore non-funding of enforcement, particularly for citizens caught in possession of marijuana--for nearly 20 years. You see what influence we have.
As long as we're taking care of the enforcement side of the "War on Drugs" (based on what I see in the criminal and family courts I practice in, drugs seem to be winning), let's take care of the treatment side as well. Cut off taxpayer funding for "treatment courts", Medicaid for rehab facilities (which generally tend not to work) and the other assorted State-sponsored "social services" that attempt to deal with the problem. Here's the important part: cut off SSI and SSD payments to the user population as well.
Let them alone---and let them be on their own.
Just as with AFDC and other subsidies to bastardy back in the 90s, once the word gets out that such behaviors are not going to get paid for by someone else, you'll see a swift drop in drug use.
For the very small number who truly are "addicted".....well, that's what Skid Row is for. It won't even have to "come back"; it never went away.
Since the political structure of the Empire is based on "compassion" and mass entitlements/transfer payments, I don't expect to see this program enacted any time soon. But still, if you don't bet, you can't win.....
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Earth to Thomas Fleming: Sadism and subsidiarity are separate concepts. The desire to set a community along the right direction ought not be confused with terrorizing or ostracizing those who do wrong.
As an aside, what exactly was Miss Hilton's crime anyway? The author never makes that clear. Or perhaps being "trashy" or "monkey-faced" constitute offenses unto themselves. Frankly, as far as I am concerned, the woman can behave as immorally as she wishes -- her immorality neither does my body injury nor picks my pockets.