Free Ghislaine Maxwell

The FBI’s arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell has been applauded nearly everywhere.  It is one thing on which the phony left and the phony right can agree.  Jeffrey Epstein was the devil, and Ms Maxwell was his madame.  

Such a consensus should set off alarm bells.   Most of what we know about Epstein and Maxwell comes from dubious sources:  Young women who received money and favors from rich men in return for sex.  

How anyone in the 21st Century can view this as criminal is beyond my limited capacity for self-contradiction.  What is the credo of our age?  The sexual revolution was an unmitigated blessing, boys and girls in their teens are encouraged by teachers and schools systems to have every imaginable erotic experience so long as it does not lead to the one great sin—the birth of a child. Some girls trade sex for money; others for marriage; others for fame.

But Epstein and Maxwell are said to have enslaved innocent underaged girls!  As if that makes a difference.  Anyone who thinks these girls were innocent when they attracted Epstein’s attention has not been living in this world or even watching television.

Epstein is a loathsome character whose life was devoted to the exploitation of women.  He used his close personal connection with the head of Victoria’s Secret as a recruiting device.  If we are so concerned with protecting the chastity of our women, why is a company like Victoria’s Secret allowed even to exist?   When Hollywood stars are caught running through women like a package of Oreos, they go to clinic to receive treatment for their “sex addiction.”  What is different about Epstein?

Ghislaine Maxwell is clearly a disturbed woman.  Her father was the preposterously evil Robert Maxwell, owner of the Mirror group including the New York Daily News, who defrauded his investors.  His daughter always believed his death was not suicide but murder.  She had no lack of money, but she took over the management of Epstein’s household and private life.  It seems more like an obsession than a profession.  Rumored to prefer women to men, Maxwell was nonetheless infatuated with the man.

Looking for some sane commentary on Ghislaine Maxwell, I recalled some things my friend Taki had said about her.  I found a column published September 11 of last year on Takimag.  

She’s not a bad girl, and I knew her before the death of another monster, her old man. I always thought she preferred women to men, but she’s always been polite and friendly toward me and has never given me cause. That she pimped for Epstein is obvious. But is pimping worse than, say, selling drugs to minors, like Jay-Z used to do? Jay-Z is a billionaire and black, so he’s excused. Ghislaine is a woman alone and no longer pretty. They will throw the book at her. I smell a real rat, with The New York Times and Wall Street closing ranks because too many big shots were involved.A special prosecutor was appointed to go after Trump for much less.

I sent him a note of thanks, and in his reply he noted that people like us are "an endangered species."  To honor the Native American ancestors I never had, I am thinking of changing my name to Spotted Owl.

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

23 Responses

  1. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    Maybe the Washington Redskins can change their name to the Spotted Owls? (Vipers or Preditors might be more appropriate.)

  2. Allen Wilson says:

    Of course one could bring in the MOSSAD angle, claim that Epstein was wittingly or unwittingly working for them, and that Ghislaine was either his handler, or else an innocent who just happened to know a little too much and might begin piecing it together.

    Of course this theory has no credibility, and will not unless she also dies by prison suicide.

  3. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    Anything could be in this world, and I have no head for theories, whether conspiratorial or climatological. But suppose there were a drop of reality in what you playfully suggest, I am bewildered by the response of the American Media that are owned and operated and manipulated by someone other than North European Christians.

  4. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    I think the charges are about underaged girls. But of course our schools are exposing young children to sexual matters, so they are corrupted and easy prey for anyone who wants to take advantage of them. By the way, whatever happened to the Man-Boy Love Association? Did they fall out of favor, too far ahead of the times?

  5. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    The Indians are thinking of changing their name, too, and I do not think they are going to move out of Cleaveland. Never let a crisis go to waste!!

  6. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    Most of the charges are about underage girls, but 1) none of the evidence I have seen so far is credible, 2) the girls, as Taki says, were already on the street for the most part, meaning they were pros to begin with and always lied about their age, 3) the schools actually hand out condoms and IUDs and provide abortion counseling, often without parental knowledge. Whatever she was doing, it was not pimping in the usual sense of a money-making operation. Most of the women fall into recognizable types: bad girls looking to make good out of their opportunity–if they can’t shake down the victim they seek lucrative celebrity in the Media; repentant Jezebels who want to blame everyone but themselves for their bad decisions. A decent person might murder Epstein or Weinstein, but dragging the smutty story through the press and shaming family and friends would be the last thing.

  7. Vince Cornell says:

    I don’t even know how to pronounce the woman’s name, but from what I gather in various headlines really all anybody cares about is a.) – will this get big name people in serious trouble so we can watch them get taken down in public for our tawdry enjoyment or b.) – will she be murdered in prison so that we can all go “See, I KNEW Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself!” The idea that Ms. Maxwell is actually a human being hardly factors into the equation at all.

    In many regards, I think folks watching gladiators kill people for sport were a lot more civil than our modern day peoples who can’t get enough death, slander, and destruction to suit our palates. We call mental illness a “right” just so we can prop up clearly mentally unstable people in public to make fools of themselves and eventually self destruct. I half think that’s the entire appeal and strategy of the Biden campaign – folks will watch and support him just so they can enjoy the flubs, gaffes, and failures of an old man with dementia. Not that I have any sympathy for Biden.

  8. Dot says:

    I don’t know anything about Epstein or this Maxwell except that what they did was evil. But this apparently is what the hoi polloi reads – perhaps to make them feel like they are not like them?
    We live in a society where freedom is abused. What you wrote, Dr. Fleming, about the fact that schools hand out condoms and IUDs and provide abortion counseling was shocking. If this is so, Planned Parenthood has made an inroad into the schools.
    How many children are being brought up in child care centers? How many of them go home after school to an empty house? How many of them want love and attention they don’t get from their parents? They become easy prey for despots like Epstein and Maxwell. The churches should be aware of this but they are weakened now and don’t have the influence that they once had because we now live in a post Christian world.

  9. Irv Phillips says:

    According to a NYT article, Epstein told a publicist that he had sex with “tweens and teens”. So this means he rather liked girls as young as ten and Maxwell was happy not only to procure these girls (most decidedly not young women) but to get in on the fun (she has been described as being “hypersexual”, which I’ll translate into English as perverted). I have been reading Taki for over thirty years ago and he’s a hoot, but in fairness he did defend Roman Polanski. Watch the movie “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired”, which attempts to make a case in his favor, and tell me what your gut tells you about Polanski. Spoiler alert: I’m going with “scum”. He is defended because a certain class of people reflexively protect their own (no that is not a reference to Taki).

    As for the Mossad angle, Robert Maxwell was such a strong (and wealthy) supporter of Israel that his funeral apparently brought out nearly every important person in the country. Ghislaine as a spy using compromat on important people who liked girls? Who knows? We certainly won’t be figuring it out during any legal proceedings.

    Let her burn.

  10. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    I don’t care much about La Maxwell or what anyone thinks of her. What does disturb me is any inclination among sensible people to believe the press–American, British, European, Russian, Chinese. All your quotations should have been prefaced with the word “allegedly” because that is all there is, allegations.

    If you think finding teenage girls is perverse, you’d better not read Shakesepare, or Dante, or Homer, and join those who are tearing down statues in Virginia, where the age of consent to marriage at the time of the Revolution will shock you.

    If we believed the local presses over the years, we’d believe Eliot Ness was a hero, Al Capone a villain, and send Communists and KuKluxers to jail. Hitler and Stalin and FDR were all great guys. Sorry, no sale. I quoted Taki because he is the only person I know who actually is acquainted with Maxwell. He has frequently expressed complete contempt for both her father and her adored lover Epstein. Do try, Irv, to resist the call of the Lynch mob.

  11. Irv Phillips says:

    Tom, if the claim of ten-year olds is indeed correct, would that change your opinion? Ten-year olds are in elementary school; fourteen year olds may be high schoolers. I spent twelve years working in a school district (and I have three daughters) and I can tell you that the difference between girls in category one and two is enormous.

  12. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    There are many subjects which cause people to see red. It used to he heroin, rape, and homosexuality, now it is racial prejudice, homophobia, and child abuse. The purpose of setting up demons and causing panic is the acquisition and increase of power. If we listen to them, ideas about due process, fair play, reliability of witness, statute law fly out of our heads. As a father of two girls, I am as aware as anyone perhaps of the evils faced by women and the difficulties of adolescent females. But you are citing statements that could not be introduced into a court of law. I am not defending the late Mr. Epstein. His murder means nothing to me. The unfortunate and unhappy woman who devoted her life to him may well have committed serious crimes, in which case she should have a fair trial, but we must not forget that if there is scum in this world, we know that a large part of it is working for and running the FBI. They are supposed to be a law enforcement agency but they prefer to try convict and sentence their targets before any formal charges are made. Remember Richard Jewell. The FBI creeps are still trying to justify their actions. Remember Waco.

  13. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    And Ruby Ridge featuring a former army sniper (West Point grad).

  14. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    I recently read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel depicting how fear is used to get people to support action for or against “critical” issues. The book has an extensive, though dated, bibliography

  15. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    Your point about public panic is well taken, Dr. Fleming. I recently read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel depicting how fear is used to get people to support action for or against “critical” issues. The book has an extensive, though dated, bibliography. One of the references was The Culture of fear by Barry Glassner, which he updated in 2018 “for the Trump Era. He added an epilogue “The Fearmonger in Chief,” which I have yet to read. I have read the first six chapters in which he makes some good points about a number of issues that were overhyped in the past. But he appears to fall into the same trap regarding the need for more gun control. After debunking the dangers of mass/school shootings and car jackings for example, he says that because some of the incidents involved firearms we need more gun control laws.

    Looking forward to the epilogue.

    Sorry for the double post. Hit the post tab before I was finished.

  16. Irv Phillips says:

    Dr. Fleming, I’ll “go public” and claim that supplying pre-teen girls to perform sex acts on men, women, or anything else (regardless of the profound irresponsibility of their parents in possibly–we don’t know how the girls were recruited–putting their children in harm’s way) is a great deal worse (and is, indeed, in a separate category) than racial prejudice (the real, read actual type), homophobia (I “fear” the practice no more or less than I do adultery), and using heroin (despite what we’ve all heard, by the way, there are certainly ‘recreational’ users of that drug and if we fear it we should, pari passu, fear the underground traffic in fentanyl, which is something like two orders of magnitude stronger than morphine and is being used to lace cocaine, resulting in bad results, e.g. death, in its users).

    I agree with your comments regarding the FBI. Yes, I remember Waco (I was drinking a beer across from Fenway Park when it came on the TV). However, in this case I don’t know what was demonstrated in a court of law? A powerful documentary suggested that men in helicopters fired upon the Branch Davidians as they left the compound, but we are left mostly with alleged claims, unless I am mistaken?).

  17. Gregory Fogg says:

    Mr. Van Sant, Horiuchi was also at Waco.

  18. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    If we wish to play at skepticism, we know nothing about anything. If we wish to be practical, we can surely distinguish between unsupported claims made so far mostly by disgruntled sex workers, and two cases–Ruby Ridge and Waco–where armed government agents deliberately provoked a violent confrontation with people accused of at most minor legal infractions which, in the case of Waco, were never proved and probably could not be. Even without the documentary, massive evidence had accumulated from responsible people, such as the sheriff of Waco. In this era of #metoo, most sensible people have learned not to accept the unsupported allegations of flagrant immoral women in Hollywood and the sex industry. To compare their allegations with the evidence of wholesale murder on the part of government agencies is little short of monstrous. It is reminiscent of the child abuse allegations made against David Koresh. We have, or had, a system of law. A tyrannical president and a rogue lesbian AG murdered American citizens, and the cover-up was assisted by prominent House Democrats like Tom Lantos and Chuck Schumer. One of the evil agencies involved was the FBI, an organization about which I know little, apart from being the object of their attention, which culminated in serious threats.
    lo-
    I cam only talk seriously about things I either know or have looked into seriously. I never met Roman Polanski, but I know several people who did, including one Polish mother of a daughter who hated his guts, because of the allegations. After speaking with Polanskin for some minutes, she believed him, as did Taki, a generally good judge of human flesh. I don’t want to know any of these people, but being–as we all are–a potential target of government created libel–I refuse to be deflected from a principled commitment to sound Anglo-American jurisprudence. Thomas More once said he’d give the Devil the benefit of the law. That used to be the difference between us and them.

  19. Allen Wilson says:

    Dr Fleming, you have made a good case for freeing Ghislaine Maxwell. It may not be all that would be required for a legal case in court, but nevertheless I consider it valid according to my limited understanding, and somehow it reeks with the odor of Roman jurisprudence. Cicero might be proud, wherever that old pagan is now.

    As for the media, perhaps people are tired of fake plagues, riots, and mass vandalism, and this is the reason for poor GM’s 15 minutes of infamy? Perhaps the powers that be realise they have gone too far in stirring up the unwashed barefoot masses, and are looking for a distraction to divert their short attention spans? I’m not really joking about that. Their ratings must be going back down.

  20. Dot says:

    I tell you what. This is out of my league. Even though I apparently am the only female who is willing to make a comment, this topic for me is rubbish. I subscribe to this foundation because I look at it as continuing education. I don’t see this Maxwell and Epstein as continuing education. Everyone else can think differently. It makes no matter to me.

  21. Robert Reavis says:

    Dear Dot,
    I always enjoy your comments and your fierce independence. I think if you are like me you may have misunderstood the original purpose of this post which is that it’s a little strange that the very institutions that spared no effort in undermining the common morals and ethics of our culture even cheering the next assault after assault, and are now trying to resurrect the old heap of values and conduct they helped destroy to go after someone for their own ends. I hope you will continue to post your comments here because I always enjoy reading them.

  22. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    I concur with Mr. Reavis, Dot.

  23. Andrew G Van Sant says:

    A quick check of WUWT reveals that the climate change fearmongers want to silence and imprison climate change sceptics and realists.

    I recently read Chambers’ introduction to Witness and think everything he said about Communism and Communists applies to Progressivism and Progressives. Marxism never dies, it just morphs into its next stage. It remains to be determined whether or not he was right when he said he was joining the losing side, but it is not looking good for us.