Challenge of the Week (Belated): Ghislaine Maxwell, Political Prisoner

We have heard much too much, in the past few years, about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts.  I wonder how people would respond to the argument that these cases are more in the nature of a public ritual or show trials than they are actual legal procedures?

Item:  Virginia Roberts, who ran away from home and sold her body on the street, worked for Epstein and Maxwell in procuring other young women.

Item: Few of the accusers can verify their claims with third party witnesses, and, while shielding themselves from public scrutiny--in violation of the ancient legal principle that the accused has a right to face his accusers--may well have similar records as Roberts.

Item:  Epstein and his accomplices were friends and collaborators with rich and powerful people who so far do not have to face any music:  Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates--to name only three.  These trials would seem to be letting the cat out of the bag.  There really is one law for us and another for them.

Item:  People like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Hugh Hefner, and virtually everyone connected with the entertainment industry are lionized for living for their heroic freedom in abandoning every principle of restraint and decency.  Harvey Weinstein is only distinguished from the celebrities he paid is in being fat, ugly, and boorish.

Item:  American government schooling at all levels is devoted to sexual liberation.  Through sex education classes, contraception and abortion counseling, one message is given to children and minors:  Anything you do is all right so long as no new life enters the world.  If teenage sex is being preached in the schools, surely it is rank hypocrisy to draw arbitrary lines about who may have what relations with whom--unless the whole point is for the government to take over all authority in sexual matters.

Conclusion:  Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Prince Andrew are convenient scapegoats for an American elite class that wants rejects every conventional moral principle and refuses to accept responsibility for its actions.  It is hard to find a parallel, apart from "ethics investigations" in Congress.  To appreciate the stupendous quality of the hypocrisy, imagine Hitler putting Goebbels on trial for anti-Semitism.

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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

15 Responses

  1. Michael Strenk says:

    I suspect that what most really want out of all of this is a good look at powerful people engaged in sexual relations with young girls via the presumed video evidence. Same problem as above elucidated on the part of the aspiring voyeurs.

    As Dr. Fleming has mentioned elsewhere, the problem is not the fact of teen aged girls having sex. One of my great grandmothers was married at fourteen, another at sixteen and the oldest sister of my maternal grandfather was married at fifteen. All of these girls were married to men of their own kind and religion and their fathers who loved them approved the matches. They all came from large, desperately poor families. Marrying young took the burden of their upkeep off of their parents freeing more resources to be devoted to the younger children and the girls were better fed and cared for, each by one man who devoted himself to her upkeep and the care of their children. Still a hard life, but that is life as such.

  2. Michael Strenk says:

    I recently read a horrifying article on the likely true fate of the poor, beautiful girl used by Speilberg in his movie Poltergeist. All I kept thinking throughout the article was where the [expletive] hell was her [expletive] family when all of this was happening. Spending the [expletive] money, no doubt.

  3. Michael Strenk says:

    What’s more, the above-mentioned girls of my family, in their mid-teens, were both prepared for and capable of caring for families of their own. What are teen-aged girls today being prepared for?

  4. Robert Reavis says:

    “American government schooling at all levels is devoted to sexual liberation.“

    Yes, but not just government schools. It’s not like the freedom fighters of old who removed prayer, Ten Commandments and local parental control to be replaced with a department of education, human rights and the drafting of women for service, haven’t stamped their mark everywhere else too.
    People have often asked me why I never sent my children to Catholic schools and Universities. Honestly, if I knew where such things still existed I would have. As it is I prefer the wolf in wolf skin to the wolf in shepherd’s skin where at least there is no question of rights and honest hatreds. It’s good to at least know your enemies if you are going to make any attempt to resist them with a love stronger than death.
    Usually the scandal in these type cases is generated by people who have no interest in the morality whatsoever, rather the power or position of the accused has become a problem that needs eliminated or replaced with another more docile to current needs. I always thought poor Tiger Woods was taken down when his financial empire began to rival that of his sponsors. Surely poor Joe Biden has done nothing differently in the last year than he has in the previous 50, but why all the sudden hatred and feigned surprise?

  5. David says:

    Mike is referring to the recent vigilantcitizen article

    That and eugenics are the subjects/topic to address.

    Eugenics (and epigenetics) are the operational words/topics.

    As Navrozov says: there’s a hierarchy to everything.
    I say: if they can get away with it, it’s because might makes right and who are you lowly serf to suggest otherwise? (Forgive me if I’ve mis paraphrased the new dad…)

    Padre Pio the stigmatized says forget about it, just hope and pray, dont fret.

    …left speechless…

    https://vigilantcitizen.com/

    https://external-preview.redd.it/xMQRnQ-KwejAIamOy2zOuCh0jn64JqYh0uOyfCotJGE.jpg?auto=webp&s=3f37b961ad4075b1b2fff71581c82b3ef1dbbc5f

  6. David says:

    I was trying to link to the article mike eas referring to

  7. David says:

    A comment made in the comments section of the article to.which.i think mike was likely referring links to the below.

    This all has been going on since the beginning, yes? Why/how expect a change?

    https://external-preview.redd.it/xMQRnQ-KwejAIamOy2zOuCh0jn64JqYh0uOyfCotJGE.jpg?auto=webp&s=3f37b961ad4075b1b2fff71581c82b3ef1dbbc5f

  8. Robert Geraci says:

    This has nothing to do with sex and the partying of the high and mighty. Except for underage girls being used, the issue isn’t who might have been charged with a crime or at the very least embarrassed by being shown to have participated in any of the goings on. The issue is to ask if there was a larger manipulation going on to put these powerful figures into such compromising positions. Epstein was the cool male dude who lured these men quite easily since the appeal of that kind of sex is de rigueur for those types. And for what purpose? To party? For those men, absolutely. But in their stupidity they became players and pawns in a bigger game where sex was only the tool to entrap them.

  9. David says:

    Forgive me

    My point was
    I think
    Why the challenge
    When no change can.be expected?

    Elites
    Barf

    Not my flag
    Not my elites
    …but I’m their’s.

    Please don’t ever post on this again . Yuck

  10. Vince Cornell says:

    I had assumed that the whole Epstein affair was the result of hysterical types going after Trump. Without thinking, when they discovered his name linked with Epstein, they went after him guns a’blazin’, but when so many other, much more important elites looked to get hit hard with the shrapnel, and Trump wasn’t even going to be impacted at all, they wanted to make the problem go away as fast as possible. The fact that Comey’s daughter is on the prosecutor’s team in the Maxwell case, right after that same team “lost” the surveillance footage of Epstein “hanging himself” in jail due to a “technical error” – the only thing I find entertaining about the whole sordid affair is how brazen the elites are at showing us plebs that they are so far above the law they can barely see it anymore from their lofty perches.

    Personally, this is one of those news items I can’t bring myself to have even minimal interest in. I have bigger problems, like the package of bacon that we thought might have gone bad and that we tried to cook – and now the house smells like a pig left his sweat socks in the corner all weekend – which is how I imagine this entire trial smells like anyway.

  11. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    I doubt that the real target was ever Trump, who, it was well known, had actually broken with Epstein. The Epstein case was a running sore for the #metoo mob, since he had managed to evade retribution for so long.

    Bob Geraci begins his comment with “this has nothing to do” but then does not tell us what the “this” is. My post? The prosecution of Maxwell? The dishonesty of the media accounts? The ambiguity of the pronoun then leads all too easily into a vague conspiracy theory, which may or may not be true, but which would require evidence and argument to substantiate.

    David reduces his comment to the Yiddishism, “Yuck,” which is expressed in English by “Ugh”.

    Robert R points out quite correctly that government schools are far from being unique in preaching sexual liberation. True, but not relevant, since the purpose in bringing up sex education was to point out the hypocrisy of American governments that spend huge sums of tax money to promote sexual irresponsibility in children and teenagers and then want to prosecute those who take advantage of their programs. It is a great deal like the state attorneys-general who have sought damages from tobacco companies, all the while taking in more net income from the taxes on tobacco than the companies receive.

  12. Michael Strenk says:

    David, different article. I don’t think that I could dig it up. That sort to thing is generally not my fare. I always assume the worst of Hollywood and government and everyone associated with these criminal conspiracies. Its a crying shame that so many people are willing to sell themselves and what should be their most precious loved ones into that machine. While none of it surprises me, it still shocks and saddens me when I allow it to. Before reading the article I suppose I had fallen into a black mood where I needed to get a good hate going. It worked.

    I am very sympathetic to what, I believe, Mr. Geraci is getting at, but if all the theories about Epstein and Maxwell and their operation are true, we will never know the half of it. These people play by rules that they know could find them being hung out to dry. This is just a bit of gladiator meat to entertain and distract the masses while the psychos get on with their crimes. There are victims of course. As Dr. Fleming shows, the girls victimization started long before they met Epstein & company and their families are chiefly to blame. Pop culture and public education were already awful in my childhood in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s (although somewhat less perverse) but my mother just about managed to protect us from the worst of it in our early childhood, which can make all the difference in the world. The other victims are all of us as, if the worst allegations of espionage are true, we are being sold and betrayed by the marks. A lot of this is done with eyes wide open. In the mafia and street gangs you have to kill to become “made”. In this way everyone is bound and committed to the criminal conspiracy and subject to its discipline. We have been victims of these conspiracies all along. They’ve sold just about our entire manufacturing capacity and military secrets to our enemies, for money. What more can they do to us? Inject us with toxins to clear the land for enemy occupation? “Ah! Jones, I think that we are entering the realm of fantasy here,” says Captain Mainwaring. Although I’m with Jones, separation from their influence, as much as is possible is the only solution. The society as a whole is going down. Time to dig catacombs, so to speak, and try to ride it out.

  13. Michael Strenk says:

    Pop cultural reference as follows:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrrIRr9arkM

  14. Robert Geraci says:

    In my less than clear response, I was trying to say that the issue was deeper than who of the high and mighty echelon went on Epstein’s sexcapades. I am no way shrugging my shoulders at the whole sordid thing and it surprises me not at all that such things happen among the high and mighty whose names we are familiar with and maybe some that would cause us to say, “Wow, even him!”. And equal no surprise that all ways of hiding these things up to and including convenient deaths, or blocking access to trials, occur to protect those involved. And while Dr. Fleming is correct that without evidence all we are limited to are suspicions, is it not appropriate to at least wonder what else might be going on based on the high level of intrigue thus far? I hope I am wrong about a higher level of intrigue and that this was limited to guests at an illegal pleasure island.

  15. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    In going back to Robert R’s observation for a moment, I wonder if anything can be done to encourage or even effect some wholesome regress in religious schools and universities. For decades it has seemed to me that the object of all modernized institutions is to destroy or at least corrupt the principles and purposes for which the institution existed.