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Why I Recommended Against Milo
As discussed on the main page, Milo Yiannopoulos has been invited to address CPAC this year in the major Saturday night address — the one that gets the television. About this I have mixed feelings, as I have mixed feelings about Milo in general. However, at my university, the College Republicans I sponsor discovered that they could get Milo to come speak for basically a song. Breitbart appears to pay a sizable chunk of the cost of his speeches. They asked my opinion.
I recommended against.
Now this decision was made in the space of a day, so my reasons were not as well formed then as they are now. What I told them is that Milo is a blunt object, as likely to hurt as to help, and that such a blunt object is not necessary at our school. Should the day come that we need a blunt object, having already used Milo, we won’t have anything in reserve. Furthermore, our campus is already fairly conservative -even Trump friendly -so bring a provocateur to campus to generate protesting seems counterproductive.
We can, ultimately, catch more converts with honey than with vinegar.
But if they wanted provocative, I offered to look into SABO, who is in a league of his own.
The lure of Milo is that he kills every sacred cow. He is a walking scandal. A talking desecration. He is, by his own admission, transgressive as a personality trait. The id made flesh. But he’s also indiscriminate. He is, in his way, the Right’s Madonna -who spent her youth talking about the greatness of the sexual revolution -and then discovered in middle age that her money made the revolution great, but that for everyone else it was a much more mixed bag. That for her, effective single parenting just meant hiring a nanny, while for the teenagers listening to her, it meant a much harder life.
My students want to see Milo say all the things you can’t say, without any recognition that there is a reason tact and manners exist. Or if they do recognize the importance of manners (they are generally decent people) they don’t see the threat Milo represents to their tact and manners. They can point to no general oppression of conservative views on campus except for a few professors here and there (as opposed to the more general oppression of a place like Berkeley where it is both professors and students). They just want to watch Milo play with matches.
The day the administration threatened to keep him off campus, I would convert to my students’ desire. But that is because the day the administration threatened to keep him off campus we would actually have a threat to free speech worthy of blasting apart, and I would consider the collateral damage that is Milo to be worth the risk. I cannot abide, for my own security, a system in which speech is formally controlled by one side. I will take my chances in the world without restraint.
SABO, for all he is just as transgressive is much more solidly aimed at the Left. His style is to parody the left’s attacks. “This is what you do all the time! Why is it only wrong when I respond in kind!?” His is a shaped charge to Milo’s bomb throwing. His is, in its way, a call for proper civilized constraints — constraints on both sides that exist in order to keep the peace, and not to ensure one party’s domination over the other. He wants a fair fight, whatever the rules. Milo wants a fight without rules. SABO is a rebel. Milo is a revolutionary.
So how does this play to CPAC? In many ways, CPAC is now filled with people who feel greatly constrained by the left. Josh Barro commented that the social conservatives must be alarmed by CPAC’s invitation of Milo. Speaking only for myself, were it a couple years ago, I might well have. But today, I can understand what a wit called “The Boromir Option.” If electing Trump and setting of Milo is the only way to break the left’s monopoly on the nationwide culture, then I understand. If the guillotine is falling, there’s not much reason to complain about the collateral damage of the bomb — so long as it throws the blade out of its track.
But on the other hand, CPAC is the base of the people — and why would you set the bomb off in your own headquarters?
It was for this reason I recommended against Milo at my campus, and why I would recommend against at CPAC. But it is also why I will not stand in their way, either.
Published in Culture
Exactly. I’m generally a strong proponent of pedantry, but in this case arguing about whether or not pedophilia is the appropriate term seems to me to be about as pointless as those people who argue that anti-Semitism is incorrectly applied to Jew-hatred because Arabs are a Semitic people too. It’s technically correct, but goes against common usage and serves no point as much as deflecting from the main issue.
I agree with the overall point, but there is an aspect to this that may make the distinction relevant. Milo, in his defense, has said he strongly opposes pedophilia. But given some of his other comments about adult-underage relationships, it seems fair to wonder whether Milo himself is hiding behind technical definitions. I haven’t read a lot about this issue, so I’d welcome the clarity on this point.
What… the heck… was that?
You’ve never seen the BBC’s House of Cards?!
a) You must watch it. I’ll mail you my copy if need be.
b) Sorry for the spoiler.
No, no. I’m good. The American version makes me claw the upholstery with how badly it fails to understand anything. I don’t need to see the British version, too.
I’ll stick with Yes, Minister.
From my limited understanding, the first series (4 episodes) is at least as realistic as Yes, Minister. Just done for drama instead of farce.
The first season of the British House of Cards is both plausible and good. Neither of these things can be said for the Netflix version.
There is a big distinction that is part of human history, remains part of other cultures (that we like to pretend can be just like us [central america]), and is biological. Hormones have an effect on sexual drive and young, post-pubescent boys and girls are not immune from knowing just what it is they do. Its like you were all sheltered as kids. Did you never see the girl trying to seduce teacher into giving her a good grade? Manipulation. Middle school boys jonesing for teacher? I knew one kid who drove his cousin and his cousin’s teacher around town while they got it on in the backseat. The kid wasn’t innocent. He was a nasty piece of work well before. Puberty matters. 5, 7, 8 – those ages don’t get sex or have a desire for it. Pedophilia is 100% different.
Also, for Milo, when people are abused, they try to make sense of it in many different ways, especially if they found enjoyment in the nature of the abuse.
So was Lina Medina raped?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Medina
You might want to investigate your source of information. He has many disgusting traits (in my opinion), but racism isn’t one of them.
Most likely, yes. There is no medical history that she had reached menarche before pregnancy, likely implying she was a victim of ongoing child sexual abuse and her first cycle resulted in pregnancy.
She wasn’t married and her parents had no knowledge.
Her doctor stated that she had menarche at 8 months and had been cycling regularly since 2. Yes, obviously, she was raped. But she was raped even if her body was sexually mature and she was horny that night.
Other young mothers have a more nuanced history, such as documented early maturity and subsequent marriage.
Their cultures are likely “archaic” in how they teach their daughters about marriage and marital duties. It would greatly depend on revelations of the parents (sudden, distinct epiphanies out of the ordinary cultural traditions) to come to the conclusion that an early matured girl would not be ready for marriage. Most people don’t think outside their own cultural norms.
I can hold that pedophilia is evil, that some post-pubescent teens can know what they do and be willing participants, and that some post-pubescent teens can be innocent and victims of rape in tandem. I know the law can not make such distinctions, hence age of consent laws.