From: edwardbelsky@worldnet.att.net   
      
   ROBBIE  wrote in message   
   news:J9qdnUQTTtJUtjfYnZ2dnUVZ8qeknZ2d@bt.com...   
   > Edward Belsky"  wrote in message   
   > news:D8fnh.330031$Fi1.236214@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...   
   > >>   
   > > Brass, this shows how cheek returns on the speaker. The quote that you   
   > > think   
   > > shows the effect of drugs was composed by you in 2001.   
      
      
   Sir:   
      
   " Listen, you ain't the fucking daddy round here anymore mate, I've shown   
   you respeck just because that's the type of geezer I am."   
      
   You get me so wrong in your letter that I wonder whether you might have   
   gotten other people wrong too. You got that right that I am of tender-souled   
   weft, woof, and grain and je rencherai sur cela (I will do you one better) :   
   I take my cue on most issues from what I think that A.S. Neill, founder of   
   the utopian school Summerhill, would say, but on the death penalty and on   
   Israel, I strain against my viscera.   Even allowing for the 6 yrs.that have   
   passed since I started the thread "Orwell and the Death Penalty (long)" and   
   allowing too for the pissant way I probably expressed myself at the time,   
   then when I was unfledged here and without a history of opinions to counter   
   potential misunderstanding, you should have remembered that my view on the   
   death penalty is unlike the rest of my views.   
      
   But of course you cut me down because your sense of your audience is   
   cliché-crazed.  When you wrote "Death or Bongo" and "Virginia Plain" you   
   were exquisitely aware of of what is "original, spare, strange/whatever is   
   fickle, freckled (who knows how?)."  You were attuned to the awesome,   
   blooming variety of life.  You got all the species. But now Sophocles (you)   
   has become a media maven and the tender-souled people that he wants to   
   antagonize and say "Boo" to are all straw men, customized set-ups for him to   
   outshine and freak out, like the scoffers in a 50's Hollywood bible movie.   
   His erstwhile feel for particulars would be a handicap to a media maven who   
   by definition sees people in the bulk.   
      
   Straw men are souls that take life out of the congress of ideas or ectoplasm   
   springing up around core ideas.  I think that the straw men have come thick   
   and fast ever since you became a media critic because your novelistic roots   
   dispose you to give ideas a local habitation and to be uncomfortable   
   detaching ideas from human beings. Your talent is for the dramatic -- like   
   someone who converts P.F. Strawson's (Strawson not Straw Man) "Individuals"   
   into a Punch-and-Judy type puppet show.  It is quite unnecessary to pick on   
   hapless ED and tell me that as a left-liberal I don't believe in heroes -- I   
   believe that Tom Deveson understood that I have a fatal penchant for them --   
   when what you really want to deal with the concept of levelling per se.  I   
   was shy about telling you that.  You were so fervent about my non-belief   
   that it seemed rude to clip your wings.  Philosophers get on idea-trains and   
   follow out where they lead, quite independently of flesh-and-blood   
   espousers.  A philosopher would convert a "straw man" into an "ideal type"   
   of thinker and leave flesh-and-blood posters out of it, although he might   
   give some of the lurkers a bad hour or two.  But of course you don't won't   
   to be a philosopher.  You want to impact on the media.  But I don't think   
   your genius is as an essayist even though you did great with P. Hitchens,   
   like someone building up ideas from scratch in an Oxford Union debate.   
      
   Regarding the Death Penalty, I am a strange bird: I support it without any   
   venom and without any redneckism.  I am only person I know who supports   
   coming from the left, except for Ed Koch and Eliot Spitzer.  I leave my own   
   identity out of it.  I support the DP without making a statement about   
   myself.  I am bored by all discussions (including yours) which say that even   
   if it doesn't deter -- and I know it doesn't (that's you or the ideal   
   thinker, not me) but I am still for it: I'm tough, I'm a man.  Well how do   
   you know it doesn't?  Your method of canavassing that question sounds like   
   introspection.  Again identity, the self, emotions.  My argument is simple.   
   The DP was widely used in big towns in the 19th century.  It was done very   
   theatrically.  It made an impression that was absorbed in the folk-culture.   
   which meant that the terrible executions of the 19th deterred potential   
   murderers from later generations.  The DP eventually deterred as a   
   folk-memory.  What's my proof?  At the beginning of the 19th century the   
   typical English crime was (according to GO) "kicking your wife" to death.   
   End of century no longer true and John Bull (a taurus) much softened from   
   the 1800 edition.  By the beginning of the 20th century murder is down in   
   all the groups that beheld those terrible public executions. As further   
   corroboration, consider a group that did not arrive in the big US cities in   
   a big way until a time when the Progressive movement of the early century   
   was cutting back on the DP.  This group regularly racked up high murder   
   rates in the cities and those numbers steadily climbed but, for reasons of   
   prejudice and lack of affect, the judiciary was not stimulated by those   
   statistics to take back public executions to the old levels.. Wouldn't that   
   also count as corroboration of the deterrent effect?  The thousand pouind   
   elephant in the room in the room whenever you discuss the DP these days is   
   the thought that black people are degenerate or whatever.  My point is that   
   their statistics can be explained by penal reasons alone. This is one thing   
   I am sure of: with lethal injection you sanitize capital punishment and   
   undermine the deterrent effect and waste something like 3/4 of a death.. I   
   add two coda to this that I commend to the attention of any retired lawyer   
   or authoress who may have gotten this far.  The claim that the DP needs to   
   be carried out right on the heels of a crime to be effective as a deterrent   
   is baloney. My other coda is that cops or ADAs who bury evidence have to be   
   shown to go down badly for it, possibly even to suffer the DP itself.   
      
   I feel rotten about calling you a racist. What you are is a protester   
   against compulsory post-judice non-racism.  You are in the anomalous   
   position of being a racist without any animus at all against blacks because   
   what you are really doing is insisting on an Englishman's right to make up   
   his own mind.  You  think that the English campaign against racism is   
   kulturkampf intent on putting you down and restricting your autonomy and   
   making you crawl.  It is just a re-affirmation of your place, eh Robbie?  I   
   am trying to work out your logic, not saying that I agree with any of your   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)