I was working my way through the search line at the airport. Lost in thought, I was pondering how to get more production out of certain writers at No Treason. I got to the point where I was asked to turn over my toiletries in a clear plastic bag, and for some reason I suddenly scrawled “Kip Condor Is A LazyBones!” on it.

“What’s this about?”, asked an impertinent TSA screener, holding up the bag.

I pinned him with an icy stare, like a matador would stare down…

…well, in this case, a sheep.

“It’s… a… long… story…”, I spat the words softly, lacing each syllable with infinite contempt.

“Whatever”, he replied, looking terribly bored as he passed the bag along.

“Have a nice flight”, droned the insufferable quisling as I was collecting my belongings.

I froze him the patented icy stare again, this time for a full three seconds, until I summarily dismissed him with a scornful, “See you later.”

As I turned away, I could swear I heard him say, “Baa, now.”

(…In The Deeply Confused Mind Of Meaghan Walker-Williams)

For more than a year now Meaghan Walker-Williams has been accusing the editors of No Treason of being Scientologists. Recently she clearly declared her suspicions:

Oh, btw Kennedy, the folks at Scientology’s FLAG in Clearwater stopped by, judging by sitemeter. You might be due for sec check real soon!

Casual Readers may want to check out John T Kennedy’s admission that he is a practioner of Scientology “tech” and his girlfriend Lynette Warren’s “warnings” to me, not to criticize her religion , Scientology, here on the prog-blog website. For More Info On Scientology’s Views On Abortions - and in fact COERCING women to have Abortions if they are low ranking Scientologists… visit the following website. ALSO visit HERE from Absinthe and Cookies.

(By the way, please follow her link and see if Lynette said what Meaghan claims.)

And:

A few years ago in a discussion, Kennedy and Warren let it slip out that they had a connection with Scientology, in that, during the middle of another weird situation occuring — See a mutual friend of ours was organizing a boycott of a Scientology Front Gun School called “Front Sight”,

[Here Meaghan again provides the link to her investigative piece that blew the lid off this story: No Treason Admits It’s Connection To The Dangerous and Criminal Cult Of Scientology. - jtk]

[…]

Now, I firmly believe that Kennedy and Warren are Scientologists based on their own admissions, and actions. And if other libertarians become aware of this, they will lose any credibility at all for anything they may be hoping to achieve. In Libertarian circles - not to put too fine a point on it… being a scientologist, (unless you are perhaps in South Florida, near Clearwater) - you are about as welcome as a KKK member at an African American Gospel Church Choir practice.

This really says so much about Meaghan’s psyche. Her wet dream is that I will lose credibility in libertarian circles. It reflects her own deep-seated fear of losing acceptance. It’s why Meaghan routinely frames her arguments with long explanations of who is on the good team, who is on the bad team, and who is apt to get their good-team credentials revoked if they don’t stop consorting with the bad team - but pronto!

The only problem with her fantasy is that I don’t give a rolling donut about credibility in libertarian circles.

So anyway, how did Meaghan discover that I’m a Scientologist? She’s already provided the links needed to explain her detective work. It all started back on Mike Schneider’s American Liberty forum. There was an argument about Front Sight’s suit against Diana Hsieh in which Lynette and I argued (among other things) that Hsieh had been harassing Front Sight. Meaghan wrote to Lynette:

You and John can play pattycakes nice-nice with any Scientologists that you want, and even promote Piazza and his business and you are even free to suggest that Hsiah has somehow done something wrong by merely questioning what’s going on with an organization
that she was involved in, and had financially contributed to.

In response to this I “let slip” the following admission:

No Treason itself has no connection with Piazza and we are not promoting Front Sight or Scientology. Furthermore, No Treason is in no way, shape, or form connected to or affilated with ANY religion– Catholic, Baptist, Buddhist, Scientology, Mormon, Muslim, etc. We have 15 contributors and I cannot tell you what religious backgrounds they all have as it makes no difference to No Treason. We do not ask, we do not care. Does No Treason use some of the
business technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard, the Founder of Scientology? Yes, and so do the following companies:

Allstate
Bell and Howell
Nissan
McDonalds
Getty Oil
Honeywell
Mattel
Ralph’s
Rockwell
RotoRooter
Pacific Stereo
Sunkist
Winston Tires
Del Taco
Wherehouse
Broadway Department Stores
Earthlink

Does the use of Hubbard Business Managment Systems connect or affiliate these businesses and governments (or No Treason) with Scientology? Of course not.

Predictably, this “admission” distressed Meaghan. I thought Schneider gave the game away when, within 24 hours, he revealed that the text was a direct cut and paste (with a few substitutions) from Piazza’s email to Hsieh, which was (and remains) posted on Hsieh’s web site. And indeed, this revelation did give Meaghan some pause. But she still couldn’t figure it out. She wasn’t the only one. We had fun stringing the group members along for days with evasive answers and non-denial denials.

Eventually I explained it all to Tim Starr:

As to the gag, I admit to being mildly puzzled as to why you and Mike would have bought it. The text was a direct swipe from the web site under discussion, something I could not have suspected to go unnoticed for long. It’s a rather strange way to reveal NT policy, isn’t it? You missed my confirmation that the revelation was not real, and that’s fine because I was trying to leave people the opportunity to miss it. But I never confirmed that it really was NT policy, it was just hanging out there all by itself. I would think that for someone who had some significant experience of dealing with me and NT, the outlandish idea that we were really using Hubbard Management Technologies to put out a blog would not be the simplest explanation of the revelation. The simplest explanation was that the post wasn’t serious.

But hey, it’s not like I’ve never fallen hook line and sinker for a gag. Early last year Lynette announced on whitewater that she’d taken a job with the GSA, and she gave a link to the GSA showing Lynette Warren did work there and revealing her work number and email. I bought it big time and privately urged her to kill the post because it would give weasels direct access to her professional life. In the newsgroup I tried to muddy the waters by posting links to a bunch of different Lynette Warrens, attempting to pass off her announcement as a joke. But the joke was on me of course, her link was no more legitimate than the ones I posted.

I laughed my ass off when she let me in on the joke.

I made her pay for it though. She’s still paying for it.

Meaghan read all of this four years ago. I answered her questions directly once the gag had run it’s course. She stopped accusing me of being a Scientologist until last year when she got pissed off about my exposé of her sock puppet theater and she went on the warpath.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. How could Meaghan imagine I was a Scientologist after reading those threads? Could it be that when she got angry it simply became easier to believe whatever she wanted to believe? Lynette and I were delighted and started googling the web for scientologist jargon to sprinkle into our responses to Meaghan. We let Lopez in on the gag and he eagerly joined in. It was all obviously way over the top but it worked like a charm! She became more and more certain that we were scientologists.

And now that she’s sufficiently pissed again she thinks an anti-Scientology crusade is just the thing to bring us to our knees.

NOW THAT’S FUNNY!!!

Update (11-7-06): The candy continues to spill out of the piñata as Meaghan ramps up her delusions.

A correspondent to Beck expresses shame for jumping through government hoops to use his car:

Shame at being forced to think and act like this. Shame at realizing this type of behavior was business as usual in the communist countries. Shame at being compelled to take a short cut that on principle I wouldn’t take with my family or friends in an analogous situation.

Beck answers:

The only thing that I have to add right now is something that Tim Starr and Ernest Brown brought to my attention several weeks ago, which is that submission is not the same as compromise.

It’s nice that Starr and Brown recently brought this to his attention but Lynette and I (not to mention Greg Swann) have been telling him the same thing for years. Most recently:

jtk3isme: you pay taxes billy, so it seems to me you can
Wm J Beck III: What did you say?
jtk3isme: i said you pay taxes
Wm J Beck III: I mean: is that really what you intended to say?
jtk3isme: yes
Wm J Beck III: What are you talking about?
jtk3isme: you pay sales tax and other taxes
Wm J Beck III: John… have you *never* paid attention?
jtk3isme: sure I have
Wm J Beck III: I wouldn’t pay *those*, either, if I could find a way to stop it, and this fact has a serious implication.
jtk3isme: you do pay them, which means you *can*
Wm J Beck III: I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I will set up a fucking robot to let you know every Saturday that I haven’t burned myself on the Capitol steps. Will you shut your fucking impertinent mouth then?
jtk3isme: not a bit of it
Wm J Beck III: No, sir: I can’t. They’re different things.
jtk3isme: one theft is in principle different from another?
Wm J Beck III: No, they are different in practice. However, let me put it to you this way: by your way of thinking, I just die tomorrow. Will *that* shut you up?
jtk3isme: No, it will shut you up.
Wm J Beck III: You’re implying a problem of integrity, and I know the solution. Is that what you’re looking for?
Wm J Beck III: That should be at *least* as attractive to everyone involved.
Wm J Beck III: Certainly, the punk Swann might be satisfied.
jtk3isme: I’m not implying any lack of integrity for paying your taxes
Wm J Beck III: Look, John: don’t try to bullshit me.
jtk3isme: I say it’s fine
Wm J Beck III: It’s *not*.
jtk3isme: no really it is okay to live in the world, be it good or evil
jtk3isme: they commit a crime but you do not by paying

My original commentary stands:

We’ve had the same discussion a number of times. Every time we do Beck chooses to construe it as an implicit attack on his integrity, as if I were saying he ought not be paying sales tax and other taxes. On the contrary, I’m saying that it’s fine for him to pay sales tax and it would be fine for him to pay income tax. I’m saying his behavior demonstrates that he judges that paying sales tax is better for him than not paying it - else he wouldn’t pay. His behavior demonstrates that he judges he should pay sales tax (which of course is not to say he should have to pay it, he shouldn’t) to get on with pursuing other values.

And he could pay income tax to get on with pursuing his other values.

Clearly Beck submits to vehicle inspection because he judges his life will be better for that submission under the circumstances. And clearly Beck submits to having his required papers inspected every time he catches a commercial flight because he judges his life will be better for that submission under the circumstances.

And that’s perfectly fine. But Beck explains to Richard Nikoley about how the state is killing him:

I don’t know what any of you ever thought was going to happen to me. I had to explain something to Lynette the other night, which ought to be available to a moment’s consideration by anyone in the custom of thinking. I’m forty-nine years old now, Rich. When I come to face the first serious systemic medical crisis of the sort that commonly happens to human beings approaching that part of their lives, there is going to be no way in this world that I will be able to deal with it in the way that every blinking asshole on the street assumes that such things should be taken care of.

All we’ve done is point out to Beck that he doesn’t have to die that way, that he could get plenty of decent medical care the same way he gets his car registered and the same way he gets to fly to a gig: by submitting to some injustice.

For this we get:

Do you understand? I had to point out to her some elementary facts involving the nature of production and the function of money in human life, because those two people — John and Lynette, who really do seem to care about me with a good deal of the emotive force of hysterics — have serious difficulty at bringing themselves face to face with real-live practical implications of a murderous society. Forever, I have been telling people: “This ain’t no disco. Ideas matter.” Their estimation of my personal devotion to an ideal of freedom rises almost to the level of resentment because I am so serious about it. And I appear to be the only one on the scene who is not fooled: I have always known — every step of the way — exactly where this, my life, was going in the present political circumstances, which have only darkened greatly in general since I took my first adult steps.

I’d like to ask Richard: Do you resent the fact that Beck refuses to pay income taxes while you pay that ransom to improve your life under the circumstances? Does it seem plausible to you that Lynette and I resent him for not paying income tax while we do pay taxes? And if it’s not plausible, then who’s exhibiting “the emotive force of hysterics”? And why?

I have an idea why. Principle does not require Beck to do without health care or the bulk of the fortune he could earn any more than it requires him to do without his car or air travel. Beck could still improve his lot in life dramatically by submitting to some injustices the very same way he already submits to others.

But at 50 it would be a very bitter pill to swallow - to concede, even implicitly, that he has foregone decades of production that principle did not require him to refuse.

“Fundamental rights aren’t subject to the democratic process.”

- Radley Balko

Granted I was just skimming but surely this announces Radley’s long overdue rejection of statism.

I just noticed that Diana Mertz Hsieh announced in January of this year that the suit against her had been settled about nine months earlier:

I’m pleased to report that the lawsuit against me originally filed on behalf of Dr. Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight Firearms Training Institute over this web site was settled just before the case was scheduled to go to trial in April 2005. Although the details of the settlement are confidential, I can say that I’m reasonably happy with it. The lawsuit was a long and unpleasant ordeal, so I’m glad that it’s behind me.

As for the web site, it will remain where it is for the foreseeable future.

From the fact that she has not resumed her crusade to get Piazza to publicly renounce Scientology I infer that as part of the settlement she has probably agreed to discontinue that campaign.

I also note again that bloggers did a lot of posturing for a few days and then went dead silent on the matter for the last three and a half years.

Glenn Reynolds wrote:

It’s obvious that Front Sight’s lawsuit has so far bought it far more bad publicity than Diana Hsieh’s blogging ever did.

In retrospect the lawsuit stopped the crusade against Piazza and Front Sight in it’s tracks.

Hsieh keeps busy though. And it seems now every couple of years she discovers that, as at Front Sight, there’s something deeply troubling about the people she’s been hanging with. In 2004 she she broke with The Objectivist Center, reminiscent of her break with the Objectivist Study Group a decade earlier (also exhaustively documented on usenet). This year she’s outing her longtime friend Chris Sciabarra as dishonest and manipulative. I recommend her post on Sciabarra primarily as a fascinating window into the world of Objectivist back-channel communication.

ow.

Posted in Just Plain Dumb, NT Insider Stuff | 4 Comments »