The Butterfly Nebula: Hubble and the @nasachandraxray Observatory link
“Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society’s institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems.” Peter Maurer
Hi all. I spent the entire day going through my mother’s things in preparation for her move to assisted living. I am utterly exhausted. Tuesday is move-in day. Please forgive this short post. I have some excellent stories to tell soon.
Update on Dr. Steven Kershnar: Besides abhorrent views on adult-child sex, it seems to me that he supports slavery and torture.
On Wednesday i wrote about the deeply concerning statements by Kershnar on adult-child sex. Did Professor Stephen Kershnar, SUNY Fredonia, Say That Having Sex With a 1-Year-Old Child Is Not Quite Obviously Wrong to Him?
Things have moved rather rapidly and the professor is finding himself in hot water at SUNY Fredonia. PM posted: SUNY Fredonia bans professor from student contact after video of him defending sex with children sparks uproar
SUNY Fredonia in New York has issued a statement announcing that one of its professors, Stephen Kershnar, has been prohibited from having contact with students and will not have a physical presence on campus pending the investigation.
…“I am writing to provide you with an update on the matter involving one of our professors interviewed in a widely shared video podcast,” wrote SUNY Fredonia president Stephen H. Kolison.
“We will continue to investigate this situation. In the meantime, effective immediately and until further notice, the professor is being assigned to duties that do not include his physical presence on campus and will not have contact with students while the investigation is ongoing.”
“Please allow me to reiterate my earlier statement that I view the content of the video is absolutely abhorrent. I cannot stress strongly enough that the independent viewpoints of this individual professor are in no way representative of the values of the SUNY Fredonia campus.”
Any guy who doesn’t “quite” see the problem with a number of questionable activities should be kept far away from students who might warm to his sensibilities.
PM also linked to a former article that they did on Kershner’s defense of slavery and torture in Libertarian SUNY professor who argued for child-adult sexual relations defended slavery and torture as consensual activities
In the paper, titled “A Liberal Argument for Slavery,” dated 29 October 2003, Kershnar writes that “In this paper, I argue that state recognition and enforcement of slavery contracts is consistent with the value of autonomy and with liberalism.
I wonder if he’s been drinking with Doug Wilson? He also appears to defend torture.
While framed from a quasi-legal perspective, Kershnar’s paper is a thinly veiled argument for BDSM sexual contracts, whereby a submissive female (whether child or adult) “submits” herself to a “master,” akin to the Gorean lifestyle subculture, in which sexual fantasies take on added dimensions in the real world.
While Kershnar does not explicitly mention the subculture, much of his ideas pushed in the paper arguing for slavery, and in another 2011 book titled “For Torture: A Rights-Based Defense.”
I sure hope that they are checking his computer and someone should look in his basement to make sure that the exits are working and there are no hidden rooms.
The students have started a petition at change.org where there are around 14,000 signatures to dump the professor!
A philosophy/ethics professor at Fredonia has expressed his support and encouragement of pedophilia and adult-child sexual relationships, in interviews, his own academic papers, and even class material. While the university can and should foster a difference of opinions, these views are directly harmful to a community already dealing with instances of sexual assault and struggles with consent. While Fredonia made a statement saying his views don’t reflect that of the institution, by labeling him as a distinguished professor and supporting his problematic academic papers, it directly shows the college encourages his actions and views, and personally, I don’t feel safe on a campus that encourages this behavior. We need to have Stephen Kershnar removed from campus to preserve both the safety and integrity that this institution of SUNY Fredonia promises and should strive to be known for.
They only expected to get 500 signatures.
If you have some time, do some reading on this guy. He sure is creepy. He now has an attorney who is doing all the speaking for him which seems wise to me. This guy appears a ticking time bomb.
Question? Does this guy understand what constitutes a crime?
Good Lord! Do we have any idea where this guy came from? What his affiliations have been over the years? What other crazies he has been hanging out with? Why he was hired as a college professor?
Okay, at least THIS time I’m sitting at a desktop machine that I cannot heave at the wall.
And I’m not even surprised by the torture, it seems to go hand in hand with the slavery.
I would advise people to keep up the pressure on this guy and SUNY Fredonia. Right now he’s collecting a paycheck and is taking up a position that could go to someone else. SUNY Fredonia is probably hoping this will go away soon–and it will, if pressure doesn’t continue.
Sounds like a real nut job. How did he make it this far?
People on his departmental tenure committee never actually read what he published, only looked at the volume. I suspect much of it was in journals that in the days of appear, would have done nothing but gather dust, if that. Alternate is he kept a low profile, just published mundane stuff, until he got tenure.
Sad thing is likely they will buy this guy out.
That would be more than a bit maddening.
As the absurd and even criminal claims by this tenured professor see the light of day, like here at TWW, he’s toast.
More daylight, please. Thx. Ever more daylight.
Creepy? Oh yes. Very creepy.
What concerns is ‘where’ did he come from, did he have ‘advocates’ who share his views or did he just ‘fly under the radar’ until he finally flipped out and exposed himself (forgive the pun please).
He sounds very sick indeed.
something tells me there are more ‘details’ yet to surface about this guy
Please pray very greatly for the agnostic young people that are drawing the line.
They will (we hope) save the world, not the dominionism (learned from the Raj) of the late RZIM figurehead and the VP of that time.
These two played into Kershnar’s hands to judge from a shifty subtitle of one of his books that begins “Abortion, Hell …”
Rev. Ravi’s tampering with Daniel air brushes out Another Comforter and wasted the evangelising (not apologetics) gift of John Lennox.
I’m sure the SUNY President is looking into how this guy got in the back door. There’s more to screening candidates for academic positions than just seeing if they have the right degrees on their resume … this guy is a degree too far off the map!
If I was the SUNY President, I would be giving the Dean of the philosophy department a hard talking to. There may be others that see the exit at SUNY before this is over.
His views feel like the ultimate theoretical end point of libertarianism to me.
Indeed! I compare this extreme political philosophy to antinomianism, the theoretical end point of New Calvinism’s message of cheap grace. There is a NeoCal fringe believing that a “Christian” is released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law … which, of course, is not the essence of true Grace. IMO, New Calvinism is more philosophy than faith. America has several fronts of dangerous stinkin’ thinkin’ in-church and out-church … we’ve lost our way.
There my be an additional dynamic in play.
Kershnar may be approaching everything as an abstract intellectual exercise, abstract philosophizing in his intellectual salon. I’ve seen this pattern in “My IQ Is Ont Point Above Yours, RETARD!” intellectual snobs; add Entropy over time and you can end up with something totally inhuman.
Not just Auschwitz Inhuman, Unit 731 Inhuman. Remember Comrade Stalin’s quote “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is just a statistic”? I’ve heard one better, about all-out Nuclear War: “Only a three-point-seven Gigadeath situation. Insignificant.” Like something out of the War Room discussions in Doctor Strangelove.
I experienced a Christianese version of this inhumanity during my time in-country in the Age of Hal Lindsay: “Grinning Apocalyptism”. All the horrors of Revelation According to Hal Lindsay completely abstracted as a theological exercise, utterly indifferent to the suffering and destruction of everything. Only an abstract checklist of End Time Events, check, check, check, check, check. And all of us only pieces to move about on the End Times gameboard, check, check, check, check, check.
“Sometimes you don’t notice the sun in going down until you look around and everything’s dark.”
Yeah, too much philosophical what-ifs will drive anyone crazy after a while. But there’s a very dark side to this guy that can’t be excused academically.
I bet the SUNY philosophy department (after Kershnar’s exit) sticks to the usual college debates:
Can you still daydream at night?
Can vegetables feel pain when you bite into them?
If we expect the unexpected, doesn’t the unexpected become expected?
If a tree falls in the forest …
etc.
Hhm. Back in the day I had loosely considered libertarianism because it gave freedom to people.
However, what stopped me up short before ever taking it seriously as a world view was all the patriarchs out there that were using libertarianism to give themselves all sorts of freedom all the while denying it to the women and children in their family and in fact, using their own personal, unlimited freedom to oppress those under them.
So, yeah, your comment makes sense on this level.
If you keep on going the way your are going, you are going to end up where you are headed. Dr. Kershnar reached his destination on earth, but still awaiting his eternal home.
Thanks for your comment. Please come back. I love your blog name!
Back in the day (I go way back), lots of philosophies were defined differently. Scripture calls today’s extreme views of libertarianism (in the world) and antinomianism (in the church) … “lawlessness.”
Max,
So what is the difference between the three… antinomian, anarchy, and lawlessness?
They are close cousins. Some go to church; some don’t.
This biggest concern I have with this line of thinking is that political causes will by nature have political solutions. This level of depravity is apolitical, it is deeper than moral, it is spiritual.
great quote, Headless, you nailed this perfectly!
Lay low until tenured?
Kershnar isn’t even engaging in a philosophical or ethical discussion, or a thought exercise. He’s simply using the old “gotcha/outrage” provocation. It’s not only vile and evil, it can’t evene be defined as a proposition.
Yes. Libertarianism is a child’s view of freedom.
Tenure shouldn’t cover low livin’
If he wanted attention, he certainly got it! And as you note, about as vile and evil as attention-grabbers can be. (I can’t wait to hear him say we have all misunderstood what he said)
He will have to go somewhere and write dirty books now.
Another felicitous maxim from Max.
We’re watching the 2022 Beijing Olympics right now, so, “Xie, xie, ni, Max!”
apocalipstick,
Well stated.
Here’s some attention for him: would Dr. Steven Kershnar have the same opinions about slavery and torture if he was a slave and/or he was being tortured???
What’s good for the goose………
Gus,
No, because that isn’t Libertarianism. That’s a total and utter abomination.
Wayne
I think it might be helpful if you would explain your answer to Gus. There are many utter abominations in this world, Steven Kershnar’s statements being some examples. I am shooting for more kindness in 2022.
Wayne Borean,
I suppose you referred to Kerschnar’s statements when you used the word “abomination”. I fully agree with you there.
If you want to claim that libertarianism is better than Kerschnar’s various stetement: idk, there are, as always, different versions and proponents of libertarianism, but, if what I have seen in recent years in US politics and media, is in any way representative, the prevalent version of libertarianism is a sick antinomianism.
Ava Aaronson,
Bù yòng xiè, Ava
USA! USA! USA!
I resemble that remark!
More like “The Beavis & Butthead definition of Freedom”, i.e.
“Freedom means I Can Do Anything I Wanna! I WANNA! I WANNA!”
(Which is also the B&B definition of “Anarchy Now!”)
I think the quote came from an Eighties book on teen suicide, from one of the surviving parents.
Max,
LOL.
When a covert weirdo or pervert is embedded in a normal community and normal people have to deal with it to stay safe (for extra credit reading after coverage of the weirdo pervert in academia):
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tesskessler/catching-family-harasser
Headless Unicorn Guy,
“More inhuman than thou”. Don’t lots of church leaders say human is bad?
Yes they do, and they’ve got Paul to prove it:
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”
Romans 7:18
Rather than seeing it as simply a statement of hyperbole, some brands of the faith will insist that the ‘unsaved’ cannot perform any real good in this world.
Dee–keeping you and your mom in prayer today!
extreme libertarianism certainly is almost like someone having a ‘chip’ on their shoulder IF there is activity shown that is aggressively inconsiderate to the well-being of innocent and vulnerable peoples. . . . that ‘in-your-face’ ‘I don’t give a ___’ acting out is a ‘statement’ that seems to repudiate any solidarity with the welfare of the ‘common good’ and seems also to align with the ideas of ‘survival of the fittest’, a throw-back on ‘rugged individualism’ that borders on Darwin’s theory, especially these days:
. . . when the anti-vaxxers are unconcerned that the vulnerable and the weak among us will perish in greater numbers from exposure to covid –
what is that saying? ‘The dwarves are for themselves’ 🙂
I agree: the irresponsibility of a human person for the welfare of his ‘neighbor’ speaks to the tribal worship of Trump,
not to the Good Lord who asks of us to help those who suffer out of love for Him
Childish? Yes . . . but sometimes bordering on evil especially when the ‘freedom’ espoused is expressed as anti-socialism or anti-communism – very tribal language, that
Did you not read about the change in scientific consensus? The CDC has been saying the vaccine does not prevent transmission of omicron, which means the vaccinated can spread it just as well as the unvaccinated. But it does appear to keep people out of the hospital, so that helps.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/omicron-variant.html
My old Dungeonmaster used to say that Libertarians are not that far removed from Anarchists.
And that it was really hard to get two or more Libertarians to agree on anything. Something about a philosophy of spitting in the other guy’s eye.
“THE DWARFS ARE FOR THE DWARFS!”
More like the original strain of Social Darwinism, where Survival of the Fittest was in competition between individuals. Very much liked by Victorian rich and powerful, who saw in their wealth and power the PROOF that they were the fittest.
(According to Gould, this was more a product of England having a large population on a small island with the aura of “not enough to go around”; Russian Social Darwinists emphasized cooperation between individuals surviving in a vast but hostile land of near-unlimited resources.)
Later types of Social Darwinism were Communism and Naziism. Communism defined social classes in Survival of the Fittest competition to the death, and Naziism just replaced “social classes” with “races” and firewalled it to the max. Both decreed Extinction to the losers.
From the OP: I sure hope that they are checking his computer and someone should look in his basement to make sure that the exits are working and there are no hidden rooms.
Dee,
When I was reading through the post and started reading what you wrote in the paragraph I quoted, I was expecting you to have written (after your phrase “someone should look in his basement”) the phrase “for dead / buried bodies”. 🙂
The scientific consensus is, I believe, that while the vaxxed may spread omicron they spread far fewer viruses, which means are less likely to spread it than unvaxxed. And, the lower the viral load you receive the milder the disease is likely to be for you.
So to protect OTHERS we still need to reduce the sharing of viral load, which means wearing a good face mask such as an n95, avoiding close proximity and crowd situations as much as possible, and getting vaxxed.
Those that do none of those things, clinging to their freedoms, will some hear, I believe, “As you did it unto the least of these my brethren you did it also unto me.”
Throughout the pandemic, I’ve learned two things: (1) Americans depend on each other to do the right thing to protect others, and (2) millions of Americans won’t do the right thing to protect others.
Because it’s not SPIRITUAL(TM).
Like a Pneumatic Gnostic of old, so SPIRITUAL(TM) they cease to be human in any way.
Or a Silicon Valley Geek longing for The Singularity, so he can upload himself into The Cloud and leave the (ugh) meat body behind with all the other meat in (ugh) Meatspace.
All he needs is to justify it with Godspeak, and he can take over that Kirk in Moscow Idaho.