This story is near to my heart because I was once almost mauled by a rabid raccoon while on one of my day long rambles through the suburbs of New Jersey. I was only saved from a series of painful rabies shots by my penchant for unusual clothing, including 17 inch leather boots which I thought were quite dashing. They also proved to be raccoon proof which has solidified my preference for tall leather boots ever since.  It’s a long story but suffice to say the parks and pathways of New Jersey are not a great place to run into a foaming at the mouth animal, and if you do running across the nearest deep stream will buy you enough time to make your escape.

So when Tennessee Republican Steve King let his Twitter followers know that he ended up putting down a raccoon that kept trying to claw its way into his house I understood that he had to do what he had to do to protect his family. A raccoon is about the size of a medium sized dog and weighs in around 40 pounds. That’s a lot of teeth and claws coming your way if things go wrong. So I personally think King was in the right.

P.E.T.A. disagrees:

He (King) told Roll Call that he was on a Feb. 9 conference call when the raccoon returned.

King grabbed the Desert Eagle — “It’s the one I had handy,” he told HOH — and went after the raccoon, which fled. But King caught up, fired and killed the creature.

“We can’t have an animal that might be sick, might be rabid, out there,” King said, adding that his granddaughters often play in the area where he spotted the raccoon. “That’s just what has to happen when you live out here in the country.”

Problem is, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) late this morning has criticized King, with spokesman Jaime Zalac saying King should not have dispatched “a small animal seeking warmth in another blizzard,” a second Roll Call piece relates.

“I would hope he’s not on any (House) committees that make decisions regarding cruel and unusual punishment. Decent people would call animal control for help, not get on Twitter to boast about having a really, really big gun,” Zalac said.

This from an organization that routinely kills animals they take in for their supposed adoption program. Public records show that P.E.T.A. found homes for only 1 out of every 300 animals it’s “no kill” shelter takes in. P.E.T.A. itself admits to killing some 95.8% of the animals they got their hands on in 2008. None of those animals were potentially rabid.

More importantly this response shows that far from being nature lovers P.E.T.A. and their supporters are disconnected from the very natural world they claim to love. Raccoons are dangerous, only people who haven’t seen one think otherwise. Nature is struggle, an endless cycle of beauty and violence that makes life possible and the disconnect from natural law creates people like the Jaime Zalac who have no idea how nature works. People like Zalac believe man has tamed nature but in reality we hide from it, huddling behind a flimsy barricade called civilization that can only offer us temporary shelter.

Raccoons shelter from blizzards in the wild all the time, they don’t need to come into your house. It is unusual behavior which may indicate that the creature is rabid. P.E.T.A. thinks in that situation you should throw caution to the wind and allow your family to be mauled. People who truly love nature know better.

h/t N.R.A.

Though I have not blogged about the case, I am a supporter of Rifqa Bary, the teen runaway who fled her militant Islamist family after converting to Christianity. It is not my purpose to cover that case here, but please see the great work Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs have done on getting Rifqa’s story out.

Deirdre Hebert, the host of Pagan FM, which I am only aware of through some contact Pagans Against Child Abuse had with her in the past (more on that later) is not a supporter. Someone emailed me a comment she made that said Rifqa was a runaway who was merely afraid her parents were going to “freak out” on her so she should be returned home. In that thread she also claimed only “fundies” cared about this. My comment back was simply this:

Deirdre – She wasn’t afraid her parents would “freak” she was afraid they’d kill her. Literally. Honor killings are a serious problem

Our comments, of course, went to our Facebook profiles and you can see the debate that ensued with Deirdre when see decided to “educate” me about the “indoctrination” of Rifqa by those evil Christians. She also claimed I was a criminal. At some point she decided to do take this conversation to the emails and began a long private correspondence with me by sending me an email with the subject line “Stop Being a Fucking Moron and Listen and Read” which is too long to reproduce but I will forward to anyone who wants to read through. In it she makes several points that I want to use to illustrate the intellectual vapidity and rampant amorality of the leftist mainstream neo-pagan movement:

1) Christians “indoctrinated” Rifqa to hate poor innocent Muslims. Christians also committed more atrocities than poor innocent Muslims and I am a secret Christian for not wanting Rifqa sent back to the parents who blinded her and threatened to kill her.

2) Rifqa Bary is a liar and all children who claim they are abused should be left in the homes of their alleged abusers until we’re sure they are actually being abused.

3) I insulted her out of the box by writing the sentence above (which readers can see is simply mild disagreement), thus the venom she vomited on me over a day and a half was well deserved.

4) Myself and people like me are the cause of her immaturity and inability to agree to disagree sans meltdown.

5) Anyone to the right of George Soros is a fascist and I should get my news from the known anti-Semites at Media Matters.

Her first point is at odds with the facts, Rifqa herself, and a quick perusal of any site that aggregates news involving Muslims such as Religion of Peace. This is politically correct posturing based largely on ignorance of Islam and inexperience with both Muslims and American Christians. The racism of Islam regarding Black Americans was exposed in my coverage of the Sandra Hall murder, and the innate misogyny of unreformed Islam is so blatant that one need not argue the point. The idea that Islam is being smeared by those evil Christians and Jews who spread Islamophobia is utter nonsense. Muslims cause Islamophbia with every call for Jewicide, endorsement of wife-beating, every forced conversion, every honor killing and praise for terrorism.

But Hebert’s rosy fantasy about Islam is actually a symptom of a larger problem with the neo-Pagan community and the cosmography they have cobbled together using neo-Marxism as a guide. Her latter three points are also simply expressions of this world view wherein the world is divided into progressive and “regressive” camps and the “regressive” is de facto evil and at fault for all conflict. Hebert’s charge that I “insulted her first” came after she deleted the conversation on her page in a transparent attempt to alter history for her fellow ideological travelers who she knows will never view my page or this post. This, of course, came after she herself trolled a news story with a series of insulting quotes aimed at the Christian supporters of Rifqa. They, however, deserve derision – they are “fundies” after all.

The idea that Rifqa simply must be lying about her parents, and that risking the girl’s life to prove some cheap political point about “radical Christians” is acceptable is the depraved indifference of Dierdre Herbert that I want to point out, as it isn’t unique to Herbert but it is a feature of the modern neo-Pagan movement whose mainstream is on the very fringe of leftism. There have been dozens of honor killings in America. There have been hundreds of Muslim-driven acts of violence, vandalism and mayhem often targeting the very moderate Muslims Deirdre Herbert claims to be defending. But she instead sides with radical Islamists in an attempt to be on the “right” side of this issue. Herbert doesn’t actually care if Rifqa is in danger, but is interested in peddling a made up version of the story in which Christians lure a teen to their cult compound and turn her against her loving parents.

She has gone so far as to claim I was “advocating breaking the law” by supporting Rifqa’s struggle to stay alive.

This is a far cry from my first contact with Herbert, which happened after the Pagans Against Child Abuse exposure of child exploitation being facilitated and covered up by the owners of PaganSpace. Again through emails (which I will make available to anyone interested, Deirdre Hebert and I came up on opposite sides of the issue, with her claiming I was promoting “vigilantism” for promoting the idea that adult Pagans be alert for predators in our midst who use the loose structure of the various faiths within to prey on teens who make up the majority of new converts. In other words, we should report men who attempt to lure teens into sexual situations under the guise of “worshipping the goddess” to the police, and remain vigilant against what is a threat to the legitimacy of neo-Paganism. PACA was, in Hebert’s estimation, “ruining reputations” for no good reason.

Hardly the stance one expects from a person so concerned with law and order in the Rifqa Bary case. Unless Hebert has had an extreme change of heart since our first contact (and after our discussion I don’t think she has) it would seem that Herbert’s guiding philosophy is to simply take the position of the Left on any argument, then attempt to find reasons to prove the position she has already decided is right. These reasons will then always boil down to me and anyone to her right simply being a fascist. PACA itself has been branded a “conservative” group because in modern neo-Pagan morality it is seen as something Conservative Christians are involved in, so for the modern Wiccan (as an example) even attempting to work against criminality is anti-Pagan.

The anti-Conservative, anti-Christian/Western stance that is considered part of Pagan identity (which is no longer a religion but a sub-culture) is at the root of Pagan support for Islamism in general and the parents of Rifqa Bary in particular.

This pretension, this moral cowardice and herd instinct masquerading as free thinking would be little more than an inconvenience to right-leaning Pagans and a source of amusing anecdotes for non-Pagans. But this attitude has consequences. There is an indifference to actual suffering in the neo-Pagan movement that has long, long ago crossed the line into being depraved. One in ten Pagans I dealt with directly after the PaganSpace exposure even cared that grooming of children was going on. Some claimed it was acceptable, that I was simply a “prude” for not being OK with some 50-year-old claiming a 14-year-old girl needed to service him sexually as part of the worship of whatever goddess he was pretending to serve. Deirdre simply didn’t care at all, instead branding our efforts “too militant” for her to be at ease with.

Here’s a quote from an eamil she sent to one of the PACA members:

Hi,
I was emailing Rob a bit. I’m going to be spending more time on your web site. I definitely respect the mission of protecting children. I come from a family directly impacted by child abuse from a clergy member, and your mission is very important.

What puts me a bit ill at ease is that PACA has seemed a bit militant in methodology. While I understand the philosophy of erring on the side of safety of children, I tend to be on the side of caution, seeking to cause harm to no-one.

I know that the incidents with Pagan Space was well-intentioned, and that the way things turned out weren’t entirely your fault, but it is sad that there aren’t better ways to handle things.

We’re militant … in our methodology of quietly observing sites to see if any grown men are publicly making sexual advances to minors. Our methods for finding perverts at PaganSpace consisted of simply joining PaganSpace and reading the forums. We threw caution to the wind by alerting the owners to problems, and the authorities to anything illegal. PACA has in fact helped shut down several child porn trading sites on the Ning networks. But I guess that doesn’t “harm none” in Deirdre’s estimation.

Modern neo-Pagan morality is the same as leftist morality. It is based on identity politics and the breakdown of tradition. It replaces debate with smears and attacks (like the Dominionist smear of Sarah Palin, and the death threats I received for defending her) and refuses to acknowledge the suffering of real victims of crime or oppression if doing so would put them in conflict with some leftist canard. Thus, Rifqa Bary cannot receive support from Deirdre because to do so would mean she sided with Christians and against Muslims, who despite their open promotion of the extermination of Witches and Pagans are held in higher esteem than the American Christians whose companies make our grimiores and altar supplies. Child predators cannot be purged from Paganism because to do so feels too much like supporting sexual morality, something even “Horrible” Herman Slater ran afoul of when he had the temerity to state that gays should be monogamous until the AIDS crisis blew over. The fact that he was himself a gay man who died of AIDS has not stopped modern neo-Pagan myth from claiming he was some sort of radical right homophobe.

It turns out he was simply right, and trying to keep others from dying.

Rifqa Bary will die. Or as Muslim supporters of the Rifqa’s parents have stated publicly “the Christian bitch must die.” No matter how the case turns out, it is more likely than not that she will suffer the fate all apostates from Islam eventually do. My hope that this won’t happen will not stop the family and their supporters from making attempts on her life. Deirdre Herbert is indifferent to that.

Pagan teens are going to be raped and exploited by people who the rest of the Pagan community allows to do so. Horrendous abuse by a “Druid” claiming that sexual exploitation was part of his religion has recently been in the news and a degenerate with a history of domestic violence killed his girlfriend recently because she broke a promise to him making her a “Warlock” (and thus marked for death) in line with the hokey mythology Wiccans pass off as history. Both these crimes could have been averted if there were more Pagans willing to be “militant” in policing our own community.

Deirdre is indifferent to that as well. Instead, she’s invested in the comforting lie of universal brotherhood, that the essential goodness of every individual can be fostered by ignoring their criminality. Instead, she is invested in the leftist lie that Wahabbist Muslims can be tamed and kept as pets by White liberals if only the Right would stay out of it. A transcript she sent me of her recent show says pretty much that. It simply isn’t true and organizing our support around that faulty premise will lead to mountains of dead apostates, but there is an indifference to that fact that is at the very least depraved.

In both these instances, Hebert was willing to allow children to suffer in order to hold true to some elusive principle she is unable to define. Deirdre Herbert advocates the passive acceptance of evil, and worse, attacks those of us who will not accept evil as not being “real Pagans.”

Deidre Hebert is an example of a larger trend. Pagans have morals, and have always had morals. The Deirdre Heberts of the world would do well to remember that Western Civilization, which includes the Judeo-Christian tradition, is built upon the great Pagan empires of old. Though many neo-Pagans these days may not believe in the literal existence of the gods (more’s the pity), for those that do there is no god or goddess who supports standing by and allowing the weak to be exploited and murdered while extending your compassion to the murderers and rapists. Not in Western tradition anyway.

It is Deirdre Herbert and her betrayal of the freedom of each individual to choose their god (even the Christian one) that is truly militant and anti-Pagan. It is Deirdre Herbert, and the neo-Pagan community’s indifference to child exploitation that is an affront to the very gods she claims to serve as clergy for.  This is not open-mindedness or a desire to “harm none” since people will definitely be harmed by the inaction she wants Pagans to take with regard to child exploitation or Islamic imperialism. It is depraved indifference, and its acceptance among the wider neo-Pagan movement will ultimately destroy the movement from the inside.

Actually this Fox News piece was fair and informative, giving what is no doubt a predominantly Christian audience a look at actual Voodoo practices without theological comment. Some lefty trolls are already claiming this is evidence of some sort of racism but frankly this report on Voodoo is boilerplate and unlike Generation Hex author Jason Louv or lefty hero Martin Sheen’s hate fest The Believers (which was 90+ minutes of racist slander) doesn’t paint Voodoo as evil. But there aren’t many complaints about that interestingly:

The L.A. Times has a interesting piece on the tension between Protestantism and Voodoo in Haiti.

As I’ve said before I’m involved with Pagans Against Child Abuse which has done some great work on a number of campaigns to help keep children safe. The intrepid leader of P.A.C.A. just recently received an angry email from someone who clearly had his nefarious online perversions curtailed by her good work:

u r responsible for allowing children to be molested and killed, how do u sleep at night worthless whore? u should have everything that happened to children happen to u instead, i hope u burn in hell forever for your crimes
against children u degenerate animal

The email was sent through one of those “untraceable” email services which I won’t promote here and in an example of laughter inducing melodrama had the subject line “the blood of children is on your head u degenerate animal” which is also quite creepy when you think about it.

DodiaFae points out that this is typical behavior from web perverts:

It’s safe to assume that this email was sent by an RSOLer (Reform Sex Offender Laws activist… they’re trying to abolish the SOR – sex offender registry) or a pro-pedophile activist (they’re trying to abolish age of consent laws, the SOR, and get the government to force parents and schools to groom children for them with their version of “sex education”). Transferring blame for what they do is a very common tactic used by such individuals so that they don’t have to take responsibility for it. They will often blame the victim, the victim’s parents, or anyone else who seems to be a convenient target. Even many of those claiming to be “reformed” and “no longer a threat” will blame others in the same breath.

Normally, an RSOLer or pro-pedophile activist will go through an anonymizer site to post harassing messages to anti sites (sites created for the specific purpose of spreading awareness of, and/or fighting pedophilia). This person went a step further and used an anonymous email service to send a disparaging email with a thinly veiled threat. It’s a person that managed to get my gmail address, but didn’t have the nerve to sign their name (online or otherwise) to the email or use their own email address.

Of course while he’s doing that he’s not molesting children so I count this as a victory. Aside from raising awareness the “anti” sites make the perverts more fearful of grooming children online and distract them from such activities by drawing them into a conflict with adults rather than a “relationship” with children. This is no small feat.

As for the implied threat … I am not surprised to see that someone given to raping children spends time making anonymous threats to women. Civil commitment of sex offenders looks better with each passing day.

Being a well known Republican Pagan means that I get my share of criticism from people who like to anonymously carp about something that is usually boring and/or inconsequential. More annoying is that often these people prefer to carp either in email form or on some blogspot blog I don’t want to link to because while the owner may be willing to quote me at great length he just can’t bring himself to link to me.

Mainly these people tend to be Wiccans of some stripe playing a gotcha’ game to prove I am in fact not a pagan at all but a Christian pretending to be a pagan for some mysterious motive that they’re never quite clear about. Unless there is some other point to make in these instances I rarely bother getting worked up over them because I have no interest in what the “online neopagan community” thinks of me. I am not a Wiccan (though I was once as I’ve pointed out before) and since I’m not looking to pick up an obese Gorian who speaks Tolkien’s Elvish and suffers from some sort  personality disorder my travels through the online pagan community are more focused on causes rather than socialization.

But, I have gotten some interesting questions put to me about some recent events so that I thought the answers to would be instructive for both my pagan and non-pagan readers so here we go:

One question I get, usually in the form of an accusation or an attempt to “expose” me as a “secret Christian” double agent, is that although I always put up a post about Halloween I never have posts about the other Sabbats. Also, I rarely use the term Samhain (pronounced Sow-en not Sow-een) which thus proves something or the other. I will completely scandalize Wiccans now by admitting I refer to February 2nd as  Candlemass  not the more politically correct Imbloc and I do indeed think that candles made on that day are better than others.

How do I explain these outrageous revelations? As for the terminology I use, I was first introduced to Witchcraft by books on Witchcraft not Wicca. This was in the mid eighties when the so-called Occult Underground was still vibrantly un-P.C. and not overrun with the infamous “tent women” as Israel Regardie would later call them. Thus, Paul Huson and Anna Riva have influenced me more than Starhawk or (shudder) Silver Ravenwolf. As to why I am more public in my celebration (or Hallowmas as we used to call it) the reason is two-fold.

The first is that it is The Grand Sabbat, the first day of the Witch’s year. It is in truth to me what Christmas is to the Christians, the holiday most representative of my entire religious experience. The second and perhaps more important reason I am more public about my Halloween revels is that it is also an American tradition.

Halloween is unique for pagans because it is a holiday that has both religious and cultural significance. Halloween as it is celebrated is uniquely American and many of the things we love to do on that day are traditions that come from this country. It is, like Christmas, something that can be shared with people of other faiths just as Christians you know will be sending you a gift this time of year. My favorite part of Halloween is in fact handing out candy to trick-or-treaters.

Yule is not the same, nor are the other Sabbats. I find it interesting that the same people who cry online about “Christian privilege” and having Christianity inflicted on them by the right wing are eager to bore those same Christians with their holiday schedule. I’m sure the world is as interested in hearing about the other seven Sabbats (and 12 Esbats) that I celebrate as I am in hearing about what people gave up for Lent.

In other words, I don’t blog about Yule for the same reason I don’t blog about my banana pepper plants (which came in quite nicely this year) or the fact that I recently lost 30lbs when I got back into exercising, switched to diet Coke and stopped sitting on my now not so fat ass. It simply doesn’t concern anyone and most people wouldn’t care if I told them.

Halloween, as an American cultural expression increasingly under attack, is something we should keep in the public sphere not just for us but for all Americans. What I did on Yule is simply religious minutia only of concern to a sub-section of pagans who celebrate Yule (all don’t by the way) so I don’t bother discussing it on Red Alerts.

The Wild Hunt had a nice Yule post which makes more sense since that blog is specifically about religion. I prefer The Pagan Temple’s interesting Yule posts concerning divination and a good post on the war on Christmas from a pagan perspective.

In a similar vein, I still get the occasional “why do you hate Wiccans” email/comment/note nailed to my door with a cheap “made in China” athame and the short answer is that I was one.

The longer answer is that Wicca is the bush leagues of occultism that most people outgrow if they’re at all serious, but that answer is actually unfair to the many Wiccans who were serious about their craft and have been overshadowed by the liberal arts college set who think Wicca is some sort of unholy combination of identity politics and group therapy. Therefore, to be more precise, I don’t hate you if you’re a Wiccan unless you insist I actually call you Black Dragon FireCat while lecturing me on the inherent misogyny of pronouns or think that your Harry Potter replica wand actually works. There are Wiccans I respect, even some online. To Know, Will and Dare for example is a Wiccan blog which I think gives quite respectable advice about Wicca to people with questions. The unfortunately semi-retired blog Hecate’s Crossroad was run by a Wiccan and I think quite highly of the author.

But my criticism of Wicca comes from my experience with Wiccans which is remarkably similar to what S. Jason Black and Dr. Christopher Hyatt describe in their book Urban Voodoo:

For example, we have had many experiences with the Wicca community in southern California. These groups were invariably dominated by extremely obese, loud women – Israel Regardie used to call them “tent women” – whose goal at any gathering seemed to be to push people around. This was usually accompanied by the sort of verbal moralizing (”that’s black magic” or “he’s incurring bad karma”) that many of us can remember from Sunday school. These people claim to be nature mystics, but the clinical obesity, poor hygiene, chain smoking and chronic bickering tell a very different story. Jason was once shown a particularly pompous and moralizing article in a “Neo-Pagan” magazine and in annoyance, he asked (about the author), “Does she weigh four hundred pounds?” His friend replied in some indignation that he knew her and she was quite thin. Looking at him in the eye Jason asked, “What’s wrong with her?” After a moment’s silence: “Well, she’s kind of cross-eyed and has a neurological disorder.”

It is not our intention to be cruel here, merely to point out some unpleasant truths about the “New Age” or any other movement.

I feel likewise.

Which brings me to supposed conservative Ross Douthat who I had never heard of, but that could be because I don’t read lefty rags like The New York Times which even communists like Charles Johnson thinks are traitors. He wrote a piece on Avatar and Hollywood’s “Pantheism” which has sent many a pagan to the swooning couch but whose effect on the pagan community is best illustrated by Jason Pietzl-Waters response which though eloquent (and of course steeped in the same sort of sweeping generalizations about Christians he claims Christians have about pagans) misses the point entirely. What Douthat describes in his piece as Pantheism is not Pantheism at all:

At the same time, pantheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps “bring God closer to human experience,” while “depriving him of recognizable personal traits.” For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.

Indeed, it represents a form of religion that even atheists can support. Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “a sexed-up atheism.” (He means that as a compliment.) Sam Harris concluded his polemic “The End of Faith” by rhapsodizing about the mystical experiences available from immersion in “the roiling mystery of the world.” Citing Albert Einstein’s expression of religious awe at the “beauty and sublimity” of the universe, Dawkins allows, “In this sense I too am religious.”

[...]

Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago.

Wrong. Had Douthat bothered to consult a reputable scholar of religion he’d have found that what he describes isn’t Pantheism but a new- agey combination of Animism, “personal development” and Unitarian-Universalism style pseudo-religion. Oh, have I never mentioned before that Unitarian-Universalism isn’t a real religion? It isn’t.

Pantheism is a term used by academics like myself to describe a tradition in which there is one god who manifests as multiple gods or in some cases things. Some Hindu traditions are Pantheistic, in that all the gods (and reality itself) are thought to be manifestations of the supreme deity. The Upanishads touches on this idea quite beautifully.

Much of what Douthat complains about is what we would term monism. This is the idea that there is an impersonal absolute that gives life to the universe, as opposed to monotheism which puts forward the idea of a personal absolute. Taoism is the tradition in Comparative Religion we most often use to illustrate monism. And it is this dumbed down monism combined with quasi-nature worship that Douthat is talking about. In that respect I agree with him. I don’t like the smorgasbord religion of Hollywood, where they take the easiest to achieve ideals of every tradition that doesn’t directly criticize their callow lifestyles and blend it into a gray and lifeless gooey mass of do nothing feel goodery designed to make self-righteous moralizing about carbon offsets seem less trivial and asinine than it is.

But Douthat misses that point in his zeal to attack a non-existent religion that is only promoted by an online scam called the Universal Pantheist Society and a bunch of morons who are pissing on the graves of every Comparative Religion academic in history by making up a religious tradition out of thin air.