An eloquent, courageous man

Here is Milo Yiannopolous being interviewed yesterday on Breitbart News by Alex Marlow.

Next week Milo has created Free Speech Week at Berkeley. AntiFa riots if a conservative dares to give an opinion. Last time he was there, in February, Milo was chased out by armed mobs from an underground parking lot in an armored SUV. The mobs did $100,000 dollars worth of damage to UC Berkeley and $500,000 worth of damage to downtown Berkeley. People were sprayed in the face and beaten up while the police did nothing. Similar damage was inflicted when David Horowitz and Ann Coulter had speaking engagements at Berkeley.

So next week Milo is organizing a "four-day extravaganza" with each day dedicated to examining major threats to free speech in America. The first one is Wednesday on "Feminism Awareness Day." The second one is "Islamic Peace and Tolerance Day." The third one is called "Zuck 2020" about Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg. The final day is going to be called "Mario Savio is dead!" Mario Savio was a founder of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the 1960s. Coulter, Horowitz and Pamela Geller have all accepted Milo's invitation to appear at Berkeley events next week. Why is he doing it? So students can be exposed to a different point of view! The man is very courageous!

The interviewer asks Milo why he is risking his life and capital proving a point that he has already proven (that free speech is dead at Berkeley). His answer, "I don't just want to point to the problem and whine about it. I want to fix it! I want to force Berkeley to police properly. I also want to send a message to other colleges to allow different opinions if they receive public funding. Trump has already tweeted a threat to take funding away from colleges who do not allow free speech. Milo senses that colleges are going to hold their noses and let conservatives hold their events.

I agree with the caller who praised Milo's courage and eloquence.

Are Jared and Ivanka pushing for amnesty? Milo points out that the country turned down both McCain and Romney and they obviously do not want President Jivanka! If Trump goes with Jivanka's advice, a lot of his support will evaporate in Milo's opinion.

CPAC disinvites Milo

CPAC has withdrawn its invitation to Milo Yiannopolous to speak at their upcoming gathering. Milo is accused of advocating pedophilia. Here is a statement Milo put out on Facebook this morning.

I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim.

I would like to restate my utter disgust at adults who sexually abuse minors. I am horrified by pedophilia and I have devoted large portions of my career as a journalist to exposing child abusers. I've outed three of them, in fact -- three more than most of my critics. And I've repeatedly expressed disgust at pedophilia in my feature and opinion writing. My professional record is very clear.

But I do understand that these videos, even though some of them are edited deceptively, paint a different picture.
I'm partly to blame. My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous. But I understand that my usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor might have come across as flippancy, a lack of care for other victims or, worse, "advocacy." I deeply regret that. People deal with things from their past in different ways.

As to some of the specific claims being made, sometimes things tumble out of your mouth on these long, late-night live-streams, when everyone is spit-balling, that are incompletely expressed or not what you intended. Nonetheless, I've reviewed the tapes that appeared last night in their proper full context and I don't believe they say what is being reported.

I do not advocate for illegal behavior. I explicitly say on the tapes that I think the current age of consent is "about right."
I do not believe sex with 13-year-olds is okay. When I mentioned the number 13, I was talking about the age I lost my own virginity.
I shouldn't have used the word "boy" -- which gay men often do to describe young men of consenting age -- instead of "young man." That was an error.
I am certainly guilty of imprecise language, which I regret.

Anyone who suggests I turn a blind eye to illegal activity or to the abuse of minors is unequivocally wrong. I am implacably opposed to the normalization of pedophilia and I will continue to report and speak accordingly.

Learning to love Milo

Bookworm has done it again! Today she tackles another difficult subject: Milo Yiannopoulos. She intermixes wonderful old videos (Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks and many others) with her own insightful analysis. Don't miss it here.

"In whose hands are the great accomplishments of the West more secure?"

David Goldman compares two transgressives: Milo Yiannopolus and Yuja Wang.

China well might overwhelm the West, not by brute force and mass production and discipline, but spiritually and intellectually. If China wanted to lull the West into complacency in preparation for world conquest, it could do no better than to perpetuate the myth that the Chinese are bright, disciplined and hard-working, but characteristically uncreative, clever at stealing the intellectual property of others but unable to invent anything new on their own. If you believe this, you have no idea what is about to hit you.

On average, Chinese may be less inclined to innovate than Americans—the culture is inherently more conformist—but that says nothing about their capacity to innovate. The present generation of Chinese entrepreneurs includes many brilliant innovators, some of whom I came to know as a partner in a Hong Kong investment banking boutique. But there are also Chinese who have seen through to the most recondite secrets of Western culture and mastered them in a way that no Westerner has. The Beautiful is not the Good. Beethoven’s greatest piano sonata has a nasty side.

To Westerners who have never listened carefully to a Beethoven sonata, much less performed one, this may sound overwrought, if not deranged. It is inadequately understood in the West that mathematics and physics emerged in partnership with music. I have a contribution or two myself to the scholarly literature on the subject. China’s imperial system has its weaknesses, and China may misplay the historic opportunity that it now encounters. But if China fails, it will not be for lack of exceptional minds.

East Asia values discipline, concentration, long years of practice and utter mastery; with an exceptional head start and rare talent, Yuja Wang has earned the imperial right to conjure up Beethoven as a kindred spirit and transgress in his giant footsteps. The West values offhandedness, improvisation, luck and self-made celebrity, the qualities that make Milos Yiannopoulos a figure of admiration for the Right and an object of obloquy for the Left. In whose hands are the great accomplishments of the West more secure?

Read more here.