Death of an Eloi

The harrowing audio tape of the emergency phone call in which 19 year old model Amy Leigh Barnes pleads for help as she slowly expires from nine stab wounds inflicted by her 21 year old black boyfriend who had lived with her for a year in her parents’ home prior to the murder, was played in court yesterday.

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John B. writes:

As any grown white person with memories of the brainlessness and bullying that make up most of the behavior of white juveniles should recognize, the survival of the white race has always depended on the political predominance of a small, serious portion of that race’s population. Naturally, that predominance was never assured; it is gone now. The geologically-short existence of whites is coming to an end.

Prakhar G. writes:

The girl was not an Eloi. For the eloi/morlok dichotomy to be correct, the eloi would have to be spoiled and useless and the morloks would have to be hard-working. I doubt the boyfriend was particularly hard-working (in relation to her). At the very least, she was not lazy and spoiled if the fact of her career is any indication.

If we wish to apply this to broad racial categories, we must once again confront the fact that whites are certainly _not_ lazy and spoiled (except for a select few).

LA replies:

I have been using the Eloi/Morlock analogy to contemporary race relations for many years, and I certainly never meant it in terms of Eloi being lazy and Morlocks being hard working and in charge. The analogy is to the fact that the Eloi are passive and pretty and let themselves be killed and consumed by the beastly Morlocks.

In Wells, the Morlocks are intelligent and the Eloi are not. That also is not what I am analogizing. An analogy is a similarity between one aspect of a thing and one aspect of another. It is not a total similarity of one thing with another.

Markus writes:

I’m just sickened by these stories. I can barely concentrate on my work after reading them, when I think of such harrowing, cruel, life-terminating violence. Yes, the racial element, along with the total abnegation of common sense and parental responsibility is worthy of noting. But the primary effect that these murder stories (which you’ve posted in the last few weeks) have had on me is to reinforce my yearning for the reinstatement of the death penalty throughout Western civilization.

I write from Canada, where capital punishment has been abolished for decades, as it has throughout most of Europe. Only the U.S. still has it, and even there only in certain states.

How come so few people talk about this at the political level anymore? When it comes to the culture wars, it seems an inordinate amount of energy is expended on abortion. Meanwhile, when it comes to the “culture of life” so frequently invoked by the anti-abortionists (and I am one), no one seems to care about “the born” (in contrast to “the unborn”) who are now “dead” due to murder. Does THEIR blood no longer cry out from the ground for retribution (Gen. 4:10)?

I recently watched a video of the mother of the black boy who was lured into a savage gang beating/killing by his whore girlfriend. The murdered boy’s mother was actually calling on society to do something about knife violence! Why wasn’t she calling for the only form of restitution that can be paid—life for life? This is so basic to humanity that it’s not part of the Mosaic law; it’s one of the so-called Noahide laws, which pertain to all of humanity in a fallen world (Gen. 9:6).

Granted the woman was reading a prepared statement, so maybe her actual thoughts were more primal. At least, I’d like to think so.

LA replies:

“Does THEIR blood no longer cry out from the ground for retribution?”

Here’s the terrible truth. In contemporary Western culture the blood of the murdered no longer cries out from the ground for retribution. It’s not that the blood cries out but is not heard by a non-judgmental society, it’s that the blood doesn’t even cry out, because the dead were also part of the same culture of nonjudgmentalism and death and therefore they don’t feel the injustice of their own death. They are Eloi who accept their murder by the Morlocks.

As for the believers in the “culture of life,” who oppose the “culture of death,” remember that for these people, who are principally acolytes of John Paul II, the culture of death that they oppose includes capital punishment. John Paul and his followers see the just execution of a murderer as a crime against life in the same way that an abortion is a crime against life.They also see the prevention of illegal immigration as a crime against life, just as an abortion is. John Paul said this himself. Fighting for the “culture of life” therefore means eliminating capital punishment, and opening the borders to all comers. The common thread making sense of all these positions is the reduction of the moral good to physical life, without transcendent meaning, without justice. The “culture of life” proponents are thus liberals and part of the culture of death. The logical end of their belief system is the murder of innocents by illegal aliens who have been freely allowed to enter the country and who are not given capital punishment for the murders they commit.

Leonard writes:

You wrote:

Here’s the terrible truth. In contemporary Western culture the blood of the murdered no longer cries out from the ground for retribution. It’s not just that the cry is made but not heard by a non-judgmental society, it’s that the blood doesn’t even cry out, because the dead were also part of the same culture of nonjudgmentalism and death and therefore don’t feel the injustice of their own death.

I don’t find this quite correct. Certainly the modern view is that retribution in the sense of eye-for-an-eye is wrong. “If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.” However, progressives are not insensible to injustice of this sort; it is just that they refuse to personalize injustice. Rather, to the progressive all injustice is social injustice.

Progressives deny that man is evil: they deny original sin and our evolved bestial mind. If men are fundamentally good to begin with, then logically evil is something they must have been taught to do, or had imposed on them somehow by “society.” And obviously then, we need only to teach them well, or free men from social imposition, and we fix evil! (Who could be opposed to an end to evil?)

In this view, infamous crime is an important indicator, not of who needs to be hung by the neck til dead, but rather, which social institutions or even mere physical objects need reform. Thus the response of the victim’s mother that Markus mentions: the only politically correct action she can advocate is to crack down on those awful knives that killed him.

I think it is important to understand this, because the human instinct for revenge is strong and not going away. Only by channeling it can the progressives hope to subvert it, and that is precisely what they do. This is one source of their incredible power: first they create a problem, then they channel the energy created by the problem into more and worse of whatever they did to cause it to begin with. You can be sure that in 20 years, when progressives have purged the British Isles of every knife with a point, thugs will be still be killing people, in even more tortuous and depraved ways. And whatever weapon becomes popular amongst the scum—perhaps sharpened stakes—will be a focus of much political energy and angst among progressives.

LA replies:

That’s a very interesting qualification on my point. I like the way you place the issue of liberal non-judgmentalism in a larger context which shows that liberals also still have a (liberal) notion of the good. However, I don’t think your argument takes anything away from my point. Even if liberals direct their moral concern (dare one call it outrage?) toward social improvement, they still don’t believe in right and wrong and good and evil in the normal sense of those words. To the contrary, their belief that all crimes are the result of some social imperfection or inequality that can be reformed is the very thing that has destroyed the normal moral sense in them. Liberal morality is not morality; liberal morality is a systematic cancellation of and substitute for morality. Therefore it is still the case that neither the blood of the murdered liberals in the ground, nor the still living liberals in society, feel the wrong of the murders that were committed or cry out for justice. What they feel is the Amy Biehl Foundation Syndrome: the impulse that led the parents of Amy Biehl to set up a foundation for social improvement, and hire their daughter’s murderers to work for it and even invite them into their home. And we can bet that Amy Biehl’s spirit feels satisfied at this.

LA continues:

Backing up what I just said, the Amy Biehl Foundation website has no mention of how Amy died—chased and stabbed to death by a black mob as she begged for her life. Instead, the site says:

12 years ago, on August 25, 1993, Amy made her transition from her eventful life on earth to an even larger life of committed service to the under-served and to the hopeful. The Amy Biehl Foundation draws breath and inspiration from Amy and her example. It is a creation of family and friends who loved her in life, and is now extended by many hundreds of new friends—young and old—who want to make a constructive difference in their world and who enjoy doing this in Amy’s name.

This website is dedicated to Amy and to her hundreds of unselfish friends throughout the world who carry on for her with zest, joy and friendship.

There’s sure no blood in the ground crying out for justice. And there’s no heaven either. But there’s a liberal heaven, where the supreme liberal good in enjoyed: Amy has passed on to “an even larger life of committed service to the under-served and to the hopeful.”

Mark P. writes:

I take a more nuanced view of these various killings. There are categorical differences between these various attacks and murders.

1) The attacks on the white family in Ohio and and man in Rhode Island represent the most serious examples of the burgeoning black on white crime. These are crimes cause by blacks’ ability to intrude physically upon the space of white people with impunity. This is the most immediate threat that whites face in this country.

2) The murder of Amy Biehl is simply the removal of one future member of the enabling Mandarin class that makes all the problems in (1) possible. Just imagine how much damage an Amy Biehl would do if she grew to adulthood. A future mandarin has now been removed from the gene pool and her parents’ resources are now being wasted on worthless “midnight basketball” programs. If only all such people removed themselves to the “larger life of committed service to the under-served and to the hopeful.”

3) Amy Leigh Barnes was not quite the future mandarin that Amy Biehl would be, but her removal spares any white man from unknowingly marrying this used-up “mudshark” when she turn 30.

4) As for the murders on the cam? Meh … I don’t get mad at blacks killing each other.

What does all this amount to? Why … separationism is the solution.

LA replies:

Your dislike of liberals and desire to see them removed from the scene makes you judge the murders based on your evaluation of the victims. As I’ve said to you before, this is a morally distorted attitude. Did the blacks who murdered Amy Biehl know that she was a crusading pro-black activist? No. She was a white in their neighborhood, that’s all they knew. By justifying the black racial murder of Biehl, you are justifying the black racial murder of any white. As for the other Amy B., Amy Barnes, her choice in lovers and her living arrangements may have made her particularly vulnerable to being offed by an angry black boyfriend, but lots of white women less stupid and culpable than Barnes have also been offed by angry blacks in a variety of circumstances.

The moral quality of a criminal act is determined by its intrinsic character, not by whether or not Mark P. approves or disapproves the victim. That is to reason like a barbarian.

When I’ve written about young white women who through their looseness and liberalism put themselves in situations where they got killed by nonwhites, I have condemned their behavior and used it an an example of what is to be avoided; I have not smacked my lips in satisfaction at the removal of another liberal from the world.

Given what liberals want to do to us, your hatred of liberals and even your desire to see them dead may be understandable, but it is very wrong. It is wrong to think it, and it is worse to say it. It is also counterproductive, as it weakens your ability to see right and wrong and thus your ability to defend civilization. By choosing between which victims of crime you think “deserve” it (and therefore the murder is less wrong), and which victims you think don’t “deserve” it (and therefore the murder is more wrong), you relativize evil. And, besides, none of that is your business. It’s not your choice who gets killed by a black thug and who doesn’t get killed by a black thug, any more than it is your choice who gets killed in a car accident somewhere. Your business is to do what is right and what is helpful, not to play mental games about which people you prefer seeing dead. That is wrong, and you should stop it.

Markus writes:

You wrote:

“Here’s the terrible truth. In contemporary Western culture the blood of the murdered no longer cries out from the ground for retribution. It’s not that the blood cries out but is not heard by a non-judgmental society, it’s that the blood doesn’t even cry out, because the dead were also part of the same culture of nonjudgmentalism and death and therefore they don’t feel the injustice of their own death. They are Eloi who accept their murder by the Morlocks.”

I see what you’re saying here at some level, but I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion. Even someone who buys (unthinkingly) into the “culture of nonjudgmentalism” doesn’t just passively “accept” their own murder. As reckless as Amy Barnes (like other Eloi women) may have been, surely there was a burning desire in her to live (silly death-fetish imagery notwithstanding). I can’t bring myself to listen to the call Amy placed before she died, but I’d wager the voice on the line bears record of one who desperately wanted to live—and who, if she had any thoughts at all about her killer/boyfriend, would have—how to put this?—deeply resented him. [LA replies: my gut reaction is, no. I don’t think liberal people today are capable of genuine moral indignation, especially against a nonwhite, even if that person has attacked and harmed them. They would view it as a misfortunate, a tragedy, not as wrong. I know this is true because we see it over and over. We see how the family of the deceased regards it as a “tragedy,” and wants to “move forward,” and heal.]

I think it was Dr. Johnson who said there’s nothing concentrates the mind like knowing you’ll be hanged in the morning. Well, I’m guessing there’s probably nothing like feeling your life ebbing out of you at the hands of a murderer to cut through all the politically correct/liberal “Christian” garbage you’ve spent years telling yourself you believe. In those final moments, surely reality sinks in and the lies are over.

Regardless, I’m sure you’d agree that the victims’ personal thoughts concerning his or her killer are irrelevant to the issue of whether that person should be avenged. The passage I alluded to in Genesis 4 does not state that the thoughts/opinions/value system of the murdered Abel cried out from the ground, but simply his “blood.” It was an objective reality (blood had been shed), not subjective feelings (well, you know, he is my brother, after all) that mattered in the eyes of God. Capital punishment comes in later, but even there, its institution is completely independent of what kind of person the victim is, or what the victim’s thinking patterns were. [LA replies: good point.]

(Or what class the victim belongs to, as per Mark P.’s brutally honest, but far-too-brutal, post.)

Leonard, in his otherwise insightful response, seems to be suggesting that, when it comes to capital punishment, the “modern” view is identical to the Christian view, i.e., turn the other cheek. In reality, there’s no conflict between turning the other cheek and supporting a proportional* and properly-administered death penalty. Read Romans 13:4, which deals with the God-ordained rights of the civil authorities, who “bear the sword” with God’s blessing for the legitimate punishment of evildoers. Turning the other cheek (a teaching of Christ that Paul echoes in Romans 12) is for the individual, and is about winning one’s enemies over with kindness—not with suicide. It has nothing to do with allowing oneself or one’s family members to be abused or killed for the greater good. (Martyrdom’s a whole different story.)

Which brings me back to your (Lawrence’s) point about the followers of Pope John Paul II, who see no difference between victims of abortion and capital punishment. I’m glad you brought this out, because while I had suspected it was the case, I had only a vague sense of the matter. Simply put, on a political/cultural level, this kind of thinking is suicide. On a religious level, it’s a perversion of plain scriptural teaching. [LA replies: I have articles on this with quotes of JPII, but will have to look for them later.]

* By proportional I mean the death penalty should only pertain to capital crimes, not that equal proportions of whites vs. blacks would have to be executed to make the institution “fair and balanced,” as liberals apparently believe.

Mark P. writes:

Thanks for posting my comment. I knew I may have skirted the line a bit, but I felt it needed to be said.

What inspired me to write that comment was Markus’s statement that he could barely concentrate on working after reading about something so horrible. And, no doubt, it is horrible. I was just hoping to cheer him up by extracting something positive … in my own macabre way.

And believe me, Larry, you are absolutely right that my position is wrong. If we had a fully functioning legal/moral system, then I would have no problem simply seeing these killers swiftly put to death and leaving it at that. My disagreement with liberals would, under normal circumstances, never inspire me to classify and prioritize their destruction at the hands of random savages. This is simply because I would be comforted in normal society defending/protecting me if something similar happened to me.

But we don’t have normal circumstances. We don’t have a normal society. We have crazy people enjoining the rest of us in their suicide pact. The “Amy’s” of the world, their parents and other enablers, in their own small way, made it possible for innocent people to be “wilded” upon on 4th of July weekend. Is it too much to ask that such liberals receive a taste of their own poetic justice?

Nevertheless, there should be controls over this kind of thinking. The only time I ever bring it up in conversation is if I am dealing with a particularly ornery liberal … the type that is overjoyed at whites becoming a minority or the type that wouldn’t kill a million foreigners to protect a million and one Americans.

With these types I bring out the big guns:

1) Believe America is evil and should not be defended against terrorists? Yes, so do I. The faster to nuke those Democrat cities.

2) Love abortion? So do I. Most abortions are committed by Democrats.

3) Think national health is swell? So do I. We need to ration the care of those Baby Boomers.

I can think of a dozen others I’ve used against the particularly smug and stupid.

But of course, these are not my primary moral positions.

LA replies:

Obviously I have no problem with these kinds of rhetorical responses to liberals. Anything that sticks their liberalism back in their faces is good. Please feel welcome to share the other dozen with us.

Terry Morris writes:

I read the transcript of the (999) phone call between Barnes and the 999 operator. The transcript itself is exceedingly disturbing, and I would not, by any means, want to hear the audio tape of same. But here’s the thing, Amy knew she was dying, she was obviously extremely fearful of dying, she was begging and pleading for someone to help her, to save her. And yet, nowhere in the transcript did I find where she called out to her maker to save her eternal soul.

There’s something deeply wrong with a society that fosters the kind of unbelief in eternal salvation/damnation that Amy Barnes displays in that telephone conversation. It makes me very sad on one hand, angry on the other.

LA replies:

You’re a good man, TM.

I’m thinking, if she had called out to God, then she wouldn’t have died as an Eloi.

Luke, Chapter 13:

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Unless we repent, we all die meaninglessly, like Eloi, passive victims of our mortal fate.

Terry Morris replies:

I don’t know how “good” I am, but thank you just the same for saying so.

But you know, it apparently never even occured to her to call out to God. And that’s because the culture and family she was raised in never instilled even the slightest belief in her that there may be a God who could save her when no one else could. It makes me sick, man, SICK, what liberalism has wrought on Western civilization!

LA replies:

Well, you know how the USSR was an officially atheist society. England is almost as atheist as the USSR was. In their mainstream society, in their psyche, God is dead. I don’t just mean that religiousity or Christianity is dead. I mean any mention, any indirect reference to God, is out. God is un-English. If England had an “Un-English Activities Committee,” they would bring God before the committee for questioning.

July 17

Markus writes:

Terry M. and Mark P. both make useful, though very different, contributions to the discussion, but I find that I’m still drawn back to the same point I was making earlier about the death penalty. Capital punishment in and of itself, rigorously applied without regard to the murderer’s race or other classification, would have a salutary effect on the Amy’s of the world and their enablers. To Mark’s point, it might just wipe some of the liberalism out of them. Even a party girl growing up in a society that has enough value for life to have it avenged will maybe, eventually get it into her pretty-but-thick skull that, “Hey, life matters. Life is serious. And what I’m doing with my life is both unserious and dangerous.”

Meanwhile, violent perpetrators (whether black or otherwise) who think they’ll be protected from the consequences of their actions will be more likely to self regulate. No lynching, no vigilantism, no special hate-crimes legislation. Just the application of the most basic, sensible method the world has ever known when it comes to dealing with murder.

Regarding Terry’s point, I also find it distressing that that Amy exhibited no concern for her personal salvation. England needs the gospel as much now as it did in the eighteenth century, when it started to go forth powerfully and to great effect. But while the gospel and the death penalty are two different things, I believe the death penalty, properly applied, could serve to reinforce and provide a greater context for the gospel message to which Amy seemed oblivious. It would tend to solemnize people to the fact that, once a person has taken away life from another person, they’ve taken something they can never repay. No restitution is possible, other than forfeiting one’s own life. That same message about (1) the preciousness and value of human life and (2) the finality and permanence of death could serve to open one’s thinking process to the greater, eternal issues at stake.

LA replies:

I agree with you 100 percent about the importance of the death penalty, both in general and in relation to the specific issues you raise.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 16, 2009 12:43 PM | Send
    

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