UPDATED: Robert Stacy McCain is a lousy racist and a terrible bigot (NOT!)

Posted byCynthiaYockey 34 Comments on UPDATED: Robert Stacy McCain is a lousy racist and a terrible bigot (NOT!)

My headline would be MUCH better if I could have created urgency to click on this post by leaving out the “(NOT!).” But I know better than to trust the Left, having so recently resided there. I do not want anyone to have an excuse to put my name to a phrase saying Stacy is a racist or a bigot because he is not. The reason I can call him a “lousy racist” and “a terrible bigot” is that he completely and totally sucks at both, again, in the sense that he is neither.

This morning I see that my blog pals Dan Collins and Dan Riehl are springing to the defense of my dear friend and fairy blogfather, Robert Stacy McCain, who goes by “Stacy” and blogs at The Other McCain. I must add my voice to theirs, but with more authority, because Stacy writes in opposition to homosexual equality and I am lesbian and I support the cause of homosexual equality — for example, federal protection from discrimination in access to jobs, housing and public accommodations (e.g., restaurants, stores, sporting events, concerts, parks); same-sex marriage; repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that gays and lesbians can be openly gay or lesbian while serving in the military; and adoption.

One of the things I have marveled at and loved about joining the conservative movement is that it embodies the ideal of embracing diversity. My experience of diversity on the Left was that, sure, there’s a rainbow of races and a sort-of rainbow of religions and homosexuals believe they are welcome (which is not the same as actually being welcome), but there was a strict uniformity of beliefs that were imposed top-down and woe betide the useful idiot — like me — who tried to cash in any of those checks, especially if they then went all activist on the asses of the Lefties breaking the promises — again, like me — for passing worthless promises in the belief that that neighborhood of the Left was just ignorant and only needed activism and education so that it would keep the promises it had made of equality, inclusion, yada-yada-yada.

Even after being run out of the lesbian and gay community in the pages of The Washington Blade in 1996 for my advocacy for the rights of people in wheelchairs, including my late life partner, it was not until the spring of 2008 when I found out about Barack Obama’s 20-year allegiance to Rev. Jeremiah Wright that I began to realize that the Left is where the most vicious racism and bigotry now resides in the U.S. Over the last year, with access to a fuller statement of facts from bloggers and online magazines than I ever got from the mainstream media, I have come to see the Left as the modern embodiment of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. My perception now is that the Left espouses ideals to gain followers, but only to gain power over them, seldom, if ever, to deliver on policies in line with their stated ideals. It’s all “say one thing, do another” over there.

In contrast, on the Right, there are a few common principles holding conservatives and Republicans — who are not the same — and libertarians together in common cause — mainly, that there is a tipping point of taxation beyond which people no longer have the means of true liberty; that capitalism is the highest and best economic system to allow individuals to make the most of their lives and create a better world; and that the ideals on which the United States of America was founded are worthy of defending and passing on intact to the next generation.

Beyond those few common principles, I find enormous diversity of belief and opinion in the Right, as well as a diversity of sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race and what have you. Plus, I find women in positions of power and authority. People on the Right are able to have opposite and mutually exclusive opinions on various matters. Put together, that is real diversity.

So, yes, Stacy and I are at daggers drawn over homosexual equality, especially gay marriage equality. But he states his reasons — and his feelings. I state mine. And we remain staunch and loyal friends.

In addition, Stacy is NOT a racist — there’s just no way.

Stacy has his own pertinent remarks for Charles Johnson as folows:

His attack on me at LGF is a classic “ransom note method” attack — the assembling of this, that and the other to create a collage, like a kidnapper glueing together words clipped from magazines.

No Southerner should ever think he will be allowed to defend his homeland and her people without being insulted for it. If you’re going to defend the South, you must be prepared to defend it down to the last boll weevil on the scraggliest cotton patch in front of the most decrepit tar-paper shack in Mississippi.

So widespread is anti-Southern prejudice, especially among the intellectual elite, that the man who presumes to defend the South might as well begin by foreswearing any further ambition in life. Assume at the outset that you will be denounced and castigated and exiled to outer darkness, and resolve that this daunting prospect will not deter you from your duty.

(Note: the last two paragraphs of this post are rated ROTFLOL.)

(I should mention at this point that I was born in the South and raised in Tennessee, California and Maryland. My mother’s side of the family are Southerners. I take a dim view of stereotyping Southerners.)

All this background on the issue was never reported by the New York Times, and the people who have condemned me as a “neo-Confederate” know nothing about how I gained that descriptor.

Did I write some things that were . . . intemperate? Hey, we’re talking about Stacy McCain here, OK? When I go to fight, I go to war, and it’s war to the knife, knife to the hilt.

I love Stacy McCain. He is my friend, a valued mentor, and he is in no way, shape or form a bigot or racist.

P.S.

I believe this is only the first or second time since I started my blog that I have used the word “bigot.” I do not find it helpful in discussions aimed at illuminating how society and groups within it should set boundaries.

The link to Charles Johnson’s blog, Little Green Footballs, is in my newsfeed so I can keep an eye on him. I support Charles in his fight against Creationism, and its re-branded version, Intelligent Design, which came into being using deliberately distorted points from my father’s work. (I have the correspondence!) I do this because my father is Hubert P. Yockey and he has published a number of papers and two books from Cambridge University Press on the origin of life and evolution. Both my father and I oppose Creationism and Intelligent Design. My father’s work demonstrates that what we should be teaching in schools about the origin of life is that it unknowable by any current or future method, and why. (Dad supports the theory of evolution, in case anyone is wondering.)

By the way, I do not necessarily agree with all the bloggers who are in my newsfeed. It is a selection of people whose blogs I read, except for Shakey Pete’s Shootin’ Shack — I can’t get Peter’s RSS feed to work with my newsfeed.

Update, 9/13/09: Stogie at Saberpoint also came to Stacy’s defense today — please go read his entire post because it has additional important information (emphasis mine):

Stacy and I were involved in online discussions (aka “the great listserv debates”) with a large group of interested people and, of course, the issue of race and race relations came up and was hotly debated. Should blacks, Jews and others be allowed into our fold? Stacy, I and others said, “absolutely!” There were some bigots in the group who wanted to add a racial component to our movement but Stacy (and I and others) strenuously opposed it. Stacy was an outspoken leader of the non-racist faction; he denounced racism as dishonorable and wrong. We fought the bigots together and took a lot of heat for our stand. Nevertheless, a New York Press reporter named Michaelangelo Signorile misattributed another’s comments on interracial marriage to McCain. These errors were subsequently picked up by other bloggers (as well as the SPLC) and spread. Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs is the most recent purveyor of these falsehoods.

In addition, Prof. William Jacobson picked up the cudgel on Stacy’s behalf today and also noted that how false accusations of racism are now used to damage enemies in the search engines:

Fourth, the LGF attack appeared to be payback for McCain’s defense of Pam Geller when LGF attacked her. Payback attacks always are suspicious.

… being tagged a racist is about as damaging a tag as exists because the damage is caused once the accusation is made.And that is the point. If you want to ruin someone’s reputation, just keep posting the words “racist” in close proximity to their name on the internet so that web search engines associate the person and the accusation. That is what some people tried to do to Glenn Beck recently by making accusations of past criminal conduct in the form of a question for the very purpose of influencing Google and other search engines.

The false accusation of racism is a despicable tactic. It damages the person against whom it is made and the victims of true racism.

And that is why I felt it necessary to speak up this time.

Carol of Carol’s Closet calls for “Truth in Labeling: Stacy McCain is NOT a Racist but Charles Johnson is an Asshole“:

Stacy McCain is not a racist. He is a proud son of the South and as an adopted southerner myself, I believe there is much to be proud of. Mr. Johnson dilutes the word “racist” by using it as a stick to swing at his latest intended target (apparently Johnson is one of those people who is always targeting someone).

34 replies on “UPDATED: Robert Stacy McCain is a lousy racist and a terrible bigot (NOT!)”

  5. Two things: I am proud to be a Southerner AND an American 😀 and I think if Darwin’s theory of evolution is going to be taught in schools that Creationism or ‘Intelligent Design’ should also share the stage.

    1. Red,

      I am glad you are proud to be a Southerner and an American. However, it is ABSOLUTELY bogus to claim that “fairness” requires faith-based scenarios for the origin of life should be taught along with Darwin’s theory of evolution. First of all, Darwin himself pointed out that his theory of evolution did NOT address the origin of life — he wrote that the origin of life is an axiom of biology just as physics and chemistry accept the origin of matter as an axiom of their disciplines.

      Social conservatives who complain about liberals hijacking the public school textbooks to peddle their beliefs as facts are doing exactly the same thing when they demand Creationism and/or Intelligent Design be taught in the schools. Luckily this is a case where currently all the sides are wrong.

      The reason that what should be taught in the schools about the origin of life is my father’s work showing WHY the origin of life is unknowable is that that is what is true. All of his work is about getting faith-based scenarios for the origin of life to be thrown out of science and the public schools. He has relied on the courts to enforce the separation of church and state to keep the faith-based scenarios of Creationism and Intelligent Design out of the schools and focused his attention on getting scientists to drop THEIR faith-based scenarios.

      Cynthia

  6. Cynthia,

    My take is this:

    First, from the extensive conversations all of us had at Smittypalooza I, I found absolutely no evidence of this racism Charles is talking about. That Stacy is an inveterate attention ummm, attractor and the final word in “Social” Conservatism. And he can sing show tunes. So, really there is no “there” there.

    Second, his protege/co-blogger Smitty is an old teen years friend of mine, as you know. In my opinion, Chris Smith’s integrity is unimpeachable – he simply would not associate with an -ist of any stripe. And since my good friend Chris considers Stacy a good friend (and vice versa), I am absolutely certain my impression is correct. Thus I consider Stacy a friend, as well.

    And I don’t trust Charles Johnson as far as I can throw him. I stopped making him a regular stop when he was in full on rant about creationism. It got boring and not a little bit self-defeating. Although I broadly agree that ID is bunk, I have a personal philosophy about the whole thing. Simply, the theory of evolution explains the how – and quite satisfactorily even with holes in evidence. Genesis explains the why. From that point of view, they are mutually supporting, not antagonistic. God would not have given us the ability to investigate if he didn’t want us to learn how he did it.

    But I digress. Later, I found out about his blog war with Robert Spencer. I was surprised to see his other hobbyhorse – anti-muslim fascisti – had spilled over to Jihadwatch, which I found to be scrupulously researched and an excellent resource. I was banned for downdinging someones comment at LGF in that blog war, I think. It also may have been following a link from Jihadwatch to LGF to see just what was going on and get a full perspective on the situation – you know, both sides, weight the evidence, etc. Either way, I showed some type of minor behavior that Charles didn’t like – I was thinking for myself. Suffice it to say, Charles made my decision on who was right for me. If he can’t brook legitimate inquiry or minor disagreement, then even he feels at some level that his argument is too weak.

    Sorry for the long comment.

    Thank you for your time.

    1. Jeff Weimar,

      Thank you for your long comment!

      I’m glad you mentioned Robert Spencer. As a consequence of researching this blog war, I put his Jihadwatch into my newsfeed and I look forward to getting to know his work. I am sorry I haven’t done more to back up Pamela Gellar since she is one of Charles’s targets, too. Until moderate Muslims reign in the extreme ones, the extreme ones are setting the tone for them all, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think non-Muslims have a duty to walk through that mine field first.

      Cynthia

  7. Cynthia,
    Went over to check out your father’s site and saw a photo of this simply gorgeous young couple. (I’m sure their brains were pretty good-looking too.) You indeed won the genetic lottery!
    BTW….kept looking for that green umbrella, however, the clouds seemed to part for the Tea Partiers. 😉

  9. Cynthia and Stacy, I love ya both. LGF deserves NO clicks, that is what CJ is desperate to achieve. Like I said at Stacy’s racist blog, and you ARE lousy at it BTW, CJ is the best candidate to be hosting the next backyard BBQ for Maureen Dowd.

  10. Oh, Hell, Cyn, it’s an honor just to be on your blogroll. And I wonder, why does anybody much care what Charles Johnson thinks? I write a blog, if someone disagrees with me, fine. They’re probably wrong because I am a pretty smart guy, just ask me, but fine.

    Johnson is merely reverting to the hive mind that you escaped.
    .-= Peter´s last blog ..A Stop On The Underground Railroad? =-.

    1. Peter,

      I’d still like to have you in the newsfeed — do you have someone who could tinker with your RSS feed to reduce its size or number of included posts to no more than 10? When you let me experiment with it I thought I reduced the size enough but thought it still wouldn’t work because it was feeding too many posts.

      Cynthia

  11. Actually, not having a hive mind is why you escaped the left. When I was a boy there was a lot, a LOT, of overt racism.
    even then, though, it was a sign of bad taste, like cursing in front of women and children or wearing trousers with the butt seam split.
    Rosa Park’s bus boycott worked because so many white people got involved, driving their friends, co-workers and employees to and from work, etc. The modern civil rights “leaders” prefer that part to be forgotten.

    To the left a disagreement means someone must be cast out. To the right it just means someone is wrong, big deal. After all, nobody but me, Stacy and you are always right. Sometimes I’m not so sure about Stacy and you, though.
    .-= Peter´s last blog ..A Stop On The Underground Railroad? =-.

  12. Pingback: Irresistible force vs immovable object: Johnson vs McCain « DaTechguy’s Blog

  13. Hey Cynthia. Thanks for the acknowledgment.
    On the Creationism tip, I saw that Ben Stein film about scientists and professors being black-balled for even bringing up I.D., even just as a matter of study. I don’t think there is anything wrong with shedding light to it just as there are many who press hard for their beliefs in evolution to the exclusion of any other viable option. But that’s me.
    .-= Red´s last blog .. =-.

    1. Red,

      Darwin’s theory of evolution is one of the most well-established theories in science. It is not a matter of belief or faith. Teaching Creationism or Intelligent Design in a science class is teaching religion as science — it is wrong, factually and ethically. It is exactly the same as the Catholic Church insisting that the earth is the center of the solar system, not the sun, and forcing Galileo to recant.

      And the people who teach the tenets of their religion as science for the purpose of forcing others to believe should, indeed, lose their jobs or take their proselytizing to the college’s department of religion or department of history, which are the only appropriate places besides a church to teach Creationism and/or Intelligent Design.

      I apologize for having to harsh your mellow on this.

      Cynthia

  14. Dear Cynthia;

    Came across your blog some few days ago. Not half bad, and although not an American myself, I consider myself fairly aligned on the conservative end of politics.

    Got a few questions for you, maybe OT, maybe not. When you speak of evolution, are you speaking of natural selection/survival of the fittest, or are you speaking of random, undirected processes (using the current favoured method of mutation), generating new traits and organs/systems hence differentiating descendant specie from the ancestor species?

    Because I gotta tell you, from my perspective, a theory is something that I should be able to set up experiments and replicate the results thereof (given the correct equipment, setup and appropriate protocols, of course). And from what (admittedly limited) sources I can dig up, there’s a whole lot of ‘may lead to new traits’ and ‘possibly leading to beneficial trait’ but otherwise a lot of bunkum. A bacterium gets the ability to metabolise a new form of sugar it otherwise couldn’t before. And yes, we’re quite sure that sample wasn’t contaminated with another form of bacteria that has the EXACT SAME GENES that enable this metabolism to take place.

    Further, I really, really find it hard to believe that the genetic code and cellular systems – that exhibit far more advanced programming and complexity than our most sophisticated computer systems – arose from sheer accident and randomness.

    In addition, if what I’m reading about your father’s and your own take on this matter is correct, then what you’re saying is something like

    NON-LIFE -> {magic handwave/miracle happens/unlikely statistical occurrence/quantum oscillation/Sauron’s One Ring} -> FIRST SELF-SUFFICIENT ORGANISM -> evolution over thousands of millennia -> MANY SPECIES/WHOLE BIOSYSTEM

    which, you know, makes me wonder why I cannot believe in the Bible’s explanation of the origin of life (God created all kinds of life in 6 days, resting on the 7th) as scientific as evolution.

    Argh, too long. Feel free to edit. I suck at wordage. Mea culpa. But I really am interested and not trying to troll and stuff.
    .-= Gregory´s last blog ..Blog update =-.

    1. Gregory,

      My father’s work is on the origin of life — that is the field I can discuss.

      A theory is an explanation. And there has been plenty of research to show the validity of Darwin’s theory of evolution. That is how it became so well-established.

      Please go back and look at the definitions on my father’s site. The genetic code is not the same as the genome. You are talking about the genome.

      Also, my father is the person who debunked the chance and self-organization origin of life theories you mentioned. What he is saying is that origin of life is unknowable, so it would be: matter > unknowable > first self-replicating organism > all life now and forever. All literature comes from a few letters. All music is made from a few notes. All life is made from 64 codons > 64 codon > 20 amino acids.

      Cynthia

  18. Hi Cynthia,
    On the url tip: Must’ve been a typo the last time although throughout the day on different blogs I kept receiving a posting error message, then refresh the page and all was well. Browsers.
    .-= Red´s last blog ..Lunch Today Was… =-.

  19. I too judge people by the size of their breasts and whether they get along well with lesbians. My mate rates rather highly in both categories.

    I’m a very lucky man.

    May I add that I was a very early adopter of LGF – sent there by Andrew Sullivan about 6 months post 9/11. What goes on at LGF these days is quite sad.
    .-= M. Simon´s last blog ..This Is Getting Serious =-.

  20. I personally subscribe to the self organization hypothesis. A clue for me is that amino acids are found in space in large enough quantity to be detected.

    I’d be interested in why your father did not care for that explanation. The short version will do as I can not afford the book.
    .-= M. Simon´s last blog ..This Is Getting Serious =-.

    1. M. Simon,

      My father’s papers on both the chance and self-organization scenarios gave them favorable conditions, then calculated their probability, which came out so close to zero as to be as good as zero in the time allowed between the origin of the universe and the origin of life on Earth, which is approximately 4.5 billion years. This is why he maintains, and I agree, that acceptance of either the chance and self-organization scenarios can only be maintained on the basis of faith. My father wants science to clear the decks of all origin of life scenarios based on faith and he has shown why we now know the origin of life is unknowable by any method. Why the origin of life is unknowable is what we should be teaching about it in schools.

      Cynthia

    1. M. Simon,

      In that case, the reason why the origin of life is unknowable is stated in the Central Dogma — information can only flow back and forth between alphabets of the same number of characters, and flows from alphabets of a greater number of characters to an alphabet of a smaller number of characters but it is impossible to look back from the smaller alphabet due to the inaccuracy inherent in several-to-one codes. Information can go back and forth between DNA and RNA because both have 64 codons, but there is a several-to-one code from the 64 codons of RNA to the 20 amino acids of protein. So for some amino acids, any one of several RNA codons could have called it into the protein sequence — it is impossible to know which one.

      For an analogy, if you throw two dice and you know the result is “7,” if all you know is “7” and you need to know what combination of the dice produced it, you can only guess — there is no procedure for correctly determining the origin of “7.” It is unknowable. Ditto for the origin of life — it is impossible to come up with a procedure for knowing exactly which one from the “several” (RNA codons) in a several-to-one code coded for the “one” (an amino acid) — it is unknowable.

      Cynthia

      P.S.

      That great about the board you invented!

  23. Cynthia,

    Thanks for that. It hasn’t changed my inclination as the most likely explanation but that is just a hunch. As you point out we have proof of nothing in regards to origins.

    As to the invention. Like all “first artifacts” it was just a matter of being at the right place at the right time and knowing the need along with the appropriate information. My intention was to use it to control machinery. I thought the BBS guys were nuts. Which just goes to show you that it was not part of some big vision. Just luck. But as you know fortune favors the prepared.
    .-= M. Simon´s last blog ..Kop Corruption =-.

    1. M. Simon,

      I glanced through the thread — it is very long and would take all day to digest and answer, but it would still be a tar baby. However, Jim did not understand my father’s work showing why self-organization scenarios are invalid and must be discarded. The purpose of that was to show scientists that self-organization scenarios were based on faith, even if it is a secular one, and since science is not about faith, they must be discarded. My father, Hubert P. Yockey, has worked to get faith of every description and origin OUT of science, which is about “counting and measuring,” as he quotes Socrates.

      The reason to get anthropomorphic global warming and Intelligent Design and Creationism out of every classroom is that they are based on faith, and, in fact, are dogmas.

      Ben Stein is wrong in his documentary “Expelled.” ANYONE who teaches Intelligent Design anywhere but in a religion class and AS anything but religion DESERVES to be fired. It is exactly the same as teaching the Earth is the center of the universe because that is the dogma of your religion.

      Also, what my father demonstrates is why the origin of life is UNKNOWABLE by any method and that THAT is what should be taught in schools and universities. The origin of life is an axiom of biology, just as the origin of matter is an axiom of physics and chemistry — points Darwin made in his landmark work, Origin of Species.

      And now I have to make my father’s breakfast.

      Cynthia

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