A new film is out, called The Sound of Freedom, and it is about the horrible topic of child sex trafficking, and based on the experiences of people, such as former US government agent, Tim Ballard, who tried to shut this trade down. The film has become a hit already in the US, overtaking the new and lame Indiana Jones film (starring an aging Harrison Ford).
The Critical Drinker – my favourite film reviewer – gives his verdict here.
I want to focus on a different angle here, because I can imagine some of the “whataboutery” sort of responses from those who, for example, dislike the emphatic Christian convictions of the actor who plays Tim Ballard – Jim Caviezel. The film has already provoked sniffy responses from certain quarters.
There is, as readers know, a gap between rhetoric and performance when it comes to Christian churches and other faiths’ groups in terms of the treatment of children in some cases, while Christians and those of no faith are also to be found in seeking to protect children, too. I hope and generally imagine that the benign consequences of religion, when it comes to care for children, outweigh the negatives (full disclosure: I am a lapsed Anglican). I recall reading, with horror, about the child abuse allegations that were sweeping through the Catholic church a few years ago in cities such as Boston. I recall there was a film about this, such as about the situation in Boston, a few years ago. On the flip side, consider the work of evangelical Christians, Quakers and others on issues such as building a moral storm against the slave trade, or the encouragement of prison reform, and so on. It is hard to contemplate the US civil rights movement and not see the importance of Christianity in the US. (For a fascinating account of how different Christian denominations have shaped American culture to this day, read Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer.)
So why the hostility to this film now? This seems driven more by political partisanship and point scoring between the Left and Right than an ability to view stories on the facts.
Even the most secular person can and should be appalled, and want to tackle the matter of sex trafficking and coercion of minors. This is why issues such as money laundering, for example, are such a big deal for banks (and why it is all the more important to get that sort of issue right.)
It is true that these issues can get out of hand when it comes to fear and panic about what is going on. In the UK and other places about 40 years ago there was a “satantic abuse” problem, in parts of the north of the UK, I think, and there were miscarriages of justice, and a serious concern about the errors and oversight of various government agencies.
Even so, on the face of it, there is a problem. Slavery today is, in numerical terms, a major issue. The United Nations said, in a report last year, that there are millions of people in a condition of slavery, and a number of them will be children. (The usual health warnings apply to official figures, but even with that, these are non-trivial numbers.)
I can understand the reason for some people, maybe from good intentions, to either play down the issue or hope it goes away because they don’t want specific groups to be portrayed in a negative light, or fear this will cause specific groups to be persecuted. Centuries ago, Jews were attacked for wanting to kill Christian babies, and other such nonsense. But the problem is that our politeness, even our desire not to “rock the boat”, creates a breeding ground for trouble.
Unfortunately, in today’s always-offended culture, and its myriad hypocrisies, blind spots and desire to wish things were different than they are, the chances that there will be a rational, realistic discussion on how to prevent abuses, deal with criminals, and so on are not great. But we have to try.
The “mainstream” media are busy smearing this film – as they smear everything that is true.
In this case the media know very well that the film is a true story – Mr Ballard is a real ex government agent (“ex” is important – as he found the government was not really interested in saving the children) and the children were real victims. Yet the media pretend it is all part of the “Q Anon” conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories are often produced by the government (and allied organisation – such as certain corporations) to distract attention from real things, and to discredit dissent. For example, pretend that paedophiles have magical powers (or whatever), get people to spread such nonsense, and you discredit the idea that there are paedophiles in positions of influence (government and corporate) – which-there-are. Anyone who even mentions the possibility of Hollywood, the Federal Government, and-so-on being havens of abusers gets dismissed “you are Q Anon – you believe that…”
As for the media – they get away with the most vile lies, on Covid, on historic temperature figures, on child rape….
They get away with it because most people do not believe that such seemingly “nice” people as the media (and the government and corporate elite in general) can so evil.
I have no problem at all in accepting the existence of such evil – as I am rather evil myself.
Oh yes – I am.
I suspect that, in the current environment, any move towards a “save the children” effort is going to be explained by some on the left as an implicit attack on anyone not explicitly “normal hetero”.
Part of the perceived Q-Anon theme was the rise and protection of pedophilia among the left. That’s the link here – decrying child trafficking is seen as another tactical vector of that same theme – something to be used by the right against the left.
The open treatment of child trafficking is also seen as a threat from open-border types. Anything that demonizes the illegal movement of people across borders is to be suppressed.
So, between the two differing stories going on, this movie has earned the ire of many progressives.
I think it’s an acid test of morality. If you can demonise this film because you suspect that you wouldn’t like the actors’ politics then your moral compass is broken.
On churches and child rape.
If you, gentle reader, believed that you were going to be judged after your death and risked Hell for your offences – would you risk raping children?
No you would not. “So why do some priests rape children?”.
Because those priests, mostly (mostly), do not believe. And remember, contrary to Hollywood, ritual confession is NOT a get-out-of-Hell-free-card – if a confession is not sincere, if you have not had a real change of heart, if you have not really repented, the-words-are-meaningless.
“So why are they in the churches”
I could tell you why – and explain various campaigns to put such people in the Roman Catholic Church and other churches, campaigns that go back a century now, by a power that emerged in 1917 – but the movement that power was part of reached back into the 19th century
However, most people would scream “paranoid conspiracy theorist!” – even though the campaigns are well documented – there are even books by people who took part in the recruitment campaign to put people of certain a sexual orientation into the churches. Of course some-were-already-there – but their number was greatly increased, by a deliberate campaign.
By the way – after awhile it becomes self sustaining, once seminaries and so on are taken over – one does not even need the politically motivated agents any more. The campaign runs itself – as the best political operations do.
The ideal, in a political or intelligence operation, is to reach the stage when no professional agents are involved at all – because the process has become self sustaining.
The Catholic Church, especially, has long been a battle field.
Pope Paul VI was indirectly influenced by Saul Alinsky (yes that Saul Alinsky – an atheist Marxist, although he did not use the word “Marxist” much, who had a great deal of influence in Catholic circles in Chicago and elsewhere) – the indirect influence was via the philosopher Jacques Maritain, not a Marxist, but, sadly, an idiot – what used to be called a “useful idiot”.
The last CIA Director who really believed (in America, or in God) William Casey (who died in 1987) was a friend of John Paul II and used to go and see him (in a private aircraft – not openly).
And Cardinal McCarrick was a Soviet (and later People’s Republic of China) agent – recruited way back in the 1940s (sent over to be trained in St Gallen Switzerland – not exactly a shock there) – there were already a network of pro Soviet types. “Social Justice” was a good way of pushing disguised Marxism (just as it was in the Church of England and elsewhere).
McCarrick was (is?), to use the old word, a homosexual – as were many, although far from all, his fellow agents-of-influence.
“Yes we know Paul – some of the Cambridge Five were as well, what is your point?”
The point is that Cardinal McCarrick was active till quite recently – the deal between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China, which betrayed the underground church in China, was the crowning achievement of his intelligence career.
The pleasure (including sexual thrill) he would have got from hearing about the abuse and termination of various Catholics (and others) must have been some compensation for having to say prayers, conduct services, and so on, for about 70 years – when he did-not-believe-a-word-of-it. That can not have been easy for the man – having to live a double life for so long. It is possible to have some sympathy for him and others – even whilst remembering they would torture one to death (and get a thrill doing it).
However, and no disrespect meant to McCarrick – a brilliant professional, this achievement would not have been possible without a certain person (formally non Marxist – but usefully muddle headed) being placed, by the St Gallen group, in a rather higher position in the structure.
It should also be remembered that, in the modern world, banks and other corporations play a destructive role (at least from my, reactionary, point of view) – for example in the removal of Pope Benedict.
They also play a role in normalising certain sexual behaviours – and children are very much the current target.
Traditional society has-to-be destroyed – that is an objective of not just the Marxists, but of many important non-Marxists as well.
“Traditional society must be destroyed – so that a wonderful new society can rise its place?” – well they might still tell themselves that, but I suspect they know, deep down, there is not going to be any wonderful new society.
Clovis Sangrall “moral compass broken”.
Yes – and it has been broken for a very long time.
Remember the New York Times, the Guardian and-so-on covered up the murder of millions in the Soviet Union. They have lied about just about every other great moral matter as well.
How can they do such things? Such things as covering up child rape on an industrial scale?
Very easily – it is very easy to do terrible things, it is basically the default setting of human beings – the passions we have to use our moral reason to struggle against.
I am most certainly not free of evil – I understand the New York Times crowd, and the rest of them, only too well.
They are not some different species – they are just people who have stopped struggling against the evil within themselves (within all of us) and have, instead, embraced the evil.
Once one understands that, everything the international establishment do is easy to understand.
In the words of Dr Chisholm, first head of the World Health Organisation, they have “freed themselves from the moral chains of right and wrong” – they now act freely (free of these “moral chains of good and evil”) – I would say that this means they have embraced evil, but they would deny that. With the philosopher John Dewey (and others) they would say there is no soul (in either the religious or Aristotelian sense) and there are no objective moral laws – there is only what they want to do, which is not evil (because there is no good and evil).
I have no problem at all in accepting the existence of such evil – as I am rather evil myself.
Oh give me a break, Paul. You may have put wasps in a jam jar and watched them die as a kid, but you are not evil. That’s a big word.
I was shocked by the response to this film. I haven’t seen it, though I have seen trailers, and there is a good chance I won’t see it because it is likely to rip the heart from my body and leave me a blubbering mess. And I’m Scottish, so that just won’t do. Nonetheless, it is seen as “right wing” and apparently being right wing is the only thing that matters in terms of moral judgements. We cannot even find common cause with right wingers on such an uncontroversial thing as condemning child sex trafficking?
To me it shows how utterly venal our politics, press and institutions have become.
What we see is a burgeoning movement for “reparations” for slavery from two centuries past, but almost no concern for the massive amount of slavery going on today. Most likely there are more people enslaved today than ever in history, and most of them are kids.
And I wonder, perhaps with an excess degree of “conspiracy theory”, but it seems to me that the Biden administration’s open border policy is responsible for the largest amount of slavery traffic in the Americas since the Royal Navy put a stop to that two hundred years ago. It breaks my heart to think of this policy position which is directly responsible for the mass import of little girls into American brothels, and little boys into a life of gangland violence.
Perhaps, given this utter betrayal, this utter moral depravity by the US government, one should not be surprised that they want to tamp down any talk of child sex trafficking.
bobby b wrote:
It’s already happening. I saw on a message board the other day where one poster said he’d be fine with all child molesters being at the end of a rope, and he was accused of homo- and transphobia. He didn’t differentiate between WASP males and members of the alphabet squad, just child molesters and predators should be hanged for their efforts and was attacked for it as though it was solely an alphabet squad issue.
Obviously, this isn’t being done on a large scale, but it won’t be long until it is spun that way any time someone says anything regarding child predators, child sex trafficking, grooming children for sex, sex cults, and whatever else there is.
I think it is quite something when someone hears the phrase “God’s children are not for sale”, and are offended because it references the Christian God. “What about Allah’s children, or Vishnu’s children? What about the children of parents that don’t believe in God?”
What we see is a burgeoning movement for “reparations” for slavery from two centuries past, but almost no concern for the massive amount of slavery going on today. Most likely there are more people enslaved today than ever in history, and most of them are kids.
Reason for this: $$$$$$$$$
I can understand that people have trouble resisting some basic Darwinian drives, such as fear, lust, or gluttony.
However, the idea that Stalin, Hitler, and The New York Times did evil because they could not resist the temptation, is just insane — and that is an understatement.
Snorri Godhi – not “could not resist temptation” – that is almost the opposite of what I said.
They made a choice not to resist evil – a choice. They could have resisted the passions – they choose not to.
They had free will, they are human beings not flesh robots, and they made a choice.
Of course, like the first head of the World Health Organisation, Dr Chisholm, or the once famous American philosopher John Dewey – they may deny that there are objective moral principles of good and evil, but that is an evasion. The soul (the moral agent – the “I”), at least in the Aristotelian sense, very much exists – they, Walter Duranty and the rest of them, were just as much human beings as you are yourself Snorri (or me).
They knew they were doing wrong – and they make choice to follow their passions and reject their moral reason.
The key points of morality are to know what is morally wrong and then to make a choice to resist the temptation (the passion) to do it – “this is wrong, so I ought not to do it” – the standard ought-from-an-is that normal human beings do every day.
The role of moral reason being to control the passions – not to be a slave to them.
Johnathan Pearce.
No I have never put wasps in a jar. Why would I do that?
But if you think that I do not have a lot of evil in me – you are quite mistaken, as I do.
As for slavery.
Europeans did not go into Africa seeking slaves – partly because Europeans who went into tropical Africa nearly always died of tropical diseases.
Europeans went to the coasts and bought people who already were slaves – slavery being endemic in much of Africa.
So the modern language usage of “enslaving” or such and such an historical American personage “enslaving” people is quite wrong.
But the modern leftist activists do not really care about slavery anyway – if they did they would denounce the Islamic slave trade in African (and other) slaves that lasted from the 7th century to modern times, and they do not.
Indeed a famous America boxer changed his name from “Cassius Clay”, a man who has risked his life fighting slavery, to that of a slave dealer in African, and other, slaves – and the American left did not denounce the boxer, they celebrated the name change.
But the Islamic slave trade was hardly an isolated example – almost every major civilisation has practiced slavery, the first civilisation to turn against it was Western civilisation.
One thinks of the declaration from Westminster (Anselm of Canterbury) that the trade of buying and selling of human beings must be ended in England, or the decree of King Louis X of France that slavery was against Christian law (the same King also ended almost all serfdom in France).
Or the massive Christian campaign against slavery in recent centuries
So the left celebrate Western Christianity? Of course NOT.
Because far from wanting to end all slavery – the left actually want to extend slavery to everyone, apart from (they make an exception for) themselves.
As George Orwell, himself a socialist, put it – “when a socialist says “under socialism” he means everyone else under socialism – and himself on top of it”.
It is power lust – and it is not new. It can be seen as far back as the works of Plato – and, no doubt, has existed as long as there have been human beings.
Evil is always with us – and even killing all our enemies would not destroy evil, for evil is within us.
People like Walter Duranty and all the rest, are not some different species – they are just people (just as much human persons as we are) who have made a choice to no longer struggle against it.
We can all be like them – we just have to stop trying not to be, and there were are.
The late F.A. Hayek said that that fashionable philosophy, the denial of human personhood (the soul – the free will “I”) and the denial of objective laws of moral good and evil, did NOT have the moral and political implications that John Dewey, Dr Chisholm (World Health Organisation) and the rest of the international intellectual establishment said it did.
However, Hayek was mistaken – because it does have these moral and political implications.
Where people such as Dr Chisholm (World Health Organisation), and the Legion of philosophers, were wrong is NOT that they drew incorrect conclusions from fashionable philosophers – the conclusions they drew were quite correct, they were wrong because fashionable philosophy is itself wrong. Human beings do (not do not) exist.
Our moral agency (our free will) is NOT an illusion. We can choose to resist the evil within ourselves.
And unlike “wasps in a jar”, other humans, not just ourselves, are human beings (people) – moral agents. They matter.
At the risk of angering followers of Ayn Rand, and I share their Aristotelianism, I will cite Kant – and favourably.
Other people (for example children) are not just a “means to an end” – they are an “end in themselves” – because they are moral agents (they are beings – subjects, not just objects).
For example, medicine must be about the individual patient – not some political and cultural agenda based on lust for power.
You have to wonder what the hell is going on, inside the souls of humanity in general, that so many of us are apparently “minor-attracted persons”. I mean, yeah… I’m guilty of looking at the random young woman, thinking “Wow, if only I were thirty years younger…” and then realizing with horror that said “young woman” was actually a minor aping her elders in fashion and carriage. It’s gotten so bad these last few years that I just don’t look at all, nearly certain that I’m gonna gauge the age wrong.
However, comma… Making that sort of mistake is on an entirely different order of things from signing up for a tour of underage brothels in Thailand, and then flying off to take advantage of the poverty of that nation. Which all too many of us are doing, around the world. Y’all really do not want to know the opinions that many people have of Westerners in these third-world “sex-tourism” destination nations. I’ve met Sri Lankans that regard Westerners as sexually-obsessed and utterly depraved, only having ever seen the sort of sex-pest deviants we ship off to them, oblivious of their reasons for visiting the place. Arthur C. Clarke and apologists, I’m looking at you…
One does wonder what the prevalence of this sort of thing was, historically. I’ve read accounts of Victorian prostitution that were entirely blase about the whole “13 year-old virgin, fresh from the countryside…” being auctioned off in London brothels to believe that much of this is really entirely new. What is new is that it’s so damn easy to connect with like-minded deviants and have your way with the young by flying off to a compliant nation more worried about your money than the kids of their poor…
Hellish situation, all the way around. I can understand the instinctual reaction to youth and beauty, but I can neither understand nor countenance acting on it. Hell, I’ve made that mistake a few times, over the course of my life. I remember certain young German girls hanging out in adult nightclubs as if they were in their twenties, and everyone being dead-certain they actually were… Yet, the little twerps trying out their charms on grown young men weren’t even sixteen. That was a bit shocking, TBH. The only people who could tell at a glance were other German women who actually were, and some of them were disturbingly tolerant of the whole idea, saying that it was entirely OK for those girls to be “trying out their wings” in that manner.
That whole milieu was one reason I quit clubbing in Germany for about the last half of my tour, over there. Even in the mid-1980s, the sheer licentiousness from my staid point of view was intolerable. I suppose I’m a bit of a moralistic prig, in that regard…
The inevitable outcome of all that has become apparent, I think. I don’t think it is entirely accidental that German fertility rates are what they are. The cultural swirls and eddies have produced a bunch of people that just aren’t all that into the production of stable family situations…
However, we are overlooking something.
It is a good film – that, not politics and not religion, is the reason why most people are going to see the film.
They have been told (word-of-mouth) by people who have seen the film, that it is a good film.
As for what Kirk has pointed out….
Well sex has become divorced from marriage and motherhood – that is not just a German thing, as Kirk knows that is all over the West.
By the way – the number of Victorian men who used prostitutes is massively exaggerated by politically motivated leftist social historians. Although whether the reason that most Victorian men abstained from prostitutes was moral, religious, or fear of sexual disease (a long, lingering, humiliating and disfiguring death from syphilis) I do not know.
Perhaps it was a mixture of reasons.
Gladstone believed that, in spite of all the gossip, that Randolph Churchill did not die of syphilis – Gladstone believed that R. Churchill was killed by a brain tumour, one of Gladstone’s own sons died of a brain tumour. Gladstone also knew men who were suffering from syphilis – for example Forster (the man responsible for the deeply confused Education Act of 1870) and thought that R. Churchill’s symptoms fitted a brain tumour better than syphilis. But, again, I do not know if Gladstone was right or wrong about this.
And…. thank you for your service Kirk.
@Paul Marks,
You’re welcome, although I have to acknowledge that I was well-compensated for said service, if only in terms of life-skills education and sheer entertainment value. Mid-1980s Germany was an educational experience for anybody…
The things I have said vis-a-vis Regency/Victorian sexual mores are not things I’ve taken from the various distortionist lefties, however. Most of those are primary sources, and some personal correspondence I’ve seen. None of it really tells you anything about the prevalence of it all… If you look at the ages reported of the “nautch-girls” that employees of the East India Company took up with, as well as everywhere else, this wasn’t exactly a new issue. Everybody was doing it, to include the locals.
I’m really not too damn sure where I stand on the morality of it all, when examining the moral culpability of some jackass selling off his barely-teen daughter to some deviant. Who is more at fault? The person selling, or the person buying? I could tell you stories I heard from Korean bar-girls that’d turn your hair white, were you to hear them and then try to transpose those into your own life-experience. I remember one girl matter-of-factly describing her parents taking her out of school to hand off to their landlord to pay off a debt, and then the landlord taking her that same day to sell off to an ajima who ran a whorehouse catering to US soldiers. She was like 14 at the time, and told to lie about her age, if asked. This happened sometime in the mid- to late-1960s, and as far as she was concerned, the only way she’d go back to visit her parents or her village again was if she had a bomb to blow it up with. The only thing that saved her was that one of her first clients was a naive young airman (who’d had no idea at all that her pimp was trying to sell her for sex, BTW…) who thought nothing of sending home for money to buy her contract out, and she glommed onto him like he was the only thing floating in an ocean of shit. Stuck to him like glue, too. Years after he died from cancer, you’d likely get shanked for saying a bad thing about the guy…
People do ugly things for sexual gratification. That’s about all I can reluctantly conclude, after years of observation. What just gets me is that they very often know damn good and well that what they’re doing is cruel, foolish, and entirely depraved. They still do it.
Chasing down child traffickers is all well and good, but why aren’t we chasing down the customers? Or, like with Epstein’s list, we’re not supposed to ask?
Ah, but you see, the customers are innocent victims, too! Don’t you understand? It’s all those nasty procurers, pimps, and panderers… Plus, those naughty, naughty girls!
I’m of a mind that if you knowingly procure the sexual services of an underage child, then that ought to be a capital crime with punishment meted out publicly, without mercy, and with immediate effect.
If, on the other hand, there is doubt about your knowledge of the situation? Mercy might be justified, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of extenuating circumstances when the girl or boy is obviously underage…
From what I’ve seen of the prevalence of this stuff, including incest? I suspect that there may be biological heritable factors in play. I know of one family where there was an absolute break between generations such that there was zero potential for the behavior being passed on via exposure/example, and the behavior still happened in the second and third generations after the break from the first. I don’t believe in predestination, but I’d be unsurprised if someone were to demonstrate genetic predisposition for that sort of behavior. Deviancy seems to run in families, to an identifiable degree. It does sometimes skip generations, or only show up in well-separated sports every few generations, but… Yeah. There’s a pattern of it all that sure as hell looks heritable, when you go over the family histories.
Kirk,
Perhaps you could be more precise in your terminology, “underage child” could be anywhere from seven to seventeen and a half in some jurisdictions. Age of consent is a number determined by politicians for political reasons. It is not a sound basis for shooting people.
Roué le Jour,
The issue of “how old is f*ckable” is something that the lawyers can’t seem to work out for universal reference, likely because a lot of them want to remain out of prison.
As a philosophical point, I’d submit that “underage” may not be the best term to use. Perhaps we should say “innocent”? “Unexposed to sexuality”? Something along those lines?
I’ve met women who were over the age of 21 who I’d consider “underage” for the purposes of consent, due to mental immaturity and incapacity. There’s one really attractive twenty-something I met in passing that I’m thinking of, who worked as sort of a nanny. Or, at least, you assumed she was, when meeting her with her charge… She had an IQ of around seventy and the sweetest personality I think I’ve ever met in an adult. I suspect that she was something like a Down’s Syndrome child, but didn’t have “the look” for that. It was scary as hell interacting with her, because she didn’t present as being mentally deficient, yet after a few minutes, you realized that the pre-teen she was with was probably more mature in most ways, and supervising her at least as much as she was looking out for the younger girl. Weird situation to encounter, I’m telling you…
I’d cheerfully slit the throat of any adult male taking advantage of that woman, and never feel the slightest remorse. I can’t see her ever being able to really offer informed consent to sex, at all… Just no capacity there for understanding the ramifications and implications, a true innocent.
I’ve also met some scarily adult pre-teens who could probably pass most tests for adult status, and who might argue that they deserved the right to their own self-determination in such matters.
Everyone is different, but we have to set some standards, somewhere along the line. So, when I say “underage”, what I suppose I’m meaning to say is “unready for adult sexual contact/exposure”, which is admittedly a highly variable thing.
I’ve actually met and talked to a couple of convicted pedophiles, and the interesting thing to me about them wasn’t that they were necessarily attracted to the “little girl/boy” looks, but that they were attracted to the naivete and innocence more than the physicality of it. If you’d offered up an adult that looked like a 9 year-old, they’d have been uninterested and entirely unaroused. I suspect that a large part of their attraction isn’t to the age necessarily, but the childish innocence that they want to defile by “teaching them”. The physical appearance is only a marker for them; the real “thing” they find attractive is what that appearance signals, which is sexual innocence.
Or, so I surmise from my readings and talking to a couple of them. Weird situation, that was… Both times, it was in connection with getting detailed to supervise prisoners in the military confinement system, and because for some damn reason, people want to tell me things. Things I very much don’t want to know, sometimes. You find yourself asking questions, despite it all, mostly trying to understand the weird bastards. It’s amazing what some people will tell you under those conditions.
Paul:
So far, so good.
How is that different from saying that they did not resist temptation??
That is not the position of Bishop Bramhall, R. Cudworth, and S. Clarke in their diatribes against Hobbes. (And in the case of Clarke, also against Spinoza, Leibniz, and Anthony Collins — the latter being the most profound thinker that i read on this issue.)
Bramhall, Cudworth, and Clarke all claimed that humans cannot choose evil as evil: they choose evil because they think it is good.
Most Scholastics probably agreed.
(And the Stoics certainly did.)
And Collins also agreed! (But Clarke was too dumb to understand that.)
Once again: That is NOT an ought-from-an-is.
You should be ashamed of believing that it is.