I published this months ago, shortly after I joined Hot Air, as a VIP column. I decided to republish it for general consumption because it explains how I became a culture warrior. 

I was not destined to be a culture warrior. In fact, for most of my life I would have insisted that conservatives should spend less time fighting about private, cultural matters and more about public policies such as government overreach, taxes, and economic growth.

Boy was I wrong.

Not only are the cultural issues and the policy issues intertwined, but I now believe that the most important front in the war to save our Republic is the cultural one. The enemy is Marxism, and the cultural front is where the Marxists are making the most progress. And because the cultural Marxists are targeting children, winning or losing this battle will determine who owns the future of America and the world.

So what changed me into a culture warrior? And how quickly did the transformation occur?

The transformation took a while, but I can pinpoint the exact moment when my eyes were opened to the corruption of our elites and the necessity of fighting them relentlessly.

In 2003 Roman Polanski won the Oscar for Best Director, winning the award for his movie The Piano. Polanski could not attend the event because there is currently a warrant for his arrest in the United States. A warrant for fleeing the country.

He drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, admitted it, was convicted, and when he realized that he faced jail time he fled the US.

Yet he travels freely in Europe, directs movies, gets an Oscar, and is giving a standing ovation on national TV.

It was at that moment that I knew that our elite was irredeemably corrupt. For all their virtue signaling, their moralistic lectures, and their political posturing, when push comes to shove they are willing to sacrifice any number of children for their own benefit. Hollywood, and by extension the entire elite who pal around with them and take their money, is nothing but a high-dollar grooming gang.

The case of Roman Polanski:

In 1977 43-year-old Roman Polanski committed rape against a 13-year-old girl. He drugged and sodomized her after the mother had agreed to allow Polanski to do a photoshoot with the child. (Her name is public and she has spoken about it, but it is irrelevant to the story).

The rape was committed at the home of Jack Nicholson. There were two photoshoots; at the first Polanski took topless photos. In the second he went further, including raping her. Polanski knew the mother because she was a model and television star herself.

You can see how perverted this is already. Actors and directors, including a 13-year-old’s mother, passed around a child for sexualized activity.

When the crime was committed, Nicholson was on a ski trip in Colorado, and his live-in girlfriend Anjelica Huston who was there had left, but later returned while Polanski and [the girl] were there. [The girl] was quoted in a later article as saying that Huston became suspicious of what was going on behind the closed bedroom door and began banging on it, but left when Polanski insisted they were finishing up the photoshoot.

Polanski plied the girl with alcohol, gave her a quaalude, and raped her. With Anjelica Huston in the house. How sick is that?

The girl did complain to the police, and a grand jury indicted him with 6 charges. He at first denied that it was rape, insisting that the sex was consensual. With a 13-year-old. He arranged a plea deal, admitting to a lesser charge, but when it was clear that he faced prison time he fled the country.

That, in a nutshell, is the Roman Polanski rape case.

How the elite responded

If this were the end of the story then it would be a tragedy and a crime but of no particular social significance. What turned me into a culture warrior was the way in which the elite rallied around Polanski because he was one of them, and the girl, after all, was only raped. And it was not only Hollywood that rallied around Polanski, but a worldwide political and cultural community who believe that as leaders they are not only above the law, but that normal people only exist to serve their pleasures.

Polanski fled to France, where he was a citizen. When the US asked to extradite him the government refused. Ever since Polanski has avoided going to countries likely to extradite him, although he was arrested in Switzerland at the request of the United States, but released after an outcry from supporters.

In an interview in 1979 Polanski explained why he was treated so well: “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But … f**king, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f**k young girls. Juries want to f**k young girls. Everyone wants to f**k young girls!”

On September 26, 2009, Polanski was detained by Swiss police at Zurich Airport while trying to enter Switzerland. Polanski had planned to attend the Zurich Film Festival to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was set to be extradited to the US.

The world elite exploded in rage. Petitions were drawn up, gathering signatures from most of the cultural elite. The French Minister of Culture, himself an admitted pedophile (he had written an autobiography discussing his sex safaris to Asia to violate little boys), went to bat for him.

The French minister of Culture and Communication, Frédéric Mitterrand, was vehement in his support, all the while announcing his “very deep emotion” after the questioning of the director, “a French citizen” and “a film-maker of international dimension”: “the sight of him thrown to the lions for an old story which doesn’t make much sense, imprisoned while traveling to an event that was intending to honor him: caught, in short, in a trap, is absolutely dreadful.”These reactions resulted in political backlash in France.

Here’s a bit on Mitterrand himself: “in 2005, Mitterrand had published the book The Bad Life in which he wrote about having sex with male prostitutes in Thailand. In the book, Mitterrand was quoted, “I got into the habit of paying for boys … All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously. One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable.” 

Mitterrand wrote this before he became a government minister, and did not hinder his political career one iota. 

Philosophers, actors, government ministers, and almost the entire cultural elite defended Polanski and called for his release. From a petition:

“Roman Polanski is a French citizen, an artist of international reputation, now threatened to be extradited. This extradition, if brought into effect, would carry a heavy load of consequences as well as deprive the film-maker of his freedom.” The signatories concluded: “we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.

Another petition read: “By their extraterritoriality, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.” As if he were a political prisoner, and film festivals diplomatic gatherings.

The French government officially dropped their support for him–perhaps because average French people actually wanted him to face judgment, with 65%-75% of them supporting extradition.

Despite the obvious legal case and the widespread support for Polanski’s extradition, he was released by the Swiss. Legal reasoning and public opinion could not overcome the power of the political and cultural elite.

There is much more, including stories of pedophile authors and philosophers who are revered both in the US and Europe, but you get the point.

Why this matters

The Polanski case opened my eyes to who and what our elites are. They present themselves as wise, empathetic leaders and technocrats who will build a better and more just society. They rail against each other in public, accusing each other of all manner of plans to pillage the body politic. But in fact they are a unified cabal who view average people as convenient dupes to be led like sheep. They view us as disposable, to be used like tissue paper and thrown away when done.

This is not speculation. This is not overly harsh. Jeffrey Epstein could get arrested for pedophilia and become a prominent patron of Harvard professors. He could pal around with presidents and billionaires. He could fly such people on the Lolita Express to his private island to cavort with minors. And get away with it for decades. He was himself only disposed of when he was no longer useful, and none of his clients has faced a moment of justice.

After marinating myself in the Polanski case after the standing ovation at the Oscars my journey on the path to becoming a culture warrior was begun. It took a while for it to sink in and the rot went all the way down, but it is clear that it does.

So when you see my obsession with the grooming of children in the schools, I hope you see it is not mere prurient interest that drives me. It is my firm belief that unless we root out weeds choking our civilization, that civilization will forever be lost.

I hope it is not too late. But I fear that it may be.