My husband is in the military, so I am no stranger to a culture of double standards, but until now we thought it was more isolated. In the military it is common knowledge, whether senior leaders will acknowledge it or not, that a mere accusation of sexual harassment or assault, proven or not, is enough to end a man’s career....She mentions the military's zero tolerance of accusations of sexual misconduct, but that is probably not the proximate precursor to what we are seeing right now. I would argue that the Title IX kangaroo courts the Obama administration set up at universities served as a model and training ground for this. They normalized extrajudicial handling of such accusations with none of the normal protections or standards of evidence.
All indications now are that too many in our society have abandoned the idea that all people, men and women, are innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt through due process. Instead people want a guilty until proven innocent standard for men accused of sexual assault. People think mere accusations, made without evidence and decades after the fact, should result in intrusive and embarrassing investigations simply because a woman made them.... Likewise, many seem to think that men and women should be judged by different standards. This is the opposite of equality before the law. Without equality before the law, how can we say the law rules and not men (or women)? As we make this turn toward “believe women” regardless of a trial or presence of proof, our society will only get worse.
Many also seem willing to abandon all statutes of limitation and questions of jurisdiction.
Providing Protection
At The Federalist, Melissa Danford writes about her fears for her husband and sons.
It goes back further than that--at least to the Cultural Revolution, the Stalin Era, and the Reign of Terror, if not the Salem Witch Trials and the Inquisition.
ReplyDeleteTo be sure. Ironically the local high school is reading The Crucible right now, and hearing about the evils of Joe McCarthy.
ReplyDeleteGrim,
ReplyDeleteI think you're on to something. Title IX, of course, had nothing to do with setting up kangaroo courts, but that did not stop the Obama administration, which seemed to have no idea about judicial concepts like "jurisdiction" and "procedural due process." It is nice to see DOJ being set to rights, again.
I think the misuse of universities as criminal courts was intentionally and obviously mischievous. The hazards of injustice were obvious and came to fruition in short order. I can't imagine lawyers failing to notice these flaws. I can imagine leftists of ill-will playing "F*ck the System." The fact that real, live human beings could be subjected to scurrilous accusations that cause lasting harm, appears to have been a feature, not a bug.
Valerie
I must admit that somewhere in the back of my mind, a merciless grimp is chortling with realization the accusers are in for a reckoning. Even if we, the Civilization of the West, are utterly destroyed, they will then have to deal with Islam, which will prove far less peaceful than rainbow painted burkas on coexist posters imply.
ReplyDeleteWhat we are seeing is an illustration of of the evil of bearing false witness.