Close window | View original article
Tomorrow - or today, depending on when you are reading this - Judge Brett Kavanaugh will have the most important day of his life: a day spent under the spotlights such as few will ever experience, hated in a way few Americans will ever be hated, and with higher stakes - a solid place in history, by becoming the new swing justice on the Supreme Court - than almost anyone could hope for. One can only imagine how stressed he must be just now.
If he truly is a heretofore-lucky rapist, then a bit of stress is the least he deserves. But if, as dozens of women have testified, he has only ever treated people with dignity and respect, then the best we can hope for him is the sleep of the just.
Unfortunately, as the Left has made crystal clear, the truth is entirely irrelevant. Kavanaugh's accuser can't remember the location, day, or even the year of the alleged assault. The only detail she can identify is three witnesses, who have sworn under oath that the incident she described never took place. No D.A. in the country would dare present such flimsy, fact-free charges and any judge would laugh them out of the courtroom with prejudice. Yet here we are, with his future hanging in a balance where reality doesn't even come into play.
Many others have written of the immense dangers we face if this kind of reprobate attack is allowed to succeed: are we now abandoning the core concept of "innocent until proven guilty," at least for whomever is politically unpopular - currently conservative white men, but subject to change at any time? Will we find decent people even less willing to accept government positions than before, knowing that they will become the immediate target of acid lies from their political opponents trumpeted by a soulless, conscienceless media egging on the mob? Or worse - will only leftists be willing to accept office, secure in the knowledge that their sins will be covered over, as deputy DNC chairman Keith Ellison is demonstrating right now?
Yes, all these things would inevitably mean the end of anything resembling what Americans generally think of as normal politics, instead presaging a return to the more historically common winner-takes-literally-all style of the Roman Empire. For the younger set, ask yourselves: would you really want to live inside Game of Thrones?
But most of us will never be of sufficient prominence as to gain the ire of fact-averse media leftists. For us, there's an even worse precedent that a ruined Kavanaugh would indicate.
We can all agree that we don't want a rapist on the Supreme Court. As it happens, despite gross overuse of that word, nobody is accusing Judge Kavanaugh of rape.
What do his accusers claim took place? One of them tells a sordid story of a drunken forcible fumble - potentially sexual assault, but not even involving nudity, much less rape. Another accuser spins an even less appealing tale of indecent exposure on Kavanaugh's part, which would legally be only a misdemeanor at most.
Let's assume for one moment that contrary to all evidence, witnesses, and three decades of a blameless Kavanaugh life, these stories are entirely true.
These actions would be deeply wrong, but they are not felonies, certainly not convictable in court, and they took place when the accused was underage or close to it.
Are we defending the bad behavior of horny teenagers? No, we are not, but that's not the question here.
The question is: Should such bad behavior of horny teenagers permanently destroy their lives, regardless of whether they have matured and lived uprightly as adults?
Obviously some sins cannot be forgiven, but we have a very detailed formal process involving courts, lawyers, juries, and above all evidence for deciding when that level of punishment is required.
Can each and every reader swear before God, or even Congress, that they never pushed a girl further than she really wanted to go, or maliciously led on a boy? How about our parents, or our children? Is this new feminist-dictated Kavanaugh standard truly what we want to start applying?
Of course we don't want it at all. What's more, the Left and their feminist allies quite openly don't expect it to apply to liberals. At Judge Kavanaugh's hearing, he was ferociously questioned by Senator Cory Booker (D, NJ) - who, himself, once wrote a newspaper article detailing (and, to be fair, apologizing for) an incident in which he confessed to doing almost exactly what Judge Kavanaugh is accused of. As he put it, he was guilty of "stealing second base" with the assistance of Demon Rum. Nobody is calling for Sen. Booker to resign his office, because unlike Judge Kavanaugh, he toes the leftist line.
Presumably, Sen. Booker grew up, as most of us do; one imagines that he would never dream of copping an unwanted feel these days. It seems that he actually feels regret for what he did and is grateful that it didn't destroy him. His Senate web site tells us that he and Sen. Rand Paul have introduced the REDEEM act which would seal records of such offenses so that young people could go on with their lives. Depending on the fine print, his own law might have made it illegal for Ms. Ford to bring up such a sealed indiscretion.
Even though Sen. Booker's leftist political positions are mostly reprehensible, his hypocrisy nauseating, and his political actions during the Kavanaugh hearings contemptible, we agree with the thrust of his law. We would never call for him to pay such a heavy price for decades-old mistakes of this nature even though there can be no doubt that his confession validates the accusations.
In this, we agree with his leftist allies: his confessed misbehavior far back in the past, at an age when most people do things they regret, isn't relevant to the events of today. We should concentrate on more current issues. The problem is, they expect such a free pass to apply only to one side, and that's not how life works.
And they're now completely open about this un-American bigotry. Listen to Sen. Mazie Hirono (D, HI) live on CNN:
Even before all of this happened, he had credibility issues in his testimony, three days of testimony," she told Tapper. "He's very outcome-driven in terms of how he views cases before him. And so I had issues with his credibility and how he went about things way before this even happened. [emphasis added]
What exactly do his court outcomes have to do with his guilt or
innocence? The odious Sen. Hirono couldn't be more clear: he's a
conservative, so of course he is guilty regardless of evidence.
No doubt she considers her party executive Keith Ellison to be innocent regardless of evidence,
because he's a leftist.
But she's so blinded by hatred and bias that she's missing something important. The left would prefer to keep things as they've been for years, with sexual allegations wielded exclusively against conservatives while liberals are given a pass. How's that working out for #MeToo? Just about every major scalp claimed outside of politics has been a Democrat through and through.
Back in the old Cold War days, both the Russians and the Americans had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world, but neither used them because they knew that, if they did, the other side would too, and then everybody would be dead.
For fifty years, the Democrats have thrown whatever dirty trick they could dream up at Republicans, secure in the knowledge that the Republicans were too pusillanimous to respond in kind. That's how we came to use the term "evil party" for Democrats and "stupid party" for Republicans.
For those who have not noticed - Donald Trump is not that kind of Republican. Haven't the Dems learned yet that his finger is already hovering over the (metaphorical) nuclear button where they are concerned? Is this really the road they want to go down?
If it is - well, the current batch of Trump Republicans will likely respond in kind, just as any American president would have immediately launched our missiles once he knew the Russians' were en route.
The question is, will there be anything left of our politics when the dust settles?