“Everyone is in favor of free speech… but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill
In one case a noxious man’s hoax is forgiven, in the other a noxious hoax is employed to destroy many men.
When Prosecutorial Discretion Is Woke
Death Threats and Drained Bank Accounts: Life on the Wrong End of the Mueller Probe
In both cases, it’s Progressives in charge.
Tyler Cowen blogs at Marginal Revolution and he is Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Director of the Mercatus Center.
He is also a polymath. Here, he interviews another of my favorite polymaths.
Jordan Peterson on Mythology, Fame, and Reading People
A snippet:
When I wrote my first book, which was Maps of Meaning, I was very curious about whether the tension between the communist viewpoint and the Western viewpoint, roughly speaking, was merely a matter of opinion, which is something you might think if you were a moral relativist, or perhaps even a postmodernist — that there’s a multitude of ways that you can set up a society and they’re each equally, arbitrarily valuable. And there’s an infinite set of methods by which a society might be generated. That’s one hypothesis.
As I got deeper and deeper into the analysis of both systems, I thought, “No, that’s just wrong.” There’s some things that the West got. What we designed in the West is a playable game, technically speaking, and what was designed by the communists was a nonplayable game. It was destined to degenerate across time because it couldn’t function in a real-world environment. It was an abstraction that couldn’t maintain itself if it was iterated…
…[W]hen you insist that the right way to view the world is victim versus victimizer, and then you coddle people into exaggeration of their own negative, emotion-centered pathology, you’re going to ensure that the political structure becomes more and more neurotic. If you’re aiming at something and you’re moving rapidly towards it, you’re likely to hit it. And that’s exactly what’s happening on the campuses.
Highly recommended. Interesting comments on the purpose of universities, media disintermediation, sex discrimination, and much else.
The real-world judicial system impinges upon the Jared Polis plan.
Representative Polis (D-CO) says that because we can reasonably assume that of 10 accused campus rapists 2 are actually guilty, we should force-transfer all 10 to other universities. One obvious consequence is that the receiving institutions would be enrolling 2 real rapists whose crimes go unpunished. Another is that no one could be sure if they got a real rapist, so they’d have to act as if all 10 had actually committed rape. I’m not sure what that would mean, but I wonder about the legal liability for any university which accepts someone who is subsequently accused of committing a(nother) rape. Surveillance 24/7?
Another result of Mr. Polis’ plan is that 8 accused rapists would be in a position to sue the originating institution. In fact, to preserve what little of their reputation they would have left, all 10 would be incentivized to file suit. Nobody knows which 2 are guilty, so the odds are good for all of them.
Polis does not explain why any university would want to enroll accused rapists. Perhaps we would need to supply an incentive: Maybe something analogous to carbon credits. Think of accused rapists as coal-fired power plants and complainants as newly planted trees. Why not establish a credit system for the transfer of complainants?
Math is hard, but if 1 in 5 campus men accused of rape is guilty, then 4 of 5 of accusations are false. For every 5 complainants transferred into your institution you could avoid accepting 1 accused rapist. That increases your tuition base. Further, transferring all complainants would address a larger proportion of the problem (4 liars become somebody else’s problem), while simultaneously endangering fewer women on the new campus than the transfer of a single rapist.
It does put a whole new group of men at higher risk of false accusations, but who cares?
It also doesn’t put the real rapists behind bars. But that isn’t the point, is it?
With Representative Jared Polis (D – Boulder, CO) and soon to be former Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton (D – Carpetbag, AR) channeling Iracebeth of Crims, I am reminded not just of Lewis Carroll, but also Joseph Heller and Franz Kafka.
The trial of the Knave in Alice in Wonderland, Clevinger’s Court Martial in Catch-22 and Joeseph K.’s year imprisoned in The Trial have much in common with the kangaroo court system Jared and Hillary want to establish.
Carroll:
“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any.”
Heller:
Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so.
Kafka:
“[I]t is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”
Polis:
I mean, if there’s 10 people that have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, [it] seems better to get rid of all 10 people. We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about their transfer to another university.
Yep. They’re at liberty to apply to the University of Accused Rapists.
Hillary:
To every survivor of sexual assault… You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you.
The ‘right’ of the accuser to be believed eliminates the rights of the guilty and innocent alike. Who has the “right to be believed?” Well, in Hillary’s case, we know who doesn’t: Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and Monica Lewinsky.
Actually, that’s not true, as Representative Jared Polis, D-CO and the people who applaud him are demonstrating.
Here’s what TITLE IX OF THE EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1972 states:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
That is called the “intent,” which for our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court should be sufficient to uphold the law even as it is transformed into Representative Polis’ desired result:
“Every male person enrolled in any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance in the United States shall be subject to summary expulsion from that program or activity if anyone, no matter how wildly specious their complaint, makes an accusation of “untoward” behavior as defined by unelected, judicially untrained administrators acting outside the Justice system and without reference to Constitutional protections. The parameters shall apply retroactively and be recodified contemporaneously with each and any accusation to reflect the suggestions of the three (3) most junior female-identifying clerks at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights who possess a minimum Body Mass Index of 35.”