The Road More Travelled

John Hinderraker when the news broke yesterday that the “holdout” juror on the Lindsey Clancy case was African-American: “What a wonderful encapsulation of our benighted era: a gaggle of middle-aged, liberal white women trying to bully a black man. I wonder whether he went to college–perhaps not, which may explain why he is not a moral idiot.”  Such intemperate language from a lawyer is unusual, but it raises an interesting question – How did we get to a place where eleven of twelve jurors could be “moral idiots?”

Believe it or not, Wikipedia has an entry on “moral idiocy” and defines it,  “an inability to distinguish between right and wrong, or to understand how moral values apply to one’s own life and the lives of others.”  Such people have always been around, but in such numbers as to dominate a jury is a new development.  Either that jury came together in a statistically anomalous fashion or we have a serious problem.  Personally, I think we have a serious problem.

My life time has been marked by a not-so-slow moral erosion.  Divorce destigmatized and eventually legally liberalized.  Marijuana use destigmatized and eventually legalized in a lot of places.  Abortion controversially legalized and when that was reversed to some extent declared not merely destigmatized or legal, but a “right.”  Out of wedlock birth, destigmatized, and now extremely common, accounting for roughly 40% of all births in the United States.  Homosexual practice…I could go on like this for quite a while.  Other areas of life that were previously not immoral, but stigmatized, – homelessness, mental illness… – have been destigmatized.

When your mode of thought is one that seeks to eliminate stigmatization, and further modify the law and morality to match when applicable, where do you stop?  Recent news would indicate that we stop at boys competing in girls sports, bodily mutilation of minors and most recently, pedocide.  But why those lines?  They seem rather arbitrary do they not?  Is that not the argument that has been employed to tear down all the barriers discussed in the prior paragraph – and more?

In fact, when you consider the moral history of the last six or seven decades, is an assembly of eleven out of twelve moral idiots really surprising?  Under such circumstances is it really fair to classify them “moral idiots?”  Isn’t that just stigmatizing them arbitrarily?  Perhaps we should be shaming Hinderraker, not the jurors?

The slippery slope is real, and we have slid a long way down it.  It often seems like we have built up too much momentum to arrest the slide.  Fortunately there is still a way to do so if we will just do it and use it.

And now, what’s left in the pile: (comic allusion)

This would be too much fun.  Glenn Jacobs as Knox County Mayor, and specifically his handling of the covid madness, is one of the reasons I moved here.  Unlike other former pro wrestlers that have entered politics – he is the real deal and does good work.

And as usual, the rest of the pile concerns California…

Must we see everything through the eyes of labels? Just because computers need them doesn’t mean we do.

Sorry, intent notwithstanding – I can’t laugh, too real.

Gavin Newsom in a word – “sociopath.”

Just another reason to leave.  Especially when people cite weather as why they stay.