Tea at Trianon: Kavanaugh: What Have We Learned?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, October 8, 2018

Kavanaugh: What Have We Learned?

From PJ Media:

So, Brett Kavanaugh is our next Supreme Court justice. It's all over now. What have we learned from the events of the past month? Speaking only for myself, this debacle has done nothing to change my mind about our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the media and the Democratic Party. (And yes, I realize those two things are the same thing.) Here are just a few of my biases that have been confirmed by this whole mess. If you don't know, now ya know:

1. Most of the media is actively working for the Democrats.

If I had any doubt about this, it was completely erased by the events of the past month. The only way any of it makes sense is if the press is eagerly doing the will of the Democrats. Are the Dems accusing a Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault, and even gang rape? Well then, the press will proceed under that assumption. They already know the accused is guilty, no matter how insane the accusation, so they'll dig up facts to match the theory. And if they can't find facts? Any facts at all? Well then, they'll just weave together rumor and conjecture until they hit their word count. (Read more.)

From The National Review:

In the probes of Donald Trump and, now, Brett Kavanaugh, these norms have been wiped away by the simple expedient of rebranding criminal investigations. Now the sleuths are unleashed under the guise of “counterintelligence” and “background checks” — whatever pretext is needed to get their foot in the door. Once they’re in, the earth is to be scorched, as if the crime of the century had occurred.

Of course, we want criminal investigators to be aggressive. But that has always meant aggressive within strict parameters. These are dictated by the degree of certainty that a crime has been committed, and by due-process rules with which the FBI must comply or be held to account when the case gets to court.

By contrast, when the Left criminalizes political opposition, no crime is required; just gossamer-thin, incoherent, uncorroborated, often unverifiable allegations: perhaps multiple-hearsay innuendo against a Republican presidential candidate, passed on by anonymous foreigners to a hyper-partisan, left-wing foreign spy working for the opposition Democratic political campaign. Or maybe a 36-year-old claim of sexual assault by an alleged victim who cannot remember basic details or keep straight the details she claims to remember; whose named witnesses do not back her account; who declines to address whether her accusation has been influenced by the controversial psychotherapeutic process of “recovered memory”; who refuses to disclose highly relevant therapy notes and polygraph information; and who is a Democrat advised by a prominent Democratic strategist and represented for free by Democratic activist lawyers, who were recommended to her by a senior Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat even as that Democratic senator concealed the sexual-assault claim from her Republican counterparts.

The Left requires no solid evidence of a crime, because solid evidence — the kind that truly justifies a criminal probe — narrows a good-faith investigator’s focus. To the contrary, the Left wants all the aggressiveness of a criminal investigation but none of the limits. The criminalization of politics leans on counterintelligence and background investigations; it wants no part of criminal courts, where due-process safeguards are enforced and allegations must be proved. (Read more.)