Dennis Prager, moral paragon

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_EAllusion
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Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _EAllusion »

Dennis Prager has an article published in the National Review on the Kavanaugh allegations. Like a large number of people writing about this on the right, Prager doesn't adopt the Kavanaugh position of simply denying the charges while not ignoring that the accusation itself is serious. No, he has a different argument in mind:

The Charges against Judge Kavanaugh Should Be Ignored

Even if true, they tell us nothing about Brett Kavanaugh since the age of 17.
It is almost impossible to overstate the damage done to America’s moral compass by taking the charges leveled against Judge Brett Kavanaugh seriously.

It undermines foundational moral principles of any decent society.

Those who claim that the charges against Judge Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford are important and worth investigating and that they ultimately, if believed, invalidate his candidacy for the U.S. Supreme Court are stating that:

a) What a middle-age adult did in high school is all we need to need to know to evaluate an individual’s character — even when his entire adult life has been impeccable.

b) No matter how good and moral a life one has led for ten, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years, it is nullified by a sin committed as teenager.

No decent — or rational — society has ever believed such nihilistic nonsense.

This is another example of the moral chaos sown by secularism and the Left. In any society rooted in Judeo-Christian values, it is understood that people should be morally assessed based on how they behave over the course of their lifetime — early behavior being the least important period in making such an assessment.

I looked, and for some reason I can't find any of Prager's advocacy for juvenile offenders languishing in prison for decades, restoration of felon voting rights, or anything of that sort. Maybe I missed it. In any case, this overlooks a pretty obvious problem. If Kavanaugh did it, he's lying about it right now. He's also letting a smear campaign go on against Ford despite her allegations being true if he did it. That is the opposite of contrition. It is a serious moral fault not in the past. You'd think anyone with an IQ above room temperature would notice that fact, but nope.

Oh, but it gets better:

A generation ago, a drunk teenager at a party groping a teenage girl over her clothing while trying to remove as much of her clothing as possible would not have been defended or countenanced. But it would not have been deemed as inducing post-traumatic stress disorder either.

This weakening of the female is perfectly illustrated by the statement released by Susanna Jones, head of Holton-Arms School, the private preparatory school for girls in Bethesda, Md., that the accuser attended. “As a school that empowers women to use their voices, we are proud of this alumna for using hers,” Jones said.

“Empowers women”? Please.

Nearly every woman past puberty has experienced a man trying to grope her. (This is, needless to say, wrong.) My mother was groped by a physician. She told my father about it. My father told the physician that if he were to do it again, he would break his hands. And it remained a family folk tale. If you had told my mother she was a “survivor,” she would have wondered what you were talking about. The term was reserved for people who survived Nazi concentration camps and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and for cancer survivors, not women groped by a man.

When my wife was a waitress in her mid teens, the manager of her restaurant grabbed her breasts and squeezed them on numerous occasions. She told him to buzz off, figured out how to avoid being in places where they were alone, and continued going about her job. That’s empowerment.


You see, powering through an assault makes you empowered. If you are beat up by a bully at school every day and learn to sneak around them without making any waves, that makes you empowered. Women who experience sexual assault, likewise, are empowered if they just tough it out. They shouldn't cause trouble for their assailants by doing things like interfering with their job prospects. That's making them weaker. His advice to women who have experienced sexual assault? Get over it.

And as a final cap off, we've got this add-on:

In sum, I am not interested in whether Mrs. Ford, an anti-Trump activist, is telling the truth. Because even if true, what happened to her was clearly wrong, but it tells us nothing about Brett Kavanaugh since the age of 17. But for the record, I don’t believe her story. Aside from too many missing details — most women remember virtually everything about the circumstances of a sexual assault no matter how long ago — few men do what she charges Kavanaugh with having done only one time.


For the record both of his arguments here are empirically false. Women do not "remember virtually everything about a sexual assault no matter how long ago." It's actually common for memories to have blank spots in traumatic events. This is well attested in the literature and there is even a neurological understanding of why this occurs. It also is not true that people who have attempted sexual assault once almost invariably are serial offenders. It's of course better for your case if there is one accuser rather than multiple accusers, but the presence of only one accuser doesn't prove that the allegation is probably false.
_Maksutov
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _Maksutov »

The deliberate use of "Mrs. Ford" is also a slam on her education and professional career. :rolleyes:

Prager graduated from the Orrin Hatch University of holy hateful hypocrisy, now he's its President.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_EAllusion
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _EAllusion »

A small amendment to my initial post: It’s possible Kavanaugh did it and was too drunk to remember it. My post should say if he did it and remembers it well enough to be lying about it.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Image

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_EAllusion
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _EAllusion »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Image

- Doc

Let me know if you find someone on this board who thinks that.
_Some Schmo
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _Some Schmo »

EAllusion wrote:Dennis Prager...

Is a douche bag and a moron.

The crap coming from the right on this subject is just incredible. Rape, pedophilia, and assault are all A-OK if you're a Republican. That's their opinion. For all the bitching they did over Clinton's indiscretions, it's as though they have no idea how stupid and hypocritical they sound.

Of course people on the right hate being called stupid. They must hear it over... and over... and over...

The funny thing is, the right has no idea the kind of political pain they'll suffer if they were to actually reverse Roe in this country. They think they have trouble with the female vote now.

Man, American right wingers are generally stupid. There's no nice way to put that. It is what it is.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_Some Schmo
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _Some Schmo »

Kavanaugh has another accuser I guess we should ignore.

I mean, what college boy hasn't exposed himself to an unwilling audience? Amirite Republicans?

One of the funny things about all this is people saying crap like, "You just want to keep your abortion rights." I personally would not be affected by illegal abortion in the least (and yet, I still think the idea of illegal abortions is stupid, heavy handed and generally based on willful ignorance).

I'm concerned with a Supreme Court Justice who seems to think the President shouldn't be held accountable for, well, anything. And of course, there's always the small matter of a Justice who may happen to think rape is fine and dandy. It would be nice to know the truth on that matter before giving him such an important job for life, especially when rape falls under the purview of the law.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_ajax18
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _ajax18 »

Why did she wait 35 years to come forward with this?
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
_EAllusion
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _EAllusion »

ajax18 wrote:Why did she wait 35 years to come forward with this?

Because Kavanaugh might be a Supreme Court Justice and that was sufficient to provoke her, it seems. If it's true, anyway.

It's very common for sexual assaults to go unreported ajax18. The research on this is somewhat dodgy, so I'm reluctant to cite specific numbers, but research estimates range from "nearly all" to "an awful lot" when it comes to unreported sexual assaults. So any specific sexual assault going unreported is rather unsurprising. If you are asking why women don't report sexual assault, 1) this entire news story should clue you in and 2) there's no shortage of writing on the subject if you are curious.

Think about Bill Cosby. He was a serial rapist for decades. Eventually, as a tipping point in allegations occurred, dozens of women came out of the woodwork to accuse him of drugging and assaulting them. They didn't go to the police when those assaults happened. And while some accusers told or hinted at the assaults to other people enough to provide independent corroboration, not everyone did. They kept it to themselves. It's important to know why that is the case, but it is not surprising that it is the case. If you don't like Cosby as your example, this pattern is showing up again and again in multiple recent high profile stories involving well-attested allegations of serial harassment or assault. Weinstein is another example.
_Xenophon
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Re: Dennis Prager, moral paragon

Post by _Xenophon »

ajax18 wrote:Why did she wait 35 years to come forward with this?
On top of EA's post, below is a short list that encompasses some (note not all) of the reasons a victim might not come forward. Feel free to mix and match.

  • feeling of embarrassment
  • fear of not being believed
  • fear of gaslighting
  • fear of being shamed for the incident
  • unsure of how to report said crime
  • misunderstanding of what actually constitutes illegal behavior
  • fear of being attacked/slandered/doxxed/etc.
  • being convinced not to when originally telling someone about the incident
  • repression of memories
  • lack of results from the justice system
"If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation." -Xenophon of Athens
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