Thoughts On The Kavanaugh Hearings, Due Process, The Court Of Public Opinion, and What It All Means For America

​"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
---George Santayana (American Philosopher 1906) 

So far, 2018 has been a very busy and productive year for our consulting firm. So much so, that we decided to put our blog articles on hiatus while we focused our attention on our clientele's priorities.  We’ve also gone dark on our social media pages for much the same reason.

However, this past Saturday a client of ours posted a statement on his personal Facebook page which I happened to catch.  His statement related to the allegations of sexual assault made against Supreme Court Justice Brett during his confirmation hearings.  Frankly, the sentiments our client chose to share disturbed me greatly. So much so, that I felt they warranted a response.

Sadly, much of social media has become a thought ghetto in recent years.  Rational debates and logical discussions have largely been silenced and replaced with emotional outbursts by angry mobs.  Their comments are largely rooted in animus and in fear; and are oftentimes agenda driven. Consequently, I decided to write a personal letter to him expressing my concerns instead of posting my thoughts to his feed or sending him an instant message.

As I said, our client’s statements on this matter were deeply disconcerting on many levels. The responses he received troubled me even more. As a result, I've chosen to share my response letter publicly. His original comment is included near the opening of my very lengthy response which follows below:
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​OUR LETTER IN RESPONSE TO THE KAVANAUGH CONFIRMATION HEARINGS AND THE QUESTION OF DUE PROCESS

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Dear (Name Withheld),
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Yesterday I sat down to finish the content for your website. I logged in to Facebook to check my feed before I began. The very first post in my feed was from you and it related to the Kavanaugh hearings. It read:

"I always believe the women! Always! To all women everywhere...I'm in awe of you [sic] courage and restraint for not burning it all down right fuckin' now! Today marks a dark day in the history of our country but I know a change is coming! And you can count on me to support you."

Your first statement, “I always believe women! Always!” really struck me sideways. It seems to run contradictory to the FB post by Dan Rather that you shared today which discusses both the “Rule of Law” and evidence “Based on Fact”. It is also counter-intuitive to other principles that Rather remarked on in his post. Specifically, the principles of Justice and Equality. In short, It’s an absolutist's statement.

Knowing you personally, I don’t believe that you made this statement wittingly. Why? Because absolutists are bullies. They ignore objective truths and are oftentimes willing to disregard the rule of law. They also rely on subjective facts to justify their opinions and render judgement. In other words, their end goals always justify their means - even to the extreme.

The media and news outlets that chose to convict Justice Kavanaugh in the court of public opinion are nothing more than propaganda outlets. If you didn't watch the full body of the Congressional hearings and if you haven't read the entire body of written evidence submitted during the hearings, then your judgement has likely been colored by propaganda.

No rational person would argue that a victim of any heinous felony does not deserve to have their voice heard by the legal authorities that serve to protect the rights, liberties and freedoms guaranteed to all of us under the Constitution and our Bill of Rights. That said, the accused also deserves the presumption of innocence before being proven guilty in a court of law. The rights of the accuser do not outweigh the rights of the accused; no matter how egregious the claims of the accuser may be.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes people are falsely or wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit. In some cases, claims are brought forward by accusers with ulterior motives. Other times, there are cases of mistaken identity. Also, there are proven examples of displacement and transference: cases where an accuser unconsciously redirects emotional trauma from one person to another.

Claiming that you “Always believe the women! Always!” is in fact prejudicial. It suggests that you hold animus toward other people based on their immutable characteristics. Specifically, in this case, a person’s birth sex. Given that we live at a time in our nation where our most basic founding principle, “All Men Are Created Equal” now extends to every single person (regardless of their race, creed, color, sex, handicap or national origin), I found your moral absolutism very disconcerting. I also found your comments elitist and dangerously extreme.

Absolutists fuel extremism, and extremism propels zealotry. Zealotry gives rise to authoritarians who enable totalitarian regimes . There are indisputable examples of this throughout world history, most notably throughout Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. I don’t know if your aware of this, but my mother emigrated from Latvia to America with her parents and her sister in the 1950's. I chose to study the European socialist/communist/fascist phenomenon at Princeton largely due to first-hand accounts of the atrocities that were committed within these regimes, told to me by family members and a close knit community of Latvian, Russian, German and Polish survivors with whom they associated.

Most Americans are ignorant of (or choose to ignore) the fact that some of the totalitarian regimes that rose to power in Europe during the 1900's did so through democratic processes. The leaders of those movements preyed upon animus, fear and prejudice to sow societal division. If you examine the facts closely, there are eerie parallels between the grievances over racial, gender and income disparity that we’re witnessing in America today from the far-left and the demagoguery espoused by the leaders of Europe’s 20th century totalitarian movements during their nascency.

Statements like the one you made only serve to further our societal division. They do not heal our wounds. Our nation may not be a perfect representation of the ideal society outlined within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nevertheless, abandoning basic core principles like Due Process will only produce an extreme dystopia in the end. Consequently, I’m left to question the type of “change” you alluded to in your post? Also, pertaining to the fate of our nation, what good can you possibly envision if the rights of one immutable subset of our population supersede the rights of others?

I am not disputing that very real inequities still exist within our society today. That said, our nation continues to make enormous strides from generation to generation in advancing equality of opportunity. Therefore, I have to ask you: are you advocating for "equality of outcome" - an arbitrary measure which (by consequence) imposes substantial restrictions on our individual liberties and ultimately suppresses the creativity, freedom, innovation and prosperity of all but the very top-echelon?

If so, I can assure you that you will wake one day and find that you live in a society that has abandoned democratic principles all together for dictatorial rule, or rule by an unelected collectivist elite. If that ever happens, Martin Luther King’s dream for America will have been completely extinguished.

​For the record, I don’t really care whether you believe Kavanaugh or Ford. For what it's worth, I watched most of the live testimony myself and have also taken time to read a well-rounded body of media reports from reporters and pundits on both sides of the aisle who covered the hearings. Having done so, it is my perspective that the entire confirmation process was a national disgrace. I also believe that there have been deliberate and calculated attempts by radical elements within our society to obfuscate the facts of this case in hopes of furthering societal division and undermining the public’s trust in our judicial system.

Having said all this, I ask that you pause to reconsider your statement. If it was an emotional response made in a moment of anger and frustration, please set the record straight on your beliefs. 

Respectfully,
Erik
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THE INEVITABLY DIRE CONSEQUENCES IF WE DEMOCRATICALLY FORGO OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
I have yet to receive a response to my letter from our client. That said, I am hopeful that he will take the time to reflect on my arguments, recognize the extreme nature of his original statement and recant his position.  That said, we are witnessing a rapid spread of absolutist rhetoric within our society today. It is a very real danger to anyone who disagrees with agenda-driven propaganda based on subjective truths and partial facts. That's why I felt compelled to come forward and speak out on this matter.

Radical leftist ideologues repeatedly ignore objective truths in order to push forward agendas premised on "equality of outcome". They fail to grasp the fundamentals of Natural Law. Additionally, they willfully or blissfully ignore the repeated failures of Marxist and Socialist ideology all throughout history.  The fact of the matter is that "equality of outcome" is an impossible Utopian ideal. Humans are inherently flawed; and there are individuals among us who crave absolute and unlimited power over others. There always have been and always will be such individuals. All throughout history, they have risen within socialist regimes to impose authoritarian or totalitarian forms of rule. 

Based on the circus we have witnessed on Capitol Hill in recent days, my hope is that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that leftist rhetoric is becoming increasingly radical in our society. It's no wonder this is occurring when you take into account that authoritarian extremists permeate our educational institutions and our media outlets. In fact, journalistic standards have been all but been abandoned by a majority of prominent American media outlets that lean left of center. 

To loosely paraphrase the Santayana quote I cited above: we will one day find ourselves in shackles if we forget the aggregate lessons world history teaches. Make no mistake, sowing distrust in our judicial system and chipping away at our Constitutional protections are but a means to an end. Evil in fact exists. There are individuals walking the planet today who would like nothing more than than to see an erosion of America's founding principles and the complete destruction of our Constitutional Republic.  Doing so would open the gates for tyranny, injustice and oppression around the world.
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CONCLUSIONS
​No matter how righteous they believe their causes to be, the social justice "warriors" that disrupt our democratic establishments with protests, harass public officials in their private lives and riot in the streets, are mere pawns in a much greater and dangerous game. Ultimately, they serve the vile interests of global power brokers who will gladly discard them when it serves their interests. You only need to look back at  Germany's Night of Long Knives that took place in 1934 to understand that.

The Washington Post has recently adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies In Darkness" to promote their newspaper. While their slogan rings true, it's also true that our Constitutional Republic will be murdered in

the shadows of ignorance if more Americans who believe in MLK's Dream don't soon wake up to the fact that we are forgetting a fundamental chapter of world history. Indeed, we are starting to repeat mistakes that led to the the death of countless millions during the political upheavals of the 20th century. May God help us all.


​NOTES
For anyone interested:

• A complete archive of Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings is available for view fee of charge on the RealClearPolitics website.
• The complete list of written questions submitted by Justice Kavanaugh to the Senate Judiciary Committee is  available Here.
• The documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Christine Blasey-Ford's attorneys can be found Here. 

​Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting