print“More toleration and respect for humanity can be found at a bowling alley or meat-packing plant than in most liberal-arts departments or law schools at modern American universities,” says Myron Pauli, PhD.
Today is the 289th Birthday of George Mason, a man as forgotten as the Bill of Rights he fought for. Those antiquated notions are inapplicable to today’s world full of evil such as “terrorists”, “rapists”, and “racists”. To the zealot self-anointed Torquemadas, you are either “with us” or with the “evildoers.” Zero tolerance must prevail over rights, liberty, due process, rules of evidence, truth, or any semblance of self-restraint.
With the CIA torture revelations coming out, some conservatives posted some nonsense from Dinesh D’Souza that American torture is “better than” ISIS beheading! Boy, talk about defining deviancy down! Great, what’s next “Stalin Better Than Hitler”? The point that these people don’t get is that “WE” (it is MY country as well as Dick Cheney’s country) are doing the torturing which is far worse than worrying what Garbagecanistan is doing 10,000 miles away. The message in Judgment at Nuremberg is for current and future generations, not just “let’s piss on the old dead Nazis” – and we should heed it lest we turn ourselves into Garbagecanistan (listen to the 6 minute speech from Spencer Tracy).
Then we have the Rolling Stone expose of campus gang rape which, I must shamefully admit, I found somewhat credible. Do frat guys drink and like to get laid? Well, apparently, the expose is, at best, partially true – but with gaping untruths. According to Zerlina Maxwell of the Washington Post, truth and evidence must take a back seat to the rape narrative. Even when the accusations are untrue, the accusers “must be taken seriously”. When it comes to rape, there is no such thing as “bearing false witness”. Zerlina, have you ever heard of the Scottsboro boys?
And then there are the various tragedies affecting blacks: Only 1 out of 9 black babies conceived in America will get born to a married couple. Over 6000 blacks die from homicide each year, 93 percent from black criminals. Five million blacks were slaughtered in the Congo by other blacks. So what motivates outrage? Answer: Michael Brown, a convenience store bully/robber who decides while unarmed to take a gun away from a cop. A hoodlum becomes the cause celebre. And “justice for Michael Brown” gets translated into “burn this down” as well as crowds shouting “kill whitey” attacking and killing A Bosnian. Do black lives matter? Apparently ONLY if they die at the hands of whites.
And zero tolerance begets a war mentality – WAR on drugs, WAR on obesity, and even a WAR on intolerance. Let’s record all calls and e-mails, stop-and-frisk the “usual suspects,” and have no-knock SWAT teams to crack down those who smoke dope, eat fries, sell cigarettes, wear ghetto garb, won’t conduct homosexual weddings, don’t wear seat belts, stare at women, speed, draw a cartoon disliked by Muslims, or whatever politically incorrect evil rouses up the mob. “Sentence first and verdict afterwards”.
Of course, with government using Grubers to lie in order to “sell” healthcare and Curveballs to lie in order to “sell” war, perhaps little can be expected of civilians who take their cues of truthfulness from the so-called leaders.
All of this would be tragic enough if the zero tolerance insanity was the product of white rednecks at the bowling alley or black dropouts in the ‘hood. However, many of the loudest justifications for torture, denial of due process, speech codes, unlimited wiretapping, and strong>results-based justice often come from lawyers and academicians. More toleration and respect for humanity can be found at a bowling alley or meat-packing plant than in most liberal-arts departments or law schools at modern American universities.
Finally, we have the ratings-driven media to whip Americans into hysterical frenzy. Terrorists eeek! War on women! Genocide of blacks! Ebola epidemic! Vladimir Putin! Mushroom clouds! Runaway Greenhouse! Democrats!Republicans! Benghazi! Daycare child abuse! Racists and rapist and terrorists – oh my! Unfounded fear statistics such as 25 percent of all college women get raped, which if true, then we should scratch co-ed learning and have sex separate schools. Enough hobgoblins to make every day a near-death experience and antiquated nonsense like the Bill of Rights standing in the way of protecting us from the Epidemic of Eternal Evil.
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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.