Header image  
Culture, politics, science, philosophy  
 

 

Thinking matters
 

Culture, politics, science, philosophy.

General manifesto ***** Immigration manifesto
The deep Crisis of the West
Permalinks


The versatile weapon

09.08.2017. Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School, Alan M. Dershowitz, was recently accused of racism. Writes he (who is not a Trump supporter) in The Latest Anti-Trump Weapon: Accusing Their Critics of "Racism" (italics in original):

In addition to falsely accusing their political enemies of criminal conduct, some extremists, who are determined to see Donald Trump indicted, have come up with a new weapon: accusing those who disagree with them of "racism."

It began when I said in public what every experienced criminal lawyer was thinking in private:

"The second one [grand jury] is important because of where it is. It gives the prosecutor the power to indict in the District of Columbia, which is a district that is heavily Democratic, and would have a jury pool very unfavorable to Trump and the Trump administration. So it gives the prosecutor a tremendous tactical advantage... The District of Columbia is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition which may be very unfavorable to the Trump administration..."

I did not say that the residents of the District of Columbia would be consciously unfair to indicted Trump associates, or that Black juries are more biased than white jurors. I merely observed -- as the Supreme Court, the NAACP, the ACLU and all experienced lawyers have noted -- that life experiences matter in jury selection and deliberation. It matters whether a jury pool is largely comprised of Democrats or Republicans, Blacks or whites, poor or wealthy. If it didn't matter, our legal system would not go to such lengths to assure diversity in jury pools. This is an uncontroversial observation, but nothing is uncontroversial in the divisive political climate in which we live today.

So people who know better have deliberately distorted my point in order to argue that what I observed was racist. It began with Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who dilutes the powerful term "racism" by tossing it around as promiscuously as rap singers toss around "motherf***er" Here is what she said:

"What he [Dershowitz] is saying is 'all of those black people are there and they don't like Trump and so he's not going to get a fair trial and so they should take it out of that jurisdiction. It shouldn't be there to begin with.' I don't like that, and I'm surprised that Alan Dershowitz is talking like that. We will not stand for it. We will push back against that because that is absolutely racist."

No one was particularly surprised, or in any way influenced, by her crying "racist" once again. If I had said the opposite of what I said -- namely that race doesn't matter in jury selection -- she would have called me a racist as well.

Read the entire article at Gatestone Institute.

HonestThinking comments: Professor Dershowitz makes an interesting observation here: If you say that the race of jurors is relevant, you are a racist; if you say that it is irrelevant, then you are also a racist.

 


Home

Permalinks to older articles

 


 

Search HonestThinking

 


Norsk stoff - Norwegian material

Norske og skandinaviske lesere vil kunne finne stoff på norsk her.

 


 

HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication never to suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.



Provoked or enthusiastic?

Please send e-mail to postmaster at honestThinking.org (replacing ' at ' with '@') if you would like to tip us about a web resource that we should link to, or if you wish to submit an article for publication here. Quality contributions are welcome from anyone.

 



 

The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.

 


 

 

Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.