Sexual Misconduct: A New Crime, A New Kind of Justice

Not all bad behavior is, or should be, the subject of official investigation, prosecution, and punishment. It should be enough, in the vast majority of cases, to stop bad behavior and discourage its repetition by simply saying “no”, administering a spanking, or subjecting the miscreant to social scorn.

These time-honored methods gave way decades ago to the sob-sister school of pseudo-psychology, which instructs all and sundry that it is harmful to young psyches to say “no” without a long explanation (couched in psychological rather than moral terms), to spank (or otherwise administer corporal punishment), or to squelch “creativity” (i.e., mischief-making) by any method of communication, from frowning to screaming.

It should therefore come as no surprise that several generations of persons born after World War II — which includes almost all of today’s practicing politicians, lawyer, judges, and celebrities — have lacked the benefit of moral guidance. What they seem to have learned is not to eschew bad behavior, but to feign contrition for it when caught. Pseudo-contrition can be made to seem genuine by a method-acting technique: converting mortification for being caught into sorrow for having committed the offending deed.

Meanwhile, the broader system of justice, which encompasses the kinds of social censure discussed above, is shifting away from the inculcation of traditional morality (which would reinforce “white privilege” and “patriarchy”) and becoming a delivery vehicle for socio-political vengeance. This perversion seemed to have peaked with the Obama-Holder regime’s penchant for launching federal investigations of shootings by police when the persons shot were black, under the rubric of “civil rights”, and with the refusal of campus and municipal officials to curb violence committed by leftists and their protégés (e.g., Antifa and BLM).

But the perversion of justice has reached a new low with the wave of public accusations of sexual misconduct fomented by the #MeToo campaign,

to denounce sexual assault and harassment, in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against film producer and executive Harvey Weinstein. The phrase, long used in this sense by social activist Tarana Burke, was popularized by actress Alyssa Milano, who encouraged women to tweet it to publicize experiences to demonstrate the widespread nature of misogynistic behavior.

Dozens of prominent or high-ranking men in politics, entertainment, and business have been accused of various acts of sexual misconduct. Many of them have lost their jobs as a result of the accusations. Roy Moore probably lost the special election in Alabama because of the accusations. It is a widely held view on the left that Donald Trump should lose his job because of accusations that have been leveled against him, and also because he’s a creepy loud-mouth who mainly takes a conservative political stance and is a “racist” to boot. (“Racist” is the go-to word for leftists who want to open the southern border to more waves of future Democrat voters.)

In other words, there’s a new crime on the block: sexual misconduct. It consists not only of actual crimes — such as rape — that ought to be prosecuted, and have been prosecuted since long before the #MeToo campaign. It also consists of any perceived sexism or slight on the part of a male toward a female.

This new, ill-defined crime is in the mind of the beholder. She may perceive a crime simply because she hates men or finds it psychologically satisfying to think of them as the enemy — along with Republicans, Israelis, “the rich” (one of which she may well be), climate-change “deniers”, NASCAR fans, and on and on.

In fact, it’s the old double-standard at work: Misogyny (real or imagined) is bad, but man-hating is good. Or so it has become among many women (and their male sycophants) who, with unintentional irony, call themselves “liberal” and “progressive”. It is illiberal in the extreme to deprive someone of life, liberty, property, or a job based on mere accusations, but that is what is happening. It is regressive in the extreme to wage war against half the population (minus the mental cuckolds who are their allies) when it is the half of the population that does the really hard and dangerous jobs that make it possible for them to live in a hypocritical state of comfort and security.

So, despite my schadenfreude about the comeuppance of many left-wing males (most of whom probably deserve it), I am unenthusiastic about this latest incarnation of the Salem witch-trials. It is too much of a piece with the many memes that have captured the fickle attentions of neurotic leftists in recent decades, years, months, weeks, and days; for example, eugenics, prohibition, repeal of prohibition, peace through unilateral disarmament, overpopulation, global cooling, peak oil, global warming, carbon footprints, recycling, income inequality, unconscious racism, white privilege, forced integration, forces segregation (if blacks want it), coeducation, mixed-sexed dorms, single-sex schools, any reference to or image of a firearm, keeping score, winning, cultural appropriation, diversity, globalization, free speech (not), homophobia, same-sex “marriage”, smoking, gender “assignment” at birth, “free” college for all, “settled science”, collective guilt (but only of straight, white, conservative males of European descent, and Germans in 1933-1945), racial profiling and stereotyping (except when leftists do it), etc., etc., etc.

Each “good” can be attained and each “bad” averted simply by enacting laws, regulations, and punishments. Though nature and human nature are not so easily controlled (let alone changed), the neurotic appetite for action can be sated temporarily by the mere enactment of laws, regulations, and punishments. And when these have been piled one on top of the other for decades, the results are as predicted by conservatives and libertarians: the suppression of liberty and economic growth.

There’s real crime for you.

Politics and Prosperity

“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”

Sexual Misconduct: A New Crime, A New Kind of Justice

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