Trust not the horse, O Trojans. Be it what it may, I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts. – Virgil, Aeneid (II, 48-9)
In general, people are not stupid; they are, however, extremely gullible. Given the information that there is a problem to be solved and the information with which to solve it, the average person can generally come up with a workable solution. But when that person does not realize that there is a problem, he won’t even attempt to find a solution even if all the necessary information is readily available. In other words, the average person is insufficiently skeptical; unless he is warned that someone may be trying to deceive him, he will not expect deceit and in fact may even deny the possibility if the deceiver is someone he has been taught to trust, such as a leader.
This childlike trust is why propaganda works, and why names have such a powerful effect; if a group calls itself “The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine” the natural tendency is to assume it’s a group of physicians fighting malpractice or the like, and if politicians call a law the “Violence Against Women Act” most people will presume that it is intended to combat violence against women. Unfortunately, those natural assumptions would be incorrect. As I explained in “The Anti-Life Equation”, the PCRM is actually a fanatical vegan group which uses lies and exaggerations to scare people out of eating meat. And though the original VAWA of 1994 was bad enough, every successive reauthorization has loaded the horse with ever-increasing numbers of hoplites, which credulous women then browbeat men into taking inside the walls built to protect the citizenry from our own predatory government.
Let’s start by getting one thing out of the way right now: VAWA does not protect women. When it was enacted there were already laws against domestic violence in every state, and most states had already tightened and strengthened those laws due to increased awareness of the problem. The law was therefore totally unnecessary from a practical or criminological point of view, and instead of reducing violence against women there is evidence that the law has actually increased it; a Department of Justice study associated the overly-aggressive policies spawned by VAWA with a increase in homicides of women, a National Institute of Justice study warned that “No-Drop” prosecution laws (see next paragraph) may place women “in greater jeopardy”, and mandatory arrest or prosecution laws make normal women far less likely to call police. Other reasons the law is bad for women specifically (aside from the ways it’s bad for free people of either sex) include encouragement of aggressive arrest and prosecution (the number of women arrested in California increased 446% after VAWA); flooding the legal system with trivial and false abuse allegations which hide the real ones; denial of women’s agency; and promoting destruction of relationships instead of reconciliation.
Neofeminists wanted VAWA so women would have a gigantic government club to use against men, to promote criminalization of men, to encourage breakup of heterosexual relationships and to provide a precedent for infantilization of women who make sexual choices (such as sex work or BDSM) with which neofeminists disapprove, and it has been very successful in achieving those goals. But as I’ve explained before, neofeminists are useful idiots to whom lawmakers cater because their rhetoric provides a Trojan horse for anti-civil rights measures, like a gigantic My Little Pony with which silly, brainwashed women are too enchanted to notice its dangerous payload. Take “No-Drop” policies; these are programs authorized and funded by VAWA which render women powerless to stop the machinery of injustice once an accusation of domestic violence is made. As soon as the woman (or in some states, anyone at all) calls the police to report an incident, the husband is arrested (no matter what the wife says, in many cases even if she is the aggressor) and prosecuted. Because many wives rightly refuse to cooperate with such proceedings, the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW, the DoJ office which enforces and funds VAWA) authorized so-called “evidence-based” prosecutions, kangaroo courts in which any evidence (including hearsay) is allowed and the accused man is denied the constitutional rights of confrontation and cross-examination. Is it any wonder domestic violence convictions have doubled under this regime?
The implications of this policy are twofold: first, women are established as moral imbeciles, with the state acting in loco parentis to make legal decisions on our “behalf”; second, once civil rights are abrogated for men the precedent of “equal treatment under the law” allows them to be abrogated for women as well, and indeed they are with increasing frequency. Other VAWA-enabled abuses include subjugation of women in shelters to a neofeminist political agenda and prosecutorial power to abduct the children of women who refuse to participate in the demolition of their husbands. And that’s just the beginning; subsequent VAWA reauthorizations have loosened the definition of “domestic violence” so much that a psychotic New Mexico woman was able to get a restraining order against David Letterman for supposedly “tormenting” her with “facial gestures” and “code words” on his TV show, and empowered the police to collect and indefinitely retain DNA from anybody they care to point a finger at. The most recent lowered the burden of proof for male university students accused of sexual misconduct to “a preponderance of the evidence” and gave the accuser (who need not even be the supposed victim) the right to appeal an acquittal. The version currently under consideration will allow a man to be jailed for ten months if a woman says he was “disrespectful” to her but did not physically harm her.
I’m sure y’all can connect the dots. If dirty looks can be crimes and feelings constitute evidence, any woman can have any man arrested on a whim…even if that woman is, say, a politician, and that man is, say, a vociferous detractor; all she has to say is that she “felt threatened”. And under policies of “equality”, male politicians will soon be able to do the same. To anyone, male or female. Under the newest iteration of VAWA, cops, bureaucrats and politicians will be able to have anyone arrested, and even if he can’t be convicted under a preponderance of the hearsay, he can be bankrupted by repeated prosecutions or framed for something else via his DNA sample. The proponents of VAWA include cops, prosecutors, career politicians, neofeminists and the brainwashed followers of any of the above who can’t be bothered to read something before giving it their support; they are personified by a comic actor-turned-legislator weeping crocodile tears and Republicans targeting throwaway additions about homosexuals and immigrants in order to call attention away from the flagrant civil rights violations they so desperately want to pass. They want you to believe that to be against VAWA is to be anti-woman, but take a look at the bylines on the articles I linked above, and on all these articles as well. And no, they aren’t all Republicans or “conservatives” either; as I stated above, the Republicans want VAWA just as much as the Democrats do. The only people who are against it are those who care about concepts like liberty, fairness, civil rights and the recognition of women’s capacity for adult decision…and unfortunately, there aren’t enough of us to stop the fools from breaking down the wall to drag this artfully-disguised menace inside.
One Year Ago Today
“Where are the Victims?” examines the absurdity and injustice of the federal prosecution of a man whose business helped make escorts’ work safer.
Personally, I never thought Franken was that funny; he came across more as an enraged jackass who thought he was covering that with his version of “humor.” But then, SNL has been unfunny for a very long time.
The son of my GP was caught up in a bad marriage. His wife was very abusive and he was raised to “treat women with respect.” Even though he’s a big man and his wife relatively smaller, she “chooses her moment.” One time she pushed him down the stairs and he spent 3 days in a coma. The police filed charges, but he refused to cooperate. So when they finally went through divorce court, after a mere 3 years of marriage and two children, the judge, a neofeminist par excellence, dispensed with the rules of evidence, allowed hearsay from her supporters and excluded actual evidence – including her arrest and his hospital stays – and ended up awarding her full custody, alimony and child support. He is completely screwed and his children are in the claws of an abusive personality and the state could not care less.
Another friend had his son victimized at school by members of a religious group who are the largest plurality in this area. When his son defended himself from a group attack, the principal of the high school, also a member of this same sect, called in the police who charged my friend’s son with assault. The principal said that his son was lying because “he knew the other kids involved and they just didn’t act that way.” So his kid is caught up in the “juvenile justice system” and is sent away to juvie.
But the icing on the cake was that his son was required to participate in a rehab program administered by – you guessed it – the same religious group that started the whole travesty as authorized by Bush’s “Faith Based Initiatives.” His son complained to him that they were essentially trying to convert him and that he could only “make progress” by accepting the therapy sessions that were thinly disguised doctrinal lessons.
My friend was furious – and went to the juvenile authorities to get him transferred to a different program. They told him he had no say in the matter, that they would suspend his visits with his son for the duration of the rehab, and that if he tried to pursue legal redress, they would initiate a termination of his parental rights.
Murderously angry was the only way to describe his reaction. I’m still amazed that he didn’t actually kill these sanctimonious SOB’s.
As you pointed out, this is what happens when an agenda becomes more important than justice. And it’s not just happening in womens’ issues, it’s happening across the board.
People complain all the time about how “criminals” get off on a technicality and think that the way to deal with that is dispensing with the hard-won safeguards that are supposed to protect the innocent. They ignore the technicalities employed by the prosecution to exclude exculpatory evidence – in one case a delivery driver was threatened with evidence tampering and his evidence excluded because he highlighted, on his own route sheet the time stamp information that proved he was not where the prosecution said he was.
Americans’ eagerness to give the government “the tools they need to protect us” are destroying their individual liberty. And they are too enthralled with the propaganda of the State to take cognizance of that fact.
In my more paranoid moments, I have found myself wondering how much of the “crime epidemic” of the ’80s and early ’90s was committed by government actors (disguised cops, etc) or simply manufactured in the records; that would account for the sharp drop in “crime” which occurred after they got the draconian laws and policies they wanted.
I seem to remember a bit in Freakonomics about crime in NYC; the reduction in crime wasn’t due to the “no tolerance” policing. Rather it was related to a reduction in births among some sections of the population.
It (the reduction in crime) has also been due to police departments jiggering the crime reporting statistics to show that serious crime has gone down in their districts — including the refusal to charge people with certain serious crimes that would make their statistics look bad. Check out a “This American Life” story (radio program on NPR) that Ira Glass did on this subject (“Is That a Tape Recorder In Your Pocket, or Are You Just Unhappy To See Me?”) at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent
Guh, I really hate police culture.
Need to start calling this kind of thing what it is; legislative Treason against the people of the US of A. Class action lawsuits against groups like VAWA, charging them with Treason with a capital T. Even if the charges are thrown out, enough media attention ought to have a telling effect, and at least get you a much taller podium to shout our accusations from, and the more valid legal channels you can go through to press your suit, the harder it would be to dismiss out of hand. You’d think that we’d shake up the people in power a bit more if, instead of calling for repeals of the laws they didn’t sneak by quite all of us, we’re calling for the arrest and life sentencing of each traitor who signed their name to bills, and for every member name on such organisations’ lists. While this smacks a bit much like sinking to their level, their own tactics for panicking the masses into supporting the ridiculous can work against them too. Label them (rather accurately) as domestic terrorists out to destroy America’s freedom. (“Tonight on CNN, leader if domestic terrorist cell VAMA attempts to defend her stance that destroying American’s constitutional civil rights is somehow not quite exactly sorta TREASON.”) They might flip it around and say the same of you, but there’s far more real proof to back up your side. Also logic and reason, which can hopefully allow one to dominate in any Crossfire-esque debates that would result if enough media attention can be gained.
What do you think? Feasible?
I think Quixotic would be a better word for it.
Go ahead, if you want. I’ve already tilted against enough windmills to last me for a while, thanks.
One of the cool things I like about the United States is that it has always been really hard to try and convict anyone of “treason”. We’ve only ever “convicted” like … around 15 people in the whole of our history and I think the last one was in the 50’s. A lot of those convicted were actually convicted on STATE treason charges (example: John Brown convicted of treason against the state of Virginia). And – many others convicted at the state and federal level were pardoned or given away to another country.
“Treason” is a weapon wielded by tyrants – I don’t like it, unless it’s clearly provable and against the people of the United States (not the government) – which you ARE kind of proposing so that’s one thing going for your suggestion.
Now, in “U.S.A. ver 2.0” – anything’s up for grabs. I will tell you that if this nation fails and there’s and there’s an armed revolt, there are going to be a lot of people who are “out” of a lot of benefits that Uncle Sam promised them and a great number will be out there trying to exact some vengeance against those who squandered this nation’s resources. I won’t be one of those guys – but I’m also not going to be one of those guys protecting the “squanderers” either. I would suspect that the charge of “treason” will be used a lot in that circumstance and in exactly the same manner you’re suggesting.
By the way – Greece is scaring the living shit out of me right now – but I just noted that the Euro is down to around $1.27 – which is going to make my trip to Europe this summer completely AWESOME – especially if it goes lower, which it likely will!
Also – let’s remember that Washington and the other founders were technically “traitors” to the British crown. 😀
Now – that’s an interesting example actually because – above, I say that my opinion is that treason should only be against PEOPLE and not GOVERNMENTS. By that standard – the founders of the American Republic were not traitors – as their actions were carried out against the British crown and it’s military forces – not against the British people.
But they were certainly labeled “traitors” by the crown – which is why I view the “treason” charge as typically a weapon wielded by tyrants.
Belated answer Krulac, but I’m sure that the many Americans who were forced to leave the newly-born United States of America simply because they were loyal to the British crown would disagree with you that George Washington and company were simply against George III and not the British people. In many way, the American Revolution was our first civil war.
Treason doth not prosper
Here’s the reason
For if treason doth prosper
None dare call it treason
I agree with you pretty much in that statement.
Well what family I had in the states at the time of the revolution were poor Scotch Highlanders living in the Carolinas. They had fought the British and lost on every occasion – and had fled Scotland. When the Revolution came – I guess they said … “We’re joining the winning side here – we’ve had enough troubles”. My family were all British loyalists – some even joined loyalists brigades and fought against the colonists.
Eventually they had to flee – but they fled to Tennessee and later to Mississippi territory. The funny story is … they picked the wrong side again during the Civil War.
Next time there is a war in the states – pick the side I’m not on – since my family has a shit track record for picking war winners. 😛
But yes – you are correct – it was like the first civil war. I think I remember reading that 1/3rd of the colonists were for independence, 1/3 didn’t give a shit one way or the other, and 1/3 wanted to remain loyal to the crown.
But the independence minded folks won enough of the apathetic 1/3rd to win the issue.
Not feasible. Even drawing up and voting for truly horrible bills isn’t technically treason. We can only hope that fashions change and it become something worse (for politicians) than treason: bad PR.
As others have pointed out, the US Constitution defines what treason is. We are probably unique in that regard. (krulac is close to the mark, but the accepted definition of “treason” is resistance to one’s nation — not to a government per se. But a monarch literally *is* his/her nation, so in a monarchy anything that offends the ruler is treason if s/he says it is. The founders wrote it into our Constitution because the King had declared several people traitors for sending him petitions he didn’t want to see.)
Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing government officials held accountable to us if they violate the Constitution. But police and judges are much more likely to do this in important ways than legislators are. Most importantly, under present common law (court-made law) officials of all three branches are entirely or mostly exempt from any prosecution or lawsuit; and all prosecutions have to be done by government prosecutors. I would love it if those exemptions and that monopoly went away, but it would take constitutional change that no one in power wants, so it will probably never happen.
I wasn’t pointing out the constitutional definition so much as my definition of it – and I think Jefferson’s too. The people have to be able to make a change to a tyranical government and that’s not (or shouldn’t be) treason. A tyranical government SHOULD be betrayed.
“Treason never prospers, what’s the reason?
For if treason ever prospers, none dare call it treason.”
Hey Maggie have you seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTZmyZ8jtw0
Somewhat relevant to the topic.
Some of these things have already happened, and some of these things are no longer true. But, as long as one keeps the relentless rolling of Time in mind, this is still valuable. Thank you.
A lot of this stuff emerged from academia in the 90’s. Maggie, I think you were in college around the same time so you’ll know how bad it was. “If a woman thinks she’s been harassed she’s been harassed” did away with objectivity. “One in three college women will be raped” created a climate of fear. This was when rape shield laws were tightened to the point where almost no cross-examination was permitted (because women are weak fragile creature who will break under the cross). Antioch College put in place a bizarre policy that required any sexual contact to obtain prior verbal consent.
What the policies inevitably had in common was the assumption that men were predators, women were weak and the only salvation lay in a powerful college/government. Occasional sane policies emerged — we did need better laws on sexual harassment (for everyone except Democratic Presidents) and it was a disgrace that a woman’s promiscuity could be used to dismiss a rape accusation (although that was more of a problem with juries than laws). But I never thought they would swallow it whole — good ideas with insane ones.
I received by BA from UNO in 1987 and was at LSU for my MLIS from ’91-’93; those insane policies (which I wrote about in “Imaginary Crises“) didn’t really infect Louisiana until after I was out for good. I remember the feminists pushing the “every man is a potential rapist” crap at UNO, but it was an extreme position largely ignored by administration; if it had infiltrated undergraduate policy at LSU by the early ’90s I didn’t know about it because I was a nonresident grad student. My first encounter with it was when I picked up my cousin Alan (who sometimes comments here, BTB) from his dorm at a different Louisiana university in (I believe) 2000; while I was waiting for him in the lobby I was killing time by reading the bulletin board, and the school’s (to me, shockingly tyrannical) “sexual harassment” policy was posted there.
BTW, I also got my MLIS (after having obtained a J.D.) and am now working as an academic librarian. I like hearing about your librarian credentials. It gives me a feeling of kinship with you, at least by way of training and your discipline for providing citation to credible authority to back up the statements you make. I would want to know you just for those qualities alone — in addition to the honesty you exhibit.
In any case, you certainly are not boring!
Thank you, Joe! I’m as much a librarian as I am a whore, and though I’m retired from both professions they are both still a big part of me. Some columns definitely show my librarian side more than my whore side, I think!
And since you ran your own escort service for a while, I guess that makes you truly “Madam Librarian,” for all that “Maggie” doesn’t rhyme like “Marion” does.
Of all the Left’s favorite nasty laws, VAWA is the one that started me referring to their aims as another French revolution.
For those who haven’t heard of the parallel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_22_Prairial
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