Strike while the irony's hot

On Saturday April 28 a vocal minority marched past the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in Durham, where the Duke Lacrosse Team was falsely accused of rape. The marchers in support of some "National Day of Truth-telling" chose to decry sexual violence rather than false accusations of sexual violence! The irony is striking.

Vocal minorities are not known for subtlety. Rather, their tactics tend to the raucous and the blatant. Hence, my intuition leads me to conclude the irony of this particular exercise in freely spoken moral outrage was unintended. I hasten to emphasize my own opposition to any form of sexual violence and my fervent support of free speech. My objection to this public demonstration, however, is based on an aversion to confused thinking. The victims in this scandal of emotional violence and potential sexual violence in prison were the falsely accused and demonstrably unethically prosecuted Duke Lacrosse players, not the false accuser of rape.

No special interest group holds a monopoly on confused thinking. Most seem to subscribe to the misapprehension that a representative form of government is beholden in any legal procedural sense to the wishes of a raucous demonstration of any dimension, state of conviction, or position in the governing hierarchy. Ours is that government of the people, by the people, for the people, but it is constrained by the legal and procedural framework of the Constitution, most especially the sublime checks and balances of our three Branches of Government. An example of (possibly politically motivated) confused thinking is the outraged posturing in the Legislative Branch whenever the President exercises his prerogatives as Chief Executive not in accordance with the collective wisdom of the Members of Congress.

... Justice for all

The Pledge of Allegiance, which American schoolchildren learn to recite by rote, has been the focus of much controversy, especially the "under God" emendation. The controversial aspects stem from the nationalistic sentiments and the religious connotations, which are far from universally accepted in our politically correct society. But the closing tripleton of words, arguably the heart of the Pledge, can withstand the most politically correct scrutiny. And the soul of that tripleton is the singleton Justice.

In the past year there have been countless instances of perceived injustice, reflecting almost as many points of view as there are viewers of points. One that has captured virtually universal infamy is the so-called Duke Lacrosse Scandal. This case study for the seductiveness of public indignation and outrage, a reflection of the vehemence with which seemingly all points of view are held today by their devotees, offered a perfect storm of circumstances for a lynching: racial slurs and counter slurs; political and idealogical motivations; the reputation of a great university, and that of its faculty, students, and governing body; the privileges of the wealthy; the disadvantages of the poor; the perceived arrogance of the privileged class; the perceived outrage of the downtrodden; the outspoken pomposity of the self-righteous; the fabrications and exaggerations of the muckrakers; and the mad dash by everyone perceived to be at risk to cover their collective mass.

Many organizations behaved as badly as those individuals who should have known better. At the heart of this personal ordeal for the three students whose lives had been placed in mortal jeopardy, as everyone who is not comatose realizes is the common fate of those incarcerated in the jungle that is our prison system, was the guiding principle of our great American system of justice: the presumption of innocence. The correct public demeanor in this, as in all such cases is one in accordance with these students' presumed innocence until, and only if they are proven guilty in a court of law.

Many fell short of that ideal. If there is something to be learned by all Americans, if not the civilized world at large, from this sorry mess having many villains, I can not think of any more pertinent to the very survival of our way of life than the sacredness of the presumption of innocence. There has been a significant lapse in the public pledge of allegiance to this golden rule of justice. This is the time to begin the healing process by publicly acknowledging that lapse.