Once again, Thomas Sowell...

[Yonivore]

...nails it.

This touches on a couple of topics being discussed here so, I decided to give it it's own thread. As it is, we've kind of cross-pollinated the existing threads with similar discussions.

Law Is Not Optional

I recommend the entire piece but have excerpted a couple of salient passages.

The fiasco of Rolling Stone magazine’s apology for an unsubstantiated claim of gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house — and the instant rush to judgment of the university administration in shutting down all fraternities when those charges were made — should warn us about the dangers of having serious legal issues dealt with by ins utions with no qualifications for that role.
...
Have we forgotten the charges of gang rape against members of the Duke lacrosse team in 2006 — and how quickly the lynch-mob mentality swept across the campus, before there was a speck of evidence to indicate whether the young men were either guilty or innocent?

Do we want people punished, based on other people’s preconceptions, rather than on the facts of the individual case? Apparently there are ranting mobs who do, and many in the media who give them a platform for spouting off, in exchange for the mobs’ providing them with footage that can attract an audience.

The law is not the place for amateurs. We do not need legal issues to be determined by academics, the media, or mobs in the streets.
...
A generation that jumps to conclusions on the basis of its own emotions, or suc bs to the passions or rhetoric of others, deserves to lose the freedom that depends on the rule of law. Unfortunately, what they say and what they do can lose everyone’s freedom, including the freedom of generations yet unborn.

If grand juries are supposed to vote on the basis of what mobs want, instead of on the basis of the evidence that they see — and that the mob doesn’t even want to see — then we forfeit the rule of law and our freedom that depends on it.

If people who are told that they are under arrest, and who refuse to come with the police, cannot be forcibly taken into custody, then we do not have the rule of law, when the law itself is downgraded to suggestions that no one has the power to enforce.
...
Force cannot be measured out by the teaspoon, and there are going to be incalculable risks every time force is resorted to, because no one can predict what is going to happen in the next moment. Anyone involved can end up in the hospital or the morgue. Let the responsibility lie with whoever forces a resort to force.

[boutons_deux]

the police, who seems to be polluted with chicken fraidy cats, resort to force when it's not necessary and/or too quickly and/or too brutally and/or fatally

Sowell!

You Repugs hate govt unless it's killing n!gg@s or Muslims.