This was one of the most difficult reads I have read on this Substack. It even prompted me to subscribe. I am not an American, but my entire life I have admired USA for its strength of judiciary and independence of its legal system. It is truly sad to see how once great system is slowly eroded by ideological zealots.
Slowly I am starting to believe that "wokeness" has supplanted religion in part of US population, and that followers of new religion are acting no different than Inquisition during Dark Ages => noone is pure enough, and who is pure is decided by wokest of the woke. Any attempt to resist is severely punished.
What is currently happening in US universities, reminds me of Lysenkoism, when entire field of Biology in USSR was captured by Trofim Lysenko and his followers. This went so far that for some 30 years USSR was teaching pseudo-science and any dissent was severely sanctioned. During this time USSR biology researched was literary decimated.
Sadly in US this woke ideology is not contained in one field, but it seems that it is slowly affecting STEM fields, this will damage US future for sure. In the beginning I thought, that this would be just a phase, but slowly I am loosing hope, since this illiberal ideology is lowly creeping over to Europe and infecting its universities.
The modern American university is a progressive madrassa married to a non profit married to a corporate bureaucracy married to a liberal convent married to an adult daycare center married to a tech-media-Democratic party complex.
Bari - I absolutely do NOT know how, with your age, education and work history, you came to this philosophy in this time and place, but it gives me some hope. What is so baffling nowadays is how so many of the brightest and best educated among us are so completely blind to the consequences of the policies they advocate. Have they no self-awareness; do they not see the slippery slope of censorship and self-censoring? Do they not have the least understanding that theirs are the attitudes cultivated in the general public by all totalitarians throughout the world who in the end would take every freedom they now enjoy?
Thanks for this great article. I have the twin advantages of 1) being retired, so my job is never under threat, and 2) having been completely immune to others' opinions even when it was. May this blog, an outpost of real liberal thought, IMHO, grow to dwarf The Times, and do it soon. There is no time to lose.
In the now- infamous Smithsonian poster about Whiteness, one of the *White* traits listed (which has never been commented on really) was English Common Law. What is this shorthand for -- the concept of precedent, innocent until proven guilty otherwise known as the Golden Thread of Justice), the cab rank principle (the notion that lawyers can not chose their clients if they are free), the jury system, the concept that the law should apply equally to the most deserving in society as well as the least (Hill v Texas 1942 -- equal under the law), and ultimately the rule of law?
It is a very worrying development for American Society indeed if such fundamental safeguards of a free society are being undermined in the way that this piece implies.
This has to be one of the most important pieces yet on Common Sense. Thank you for this. It would never have seen the light in any mainstream publications today.
The legal corruption was seen in force after the 2020 election. The Republicans were nearly unable to find lawyers to represent their side in the vote fraud challenges. Young lawyers who had stepped forward to help were threatened by their colleagues and their law firms with summary firing if they didn't immediately withdraw. There are few people who can withstand this sort of pressure when they sit on top of $100,000 in student loans (or more) and are just beginning their careers.
This sort of corruption always ends disastrously with people dead, lives and countries destroyed.
I had to stop reading , it makes me sick what’s happening in this country -this generation is destroying everything and are allowed to do it - I’m scared it’s to late ,,,liberals……
Liberals, this mess is your Frankenstein. You thought you'd be able to release the beast into the world to do your dirty work, and that you could control the beast until you realized the beast was coming for you. Now, the question is this - what are you going to do about it?
I am a lawyer with long experience in the trenches, as we say; mostly retired now, but with 25 years in the judiciary behind me. I was educated at an elite law school. I can confirm the truth of this piece. The trend he describes is happening throughout the legal system, from law schools to law firms, the courts, and our related institutions. The ABA, originally concerned with professional development, advocacy, education, and networking among major firms, drifted leftward to the point of capture by wokeism; meanwhile, its membership has dwindled, shedding lawyers who prefer to focus on the practice and retaining those pushing leftist agendas. Its approaches to law school accreditation and the rating of federal judicial nominees are now designed to perpetuate leftism in the profession.
In the state where I practice, the law journal is increasingly full of social justice themes, as are the continuing ed classes offered as a condition of renewing one’s license. My law school now boasts a variety of courses with diversity, equity, and inclusion as the main emphasis. Traditional classes such as contracts, evidence, civil procedure, Con Law, are shot through with such themes, as “professionalism” in the practice of law takes on new meaning. Clinical courses are all about advocacy for “social justice.”
And don’t get me started on what’s happening in criminal law! Defunding the police, bail reform, sentencing, even the very act of charging and prosecuting a felon - every sentient person knows how changes in this realm have made us less safe. Ironically, a foremost task of government is to protect its people; but our governments at all levels have caved to people whose policies actually promote more crime.
So yes, this article is spot on. It speaks of the legal profession, and the same trend is unfolding in medicine. But that’s a story for another day.
One thing we know for sure is that when left-wing scumbags who hate the United States seize total control of the justice system, the conservatives who criticize them will be called pro-Putin anti-American for doing so.
Tulsi Gabbard was accused of treason by the world’s foremost moderate for asking these people to please destroy their deadly viruses before abandoning a lab in a war zone, if you’re looking for an example of how retarded this line of attack can get.
See because you’re attacking America’s justice system so you’re anti-American now. You hate America. Never mind that the people running it are Democrat sacks of shit. Nope. Can’t criticize them or you’re anti-American now.
See they’ve highjacked the entire notion of anti-Americanism in a way that is just sophisticated enough to work on complete imbeciles. So expect a lot more
“We, the people who have explained in great detail for 50 years why we hate America the slave state on stolen land, are now in charge and you can’t criticize us or you hate America…..which we are killing.”
I am really really hating dumb people this morning.
"Reparations and Prison Abolition" Exactly where do these fools think Derek Chauvin and the killers of Ahmaud Arbery are going to go?
The same people crying out for prison abolition screamed bloody murder when a teenage boy was acquitted for killing two convicted predators (one a convicted rapist whose victims were adolescent boys). They want teenage white boys to go to men's prisons, or they want prison abolition. Which is it????
These are the most confused hypocritical people on the planet. They have ZERO moral compass - it's all about ideology.
I could get behind this if racism is treated as a factor in crimes for all races, and not just a weapon to be used against those of European descent. For example, most of the recent urban assaults against Asian Americans seem to be perpetrated by African Americans, yet I've not heard a whiff of 'hate crimes' or 'racism' when reporting those crimes. Racism is , imho, a tribal trait, common to all races, but has become, in our country at least, something that only people of European descent practice.
Ha! I love the hypocrisy of the students here: "Professors say it is harder to lecture about cases in which accused rapists are acquitted, or a police officer is found not guilty of abusing his authority" coupled with "he’s even stopped teaching theories of punishment because of how negatively students react to retributivism—the view that punishment is justified because criminals deserve to suffer."
These young "progressives" are the most "retributive" people on the planet! They only object when retribution is achieved through a court of law.
According to BLM activists, black sex offenders like Jacob Blake (who tend to prey exclusively on black women and children) are ALWAYS innocent, and even if they're guilty, they don't deserve any prison time cuz "white supremacy".
They cheer when cops like Derek Chauvin are convicted of murder, but want to abolish prisons so that the Chauvins of the world can walk free. What????
We have to remind people equity, pursued as a social policy, is the single greatest evil humanity has attempted in the past 100 years. Cambodia, the Chinese Cultural revolution, Zimbabwe, the Soviet Union and a dozen others were all exercises in equity.
Over 100 million dead; all sacrificed on the grand alter of equity. Rivers of blood flow and mountains of bones carry the horror of equity.
If evil exists, those that push equity are its acolytes.
The current college students are the product of a generation of kids that were told over and over again that they are #1, that the world revolves around them and they were handsomely awarded trophies, medals and ribbons for merely participating in activities. They were taught that there are no winners and no losers. They were carted around by minivan or SUV from activity to activity. They were dropped off at school, they were picked up from school. They didn't ride bikes or walk anywhere. Whatever they demanded (cars, phones, I pads, etc.) they were given. The parents simply wanted to give their kids a better life than what they had. We now have a generation of brats, entitled college students who can do no wrong.
This was one of the most difficult reads I have read on this Substack. It even prompted me to subscribe. I am not an American, but my entire life I have admired USA for its strength of judiciary and independence of its legal system. It is truly sad to see how once great system is slowly eroded by ideological zealots.
Slowly I am starting to believe that "wokeness" has supplanted religion in part of US population, and that followers of new religion are acting no different than Inquisition during Dark Ages => noone is pure enough, and who is pure is decided by wokest of the woke. Any attempt to resist is severely punished.
What is currently happening in US universities, reminds me of Lysenkoism, when entire field of Biology in USSR was captured by Trofim Lysenko and his followers. This went so far that for some 30 years USSR was teaching pseudo-science and any dissent was severely sanctioned. During this time USSR biology researched was literary decimated.
Sadly in US this woke ideology is not contained in one field, but it seems that it is slowly affecting STEM fields, this will damage US future for sure. In the beginning I thought, that this would be just a phase, but slowly I am loosing hope, since this illiberal ideology is lowly creeping over to Europe and infecting its universities.
The modern American university is a progressive madrassa married to a non profit married to a corporate bureaucracy married to a liberal convent married to an adult daycare center married to a tech-media-Democratic party complex.
Bari - I absolutely do NOT know how, with your age, education and work history, you came to this philosophy in this time and place, but it gives me some hope. What is so baffling nowadays is how so many of the brightest and best educated among us are so completely blind to the consequences of the policies they advocate. Have they no self-awareness; do they not see the slippery slope of censorship and self-censoring? Do they not have the least understanding that theirs are the attitudes cultivated in the general public by all totalitarians throughout the world who in the end would take every freedom they now enjoy?
Thanks for this great article. I have the twin advantages of 1) being retired, so my job is never under threat, and 2) having been completely immune to others' opinions even when it was. May this blog, an outpost of real liberal thought, IMHO, grow to dwarf The Times, and do it soon. There is no time to lose.
In the now- infamous Smithsonian poster about Whiteness, one of the *White* traits listed (which has never been commented on really) was English Common Law. What is this shorthand for -- the concept of precedent, innocent until proven guilty otherwise known as the Golden Thread of Justice), the cab rank principle (the notion that lawyers can not chose their clients if they are free), the jury system, the concept that the law should apply equally to the most deserving in society as well as the least (Hill v Texas 1942 -- equal under the law), and ultimately the rule of law?
It is a very worrying development for American Society indeed if such fundamental safeguards of a free society are being undermined in the way that this piece implies.
This has to be one of the most important pieces yet on Common Sense. Thank you for this. It would never have seen the light in any mainstream publications today.
The legal corruption was seen in force after the 2020 election. The Republicans were nearly unable to find lawyers to represent their side in the vote fraud challenges. Young lawyers who had stepped forward to help were threatened by their colleagues and their law firms with summary firing if they didn't immediately withdraw. There are few people who can withstand this sort of pressure when they sit on top of $100,000 in student loans (or more) and are just beginning their careers.
This sort of corruption always ends disastrously with people dead, lives and countries destroyed.
We have too many highly-educated morons. Great piece.
I had to stop reading , it makes me sick what’s happening in this country -this generation is destroying everything and are allowed to do it - I’m scared it’s to late ,,,liberals……
Liberals, this mess is your Frankenstein. You thought you'd be able to release the beast into the world to do your dirty work, and that you could control the beast until you realized the beast was coming for you. Now, the question is this - what are you going to do about it?
I am a lawyer with long experience in the trenches, as we say; mostly retired now, but with 25 years in the judiciary behind me. I was educated at an elite law school. I can confirm the truth of this piece. The trend he describes is happening throughout the legal system, from law schools to law firms, the courts, and our related institutions. The ABA, originally concerned with professional development, advocacy, education, and networking among major firms, drifted leftward to the point of capture by wokeism; meanwhile, its membership has dwindled, shedding lawyers who prefer to focus on the practice and retaining those pushing leftist agendas. Its approaches to law school accreditation and the rating of federal judicial nominees are now designed to perpetuate leftism in the profession.
In the state where I practice, the law journal is increasingly full of social justice themes, as are the continuing ed classes offered as a condition of renewing one’s license. My law school now boasts a variety of courses with diversity, equity, and inclusion as the main emphasis. Traditional classes such as contracts, evidence, civil procedure, Con Law, are shot through with such themes, as “professionalism” in the practice of law takes on new meaning. Clinical courses are all about advocacy for “social justice.”
And don’t get me started on what’s happening in criminal law! Defunding the police, bail reform, sentencing, even the very act of charging and prosecuting a felon - every sentient person knows how changes in this realm have made us less safe. Ironically, a foremost task of government is to protect its people; but our governments at all levels have caved to people whose policies actually promote more crime.
So yes, this article is spot on. It speaks of the legal profession, and the same trend is unfolding in medicine. But that’s a story for another day.
One thing we know for sure is that when left-wing scumbags who hate the United States seize total control of the justice system, the conservatives who criticize them will be called pro-Putin anti-American for doing so.
Tulsi Gabbard was accused of treason by the world’s foremost moderate for asking these people to please destroy their deadly viruses before abandoning a lab in a war zone, if you’re looking for an example of how retarded this line of attack can get.
See because you’re attacking America’s justice system so you’re anti-American now. You hate America. Never mind that the people running it are Democrat sacks of shit. Nope. Can’t criticize them or you’re anti-American now.
See they’ve highjacked the entire notion of anti-Americanism in a way that is just sophisticated enough to work on complete imbeciles. So expect a lot more
“We, the people who have explained in great detail for 50 years why we hate America the slave state on stolen land, are now in charge and you can’t criticize us or you hate America…..which we are killing.”
I am really really hating dumb people this morning.
"Reparations and Prison Abolition" Exactly where do these fools think Derek Chauvin and the killers of Ahmaud Arbery are going to go?
The same people crying out for prison abolition screamed bloody murder when a teenage boy was acquitted for killing two convicted predators (one a convicted rapist whose victims were adolescent boys). They want teenage white boys to go to men's prisons, or they want prison abolition. Which is it????
These are the most confused hypocritical people on the planet. They have ZERO moral compass - it's all about ideology.
If only we could require law professors to live amongst the oppressed instead of gated communities,
I could get behind this if racism is treated as a factor in crimes for all races, and not just a weapon to be used against those of European descent. For example, most of the recent urban assaults against Asian Americans seem to be perpetrated by African Americans, yet I've not heard a whiff of 'hate crimes' or 'racism' when reporting those crimes. Racism is , imho, a tribal trait, common to all races, but has become, in our country at least, something that only people of European descent practice.
Ha! I love the hypocrisy of the students here: "Professors say it is harder to lecture about cases in which accused rapists are acquitted, or a police officer is found not guilty of abusing his authority" coupled with "he’s even stopped teaching theories of punishment because of how negatively students react to retributivism—the view that punishment is justified because criminals deserve to suffer."
These young "progressives" are the most "retributive" people on the planet! They only object when retribution is achieved through a court of law.
According to BLM activists, black sex offenders like Jacob Blake (who tend to prey exclusively on black women and children) are ALWAYS innocent, and even if they're guilty, they don't deserve any prison time cuz "white supremacy".
They cheer when cops like Derek Chauvin are convicted of murder, but want to abolish prisons so that the Chauvins of the world can walk free. What????
This is all mindless idiocy.
We have to remind people equity, pursued as a social policy, is the single greatest evil humanity has attempted in the past 100 years. Cambodia, the Chinese Cultural revolution, Zimbabwe, the Soviet Union and a dozen others were all exercises in equity.
Over 100 million dead; all sacrificed on the grand alter of equity. Rivers of blood flow and mountains of bones carry the horror of equity.
If evil exists, those that push equity are its acolytes.
The current college students are the product of a generation of kids that were told over and over again that they are #1, that the world revolves around them and they were handsomely awarded trophies, medals and ribbons for merely participating in activities. They were taught that there are no winners and no losers. They were carted around by minivan or SUV from activity to activity. They were dropped off at school, they were picked up from school. They didn't ride bikes or walk anywhere. Whatever they demanded (cars, phones, I pads, etc.) they were given. The parents simply wanted to give their kids a better life than what they had. We now have a generation of brats, entitled college students who can do no wrong.