Elites in Robes

Mark's Mailbox
September 20, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9746/elites-in-robes

Following on the heels of last week's post-Mark Steyn Cruise Clubland Q&A, Mark returns with another episode of Mark's Mailbox, answering the questions he didn't get around to in his fortnightly webcast.

In this edition, Mark talks about judicial activism in America, the plight of Tommy Robinson in the United Kingdom, and the Australian justice system's mishandling of Cardinal Pell's prosecution.

Click below to watch:

If you prefer Mark live in person, we're taking bookings for the Third Annual Mark Steyn Club Cruise - a full ten days on the Med with Steyn, Michele Bachmann, Conrad Black, Douglas Murray, John O'Sullivan and more. There's sure to be a live Clubland Q&A aboard MS Nieuw Statendam.

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46 Reader Comments

Segnes Schonken • Sep 25, 2019 at 02:48

I'm dying to get in early on the upcoming discussion of Missy Thunberg. She's not worth it, except as a case study about infant misbehaviour.

Now, the adoring press, which quotes her as if grown-ups should be paying attention to anything that comes out of that nasty little mouth: that is a different matter altogether.

Richard Harrison • Sep 24, 2019 at 19:31

It is difficult to exaggerate the damage to the British constitution that has been wrought by the UK Supreme Court.

The court has decided, without convincing argument, that it has the power to rule on the political process - specifically, on the power of the Queen to prorogue Parliament on the advice of her ministers. This overturns centuries of settled practice and judicial restraint. It has reduced the rule of law - developed gradually and painfully since Magna Carta in 1215 - to a mere contest of wills in a political struggle.

The rule of law, presiding over by an impartial and incorruptible judiciary (if only as an ideal), is central to Western society. The activism seen in the US courts often reduces them to political players (although there is hope that they might regain their proper function with further infusions of Trump appointments). Now the UK has caught a severe dose of the activist disease.

But the disease did not come out of nowhere. The ever-present temptation to insert the judge's personal preferences into the legal process was stimulated by the UK's membership of the European Union and by the human rights jurisprudence emanating from that quarter. The novelty of British judges being empowered to review and overrule legislation proved heady, and over recent years they have become more and more emboldened to exercise their new power to legislate from the bench. The decision on prorogation is merely the culmination of the slow corruption of the UK's constitution since 1973.

Obviously an escape from the EU is necessary to begin to restore something of the delicate balance of the British constitution. But the 40 or so years of diktat from Brussels looks to have caused irreparable damage to an 800-year-old legacy of liberty and the rule of law.

Kate Smyth

Richard Harrison • Sep 24, 2019 at 22:04

Great comment, Richard, and I hope you and others continue the discussion on the recently-posted "open thread" Laura's Links page. You should copy-and-paste the above!

Perry Pattetic • Sep 23, 2019 at 10:58

Tommy Robinson was jailed for a non-criminal, non-offense.
This was outlawed by Magna Carta, itself diluted and removed from the books by successive Parliaments.

Glen Flint • Sep 22, 2019 at 23:56

Sorry that I was unable to make the cruise this summer, as I have to support a couple of elites through confiscatory taxes. Any chance that nautically challenged members of the Mark Steyn Club will get to see/hear a recording Michelle Bachman and Mark Steyn's reading of FBI Lovebirds on the cruise this summer? It must have been a memorable performance!

Felicity • Sep 21, 2019 at 23:48

Kate Smyth that is so true. The Royal Commission found historical child sexual abuse cover ups across the whole of society. It showed many cases of child sexual abuse in other Christian denominations and other religions in Australia. They showed many cases of secular and Government run organizations dealing directly with children that were rife with child sexual abuse.Yet strangely, the socialist MSM has chosen to mostly ignore these.

Kate Smyth

Felicity • Sep 22, 2019 at 18:53

Yes, so biased was the media reporting that most ordinary people thought the RC was into the Catholic Church - despite the broader findings. (And the confected Confessional Seal issue is outright, targeted religious discrimination by the state, as many have pointed out.)

Kate Smyth

Kate Smyth • Sep 22, 2019 at 20:04

I should've said "despite the terms of reference - and findings".

Segnes Schonken

Kate Smyth • Sep 22, 2019 at 22:03

Killjoy.No, seriously: nice exchange, F. and K. Hope there's more to come.

Felicity • Sep 21, 2019 at 23:08

Yes, Mark and Kate Smyth, I thought the same thing about the court case of George Pell. They were determined to get him from the start because of who he was. A staunch conservative who stood against the socialist "Queering" of general society so what better way to destroy him than these accusations. No interest shown about whether there was enough evidence to convict or not . They did not care if he was innocent or not they just wanted him destroyed. The socialist MSM were particularly biased in their reporting of this case as one would expect.

Segnes Schonken

Felicity • Sep 22, 2019 at 17:57

All true, F. Well said. This was not justice. In criminalibus probationes debent esse luce clariores. One would have thought that the journalists to whom you refer would have been attracted to the sensational miscarriage, but no. As you intimate, they were after Cardinal Pell's hide, and to hell with the onus of proof.

The terrible thing is that, in countries which embrace systems of common law, verdicts, especially those confirmed under appeal, establish precedents which can acquire force of law. It is important for every citizen, and not only Cardinal Pell, that this case be challenged and overturned. But what care the lefty journalists, those guardians of truth and justice?

Kate Smyth

Segnes Schonken • Sep 22, 2019 at 19:01

"It is important for every citizen, and not only Cardinal Pell, that this case be challenged and overturned."

Thank you for making this crucial point - and so concisely. It's another reminder of Mark's reference in another context (ie Kavanaugh) to the famous scene from A Man for All Seasons: "Yes - I'd give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake."

PS. Appreciate the Latin, too.

Segnes Schonken

Kate Smyth • Sep 22, 2019 at 21:19

Thanks, K. I have trouble with conciseness, as you know, so I take your compliment as recognition of a small miracle on my part. It was also in pursuit of conciseness that I resorted to the legal maxim. Pity the Roman jurists didn't speak better English. Same goes for their jurisprudential descendants, who insisted on their native Dutch when Latin defeated them. Stick around: I even memorised some Dutch maxims during the legal leg of my misbegotten education! With me, things can always get worse.

Kate Smyth

Segnes Schonken • Sep 22, 2019 at 22:13

I appreciate the extended comment too! (See below.) By the way, your opening point there is worth repeating: only two people - Pell and his accuser - know the truth.

Look forward to some Dutch... impressive to say the least.

Segnes Schonken

Kate Smyth • Sep 23, 2019 at 03:12

You're always kind, but please don't be impressed, K. I'm a fraud. You probably have much more Latin than I do. I gather your field is medicine, and I know that one gets nowhere in medicine without an extensive Latin lexicon. I realise that medicine involves a smaller range of maxims - 'though even we numbskulls know "Primum non nocere", even if only in self-defence - so maybe there aren't as many clever-sounding quotations on the tip of your tongue. And my fund of Dutch is tiny.

Walt Trimmer

Segnes Schonken • Sep 23, 2019 at 18:52

SS, if you ever watched films depicting the Roman Empire you would know Romans spoke Latin with perfect, upper class British accents. You probably didn't know this because you watched the movies dubbed in Dutch.

Segnes Schonken

Walt Trimmer • Sep 23, 2019 at 23:42

That's hilarious, W. Thanks for brightening my day! I realise now that shorn armpits, shampoo and knobbly knees dated from that period too. (Happily, all I caught was a handful of familiar proverbs: I'm very proud of my fulsome, suntanned knees.)

Sol • Sep 21, 2019 at 12:21

It is said that our betters don't mind policies that destroy communities because they are physically separated from them, but across the intersection from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Mr Smith's bar closed three weeks ago, after 15 years in business. "Rampant open-air drug dealing and drug use has completely taken over my block," the owner wrote in a letter to Mayor London Breed and a city supervisor. "My employees quit, my customers disappeared, no one wants to be on my block, including me. As a native San Franciscan it makes me sick to say that."

Rather than a cautionary reminder of real-world consequences of Alice-in-Wonderland jurisprudence, the imperiousness of the elites in robes might be enhanced by the disparity between the loft and gutter.

On the other side of the Mr Smith's building is United Nations Plaza (emphasis on Amsterdam). Location, location, location.

Kate Smyth

Sol • Sep 22, 2019 at 19:43

"... the imperiousness of the elites in robes might be enhanced by the disparity between the loft and gutter."

Excellent prediction, Sol.

BallBounces in PEI

Sol • Sep 23, 2019 at 09:09

The struggle is between conservatives and law and liberals and "mercy". Law without mercy kills; "mercy" without law breeds anarchy and destruction. America is experiencing rising tides of "mercy" and San Francisco is drowning in it.

Kitty Bits • Sep 21, 2019 at 11:39

When my oldest son was a kid he told me, "Hitler proved that propaganda works." For a more current example of propaganda inflaming racist hatred read Lt. General Romeo Dallaire's book 'Shake Hands With the Devil.' It didn't take long for propagandists, mostly on the radio, to inflame the Hutus to murder more than 800,000 Tutsis, mostly with machetes. What surprised me most about the book was that Dallaire still thought the UN was the solution when that corrupt cabal had already proven itself worthless and useless in the face of a genocide he lived through.
The left has been fomenting black on white hatred for decades. It would be so easy to move things in the opposite direction. Unless the racist propaganda on the left is stopped things will get very ugly before they get better.

Sol

Kitty Bits • Sep 21, 2019 at 14:44

In a television interview years later, a Hutu, who had reconciled with Tutsis, said she didn't know how she had gotten whipped up in the frenzy against the Tutsis. Douglas Murray has written a new book called The Madness of Crowds about this phenomenon disrupting people profoundly in other ways.

P. Gao

Kitty Bits • Sep 21, 2019 at 22:20

Exactly. Also watch 'The Ghosts of Rwanda' video made by front line. They also confirm the vicious propaganda via media broadcasting a long time in advance of the trigger of the downing of the Rwandan president's plane. Interestingly, they show clearly that the Clinton administration was told by many top U.S./international people to ASAP shut all the radio/tv stations down to stop the extremely provocative broadcasts, but the Clinton administration refused - calling it a 'free speech' issue.

With Sol's comment there about what that Rwandan said, and there are many many who are on record as saying the same thing, having no idea why they got sucked into it, plus the very strange position of the Clinton Admin to of all times suddenly be 'free speech' in the middle of a slaughter, maybe there's another even more chilling story that hasn't been told. Were those radio broadcasts using subliminal conditioning?

P. Gao

P. Gao • Sep 22, 2019 at 00:24

Going further, with what's being revealed about the technological advances in audio/visual manipulation of people, could it be possible that Rwanda was a nation-wide implementation of such media technology?
Wish it was too weird to be true, but the information is out there that the level of sophistication to do this has existed for decades. We've witnessed mob behavior, so we know that high tech isn't necessary to get the desired provocations and results, but what happened in Rwanda was in another category of horrific and the origin of the complicated plot is still cloaked in fog - at least to the public. Burundi, then Rwanda, then DR Congo... a massive region was dragged into it - decades of destabilizing warfare and strife.
The U.N. was working on a peace treaty; the first killed were Belgium U.N. Peackeepers and Rwandans, both Hutu and Tusi who supported the treaty. So, at least on some levels, the U.N. people were trying to do good, but what happened at the highest levels? Who made the organization stand down? General Romeo Dallaire's ordeal is an account more people should know about, but it's incredibly tough reading, that's a fact. As the head of the Red Cross in Rwanda said, "We had everything we needed, whatever we asked for we got, but Dallaire, they abandoned him." Dallaire had the African and Asian troops and staff that weren't withdrawn. Their heroism was incredible - working on no more than personal moxie and creativity, not on arms or support.

Andrew A

Kitty Bits • Sep 23, 2019 at 19:54

"What surprised me most about the book was that Dallaire still thought the UN was the solution when that corrupt cabal had already proven itself worthless and useless in the face of a genocide he lived through."

Totally agreed. Although I admire his personal courage in the face of the horror, Gen. Dallaire's infantile naivete about the UN irritated me to no end. I would forgive him for it except that in the many years since he wrote the book, he seems to have become worse, and is too far gone beyond any hope of recovery.

Josh Passell • Sep 21, 2019 at 07:33

"Elites in Robes"--I thought we might be talking Justin Trudeau's latest swarthy turn, this time as a Moorish prince.
We wouldn't need the elites in robes if we deplorables ("Call me irredeemable..." as Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn almost wrote) learned how to vote correctly. Trump and Brexit are only the most glaring examples. Voters in Texas and Georgia had the opportunity to elect R.F. O'Rourke and Stacy Abrams respectively to positions of power, and whiffed. (Sorry to break it to you, Stace.) Heck, we've been voting "wrong" more often than not for the better part of ten years, since the Tea Party-ers stood athwart President Obama's erasure of history yelling Stop. Then, it was the state apparatus that tossed dissidents into the administrative gulag; in the Trump era, it's any twerp judge whose $500 campaign contribution to a successful Democrat gubernatorial candidate earned him a perch on the bench. At least, that's how it works here in Mass.
I confess a twinge of guilt eddying within a tide of euphoria at Mitch McConnell's installation of the 150th judge under Trump. Yes, the courts are getting a long overdue conservative course correction which may stretch decades into the future (where is this "guilt" of which you write, Josh?), but is that how the game is played? We ram our guys down their throats, draw legislative districts to our benefit, and otherwise stack the deck in our favor--until it's their turn to do the same to us. I guess. And if that is how the game is played, one usually plays to win. I guess. Especially, I suppose, when the other guys play the game so well. Deploying the IRS to disarm Patriots (any group with "Patriot" in its name) and raid Tea Parties (ditto) was inspired, straight out of the Nixon playbook. That the "Obama Angel" who carried out the strategy, Lois Lerner, retired with full pension, before facing judgement herself for her abuses--giving both an opening statement and later an interview before dummying up under 5th Amendment protection--should have instructed us on the level of arrogance and privilege our betters felt was their due. Strzok, Page, McCabe, Comey, and the rest of the whole stinking lot of them learned their lessons well. Our turn? I guess.

Journolist

Josh Passell • Sep 21, 2019 at 10:36

Talking of Lois, In the UK the comrades have been writing the Tax Codes for such a long time and so prolifically that no one can understand what they mean, so it is up to the comrades to decide. Needless to say they enjoy inflicting punishment on the deplorables all the while blaming the government of the day. Win, win.

Brian from Minneapolis • Sep 21, 2019 at 01:54

I heard your comments on Minneapolis. Certain areas are just as you say. Thankfully I don't live in areas like those but things can change overnight if you don't pay attention. Once you leave the suburban areas and go close to the city you can see homeless people under bridges and near the light rail stations, the smell of urine. You can witness where in the city the elites live, the middle class, and the lower class and poor people live.

Brian from Minneapolis • Sep 21, 2019 at 01:44

You know the things on the internet that we protect our computers and such from such as malware, ransomware, spyware, etc? The left pretty much was that before the internet was created and are even more so now. What we have is spam or click bait is the fake news and academia. Malware is their socialistic/globalist agenda. Spyware is their desires to monitor, control, and take away our first and second amendment rights as well as police our thoughts. Ransomware can be things like climate change, gun control, poverty, healthcare, anything that causes us to panic and like a ransomware that says that your name is on a sex offender list and you have to click on this link to pay to get it off, people are panicking under the pretense that what the left is saying is true. We protect our cyber devices from such crap and know better yet somehow we're oblivious when it happens to us in real life. Being told that all the world's problems were caused by a free society where people's choices can't be trusted anymore and that the state knows how you should live your life. To these people: public service is like a supermarket where you have hundreds of checkout lines and the ones who use the ten items or less lane are the elites and identity groups who have more than one item, forcing the rest of us to wait for our turn but by that time the store is closed and you have to try another day.

I was thinking on the climate change articles from last century talking about how the Northern Hemisphere was going to experience the next Ice Age. So what they're saying is that the left intentionally raised greenhouse gases to combat this and now they overdid it and are trying to undo it? Ridiculous that they think that climate control can be applied to the actual climate just as they love having it in their homes.

Kate Smyth • Sep 21, 2019 at 00:10

Thanks, Mark, for addressing the legal points in the case of Cardinal George Pell. You would be stunned (or perhaps not) by how many people openly expressed satisfaction following his conviction and imprisonment - because "the Catholic Church..." and "Pell is arrogant". Oh... not because he's a paedophile? Not because of the damage inflicted upon the two victims?

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse reported widespread "historical" offences - and a culture of concealment of crimes - across a vast number of organisations including religious, secular, government and private. Obviously, such crimes and the massive breach of trust involved are all the more contemptible in the case of clerical abuse. The issue is complicated somewhat by financial compensation offered to victims (ie alleged versus actual). Meanwhile, many people are only too happy to see Pell himself "pay".

Interestingly, just a few decades ago the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - at the highest levels of the organisation - actively promoted and advocated "pederasty" under the banner of diversity, going so far as to interview several of its enthusiastic practitioners. Gerard Henderson has written extensively on this subject. But no one is particularly interested in that history.

chickensoup

Kate Smyth • Sep 21, 2019 at 06:36

I read, a number of years ago, that leftists in the Stalin State and in other repressive regimes, used child sexual abuse to imprison the opposition. Pastors and Priests were particular targets.

Owen Morgan

Kate Smyth • Sep 21, 2019 at 15:23

British Labour MP Harriet Harman was once, in the 1970s, a leading member of the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known, equally inaptly, as Liberty. Along with a pair of associates, Harman was embarrassed to be reminded, about five years ago, that her NCCL organisation had given membership to a "paedophile information exchange," which seems to have done pretty much what its title suggests.

One of those associates ** I mentioned was Patricia Hewitt. Although she shared Harman's trajectory from the NCCL to the front bench of Britain's Labour Party, she is originally Australian and I wonder if she attracted Gerard Henderson's attention. Hewitt was General Secretary of the NCCL for a number of years.

The term "paedophile" appears to have been disseminated expressly to displace the word "paederast." The latter word, linked to Eros, Greek god of love, implies physical intimacy, while the former expresses, or should express, an innocent liking, as in "bibliophile," or "philatelist.". By rights, anyone who likes children is etymologically a paedophile, but that word was hijacked by Harman and the rest, rendering it unusable in any other context than its current sordid surroundings.

Harriet Harman wants to be the next Speaker of Britain's House of Commons. Since she is blatantly anti-Brexit, she may well achieve her wish.

** The other associate from those times, Jack Dromey, is Harman's husband.

Segnes Schonken

chickensoup • Sep 22, 2019 at 00:56

I'm with you on all scores, K. I hope that you won't mind my expanding on a particular matter implicit in your post, and to speaking the name of corruption.

Before I plunge in, let me say that I cannot pass any judgement as to whether Cardinal Pell was, or was not, a paederast. Only the gods know that. I do however think, as you and Mark Steyn do, that arriving at a firm conclusion on that matter on the basis of the evidence presented has resulted in a grave and entirely unwholesome miscarriage of justice, bespeaking corruption of the systems of justice in the world I think I understand, which is the English-speaking (-ish) one.

One of the tacit premises of what you and c., in rejoinder to your post, conclude seems to be that judges should be impartial, and that it is in part political partiality in the judiciary which corrupts it. I'd like to engage with that.

Of course, I could not agree more. It is a premise of our common system of democratic governance that there should be a substantial separation of, and mutual independence between, the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government. I hope that we'd all agree that, whereas we all accept that the political agenda of dominant parties (or coalitions of parties) will inform the passage of legislation, subject hopefully to a system of checks and balances which will mitigate the reckless passage of reckless legislation enacting one or another interpretation of the "will of the people", we probably all insist that the judiciary ought to strive, accountably and expressly, to be impartial – and therefore also politically impartial – in the adjudication arising from that legislation. We'd probably agree that failure in requisite judicial integrity, and in particular judicial impartiality, arising from failure to maintain stringent judicial independence, is what enabled the perverse show trials of communist and nazi states, and is probably what enabled miscarriages of justice such as befell the unfortunate Cardinal Pell.

So what checks and balances exist in the judicial system to prevent miscarriages of justice? Actually, the mechanism is quite impressive (albeit expensive). It relies on a hierarchy of jurisprudence, by which the controversial judgements of lower courts, staffed, as it were, by lesser jurisprudents, are referred for review to higher courts, hopefully staffed by increasingly formidable jurisprudents. One of the crucial considerations in such review is whether the referring court exercised due impartiality. Or so we'd hope. The system becomes corrupted when the judiciary at the highest level, and sometimes several higher levels, is staffed, not on the basis of jurisprudential standing, but of political partiality.

That is what was wrong with having the House of lords adjudicating matters involving the nobility in Britain. The House of lords is populated by people generally more noted for their political partiality than their elite standing in the field of jurisprudence, and this arrangement was certain to give rise to miscarriages. It is also what is corrupt in the American system, by which judges are in effect political appointments. In Australia, judges are appointed by the executive branch of government, as it happens without any mandated reference to jurisprudents. Is it any wonder really that Cardinal Pell's highly questionable conviction not only occurred, but was allowed to stand? I think not; but I do think that we have a case study in the corruption which occurs when the independence of the judicial branch of government is insufficiently assured.

To digress for a moment, I am suspicious of attacking elite populations in any profession for no better reason than that they are elite, in the sense of representing the best in the field, whose expertise should command respect from the rest of the field. As long as they do not enjoy mandarin-like exemption from scrutiny and accountability, judges appointed and raised on the basis of their jurisprudential expertise (as opposed to their partiality) should be a source of comfort to the man in the street, and so should the fact that their pronouncements are subject to review by more elite judges.

But, to return to the point, that comfort is not afforded when the appointment of judges is effected on the basis of political partiality rather than jurisprudential expertise and integrity, and it is further jeopardised when the removal of judges is accomplished, as in the United States, through the legislature and not through some convocation of elite jurisprudents. At least in that regard the removal of judges in Australia involves consulting with leaders in jurisprudence: one aspect of corruption avoided, not that it much helps Cardinal Pell. I invite you to consider for comparison the process of disbarring a medical practitioner: it is undertaken by a body of expert medical practitioners whose judgement should be entirely independent of the complainant(s) or the pronouncement(s) of lawyers, policemen and/or journalists. It seems to be a better way to me. Corruption remains possible, but it is not inherent in the system. We have to rely on the elites in every system for that system to work, but have a stake in ensuring that they really are elite – the cream of the cream, if you will.

Now that I've probably annoyed some good people, let me blunder on and say that I think that a second source of corruption of legal judgement seems to be the jury system. In the interest of brevity, I forgo explaining my thinking about this particular approach to outsourcing vital aspects of judicial decision-making to laymen, and refer instead to an article by Crispin Hull on the subject of Cardinal Pell's trial: https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-problem-with-the-jury-system-in-australia-20190307-p512iy.html. I'll confine myself to saying that, whereas juries may once have protected the public against abuses, they seem to me to be the source of more abuses than they pre-empt nowadays. I'm inclined to put more faith in elites – genuine elites, not mandarins - than in laymen when it comes to these matters.

I'm sure that there is much more to this conversation, but I'll do all who are kind enough to read this over-long comment the courtesy of leaving it at that, and hope that better minds than mine will weigh in.

Kate Smyth

chickensoup • Sep 22, 2019 at 19:09

It would not have been enough to 'Get Pell' for merely tax evasion or some such. The media, the police and the "justice" system got their man - exactly as planned.

Needless to say, that's not to deny that there's ample evidence of appalling "historical" crimes relating to child sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Church in Australia, as elsewhere.

Kate Smyth

Owen Morgan • Sep 22, 2019 at 19:20

Yes, Gerard Henderson has mentioned the UK connections re the "Paedophile Information Exchange" and attempts at the time to lower the age of consent to 10 years - and below. Astonishing that these "respectable and respected" people debated and promoted this in plain sight, similar to those at the ABC.

FYI, "Boiled Lollies and Bandaids" is an article from the 1980s by a now-prominent Australian academic who argued for "the legal rights of paedophiles and their young loves, and the sexual rights of children as a whole" (G Dowsett).

As Kathy Shaidle says of the Left: "It's different when we do it."

Kate Smyth

Segnes Schonken • Sep 22, 2019 at 19:41

A lot of food for thought here, S, and I hope that better minds (than mine - vs yours) do weigh in.

Mark made the point back in March that "... this case is of interest to me mainly because of what it says about the integrity of justice and its own vulnerability to politicization", and I appreciate the detailed, expert analysis you've presented here (as do other readers, I'm sure).

You might be interested in Chris Merritt's recent legal commentary in The Australian (September 18th) - "A state's system of justice put on trial" - on the latest developments in the Pell case. I'll certainly follow-up on the SMH piece on the jury system. Thanks again!

Segnes Schonken

Kate Smyth • Sep 22, 2019 at 21:54

Million thanks, as ever, K., and thanks for your enduring kindness. I admit to a moment of blind terror. When I read your response, my heart sank to my boots: I thought you'd found somebody who'd made the points through which I had blundered with exemplary precision and brevity, and that I'd be spending sleepless nights gnawing my bottom lip over my awful prose. I read the article and realised that you'd never hurt anyone's feelings so cruelly. Of course you'd recommended Chris Merritt's article as a supplement to the conversation, and it was certainly interesting. I'm delighted that the offending part of the ratio decidendi in question is under challenge, and moreover by a personage of real jurisprudential standing, in the form of Advocate Bret Walker S.C. It's easy to forget in the heat of making a point that the elite of jurisprudence resides not only in the high court judges (in the extent that they are appointed for their expertise in the law rather than their political bent) but also in barristers who have taken the silk and prospered (Queen's councils who are not exceptionally good lawyers do not prosper, because of the enormous cost of retaining one). Well, let's hope that "our" legal elite will mete out a proper plastering to "their" legal elite.

Kate Smyth

Segnes Schonken • Sep 24, 2019 at 22:17

All good! I was only trying to convey that I couldn't presume to "weigh in" (but could recommend a piece).

The SMH article on the (flawed) jury system is very interesting.

Segnes Schonken

Kate Smyth • Sep 26, 2019 at 00:13

Delighted that you enjoyed it, K. Yeah, I'm a neurotic old codger, aren't I? "My eyes are dim, I cannot see, I have not brought my specs with me." Well, best I share the joke on me.

Segnes Schonken

Kate Smyth • Sep 26, 2019 at 20:22

Since it appears that I was unable to excite much discussion other than your useful contribution, K., I should tell you that I did lay out some bait, without success. One item upon which I thought I'd attract rejoinders was my declaration that "At least [...] the removal of judges in Australia involves consulting with leaders in jurisprudence: one aspect of corruption avoided," I'd hoped that you (or someone of your calibre) would point out that this applies only when all the other "elite" jurists are not of like-minded political bent, because if they were, it would not be a case of corruption avoided, but a case of corruption cast in concrete. I agree with that objection, of course, but know too little about legal practice in Australia to say for sure what the reality actually is. (I've seen enough of the law schools not to be optimistic!) I was keen to seize the opportunity to say that nothing is as unprofessional as making it a professional criterion not to criticise anything done, not done, said or not said by somebody else in the profession, and that this is something which I associate with the credo of the apparatchik and may be the reason that professional elites are nowadays regarded with suspicion.

I suspect that my story against myself - the moment of blind terror to which I have admitted - might have discouraged debate, or maybe my ponderous prose was to blame. No matter: I've shared what I'd hoped to discuss. Thanks for bearing with me.

P. Gao • Sep 20, 2019 at 22:59

Spot on regarding the refugees and asylum. Obviously, it's being manipulated for global political power manuvering, because people overwhelmingly want to return home as soon as they can. It's a lot to give up everything, family, ancestors, country. People want peace so they can return to normal lives. Refugee status helps them in another country, and the underlying assumption is that it's temporary. So, the resettling of whole families and villages a world away only makes sense if the persons organizing this expect to gain something big from it.

Journolist

P. Gao • Sep 21, 2019 at 07:07

The Brotherhood press on with their delivery of conscripts to all corners. This has been running for long enough to guarantee a sunni future, on which the sun will set, eventually.

Todd Lewis • Sep 20, 2019 at 21:57

Since this discussion opened with the topic of racism I think it is important to clarify what I believe is the purpose of the leftist obsession with it. I don't think it is about racism at all, especially since those pounding this night and day are the ones, if any, who are patently racist. This attack is on whites in general and white conservatives in particular because they are regarded as attached to concepts of well-established traditional morality, constitutional liberty, and free market economics. Therefore all whites must be totally morally invalidated so these concepts can be destroyed. No moral argument for these positions can be permitted to be made by a white majority and broadly accepted. The racist charge is the vehicle by which the Left seeks to morally invalidate as completely as possible all who would criticize or oppose their agenda. We have no right to speak.

But what about white liberals? They are also assumed to have loose strands of liberty floating around in their DNA and must be prevented from coming to any rational conclusions because of it. White liberals are racists as well and therefore they must be fully subjugated by guilt. Not only are they guilty but they come to assume themselves as morally superior because of their wokeness regarding their guilt. Their guilt becomes an opiate for them in the formula. Racist guilt is the razor wire around the mental concentration camp of the Left to prevent anyone from affirming liberty and morality in opposition to their ideology. No white person or "backslidden" person of color can be permitted to entertain non-leftist rationales about liberty and morality without incurring a vicious attack based on the racist premise. The Left thinks this is their unassailable moral high ground from which they can pour invalidating calumny on all of their opponents. They have no arguments. This is absolutely all that they have.

As a final note, the thing about Christianity is that it clearly states that guilt produces a state of paralysis and death. Humanity cannot function in any productive way based upon guilt. This is not to say that Christianity does not recognize that we are immensely guilty, but rather that there is an absolutely effectual remedy for guilt if applied. This is the fundamental premise of liberty. This is why the "bitter clingers" are so utterly "deplorable". Guilt is bondage in every sense of the word. The Left wants everyone chained and starved in the gulag of guilt. Don't buy any of it.

Journolist

Todd Lewis • Sep 21, 2019 at 07:11

The one feature that is common to both socialists and the Brotherhood are their unsentimental ways. They care not for humanity.

Babs • Sep 20, 2019 at 21:20

A couple of things:
Payless shoes has gone bankrupt so this is no longer a good analogy.
Second: I wonder why you keep teasing us about "hilarious performances" while on the cruise? I thought some of this was recorded and would be offered to us dry landers.

John Francis

Babs • Sep 21, 2019 at 21:02

He's right, Mark. Let's see some clips! Regard it as Marketing for the next cruise, and maybe for the Steyn Club.