At the very last minute of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Democrats pulled a vague sexual assault allegation against then-seventeen-year-old Brett Kavanaugh out of their hat. Regardless of the truth or falsehood of the accusation, how should it impact the process? It shouldn’t.
Innocent until Proven Guilty
The presumption of innocence is wisdom encoded into our legal system, dating back to ancient Rome. The world recognizes it as such a universally good principle that even the U.N. has enshrined it in article eleven of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, the reason often escapes people. Many believe that it is about not putting an innocent man in jail. That’s only part of it. Equally important is the recognition that government power can easily be abused by nefarious persons for achieving political or corrupt goals.
Consequently, in any governmental process that respects the rule of law, such as the Supreme Court appointment, presumption of innocence means that unproven or unprovable allegations must be ignored and have no bearing on the confirmation process.
By doing this, false accusations can never be politically weaponized. In the case of Kavanaugh, the allegations were known by the FBI, the White House, and all those involved in the hearing process. It was rightly ignored as irrelevant due to its unprovable character.
No Adolescent on the Supreme Court
We can all probably agree on one thing: No seventeen-year-old, regardless of what he or she has or hasn’t done, should ever be appointed to the Supreme Court. Why? Teenagers are not fully formed adults. They are not responsible for their actions to the same degree as their adult selves, nor do they have the knowledge or wisdom required to take on such a responsibility.
Consequently, what someone does as a teenager should have no bearing on the Supreme Court confirmation, except in extreme situations that reflect immutable defects of character.
Regardless of what Kavanaugh did or didn’t do as a teenager, his public adult record of behavior is impeccable. If he had relevant personality flaws, they would have been revealed in that time.
Brett Kavanaugh
Democrats Revealed
What this allegation against Kavanaugh reveals, however, is several moral and philosophical flaws in the Democrats.
First, they reject the ancient wisdom of the presumption of innocence. They show that they have no respect for the rule of law, and that they desire to rule by fiat.
Second, these progressives claim that a person’s character is so plastic that even such biologically rooted traits as gender are “social constructs” that can be changed overnight, and yet they claim that the alleged actions of an adolescent are so defining and immutable that it cannot be undone and that the person cannot change in 36 years.
We will never know if the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh are true, but we can know for sure that the Democrats are doing everything they can to undo the rule of law in pursuit of power.
