Tag: abuse of power

Member Post

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
188
 

Although we are technically animals, there are many attributes that separate us, elevate us above the animal kingdom. We are reasoning creatures; we have the ability to empathize with others; we recognize cruelty when we see it. But over the last several years we have watched one characteristic become resented, even ridiculed and degraded because […]
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Vermeule’s Gleeful Illiberal Legalism

Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
14612
 

Few have been brave enough to flesh out what the Ahmarist, or “anti-Frenchist,” vision of the common good should be. Some have said articulating specifics is beside the point, that Ahmarists’ refreshing achievement is unapologetically asserting a common good exists, even if they decline to say what, exactly, it is. And then, there are guys like Adrian Vermeule, writing in The Atlantic, brave enough, at least, to flesh out a vision of sorts. Vermeule calls it “common-good constitutionalism”, which he describes as “an illiberal legalism that is not ‘conservative’ at all, insofar as standard conservatism is content to play defensively within the procedural rules of the liberal order.” When Vermeule writes,

[U]nlike legal liberalism, common-good constitutionalism does not suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy, because it sees that law is parental, [emphasis added] a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits. Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them—perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires…

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Coronavirus and Human Nature

Kephalithos
Kephalithos
1513
 

For a few weeks, we in the coronavirus-stricken parts of the world have been living under “shelter in place” or “stay at home” orders. The only conceivable purpose of such orders is to keep people from congregating and spreading the disease. But I can leave my house while also avoiding human contact — a truth evidently lost on Italian authorities, who’ve been punishing the criminal scum of their society for engaging in the recklessly dangerous activity of jogging with their dogs; or on the social-media malcontents who believe that carping at their neighbors is 2020’s equivalent of storming the Normandy beaches.

In Britain, police shamed hikers for daring to wander the wilderness in solitude. Do the moorlands have a preexisting condition? Are birds and butterflies at risk of dying from coronavirus-induced respiratory failure? Britain’s own lockdown law allows residents out of their houses for only “one form of exercise” per day. Does combination exercise cause coronavirus to spring up out of nowhere, like maggots spontaneously generating in a hunk of rotting meat? Who cares whether Simon and Bertha spend their entire day camping in the countryside?

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Quote of the Day: Congress Doesn’t Need No Stinking Evidence!

Doug Watt
Doug Watt
86
 

“So what? We can’t get felony approval for anything without finding twenty witnesses, a dozen surveillance cameras, a victim interview, the offender’s mother’s statement AND a confession on video…..and even then, it’s probably going to be a C.I. [Continuing Investigation] until such time as God himself descends from Heaven to declare ‘This [redacted] is GUILTY and has forfeited his eternal reward.'” – Anonymous Chicago Police Officer

The quote comes from a Chicago police officer in a reaction to State’s Attorney Kimmie Foxx recusing herself from the Jussie Smollett case. Unlike the Chicago Police Department Adam Schiff goes on a fishing trip with a backhoe.

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Sexual Predation and Power Structures

SkipSul
SkipSul
3416
 

As the slow tortuous agony of the revelation of sexual predation within the Catholic church unwinds, and the faithful of the Catholic Church mourn every new outrage, there has been an enormous amount of debate over the underlying causes of the abuses, and the nature of the coverups.  For some outside of Catholicism, there has been also a horrible triumphalism, as if the scandals are entirely the fault of Christianity in general, Catholicism in particular, or dogmatic or doctrinal within Catholicism.  I have seen denunciations of priestly celibacy, denunciations of anti-homosexual church teachings (such teachings being blamed for somehow repressing those who chose to go into the priesthood), and even suggestions from non-Catholic Christians that the Reformation has somehow shielded them from similar abuses and scandals.  And yet, as the Houston Chronicle detailed over the weekend, another denomination, the Southern Baptists, is now facing its own horrible unearthing of decades of sexual abuse and protection of known or suspected sexual predators.

I have little doubt that other such investigations will be detailed in the coming years, and for other churches of other denominations.  The fact of the matter is that sexual predation can occur in any power structure, and that who the perpetrators are, on whom they prey, and how they get away with their terror is ultimately a function of the organization, its distribution of power, and the strength of the self-policing within that structure.  For the Catholic Church, this has been strongly (but by no means entirely) a series of cases of the abuse of younger males by older males, but this was mostly due to the environment where mostly males were employed, and mostly only younger males were in vulnerable positions.  For the Southern Baptists, however, the issues seem to be mostly older males preying on younger females instead, because that structure put those two groups together.  More than anything else, this should be pointing to something beyond doctrine or denomination, but instead towards something more fundamental and quite apart from issues of sexuality.

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Medical Doctor Pushes Political Agenda with Patients

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
7527
 

If this story is true, it’s a disgusting abuse of power by a doctor, and worse yet—he’s a Republican. A doctor in Lakeland, FL, apparently makes a practice prior to important elections of promoting Republican candidates. A patient of his, who was receiving injections for chronic pain, described the exchange in this way:

The patient lay on an examination table, semi-clothed and crying, after having just received excruciating injections to help relieve her chronic pain.

At that point, she says, Dr. Tom Porter approached her and asked if she was registered to vote. Though stunned by the unexpected question, she said she was.

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