Due Process Is A Foundation of Western Law

Do you believe that even accused murderers should have due process?  Do you believe in the legal presumption of "innocent until proven guilty"?  I certainly do.  And even in those instances where our legal system lets the guilty go free, I've always been of the mind that I'd rather a hundred guilty people go free than to deprive one innocent person of his/her freedom.

That isn't a belief that comes naturally, I was taught that belief.  In school.  Because that's what Americans used to believe, and school was one place where societal values were transmitted to the next generation.

It's not that way anymore.  Perhaps too many people think that our system of laws is natural, that they can (be cool and) rebel against it knowing that it will always be there to protect them.  This is not the case.  The rest of the world is evidence enough that our legal system is not the natural order of things.  Force is the natural order of things.

That introduction brings me to lefties and their current view of rapists--in their eyes, every man is a potential rapist, and any man accused of rape is a priori guilty.  Not only is he guilty, but because he's guilty he's not allowed to prove his innocence.  If you think I'm exaggerating, you're not very familiar with the Star Chambers instituted on American campuses in part because of the Obama Administration Department of Education's "Dear Colleague" letter.

Hopefully the current administration will restore some sanity to what is clearly an un-American nightmare:

A good way to tell if the Left currently believes one of their beloved policies will disappear is how viciously they write about the potential change. In this case, they’re trying to smear people who believe those accused of heinous crimes should be able to defend themselves as somehow supporting the heinous crime. That is where we are in society.

On college campuses, students (mostly male, but sometimes female) can be accused of sexual assault and receive no effective due process, no promise of a fair trial in which they are allowed to defend themselves and present evidence to exonerate themselves. This is a basic tenet of a just society. Yet activists who support these policies insist America’s college campuses are more dangerous than war-torn countries in Africa regarding rape and sexual assault. They say this issue is so pervasive, we need to cut down on constitutional protections for those accused of these terrible crimes when the accusation happens on a college campus, because they’re most definitely guilty.

Due process is a foundation of our legal system.  No one will like the results if we toss it aside, especially for partisan political purposes.

No, lefties, I'm not "pro-rape" just because I support due process.  I'm not "pro-rape" just because I don't believe in your characterization of "rape culture".  I'm not "pro-rape" just because I don't believe your fatuous "20% of women will be raped in college" claim.  In fact, I'm so not pro-rape that I want rape accusations dealt with by laws and courts, not by university administrators.  Rapists should be locked up, not expelled--as should those who falsely accuse others of rape.  And I want those who falsely accuse others of rape to have due process as well.

The views I hold used to be such universal beliefs that no American would twice about them.  That they're under such assault, and by other Americans, shows how far we as a society have fallen.