{"id":2880,"date":"2002-09-09T14:27:09","date_gmt":"2002-09-09T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=278"},"modified":"2002-09-09T14:27:09","modified_gmt":"2002-09-09T14:27:09","slug":"they%c2%92re-gonna-come-knocking-in-the-middle-of-the-night%c2%85and-take-away-my-aclu-card-for-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2880","title":{"rendered":"THEY\u0092RE GONNA COME KNOCKING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT\u0085AND TAKE AWAY MY ACLU CARD FOR THIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scanning the blogs at lunch, I came across Jeff Cooper\u0092s link<\/a> to Jeanne d\u0092Arc\u0092s<\/a> post about the Manhattan \u0091wilding\u0092 arrests, and the news that a recent confession and DNA testing are set to exonerate the youths convicted back in 1989.
\nJeff\u0092s reaction is cautionary:<\/p>\n

The large quantity of cases reversed by DNA evidence over the past several years ought to give us pause as the government seeks broad new investigative and prosecutorial powers as part of the war on terror. Much as I admire prosecutors (full disclosure: my wife was a deputy prosecutor in Indianapolis for five years), there is a tendency\u0097not invariable, but nevertheless real\u0097on the part of police and prosecutors to sink their teeth into particular suspects and hold on regardless of contrary evidence. Why should we be confident that prosecutorial abuses would be less of a problem in secret or military courts with secret evidence than they are in the public trials that produced verdicts that we now know were erroneous?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Jeanne\u0092s is more\u0085I\u0092m looking for a word\u0085self-satisfied:<\/p>\n

A lot of people say that September 11 changed everything, which is nonsense, of course, but it changed a lot of things, among them Americans’ willingness to set aside the Constitution and launch wars that no one can explain. Some stories change the way we view the world, and the story of the Central Park jogger was one of those. It emboldened people who were already filled with hate, and made those of us who weren’t a little more defensive. I, for one, grew more embarrassed by people like Al Sharpton, who seemed to cry racism at every turn. (It should be noted now — for whatever it’s worth — that one of the few people to stand up for the Central Park “rapists” was Al Sharpton). I became less likely to wonder if racism lay behind an arrest. I assumed the boys were guilty. And I became more likely to assume that if a nagging suspicion that something was wrong tugged at me, I was simply guilty of having an embarrassing “bleeding heart.”
\nThe revised story wasn’t widely covered. It won’t have an emotional impact on as many people as the original story had. It probably won’t change anything big.
\nBut it will make me trust my bleeding heart again. And nobody’s going to make me feel embarrassed or defensive about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My reaction is actually surprisingly different. I\u0092m thrilled. And excited. And proud. I feel bad for the youths wrongly convicted (although my bad feelings are somewhat offset by the admitted fact that they had been wilding\u0085randomly assaulting innocent people in the park\u0085). I\u0092m bothered by the fact that poor kids of color get worse legal representation than rich white guys like Skakel<\/a>.
\nBut none of this changes the fact that I\u0092m proud because we live in a society where we are willing to face up to and admit our mistakes<\/u>. To correct them where possible. No politically connected prosecutor was able to bury the confession or prevent the DNA testing that ultimately appears to have exonerated them. I\u0092m thrilled that we have been able to take the fruits of our technology and apply them, fairly and objectively to support the interests of people who would normally be beneath consideration. I\u0092m excited because I believe that these tools\u0085the technology and the open legal system\u0085that are the product of this society will be used in the future to prevent bad things from happening\u0085like convicting the wrong people of horrible crimes.
\nI\u0092m interested in why our three reactions are so disparate, and it cuts to one of my significant core issues, the alienation of many of us from our society and the overt disgust with all the instruments of government. In other words, the collapse of legitimacy.
\nI\u0092m interested in why it is, when we correct the injustices of the past, and devise tools to ensure that it will be difficult to make the same mistakes again, we are dwelling on the \u0093Oh, no, we were so bad\u0094<\/I> rather than the \u0093we\u0092re getting better\u0094<\/I>. See, I think that real liberalism\u0085the kind that builds schools and water systems and improves people’s lives\u0085comes from a belief in progress.
\nWe aren\u0092t perfect. No one is or ever will be\u0085to quote William Goldman, \u0093Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something.\u0094<\/i> But we can either keep trying to get there or sit on the floor dwelling on our shortcomings. Which one would you rather do, and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scanning the blogs at lunch, I came across Jeff Cooper\u0092s link to Jeanne d\u0092Arc\u0092s post about the Manhattan \u0091wilding\u0092 arrests, and the news that a recent confession and DNA testing are set to exonerate the youths convicted back in 1989. Jeff\u0092s reaction is cautionary: The large quantity of cases reversed by DNA evidence over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}