October 3, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Judge Kavanaugh,
Logic, and the Story of the Boiled Frog
Friends,
I pass on only one article today. It is by my friend Professor
Jack Kerwick. Jack is widely published nationally, including articles and
essays at Townhall.com, American
Greatness, and The Imaginative
Conservative, plus books such as Christianity
and the World and The American
Conservative Offensive, both of which I highly recommend.
Jack is a professor of philosophy and logic, and thus his
thoughtful perspective (which I pass on below) on the Kavanaugh confirmation process
and the recent public hearings and investigation is measured through the lens
of careful and rigorous logical examination.
It is a perspective that has been mostly missing in much of
the swirling and frenetic debate revolving around this unprecedented political
circus, this increasingly revolutionary episode which appears to be an immense
watershed moment defining the widening unbridgeable chasm that separates what
can only be described “two Americas.”
As Jack accurately intimates, too many so-called “conservatives”
who support Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination and his account, have yet to figure
out the brutal nature of the battle—the cultural war—that they (and we) are in.
While they play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules and bend over backwards, blubbering
and apologizing profusely, not to be thought as in any way questioning the “story”
or “credibility” of Christine Blasey Ford, the Senate Judiciary Committee
Democrats—now totally infected and possessed by the screaming virus of virulent
feminist lunacy—leave no stone unturned, no insult unmade, no accusation
unlaunched—no matter how base and filthy, no matter how unsupported, no matter
what real and collateral damage it might do: to Judge Kavanaugh, to his family, and, in effect, to what is left of the creaky American
political process.
The Left and its minions are the real Nazis here—they believe, accurately, in Dr. Goebbels idea of “total
war”—“Totaler Krieg.”
In other words, the Democrats and that contingent of raving
revolutionary feminists who now make up a considerable portion of the
inhabitants of the American nation are, in plain language, going for the
jugular, while most of the establishment GOP slinks off trembling to the “tall
grass” and fears that it might be called “anti-woman” or “sexist” if it were to
pursue the many loose ends and inconsistencies in the Ford testimony, or in the
various other bits of “evidence” or outlandish “accounts.”
Increasingly we live in a nation which has become just a mere
geographical expression in which violently opposed factions stare at each other
with hatred and disdain—a collection or patchwork of people diametrically
different in almost every way. The problem
is while the other side fully
understands the nature of that conflict and will use any method, even the most
evil and the most base, to achieve complete victory (and our extermination), our side too often sits back and
although grumbling and expressing our opposition, does not effectively counter
those revolutionaries.
As Jack points out in his closely-reasoned essay, the first
step towards a realistic understanding of and engaging in this fatal conflict—and
that is what it really is—is to comprehend the language and terminologies used,
and to repossess the English language, and to then restate forcefully the
falsified propositions being employed by the media and our political elites.
The battle we find ourselves in may not be of our making—we may
wish it simply to go away so that we can go back to watching Saturday’s
football game or taking the family to the beach or state fair—we may think we
can’t do very much—but that assumption needs to be rethought.
Whether we like it, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are
in a giant battle for our culture, for our republic, for our families, and, yes,
for our very lives.
That means voting the evil bastards out this November (and in
the future), while supporting effective and real opposition; that means if at
all possible, removing our children from corrupting public schools and sending
them elsewhere (charter, private, religious, home schooling); that means demanding that our elected legislators
commit to effecting real radical reform of our bloated and leftist indoctrinating
public university system; that means working with friends and other families in
local groups and organizations to counter the heretofore very effective loud
voice of the raving minority who dominate the air waves.
In short, we must become involved and active, or we shall find
ourselves…and at the minimum our children…imprisoned, mired in one immense
totalitarian leftist state that will make George Orwell’s dystopia seem like a
veritable Heaven.
Remember the proverbial frog cast into what initially is
lukewarm water, and then the water is gradually heated to the boiling point? By
the time the frog realizes what is happening to him, it is too late…and he is,
as it were, boiled and dead.
That is what has been and is happening to our culture…and to
us. Each of us personally, and for and with our families, must say before God: “No
further; it stops with me here and now. The Reconquest of our culture—of my culture—begins today!”
Read Jack’s column:
Kavanaugh vs. Ford: Two Definitions of 'Credibility'
Jack
Kerwick Posted: Oct 02,
2018 9:04 AM
To hear numerous GOP and GOP-friendly (“conservative”) commentators tell
it, both Christine Ford and Brett Kavanaugh are highly
“credible.” Of course, none of these pundits claim to believe that Ford
was telling the truth when she claimed that she was sexually
assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh. What they claim to believe is
that she was indeed sexually abused—but by someone else.
Aristotle, the Father of Western logic, identified numerous fallacies. One
of these is the fallacy of equivocation. This is the
fallacy of which those of Kavanaugh’s defenders who simultaneously find Ford
“credible” stand convicted.
Equivocation occurs when an arguer slides from one meaning of a term to
another in order to draw the conclusion that he desires. A blatantly
obvious example of the fallacy of equivocation is something like this: “Joe is
a damn good athlete. Therefore, he must be a damn good human being.” Clearly,
“good” means two different things, depending upon whether it is used to
describe an athlete or a person.
Similarly, when Kavanaugh’s Ford-sympathizing defenders assure us that
both Ford and Kavanaugh are “credible,” they are guilty of equivocating upon
the word credible. Judge Kavanaugh is
credible in that he has articulated a preponderance of exculpatory evidence,
i.e. good, coherent reasons vindicating him of the
allegation leveled by Ford. Not only have several dozen people, and several
dozen women, including ex-girlfriends from the years during which Ford claims
he assaulted her, publicly attested to his character. Kavanaugh has presented
calendars that he kept at the time which, along with the fact that no one who
Ford identified as having been present at the party at which the Judge
supposedly attacked her has any recollection of the event, decisively establish
that he could not have done the act of which he is accused.
“Credibility” in the case of
Christine Ford, in contrast, has a dramatically different meaning. The
sex crimes prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, who the Republicans arranged to
question Ford released her findings over the weekend. The facts of which
she reminds the public are crucial.
For starters, Mitchell notes that Ford fails to supply a consistent
account of that which is most fundamental, i.e. the year in
which the event in question is alleged to have occurred. Repeat this to yourselves:
A woman who claims to have been traumatized by someone who sexually attacked
her can’t even recollect the year—and, thus, her age—when it transpired.
Mitchell supplies some other insightful observations. Ford doesn’t
remember how she got to and from the party where the event is alleged to have
happened, nor does she recall any other details of the night “that could help
corroborate her account.” Such details include the house in
which she insists the assault occurred and the location of
the house. Mitchell mentions the fact that when Ford shared with her
husband that she had been sexually assaulted, she “changed her description of
the incident to become less specific.”
She also points out that Ford “struggled to identify Judge Kavanaugh as the
assailant by name.” What Mitchell seems to mean by this is that it evidently
took Ford over 30 years before
she mentioned to anyone that it was Brett Kavanaugh who supposedly assaulted
her. Furthermore, she was married for over ten years before she told her
husband that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her.
Mitchell’s conclusion is as powerful as it is inescapable: “The activities
of congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford’s attorneys likely affected her
account.”
Although the sex crimes prosecutor’s findings exonerate Judge Kavanaugh
while exposing Ford for the untruthful person that she is, any remotely honest
person who had been paying any attention to this national disgrace of a Senate
confirmation hearing knew long before Rachel Mitchell came to D.C. that Ford’s
story is most incredible.
Ford’s witnesses—every single one of them—either refute her story
directly or, insofar as they deny that they have any recollection of the events
that she recounts, indirectly. And at least one of these witnesses is a
person with whom she’s be close friends for most of her life.
Initially, Ford claimed that it was four teenage boys that had her alone
in a bedroom (of a mystery house whose location and owners she can’t recall).
This, she said, happened to her when she was in her later teenage
years sometime in the mid-1980s. Subsequently, though, Ford
changed her story. The remake takes place in the early 1980s
when Ford is a younger teenager and is trapped with
only two boys.
Ford initially said that she didn’t want to fly from her home on the west
coast to Washington D.C. to testify before the Senate because she had a fear of
flying. However, this “fear” never stopped her from flying to many vacation
spots.
There are still more reasons that put the lie to Ford’s account:
(1) Ford is a woman of the left;
(2) She refused to allow the Senate Judiciary Committee to see her
therapist’s notes concerning the sexual assault that she allegedly suffered at
the hands of Kavanaugh;
(3) Ford never uttered a peep about this incident until this past July,
nearly four decades after Brett Kavanaugh entered public life and long after he
became a visible and influential public figure;
(4) She says that she wished to remain anonymous, and yet Ford had been
speaking to the virulently anti-Trump, leftist Washington Post;
(5) Ford says that she always desired anonymity, and yet months
before anyone learned of her name, Ford had her entire social media
history, her entire internet presence, eradicated—a feat for the accomplishment
of which she would have surely needed help.
Yet despite all of the foregoing considerations, many of Kavanaugh’s
Ford-sympathizing defenders maintain that Ford is…credible. What in the
world could they mean?
Assuming that they aren’t just virtue-signaling, such Kavanaugh supporters
could only mean that Ford strikes them as sincere. Period.
Since there is quite literally zero evidence to substantiate her charges,
and considerable evidence that militates against it, it can’t be the case that
these Kavanaugh defenders find Ford’s testimony defensible—for it
most certainly is not anything of the kind. And precisely because of the
numerous inconsistencies and gaps in Ford’s account, it can’t be the case that
they think that her account is credible even in the sense of being plausible,
for it is most implausible.
That leaves only sincerity. Christine Ford is “credible,” then, because
she sounded like she really believed what she was saying.
However, when it is remembered that actors, the self-delusional, the
insane, the wildly irrational, and good liars sound like they too really believe the nonsense that flies from
their mouths, it should be that much clearer that “credibility” has a very different
meaning in the case of Christine Ford than it has when used in connection with
Brett Kavanaugh.
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