Wednesday, October 3, 2018


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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