I don't spend much time commenting on daily news because, for the most part, it's a tired manifestation of deeper principles being played out over and over again. There is nothing new under the sun, so I prefer to focus on principles themselves, which give you the tools to understand the various and sundry goings-on in everyday life.
On that score, I'd like to draw attention to the principle of doublethink, or the simultaneous holding of contradictory beliefs. Orwell identified doublethink as an essential feature of totalitarianism because, after all, consistent application of principles is a major hindrance to the arbitrary exercise of power. Doublethink is all around us today because most people no longer have any principles, have lost the ability to engage in abstraction, and have welcomed totalitarian government as a cure-all for the problems they refuse to confront themselves.
Today's example of doublethink concerns race.
At jury selection during trial, an attorney has a small number of "peremptory challenges" allowing him to dismiss a potential juror without giving a reason. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that an attorney may not use a peremptory challenge to dismiss a potential juror solely on the basis of race, the rationale being that it is unjust to assume that the race of a person will influence his decision-making. Now, it makes little sense to continue using the word "peremptory" for something that clearly is not, and it makes even less sense to prohibit an attorney from supposedly harming his own case with blind prejudice -- after all, if the prejudice is wrong, it will be washed out by experience and attorney self-interest. But doublethink intrudes and demands that this charade continue.
Compounding the intellectual corruption is the Voting Rights Act, which mandates the creation of "majority-minority" districts on the assumption that minorities will demonstrate predictable and uniform behavior, i.e., vote for one of their own rather than on pure merit. So the very thing prohibited at trial is demanded at election time, and for the same ostensible reason of guaranteeing minorities' rights. This is doublethink on steroids.
The real reason, of course, is to increase federal power. By crippling the right of litigants to select a jury, and by crippling the right of citizens in each state to organize their own elections, the federal government retains constant discretion and control over us.
Pierce the fog of doublethink and learn to perceive and apply principles with ruthless consistency. Otherwise stated, free your mind and your posterior will follow.
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