What nobody remembers about KU football and sexual assault

Lot of people rightfully angry about this today:

The University of Kansas has concluded a former KU football player accused of sexually assaulting two former KU women’s rowers had “non-consensual sex” with one and violated the school’s sexual harassment policy in the case of the other.

Folks are rightly pointing out there's a name for "non-consensual sex" — I can only imagine KU didn't use it because that name is a legal term, and it reached its findings in a setting outside the legal system.

As the controversy has gone on about two KU athletes who say they were sexually assaulted by a football player, I've been frustrated that nobody seems to remember that we've been through all of this before. Back in 2000....

A Kansas University soccer player says KU football coach Terry Allen discouraged her from pressing sexual battery charges against two of his players. 

She didn't immediately go to police about the February incident, she said, because Allen promised he would punish the players in an "appropriate way" if the woman didn't press charges.

The "appropriate" punishment? Allen made the players run stairs at the stadium.

There was much chest-beating and a few public tears by KU Athletics when this came out. There was even a blue-ribbon panel that set out how KU Athletics should respond to similar complaints in the future. And I'm guessing that the panel's report was promptly shelved.

Yes, this is 16 years ago — today's student-athletes were toddlers at the time. But KU is pretty good about preserving the institutional memory of things it really cares about. That this incident is so thoroughly forgotten would suggest the issue isn't one of them.

This is the first and only time this sentence has ever been written about Donald Trump.

"He doesn’t have that kind of hubris, thank God."

Donald Trump is going to North Philly today.

This will almost certainly end in tears and a lot of shouting. And that's what everybody, on both sides of the issue, wants. Donald gets to play "law and order" in front of a hostile crowd; the hostile crowd gets to show its hostility to a racist blowhard. Politics always feels like kabuki, but today more than most.

Heather Mac Donald is a hack.

Over at City Journal, Mac Donald starts out:

One of the most revealing contradictions of left-wing ideology is the determination of liberals to bring as many Third World “immigrants of color” as possible into the U.S., where, if those same liberals are to be believed, they will face bigotry of appalling proportions.

And she keeps going from there. It's a strawman piece of epic proportions.

Why? Because it's possible for a reasonably intelligent person to hold these two thoughts in their head at the same time:

• America offers more freedom and opportunity than many countries, including the countries where immigrants come from.

• America nonetheless is not yet perfect, and has improvements to make in offering freedom and opportunity to all who seek it — particularly people of color.

All it takes is just a touch of nuanced thinking and the desire not to mischaracterize your opponent. Mac Donald apparently lacks the desire or ability to do so. She seems smart, so I'm guessing she just doesn't care enough. And that makes her a hack.

Why I'm Leaving Twitter. (I Think)

Last night, I deactivated my Twitter account.

I’ve done this a couple of times in the past when I wanted to dim the noise of social media that was flooding my brain, but I think this time it’s permanent. I’m not sure. The rush of constantly updated stuff — Information? Gossip? Debate? — has appeal to a guy like me. It’s possible, in fact, that I’m an addict.

Which is reason enough to pull away: I’ve spent too many evenings dicking around, flipping from Twitter’s stream to Facebook’s stream back to Twitter’s stream — all while a book sat just a few inches away from me, begging to be read.

Lest this come off as a “It’s not you, it’s me,” breakup letter, let me be clear: The problem isn’t just me — it’s also Twitter.

Trump, Second Amendment, Revolution: Continued

Sometimes this happens: You write a post, publish it, shut the computer down, eat lunch, and realize there's a shorter, better way of saying it.

Let's boil it down:

• Donald Trump's "Second Amendment People" comment seemed to suggest that Hillary Clinton could be assassinated if she appointed judges disliked by Second Amendment advocates.

• My friends Ben and Julie responded by saying that's not necessarily what he meant, but that the right of rebellion is enshrined in the Second Amendment, so whatever.

• And what I was trying to say is: "Who wants your rebellion?"

Here's the thing to consider: We Americans have a rosy, Star Wars view of revolution — good guys versus bad guys, no moral ambiguities to make you feel icky, no weighing of interests to be done. The real world, even our own revolution, didn't work out that way. Lots of perfectly nice, morally upright people were happy to be subjects of the British Empire!

So if the "sovereign people" decided to take arms against Hillary Clinton because she appointed judges deemed likely to curb Second Amendment freedoms a bit, the truth is that they'd be also taking arms against a "sovereign people" who ... voted for Hillary and were perfectly happy to have her appoint those judges.

If Trump's revolution comes, it's not going to be Heroic Defenders of Freedom versus the Evil Tyrant Government. It's going to be some of us versus some of the rest of us. And that's one reason Trump's comment was so annoying and scary to many of us: We understand you Second Amendment folks claim a "right of rebellion" against tyrannical governments. A lot of us, though, will be happy with that government — and not at all happy with the violence you unleash to get your way.

We don't want your rebellion. Not even in musing, dorm-room, theoretical, purely hypothetical fashion.

The right of rebellion is the right to set brother against brother, family against family, neighbor against neighbor. There may be times when it is needed. But the devastation such an event would unleash on society shouldn't be underestimated.

Trump's "Second Amendment People": So You Say You Want a Revolution?

My conservative co-writer Ben Boychuk and our mutual conservative friend Julie Ponzi take turns this week trying to defend — or explain — Donald Trump's discussion of how "Second Amendment People" might try to undo the horrors of a Hillary Clinton presidency. (Yeah, that was several scandals ago, but sometimes these things are worth extended pondering.)

First up, Ben:

Hewitt asked Trump if he intended to incite violence against Clinton. “No, of course not, and people know that,” Trump replied. “We’re talking about the power of the voter. We’re talking about the tremendous power, and you understand this probably better than anybody, the power behind the Second Amendment, the strength behind the Second Amendment.” 

That’s pretty deft. In the United States, with the exception of an unpleasant period between 1861 and 1865, we settle our political differences with ballots, not bullets. But the Second Amendment is a lot like the nuclear deterrent the Republican national security establishment worries that Trump doesn’t understand. Judging from his comments on the radio, Trump understands deterrence very well.

Julie expands:

People argued he was trying to incite violence in the first case and that he was an intemperate madman in the second. But in both cases, people ended up having to rethink the fundamental question of purposes. That is to say: Why do we have a Second Amendment? What important public good is served by respecting an armed citizenry? And why does the United States have nuclear weapons? What purpose do we facilitate by maintaining a nuclear arsenal? 

We have a Second Amendment because, as a sovereign people, we reserve unto ourselves the right to stop tyranny. We are, after all, a nation founded in Revolution. We set things up so that we might always prevent tyranny with ballots because we understood that perpetual and persistent revolution (aka, direct democracy) is just another road to tyranny. So we put a lot of restraints on our ability to exercise that right of revolution.

First, let's be excruciatingly fair: Donald says he didn't mean to threaten Hillary with violence, but with the ballot power of NRA folks. That's not how a lot of people heard it initially. But: In the interest of fairness, let's call the ultimate purpose of his comments unknowable. That's still problematic — people shouldn't have to ponder or argue if one presidential candidate was trying to threaten another — but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and focus instead on what Ben and Julie say.

(Looks.)

Well, yeah. This is what we thought he was saying. This is what we were worried about.

What Ben and Julie seem to concede that, yes, Donald Trump was really talking about killing Hillary Clinton if she appoints the wrong judges — but not really, but also that's really what the Second Amendment is for, right? Like Trump, they're trying to have it both ways. We're not saying Hillary should be killed. We're saying the Second Amendment is for killing tyrants. Is Hillary a tyrant? (Whistles softly and ambiguously down the street.)

So let's be clear and deliver the proper response to this silly Second Amendment utopianism: Guns can be used to defend against tyrants. They can also be used to undermine and destroy legitimate governments that have popular support. Guns can crush rights just as surely as guns can defend them. The same goes for threats — subtle and not-so-subtle — made with guns used as backing, i.e.: The deterrence that Ben and Julie support.

In Hillary's case, Donald was envisioning a scenario in which: A) Hillary had won the election and B) was trying to appoint judges, in which case she'd need the cooperation of the Senate. (And because of B, would probably need some cooperation from Republicans, even if they lose the Senate, because that's how things work nowadays.) Ultimately, what Donald is suggesting is that the desires of "Second Amendment People" should undo a government elected by popular will, held in check by senators who are also accountable to voters.

Is that what the Founders really meant? I'm deeply skeptical that "Hillary appoints judges disliked by the NRA" sets the bar high enough to justify armed revolution. My friends, who believe that undermining the Second Amendment would be an assault on the Constitution, have a different sense of where that bar should be set.

But yeah: Donald Trump was suggesting — never mind his backtracking — that election results can be undone with a gun. Ben and Julie endorse that notion in broad strokes, just not necessarily specifically in this case. Makes little matter. "Deterrence" is just a nice way of saying: "That's a nice candidate for president you have there. Be a shame if something happened to her." There's no amount of Founder-loving philosophizing that can dress it up.