What the Heck was I Thinking!?

Bruce McQuain of QandO Blog posts about the response of Karla Holloway, a member of the Duke University faculty, to discredited DA Mike Nifong’s recusal from the so-called “Duke lacrosse rape case:”

“The decision by the university to readmit the students, especially just before a critical judicial decision on the case, is a clear use of corporate power, and a breach, I think, of ethical citizenship,” Karla Holloway, an English professor and former dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, wrote to Duke’s black faculty caucus.

“Despite our judgments about the prosecutor”s own lack of principled conduct, it is not ours to become the judge or subvert the process,” she wrote

Now that’s a demonstration of principled conduct and ethical citizenship! Convict these students not just before the case has been heard, but before a case could be made. The lack of facts associated with this prosecution is breathtaking. The lack of true citizenship by not only Ms. Holloway, but the entire 88 members of the faculty who signed the notorious letter

Source: http://www.qando.net/ - Nifong wants out and Karla Holloway resigns

 Michael Ledeen of Faster Please! writes about the lack of thinking by liberals

The bottom line: it’s all about feeling, never mind knowledge and logic. There is a straight line from “if it feels good, do it” to Boxer’s rant:

“Who pays the price?” Boxer asked Rice. “I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family.

“So who pays the price? The American military and their families.” In other words, in the Senatrix’s view, neither she nor the secretary of state is really entitled to make policy on the war, because neither of them ‘pays the price,’ neither can have the appropriate feelings. Those are limited to soldiers and their loved ones.

The Senator should be careful with this kind of logic. It’s obvious she’s not used to using that tool. Mr. Ledeen shows that that logic can cut away the authoritative underpinnings that many of the left, including some Members of Congress, have claimed.

He (Ledeen) follows with,

The theory that you must have the correct emotions in order to understand a body of knowledge or master a particular subject is a corollary of the doctrine that there is no objective truth (knowledge being no more or less than an instrument of power). Every idea is held to be subjective, and thus—again—emotions and feelings are the most important things. Indeed, for a certain kind of contemporary liberal, they are the only things that matter.

If you believe that, there is obviously no point in studying anything, except to provoke emotional reactions, and you will be unable to distinguish between the validity of conflicting emotions.

Of course, this isn’t the only problem with using emotions to decide on a course of action. Emotions are easily swayed with colorful word choices.

Source: Faster, Please!: Losing Standing