Letter to DOJ Re Junk Science in Start by Believing Programs

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

I just received an email from Ed Bartlett of SAVE that says that although the overall movement to restore due process on campus continues to gain support, one aspect appears to be actually getting worse:  Campus and criminal investigations are increasingly based on guilt-presuming “believe the victim” and “trauma-informed” concepts. Each year, literally thousands of law enforcement and campus Title IX personnel have participated in sessions where they are told to repeat, in sing-song manner, “Start By Believing.” This has continued since 2016.

I am deeply concerned about this lack of concern for due process and advocacy of fascistic investigative process, apparently based on junk social science. 

Bartlett says that the U.S. Department of Justice has spent millions of dollars to promote such “victim-centered” approaches, including a national start-by-believing campaign;  a law enforcement training program "Approaching Your Work with a Trauma Informed Lens"; and an Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Report,  “Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence: A Roundtable Discussion.”

On May 29, the DOJ will be sponsoring a program on such “victim-centered” approaches titled, “Law Enforcement Response: Approaching Your Work with a Trauma-Informed Lens.”

Bartlett suggests that it's hard to imagine a more direct assault on the presumption of innocence and the impartiality and integrity of the investigative process than these programs.

It is time to bring the three-ring, junk-science circus at DOJ to an end. I am copying the president on this.

Sincerely,

Mitchell B. Langbert, Ph.D.

John Galt on the RINO Response to the Pro Antifa Media

In the course of John Galt's climactic speech in Atlas Shrugged, he spends a paragraph on what today is recognizable as RINO cowardice in response to America's extremist, pro-Antifa, fake-news media, starting with the New York Times. We are witnessing this most recently vis-a-vis the Stephen Moore nomination:

You, who are half-rational, half-coward, have been playing a con game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself.  When men reduce their virtues to approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels--and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously compromising evil.  As you surrendered to the mystics of muscle [leftists] when they told you that ignorance consists of claiming knowledge, so now you surrender to them when they shriek that immorality consists of pronouncing moral judgment. When  they yell that it is selfish to be certain that you are right, you hasten to assure the that you're certain of nothing.  When they shout that it's immoral to stand on your convictions, you assure them that you have no convictions whatever. When the thugs of Europe's People's States snarl that you are guilty of intolerance because you don't treat your desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion--you cringe and hasten to assure them that you are not intolerant of any horror.  When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at you:  How dare you be rich--you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you'll give it all away.

Letter to Senator Grahm Re Moore Nomination

Dear Senator Graham:

I noticed your comments about Stephen Moore.  I appreciate the importance of shallow grandstanding in politics, but you might consider the one-sided bias of the media in "outing" conservative Republicans and protecting leftists.  Saying that Moore's nomination is "problematic" does much to empower Antifa and its media mouthpieces like the New York Times.

Sincerely,

Professor Mitchell Langbert

Ayn Rand on the Fake Media

I have been rereading Atlas Shrugged, and I have reached the chapter, "This is John Galt Speaking,"  in which John Galt makes his grand speech.  I noticed a passage on page 916 of the Signet edition, a few pages before the speech, that describes the media in the Atlas Shrugged world right after Hank Rearden disappears.  The description sounds like the media in today's America.  As a child Rand had lived under Soviet totalitarianism, and the media in today's America likely has much in common with the USSR's media, which is likely the model for this description:

It was strange, she thought, to obtain news by means of nothing but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished, and only the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue to the reality they were denying.  'It is not true that the Miller Steel Foundry of New Jersey has gone out of business.'  'It is not true that the Jansen Motor Company of Michigan has closed its doors. 'It is a vicious, anti-social lie that the manufacturers of steel products are collapsing under the threat of a steel shortage.  There is no reason to expect a steel shortage.' 'It is a slanderous, unfounded rumor that a Steel Unification Plan had been in the making and that it had been favored by Mr. Orren Boyle.  Mr. Boyle's attorney has issued an emphatic denial and has assured the press that Mr. Boyle is now vehemently opposed to any such plan.  Mr. Boyle, at the moment is suffering from a nervous breakdown.'  But some news could be witnessed in the streets of New York...