I have spent a lot of time in federal courthouses lately. I read more than my share of court documents, too. The experience has taught me something.
"Presumed innocent until proven guilty" is more than just a fine courtroom theory. It is a good general rule.
Reasonable people do not send money to a "Nigerian prince" who contacts them by email. That would be an unmerited commitment based on no real evidence. Well, the same principle applies with dishing out condemnation or censure. People should not make any unmerited commitments of spite.
You can be a sucker if you assume guilt just as easily as you can be a sucker if you assume good intentions and answer an email scam with money.
The biggest difference in this particular example is whether your assumption ever gets disproved. The email scam will rip you off. You will eventually realize it. You will have to confront what a sucker you were.
When you convince yourself someone is guilty, though, you never really have to admit when you are wrong. As our justice system knows, someone really can never prove his innocence.
Now I would like to shift topics, while staying on the general theme of avoiding being a sucker. Consider some recent events outside of courtrooms.
Those who abandon old friends for new ones lose both. Aesop told a fable about this.
No one gets splashy cable TV news coverage by keeping faith with old friends, though.
Splashing was what last week was all about. Our president talked trash about the Canadian prime minister and insulted other friends. Then he shook Kim Jong-un's bloody hand. He made a splash each time. That was all he wanted. That is all he got.
Canada is still our northern neighbor. Our economies are still intertwined. Europe is still our biggest set of trading partners. And North Korea is still a prison and a protection racket disguised as a country. Now the protection racket has nuclear weapons. It will keep them. Our friends on three continents -- four if you include Australia -- now know they cannot really trust us. I guess they are better off knowing. We are not.
Some flunky said there is a "special place in hell" for the Canadian prime minister. The prime minister always struck me as a nice young man even if he seems a little flaky sometimes. The flunky has apologized since, but that really makes no difference. Damning someone for disagreeing with you and defending his own country is not really something that can be walked back. That is why making a reservation for a special place in hell should only go for actions that are really bad. For example, I would reserve such a spot for a devious thug who messes with our elections. Instead, the president would rather reserve him a seat at the next G-7 meeting.
I rarely watch television anymore, but some years ago I watched a very good miniseries on John Adams, the revolutionary who later became president. One remarkable scene sticks in my mind. Adams is named the first U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. As such, he is brought in to meet King George III. This is a meeting between a monarch and a major author of the successful rebellion against him. Under almost any circumstances of the previous decade, a meeting between those two would have led to Adams' hanging.
The meeting goes well -- extremely well, in fact. At the end, the king notes that Adams is not all that friendly to the French.
"Yes, well, I avow to your majesty that I have no attachment to any country but my own," Adams says.
The visibly impressed king replies, "An honest man will never have any other."
Perhaps we should be less surprised than the president and his courtiers seem to be that the Canadians are as patriotic as we are. So are the Germans, the French, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans -- North and South -- Mexicans and Russians and so on.
In our own country, anyone who kneels during "The Star-Spangled Banner" to protest injustice can still be far more patriotic that one who lines up Old Glory shoulder to shoulder with the North Korean "star and bar" for a publicity stunt.
Commentary on 06/16/2018