Water Cooler 9/21/18 Open Thread – Falling, Innocent until Proven Guilty, Bearing False Witness, Does Truth Win?

Hello RedStaters, and…

Thank God it’s Friday!  Every day is a gift, but hey, no harm in using Friday as a special excuse to thank the one who made and sustains us.  Welcome to Friday’s “Water Cooler”, RedState’s daily opportunity to sound off without writing a diary or commenting “on topic” to a diary written by someone else.

Falling

Speaking of gifts from God, Autumn is way up on the list.  It was one of the original inspirations for the phrase “the best things in life are free”.  At least in the temperate zones.  Cool or brisk weather, fall colors, leaf burning, pumpkins (not pumpkin spice almond milk lattes though).  The wonders that we get from God’s clever 23.5 degree tilt of the Earth.  Bravo!

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10454469/seasons.gif

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

The concept of being innocent until proven guilty has been on my mind this week.  Hmm.  Not sure why.  Maybe it will come to me.

It’s almost like a protection against having your whole life ruined because there are people who don’t mind ruining your life to get something that they want.  And oh yes, there are people who will knowingly lie, knowing the horrible consequences that the successful lie would place on other person(s).  Oh well, sucks to be you!

I didn’t always believe that people could do this.  Until my wife and I spent 7 years of our lives and 6 figures fighting a legal attack designed to ruin us and profit the attackers.  It is actually what drove us to Christ.  The main plot and subplots were bad enough, but they were compounded by the gaslighting effect that came with it.  Nobody would knowingly falsely accuse and attack people in this way, right?  Turns out there are people who will.  Thankfully in this case legal justice prevailed over and over, culminating at the California Supreme Court, with confirmation of the victories in the lower courts.

The whole experience is a pivotal part of my testimony, and was impossible to reconcile with my earlier agnosticism/atheism.  I had watched God protect us and do the impossible.  I could not ignore or deny him.  Have you had this moment?  Are you yet to have this moment?

Legal Grounds for Presumed Innocence in America

Where do Americans get their status as “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”?  The language construct does not appear in our Constitution, though the 5th and 6th Amendments lay the groundwork, respectively:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.  [emphasis added]

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Given what my family has been through, and watching the mob lynching that is masquerading as a Supreme Justice Confirmation, I recommend we hang on to this principle.  The mob that could crush Brett Kavanaugh could be coming your way next.

Bearing False Witness

And by the way, the problem of false accusations is so fundamental that it is addressed not only in the law, it’s addressed in The Law, as in part of the 10 Commandments.  Here, the ninth commandment, as presented by Dennis Prager and PragerU:

This video is a great look at False Witness.  Worth the five minutes, but here are a few gems:

• the biblical penalty for bearing false witness starting at 0:53
• the importance of truth at 1:53
• concept of people lying on behalf of a “good” cause (might this apply in the Kavanaugh experience?) at 3:41

If, hypothetically, Christine Blasey Ford is bearing false witness against Brett Kavanaugh, what should the penalty be?  How about Diane Feinstein knowingly peddling such?  Peter Strzok lying about the Trump activities?

Does Truth Win?

We live in a time where three trends increasingly collide in spectacular fashion:

• Regard for truth is waning, but
• Privacy is decreasing, but
• Better technology for liars
  • Long ago a photo was true
  • Yesterday a photo could be faked
  • Today technology exists to spoof your voice onto an impostors script, such as verbal instructions to your bank.  Or your boss, Or your wife or kids.
  • Tomorrow technology will use real records of you and a description of the desired scenario to create video that shows (proves) you doing something you did not do.  This will be the case you are thankful for the video that captured you where you really were.

Sometimes the technology wins one for truth: a sadistic rapist caught by a relative using ancestry.com

Closing

May God keep and bless you this week and always.  Please pray for our nation and our leaders.  If we RedStaters got everything we wanted politically our nation would still not work apart from a return to God and truth.  We are human, we don’t have all the data, we don’t have all the wisdom, and we don’t have all the scruples needed to create Utopia.  Don’t believe me?  How about John Adams:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Only God has the big picture, has wisdom, has each of our best interests at heart, and never fails.  Let’s go to him in humility and do it his way.

Mike

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