General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Breaking - State Attoney MOSBY - Freddie Gray's death was a homicide [View all]Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)Only imbeciles and/or knaves could fail to be familiar with such an elementary law as that distinguishing between the carrying of a flick-knife and a different type of knife, under Maryland law.
This is, after all, their domain - street-level crime; the laws of which they should be familiar with; not white-collar crime, such as fraud, so ambagious as to rely heavily on statistics.
Everyone makes mistakes, everyone makes big mistakes, but God give the prosecutor every assistance, as it seemed imprudent of her to effectively 'cheer-lead the prosecution to the demonstrators (despite having every private and well-founded ground to harbour the underlying sentiments she expressed), thereby giving oxygen to eminent, compulsive attention-seekers, sometimes demonstrating a lamentable lack of a sense of proportion as, imo, Dershowitz has, here.
But then, did he not accept to defend O J Simpson, and contrive to get him off the hook? That surely took an appalling depth of cynicism. 'What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?' It seems to have escaped Dershowitz that the man-made laws of States and nations must be the handmaidens of good governance, not the other way round. What's that they say? To a hammer, everything looks like a nail..? He seems to see everything as grist to his legal mill.
So, it seems to me there are severe limitations on the wisdom that could expected of him. A high degree of worldly, analytical intelligence has hardly been a guarantee of wisdom - still less common sense, so let's hope that wisdom is given very opportunity in the upcoming trial.
The wisdom of his confreres, other professors, could do with some boosting in terms of the public's esteem, not further ridicule. 'Absent-minded professor' can have an all too literal meaning. Given a false assumption, the most pellucid and faultless logic will lead to the madhouse; and sound assumptions are by no means a special prerogative of those with a high analytical intelligence, but tend rather to be the province of the heart, our desire.
Because the factors that contribute to our world-view are so abstruse, atheism is just as much a religion as any Christianity or any other religion properly so-called. And strident, secular fundamentalism is in no wise less foolish than Christian fundamentalism.