Ann Coulter draws some good lessons from the Duke Lacrosse team fiasco and along the way remarks upon our peculiar reticence to condemn certain behaviors as stupid and/or immoral. Here's an excerpt:
Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!
But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.
Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar -- whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as "judgmental," I'm not sure most people do recognize that anymore.
It shouldn't be necessary to point out that girls shouldn't be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn't be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.
Read the whole thing. She's right on target.
We might add the observation that as a society we've become conditioned to dread being called "judgmental," and as a consequence we're loath to make moral judgments. We've become so accustomed to hearing the refrain that we shouldn't impose our morality on others that we shrink from asserting that hiring a stripper, or being one, is morally wrong.
The fact of the matter is that "being judgmental" is merely making moral judgments without a proper consideration of all the relevant facts. Of course we shouldn't do that, but it doesn't follow that we should not, therefore, make moral judgments at all. Moreover, the person who takes us to task for being "judgmental" when we make a moral judgment is a hypocrite. By making a judgment about our behavior he's doing exactly what he criticizes in us.
Besides, the idea that we shouldn't impose our morality on others is itself a moral notion. It has force only if one believes that moral right and wrong actually exist, but there can only be moral right and wrong if there exists a transcendent moral law-giver. If there is no such moral law-giver then whatever I do is neither right nor wrong. Thus, whatever I have the power and the desire to do, I may do. That includes imposing my morality on others. I am obligated to respect the "rights" of others only by God. Nothing else can obligate me in any moral sense.
Moreover, the person who says that you shouldn't impose your morality on others is, of course, doing himself exactly what he reproaches you for doing. He's trying to foist upon you his sense of what is right and what is wrong, but he's too dull to see his own hypocrisy.
At any rate, as Ann Coulter suggests, whatever happened at that house in Durham, none of it was good, and a lot of it was morally debased. All concerned should feel deeply ashamed of themselves.