www.thornwalker.com/ditch/olson_orwell_kafka.htm

The Olson file
 

Laws by Orwell, trials by Kafka

By DOUGLAS OLSON
 

Maybe I'm just slow, but I had a revelation the other day. Perhaps the more astute among you — or even the dullest — have known this all along, but it was a new realization to me. Hold that thought for a moment.

We're all aware that the current push for "hate crime" laws is simply the implementation of George Orwell's "thought crime" concept — that you will be punished for what you think, instead of anything that you actually do.

In the latest incarnation of "hate crime" legislation now working its way through Congress, our modern Orwellians have tweaked the idea to claim that they will punish you for your thoughts only if they lead to some other crime — providing "enhancements" of the normal sentences for assault, rape, murder, and such because you commit those crimes out of "hate." Thus, they argue, we are not really punishing speech, but actions.

This, of course, is a lie, because they don't really give a damn about assault, rape, murder, and the rest — those are merely convenient excuses to put "haters" out of circulation. That is proven by the incredibly lenient treatment of criminals committing those crimes in recent years in cases where there is no overt racial component, and especially when the criminal is a member of a privileged minority and the victim is an unprivileged white.

In fact, in one recent case, a state court judge has ruled that no actual "hate" need be demonstrated to trigger the state's "enhanced" sentence for a "hate crime." That case involved men who deliberately chose a homosexual as their robbery and assault victim, apparently for no other reason than that they thought he would be an easy target. Although the prosecution could not demonstrate that any of the defendants had ever shown any hatred or antipathy toward homosexuals, the judge nevertheless ordered that they be subject to the stiffer "hate" penalties simply because their victim was queer.

Well, that was obviously the inevitable (and intended) result of creating "protected classes" of people — especially when everyone in the country is now "protected" except white males younger than 40. And that exception is soon to be narrowed by Congress to heterosexual white males younger than 40. If we had the gonads, we could soon short-circuit all of this cr*p by means of every white guy declaring himself to be homosexual, or at least bisexual, and then everyone would be "protected" and on a supposedly level playing field again.
 

Anyway, my revelation was that the very concept of "racial discrimination," enshrined in U.S. law for well over a generation, is actually nothing but a thought crime.

Think about it. It's not the act — refusal to rent to a Negro, refusal to hire a Hispanic, refusal to promote a woman — that is the actual "crime." It's the presumed thought behind the act that Big Brother is punishing. It's your motivation, your refusal to be manipulated by our political masters, your subversion of the master plan to dispossess and denigrate (are we still allowed to use that word?) the white race, your daring to inconvenience a member of a sacred "protected class" in America's classless society — that is what brings down the wrath of Leviathan.

Even worse, when you are sued or prosecuted under these statutes, you move quickly from the Orwellian to the positively Kafkaesque. It is entirely possible that you can be fined or sued into hopeless beggary without anyone ever presenting a shred of actual proof that race, sex, color, religion, or any of the rest of the litany of privilege played any part in your decision.

This all arises from the seldom-mentioned "burden-shifting" tests imposed on such defendants — manipulations that manifestly violate not only the U.S. Constitution but also the basic Anglo-Saxon common law principle that any defendant is innocent until proven guilty. That process places the accused at an outrageous disadvantage that would never be tolerated in any courtroom presided over by an honorable judge — and would certainly, for obvious reasons, be loudly and violently denounced as "racist" in any criminal proceeding against a colored defendant.

All that is necessary for the tables to be turned is for the plaintiff to present a "prima facie" case of discrimination. To do so, he must simply claim that

     (1)  he is a member of a "protected group,"
     (2)  he applied, say, for a job with the defendant, and was qualified for it, and
     (3)  he did not get the position.

Basically, all he needs to do is state: "I'm black, I wanted something, and I didn't get it." The judge — not the jury — decides whether the plaintiff's assertions are sufficient to constitute a legal "inference" of guilt.

If the judge so declares, then the law in its magnanimity allows the accused — at this point presumed guilty without having been allowed to say a word — to defend himself by offering admissible evidence of a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for his action. Don't forget that other laws come into play to support the presumption of guilt — for example, the federal scam that requires employers to make "reasonable accommodation" for such "disabilities" as illiteracy, drug addiction, drunkenness, insanity, criminal convictions, and other conditions far outside the normal physical handicaps that sane people associate with the term "disabilities."

Most demonstrated inabilities to handle a job can be laid to some real or fantasized "disability." Remember the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster? As I recall, the company had tried to dismiss him, but his alcoholic "disability" made it impossible to fire or relieve him of his responsibilities, and also made it virtually inevitable that one day he would cause such a disaster. That Catch-22 cost Exxon billions of dollars in fines and expenses, eventually resulting, of course, in higher oil prices.

Whatever excuse the accused offers, the accuser then has a chance to dispute the legitimacy of that defense. Here is where all the weepy, hand-wringing tales of racism, sexism, age-ism, and other persecution of the "victim" come into play, as well as charges that the defendant promoted (gasp!) whites, or once refused to promote a Negress, or an illegal alien — or, in the near future, a transsexual freak. The judge or the jury, if there is one, is then supposed to administer the coup de grace to the obviously guilty defendant.

The courts have felt confident enough of this legal scam to boast of its hidden motives, including the "important policy objectives of the Civil Rights [note the sacredness of the term] statutes, and the intent of Congress to achieve such objectives through the use of plaintiffs as private attorneys general" (Fogerty, 510 U.S. at 523).

Ironically for a purported "civil rights" law, there is — by design — no equality of treatment for the participants in such a case.

Winning is everything for the plaintiff — he gets the job, back pay, damages, and legal expenses, in addition to rubbing the hated white's man nose in the dirt. Winning is nothing for the defendant — in most cases, he is out tens of thousands of dollars or more, and cannot even claim legal expenses from his failed accuser.

According to the Supreme Court, even summary judgment for the defendant without trial entitles him to nothing unless the judge finds the charges "frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, or that the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so" (Christiansburg, 434 U.S. 412, 421-22 [1978]). And few judges in the United States today are brave enough to deliver such a stinging rebuke to a "protected" minority, no matter how obviously deserved it may be. As a later court summarized the Christiansburg doctrine, "prevailing defendants could be treated less favorably than prevailing plaintiffs."

And that's the essence of today's twisted concept of "equality" in America: Some animals truly are "more equal" than others.

October 15, 2007

© 2007 Douglas Olson.

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