The salient thing about J. Christian Adams‘s accusation that the Obama administration deliberately let off the New Black Panther Party after it engaged in voter intimidation is that, if true, it constitutes a pure exercise in the abuse of power. The other wrongs it represents — the perversion of the electoral process, the violation of civil rights — are secondary. The most serious allegation in the whole affair is that the certain officials countenanced a crime because they wanted to. The most concentrated expression of tyranny is malice in the service of caprice.
Adams was a Department of Justice lawyer who resigned in disgust after “we were ordered to dismiss the case. I mean we were told drop the charges against the New Black Panther Party. It’s the easiest case I ever had at the Justice Department. It doesn’t get any easier than this. If this doesn’t constitute voter intimidation, nothing will. .. ”
Like the recently concluded Robert Wone case — in which three gay men were acquitted of the murder of a man in their apartment — the New Black Panther incident pits a politically powerful minority against ordinary victims. The public is asked to understand the situation from the perspective of the underdog. What does it matter if men in New Black Party uniforms paced across a voting precinct? They’re just evening the score. Or so we are told. But in situations where the world’s largest midget fights the world’s smallest giant the “correct narrative” is no longer so obvious; just who is bigger is no longer clear and the system by rights should fall back on the law itself and ask itself “who really violated the law.”
But the habits of political correctness are so ingrained that even this logical parachute fails to open. In the Wone case, even when the judge is inclined to find the stories of the three defendants preposterous, the word “guilty” can hardly be pronounced. The Washington Post reports that Judge “Leibovitz said she believed that the three defendants know who killed Wone, but that the prosecution failed to prove that they did. It came down to the reasonable doubt standard, she said.” The Wone case is singular for the questions that were not asked and the media coverage that never materialized. The Washington Post question and answer gives a flavor of what was left off the books.
I want to raise a bit of an uncomfortable topic. In the early stages of the investigation, the media reported that human semen (perhaps his own) was found on the body of Mr. Wone. I did not read anything about it once the trial started. Were the reports accurate? If so, was it raised at the trial, and what were the conclusions? …
Keith Alexander: It is indeed a delicate question but a question I have been getting from readers via email and letters for weeks now. Yes, when the men were arrested in 2008 for obstruction of justice and conspiracy, prosecutors said Wone had been sexually assaulted. They based their conclusion on the fact that his own DNA was found on him, well, in his rectum area. Defense attorneys said Wone was never sexually assaulted and produced a medical expert during motions who said the Wone may have discharged the semen as he was dying. The government decided not to pursue the sexual assault theory primarily because this was a conspiracy trial, not a murder or sexual assault trial, so such details would have just distracted a jury from the actual case. So they agreed to leave it out, before the defense requested not to have a jury trial and instead allow the judge to hear the case.
Despite the sensational elements in both the Black Panther and Robert Wone cases there has been very little media coverage of the incidents. Wikipedia notes that “Camille Paglia commented that the relative lack of news coverage for the crime ‘appears to be a blatant case of politically correct censorship'”. The Washington Post was asked about the empty media seats at the Wone trial. It was as if they had been forced to witness a plague.
Washington, D.C.: Are you aware of 20/20 or Dateline doing an episode on this case? It would seem perfect for their audience.
Keith Alexander: Dateline had a reserved seat in the courtroom during the trial, but I only saw someone in that seat a few times. So I really don’t know. Never saw anyone from 20/20.
It was left to elements of the gay community to appoint themselves the strongest advocates of justice for Robert Wone. Some of them banded together to start the website Who Murdered Robert Wone? and the depth of their coverage, its professionalism and thoroughness, has put much of the MSM to shame. They at all events had not forgotten that they shared a common humanity with Robert Wone. Perhaps they were emboldened, and not a little empowered by the knowledge that in demanding justice for the victim, they could not be accused of the greater crime of homophobia. It is demotion of crime — even murder — to the shibboleths of political correctness that is the most remarkable aspect of both cases. Albert Camus had remarked on it before: “on the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence — through a curious transposition peculiar to our times — it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.” Camus’ mistake was to believe this reversal was peculiar to Hitler or Stalin. It now threatens to become a fixture of the modern world.
So though it is theoretically irrelevant, it is probably unfortunate that J. Christian Adams, the Justice Department lawyer who resigned over the mishandling of the New Black Panther case, is white. In our politically correct world, it would have been far better had he been black, because just as those who are seeking justice for Robert Wone are themselves gay, the case against voter intimidation would have been immeasurably strengthened if the complainants had been persons of color.
The greatest damage that political correctness has inflicted on society is to make each of us forget that underneath the accidents of color, nationality and creed, that all of us are men. By dividing humanity into hyphenated buckets, each sequestered in its hate, the puppet masters have managed to set one against the other so thoroughly that the sharpers, wheeler-dealers and fixers can operate undisturbed. In a world where every one thinks of himself as white, black, gay, straight — we have forgotten that the real distinction is between who holds power and who does not. Nothing else matters. The Black Panthers and the three men who are suspected of killing Robert Wone are not impotent underdogs. On the contrary, they wield far more power than we, in our normal lives, could ever dispose of. God grant we never meet them, for if we do, we meet them alone. W.H. Auden, himself a homosexual man, understood that survival in hyphenation was impossible. He wrote:
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
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