Mary Kenny
Judge Brett Kavanaugh I – IF – an individual does something reprehensible at the age of 17, possibly under the influence of alcohol, does that bar that individual from the responsibility of public office for the rest of their life?
Second question: if a person is accused of a reprehensible act, does that automatically make them guilty?
Such are the situations facing the American Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of a sexual assault, as a teenager, on another teenager, some 36 years ago.
Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology (and a donor to the Democratic party) says that Judge Kavanaugh pushed her into a bedroom at a teenage party in the early 1980s when she was 15, locked the door, turned up the music to silence her screams and forcibly lay on top of her.
Judge Kavanaugh denies that. Certainly, the charge should be investigated and Mrs Blasey Ford listened to. Although questions might also be asked if this has been a trauma in her life, why she did not make the claim public until now.
The allegation has been facilitated by Dianne Feinstein, the leading Democrat on the judiciary committee, and a strong advocate for abortion rights.
On Twitter the accusation is now assumed to be proof of the crime. Innocent until proved guilty, and due process, are fast losing ground.
But even if Brett Kavanaugh did behave in a dreadful way when he was a teenager, does that bar him from high office 36 years later? Are we also to assume that over the course of a life, nobody learns anything? Nobody repents of anything? Nobody corrects what the French so shrewdly call “les folies de la jeunesse” – youthful madness?
Many of our finest saints led lives of abandon and debauchery when they were young – Francis of Assisi, for example.
Men have been murderers, criminals, rapists, slave-owners and come to see the errors of their ways.
I blush to think of some of the ghastly mistakes of my own youth: and indeed, that of others I have known. There are more than a few people in high positions today who behaved like bounders in their early days: but it doesn’t condemn their characters now. They have changed and developed.
Are we only to have individuals in public office who have never made a mistake, never acted badly or stupidly – especially under the influence of drink – never, in short, sinned? If that is the standard, then who shall attain it? And who shall we have in office who understands the weakness and errors of human nature?
If only paragons of virtue are deemed worthy then we have a world without clemency, or insight, or wisdom. As we seem, already, to have a world where guilt is presumed without due process.
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The year-on-year success of the National Ploughing Championship – now in its 85th year – is a tribute to rural Ireland’s continued vitality, and continuing witness that despite urbanisation the grá for the land runs deep. Wish I was there!
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If you’re not ill, don’t take the pill!
Ever since I graduated to the status of ‘senior citizen’, I’ve been advised to take an aspirin a day to prevent heart attack and strokes. But I wasn’t comfortable with the advice, some of which came from doctors, because I don’t think we should take medication until we have to, or until we are ill.
Now it turns out that taking aspirin every day “may cause older people more harm than good”, according to a major new study carried out at Australia’s Monash University.
A healthy older person who takes a daily aspirin is, according to this study, more at risk of cancer and stomach bleeds. Unless diagnosed with heart problems, any benefit of daily aspirin is outweighed by the risks.
As Dr James Le Fanu says in his very sensible book Too Many Pills, far too many pills are being suggested or prescribed these days, and that can include statins, which can have a negative impact.
If you’re not ill, you don’t need medication (though I make an exception for that useful winter practice of taking a tonic).