The American Conservative is reflexively hiding behind 'due process' — in the Daunte Wright 'manslaughter'

13 April 2021

Today, let's look at the fear that motivates so many any American 'conservatives'

And how that pusillanimous trembling leads many of them to do and say absurd things. Including protecting murderous cops.

For instance, yesterday, senior editor Rod Dreher at The American Conservative took the town council at Brooklyn Center to task for firing its City Manager after the Daunte Wright manslaughter.

The City Manager had contradicted the Mayor's statement that the officer who shot and killed Mr. Wright — reportedly by 'mistake' — should be fired.

From Fox News:

Brooklyn Center City Manager Curt Boganey was fired on Monday evening, hours after he publicly disagreed with Mayor Mike Elliott’s assertion that the police officer who fatally shot a Black man in the Minneapolis suburb should be immediately fired in response to the incident.

"All employees working for the city of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline," Boganey said.

Rod Dreher agreed with Boganey:

They fired this city manager simply for calling for the basic constitutional right of due process for the accused police officer!

The cop, like every other accused criminal, deserves a fair trial — and nobody should be punished for saying so! And this one council member openly admitted that she voted that way out of fear.

Mob rule is always and everywhere bad. It’s even bad when a careless police officer shoots and kills a man. So many forces are now in play to encourage mob behavior.

Let's look at Dreher's outraged statement from two angles

First legal, then societal.

Legal perspective

Administrative due process, on the part of an employer, does not require waiting for a "fair trial" — however terminologically confused Dreher's thinking is in that regard.

Administrative due process — at its most complicated — involves hearings, not trials. Nor is it a "criminal" process. Evidence presentation is much less formal and much less bound by protections for the metaphorically 'accused'.

Furthermore, in the 'hearing' regard, it seems to me — as an attorney, former police supervisor, and a member of the public — that video showing the cop in the Daunte Wright execution shooting him, without any cause whatsoever, is sufficient for immediate employment termination.

Nobody can argue that they have a vested employment interest — one deserving of drawn-out administrative 'due process' — after (grossly) incompetently murdering or manslaughtering a person on camera.

Societal perspective

Part of the American public's frustration with bad policing is that bad and incompetent cops keep skating on interminably dragged-out legal bullshit — in spite of the fact that the murders they commit are video-recorded for people to see and easily interpret.

Thus, people like Dreher and Boganey are accurately perceived — by the public — as having intentionally thrown obstacles in Justice's obvious path.

Timeliness is part of a legitimately delivered administrative and judicial system. This quality is a major area in which the American justice system has completely collapsed. Everything takes way too long and is subject to far too many detours (for those who can afford to defend themselves).

The dispensation of purported American 'justice' has become, almost entirely, a guild system that is motivated more by the (often lucrative) employment opportunities that it provides, than it is by its pretended loyalty to making society work fairly.

The moral? — 'Due process' obstructionism, like Dreher's . . .

. . . is merely another way to keep Murderous Tyranny on its nasty tracks.

Dreher's is not a thoughtful devotion to principle. It is merely a reflexively indulged fearing of the public's righteous wrath.

No points for you, Rod Dreher, today.

PeteFree.com

The American Conservative is reflexively hiding behind 'due process' — in the Daunte Wright 'manslaughter'