The Burden of Proof Is No Burden For Joe Biden's Ambitions

If Joe Biden were re-making the classic black-and-white 1957 drama 12 Angry Men the movie would have been over in about a minute-thirty. That’s because Joe— and many in the blue-check army— believe in something called “Truth over facts”.

In 12 Angry Men, Henry Fonda is on a jury faced with what seems like an open-and-shut murder case. In a quick vote the eleven other jurors apply their own truths about crime, immigrants and justice to find that the young man is guilty. Fonda is a holdout. He wants to talk over a few stubborn “facts” before he sends a boy to the electric chair. 

The other jurors, several of whom have things to do that evening, say the boy never proved his innocence.  “The burden of proof is on the prosecution,” says Fonda. “The defendant doesn't even have to open his mouth. That's in the Constitution.” Eventually Fonda uses logic and facts to show the defendant could not have done the crime. The boy is acquitted. And liberal film goers— Fonda was a big liberal— celebrated the clarity of blind justice.

But the was then. These days, liberal Joe Biden doesn’t believe in facts. He believes in something he calls “Truth over facts”. Truth, not fact,  is what made him believe Christine Blasey Ford’s unsubstantiated accusations against potential Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Ford’s tear-stained telling of her story to the Senate trumped the case’s facts— of which there were none— for many in the media and the Left (but I repeat myself). 

She spoke her truth. And all women with a sexual-assault allegation must be believed, said a nodding Joe.

Except now that he himself is caught in an allegation of sexual assault made by a former staffer, Tara Reade, Biden is suddenly a big fan of facts again. He’s protesting that the facts don't support the allegations. Unlike Blasey Ford, Reade’s truth doesn't matter to Biden or the the other angry Democrat jurors who echoed his “truth over facts” standard in the Kavanaugh case. Now it's all about the evidence.

Which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Biden’s entire platform is a contradiction of every position-- from abortion to the Iraq War to the border— that he stood for 20 years ago. But he’s willing to ignore this hypocrisy if it gets him tight with the strident feminist wing of the party. 

Who knows what happened between Reade and Biden in 1993? Based on the contradictions in Reade’s story, a good lawyer should be able to dismiss her complaint in short order. But we’re not in fact land anymore. We’re in Joe Biden’s House of Truth where heartfelt tales of assault are sacrosanct.

Yes, but this is a stand-alone situation, say Biden’s feminist allies. No, it’s not. Far from it. Biden has a long history of public groping of women. Despite that, Slow Joe is getting the approval of senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, because he did them a solid in the Kavanaugh hearings and in his role as Barack Obama’s point man on Title IX. It was there, on campuses across America, that he honed his “truth over facts” regime.

Title IX says, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” In practice it was supposed to address a perceived gender imbalance. Under Biden, however,  that noble goal meant that schools used the lowest possible standard of proof for finding a defendant guilty of sexual assault (defendants always being straight males, of course).  Police were not invited to participate because, you know… facts . 

Let author Heather Mac donald, author of The Diversity Delusion, describe the Title IX justice that Biden imposed: “Colleges routinely deny defendants the opportunity to review all the evidence, fail to provide an impartial decision-maker, and ignore the presumption of innocence. The accused is regularly forbidden the assistance of counsel. In 2014, a Title IX officer at Washington and Lee University issued a lugubrious warning to a male student—‘a lawyer can’t help you here’—before expelling him for sexual assault.”

That’s a standard to which Canada’s prime minister Justin “she experienced it differently” Trudeau would no doubt approve. In his “good for me but not for thee” bubble, Trudeau is a truth-over-facts aficionado. So long as it’s his truth. That’s what let him fire men in his cabinet for consensual sexual encounters with other politicians while reserving a “get out of jail free card” for his own documented sexual encounters. 

Like the guns that protect him— which he doesn’t want other Canadians to possess— Trudeau has a special double standard for when he’s in trouble, one average citizens never get.. 

Somehow the rights and traditions of the Magna Carta that have served civilization well for over 900 years are now, to Trudeau and the Biden Bunch,  archaic annoyances getting in the way of the Woke Revolution. The burden of proof is now on the accused. That's like the Monty Python standard of determining a witch by weighing her against a duck to see if she’ll float. Nonsense.

Voters in a hurry to purge Donald Trump had best be aware of what standard of justice they’ll be getting with a Biden presidency. The Title IX model of “Truth over facts” will be transferred from colleges to to any case looking for an easy conviction to buttress progressive values. Principled Joe won’t deter the Maizie Hironos who want men to “just get out of the way”. .

So bear this in mind as Americans vote for the next president. This time you won’t have Henry Fonda to pull their ass out of the chair with a few facts.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of Cap In Hand which is available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca