Dershowitz shows that, for some Democrats, it’s impossible to give up the faith

Alan Dershowitz’s fealty to the Democrat party, even as it betrays him and his core principles, reveals that the party is a faith, not a political system.

I listened to Alan Dershowitz’s interview on Friday’s Derek Hunter podcast. The interview’s purpose was for Dershowitz to discuss his new book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of MeToo, in which he gives chapter and verse explaining how he could not possibly have committed the sexual improprieties that Virginia Giuffre accused him of committing thanks to his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

I happen to believe Dershowitz in this matter. He’s a compulsive diary keeper and claims to have proved conclusively that he was absolutely elsewhere at the relevant times. He also says his accuser’s attorney, the sleazy David Boies, admitted on tape that Dershowitz did nothing wrong. Lastly, it was Dershowitz who helped reopen the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, something I doubt he would have done if he wanted to whole Epstein-based allegations to go away.

I find Dershowitz an interesting guy. He’s obviously brilliant and is, I bet, a very good teacher. He’s always been willing to represent awful clients (provided, of course, that they can pay), which puts him in bad odor with a lot of people. I don’t have a problem with that.

When I was in law school, some of my classmates asked our criminal law professor how he could justify representing someone who was obviously guilty, or seemed pretty darn guilty. After first discussing the fact that sometimes people who are “obviously guilty” prove not to be guilty at all, the professor said something I found very profound:

In America, the government is policeman, judge, jury, and executioner. It has all the power, and its employees know every in and out of the law. No one, no individual no matter how bad he is, should have to face the awesome majesty, weight, and penal power of the government without a knowledgeable friend at his side.

I realized then that, while I would not ever want to be a criminal justice lawyer myself, the fact that we have criminal justice lawyers at all is part of America’s greatness. John Adams, I think, would agree.

Additionally, over the years, I’ve seen too many friends falsely accused for me to accept any accusations at face value. This is especially true in a #MeToo era that insists “all women must be believed.” Women lie all the time. They lie for revenge. They lie for political reasons. They lie for spite. They lie because the truth is too embarrassing. Our system of witnesses and evidentiary rules is as good a system as any to try to winnow out the truth.

I also find Dershowitz interesting because he’s intellectually honest. He’s a passionate Democrat (although he calls himself a “liberal”), but he’s willing to part ways with his party on important things. For example, he’s parted ways with the party over the whole impeachment fiasco. He’s also parted ways with the party when it comes to his staunch defense of Israel.

It’s this defense of Israel that led him to say near the end of the interview with Hunter that, if Bernie wins the primaries, he (Dershowitz) will abandon the Democrats and campaign for Trump. The problem Dershowitz has with Bernie is that the latter went to England to campaign for Jeremy Corbyn — and Corbyn, of course, represents the apex of Western, non-Muslim anti-Semitism. Other than that, though, Dershowitz is good with his party.

It’s that fealty to the Democrat party that’s the point of this post. The Democrat party has become blazingly anti-Semitic. Bernie is scarcely the worst offender and all of the Democrat candidates are hostile to Israel, even as Donald Trump is the most pro-Israel president (so far) in American history.

The Democrat party is also the home of #MeToo. Dershowitz has written a whole book about the dangerous culture of “guilt by accusation,” but cannot recognize that his party has taken the lead. It’s his party that says “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” It’s his party that calls all men toxic. It’s his party that says all women should be believed. It’s his party that’s created a debauched campus culture that makes it too easy for damaged young women to cry rape (or for drunken women to be raped).

Lastly, Dershowitz has acknowledged that the Democrat party has gone completely off the rails with the impeachment kabuki. This is a step from which he fears that there’s no going back. So one has to ask: To what Democrat party is he still feeling loyal?

To me, Dershowitz’s willingness to hold the red pill in his mouth, even as he is unable to swallow it, speaks to the way in which the Democrat party (or, if you will, Progressive ideology) is a faith, not simply a way of organizing the world politically.

It’s different, I think, for conservatives, and I say this as someone who left the Democrat party later in life. I have always had fixed values about the Constitution, about family, about morality, about law and order, about foreign policy, etc. I will follow the values, not the political party. That’s why I feel a fellowship with Ronald Reagan who famously said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.”

For people like Dershowitz, though, their belief in the party is so strong that they cannot walk away completely. Even as Dershowitz has been made aware, in the most brutal way possible, that his lifelong political allegiance betrays his actual core beliefs, he’s still worshiping in the Democrat church.

People need to believe in something. It’s a shame that the something in which they believe is a faith that’s become as awful as the modern Democrat party.