The Idiocracy That Reigns in the West

That we in Australia, and those in most of the rest of the Western world, are in the hands of idiots is surely beyond any reasonable doubt. Hmm? What is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, asked one juror in a trial in which I happened to be the jury foreman. Can we ask the judge, she asked. I forget what I said, but it was something dismissive. It was a long time ago and I was relatively young and lacked the smattering of diplomacy which I’ve since acquired. But, to reflect, was the juror so silly. After all, Cardinal Pell’s conviction and rejected appeal showed that from juries to judges there is now no proper appreciation of its meaning.

Those deciding to prosecute cases against Bruce Lehrmann and Brian Houston seem to be equally in want of some education on the meaning of the term; which, of course, goes to the heart of our Western system of justice. When people generally, and the legal fraternity in particular, lose the sense of what ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ means, then…