Arbitrary Justice, Progressive Style

In Deconstructing Reality and Zimmerman, Peter Wehner argues that Justice is being subordinated to the progressive narrative:

What we’re seeing from the left is post-modernism on full display. The facts, the truth and objective reality are subordinate to the progressive narrative. In this particular instance many liberals so want the killing of Trayvon Martin to be driven by bigotry–which would serve as both an indictment of racial attitudes in America and turn a horrible mistake into a “modern-day lynching”–that they will make it so, even if it requires twisting the truth into something unrecognizable. What matters, after all, is The Cause. And everything, including basic facts, must be bent to fit it. This kind of systematic deconstruction of truth is fairly common in college liberal arts courses all across America. But when it becomes the primary mode of interpretation in a murder trial, it is something else again.

Most of us, when we hear the words “justice must be done,” believe that what is right, reasonable, fair and in accordance with the facts be done. But some on the left have something else in mind. For them, justice is a tool in a larger political struggle, a means to an end. Justice can be at odds with reality if reality is at odds with liberalism. Which is why the efforts to turn the Zimmerman verdict into a racial miscarriage of justice is so discouraging and so damaging.

In Open Season?, Dave Carter laments progressive-style justice as well:

During the trial of George Zimmerman, four children were shot to death in Chicago. Five-year-old Sterling Sims died in a murder that also killed his 31-year-old mother. Police think it was a robbery.  On July 1st, 16-year-old Antonio Fenner was shot and killed, his body next to that of a man who had gang affiliations.  Damani Henard, 14, died on July 3rd, his body next to a bicycle. On July 9, a man got out of a black van in a neighborhood park and opened fire at some boys.  Ed Cooper, 15, was hit.  He continued running to a vacant lot, where he collapsed and died, his civil rights eternally unquestioned by the NAACP, his visage never gracing the screens of MSNBC, CNN, or Barack Obama's catalogue of lookalike sons.

Since the Zimmerman verdict?

A gang of black youths chased down an hispanic man in Baltimore, beating him and kicking him while yelling, "This is for Trayvon."  I hear the Department of Justice is in the market for hate crimes these days, so I hope this will stir their excitable curiosity.  I hope it.  But I doubt it.  Meanwhile, in California, the forces of tolerance took a hammer to one man's head, stormed a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles, punched people at random, briefly blocked Interstate 880 in Oakland, and otherwise engaged in behavior not seen since winning some sports championship.

Justice, Carter argues, is being transformed under the Obama Justice Department:

Of course, the odds of President Obama or Eric Holder taking on these lawless, semiliterate goons are roughly the same as the odds of them standing up to the goons in the Muslim Brotherhood. ... the definition of Justice in Barack Obama's America has been fundamentally transformed into a doctrine of comeuppance.  America, in the view of the President, the Attorney General and their enthusiasts, has not sufficiently paid for her sins, and so a dose of revenge is in order.

This is done chiefly through classifying certain criminal elements as untouchable.  Members of the New Black Panthers for example, decked out in military regalia and wielding a club so as to intimidate voters at the election polls are, simply, untouchable.  And you'll die of old age before Messrs Obama, Holder, Sharpton, or Jackson hold a rally in support of Sherry West, whose 13-month-old baby was shot in the face and killed by a black teenager in Brunswick, Georgia.

Concludes Carter:

It is horrendous and tragic that from Chicago to virtually every other major city where politicians conspire to restrict the right of law abiding citizens to defend themselves, every day is open season on black children.  The sad and inexcusable truth is that if Trayvon Martin had been shot in Chicago, he would have died in obscurity, his death registering not so much as a moment's distraction from a Presidential golf game, nor a blip on the radar screen of the peddlers of racial grievance.