The wise have learned information gleaned from social media is often suspect. Yet I occasionally discover undeniable truths posted there.
The deceptive allure of socialist government has increasingly gained a foothold among many younger Americans who often don't (or won't) invest the effort to understand how that ideology has repeatedly failed.
They've neither witnessed nor studied the resulting food and housing shortages, or the grinding poverty socialism invariably brings to millions who aren't members of the elitist class who determine how wealth is redistributed.
I recently happened across some wisdom that explains the dire effects of choosing financial winners and losers from such failed ideology.
The reality of trying to equalize income in any mass society is reflected even in the scripture of Matthew, which assures us that despite human desires to eradicate poverty, "the poor you will always have with you."
Don't misunderstand; like many of you I've always felt empathy and compassion for the disadvantaged. Many of my journalistic efforts over the years have been focused in that direction.
At the same time, I've strongly advocated for teaching the underprivileged to fish rather than handing them a trout to make myself feel better, and remembering that a hand up is far better than a handout.
First, no country can legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of it. Next, it behooves us all to understand what one person receives without working to earn, another must work for without receiving.
In light of all the trillions of tax dollars being distributed today to throngs of non-workers, this truth is undeniable.
Third, the government we elect and expect to lead us through wisdom (and the overall best interests of our free-enterprise system) cannot provide anything to anyone that today's grossly partisan government doesn't first take from someone else.
Finally, perhaps worst of all, when half of a nation's population gets the idea they don't have to work because the other half is going to care for them--and when the working half gets the idea that it is of no benefit for them to work because some stranger is going to receive the fruits of their labor--it signals the beginning of the end for that nation.
Innocent executed?
Let's hope there's been some kind of mistake. Otherwise, based on DNA and fingerprint evidence released by the nonprofit Innocence Project and the ACLU, our state may have executed an innocent man, according to a story earlier this month by Lara Farrar.
Black inmate Ledell Lee steadfastly professed his innocence of murdering Jacksonville neighbor Debra Reese in 1993 from his arrest to his execution. Convicted in 1995 primarily on eyewitness testimony by neighbors, Lee was executed on April 20, 2017. His initial trial ended with a hung jury; he was convicted and sentenced to death in the retrial. Lee was convicted of rape in two unrelated cases.
Farrar reported that eyewitnesses testified that Lee had been seen walking in the neighborhood on the morning of the murder, yet Lee was never directly linked to the crime.
Court documents filed in 2020 on behalf of Lee's sister said "no physical evidence directly tied" Lee to the woman's death. Neither DNA nor fingerprint evidence implicated Lee.
Recent DNA testing of evidence, including the murder weapon and a bloody shirt, revealed the profile of an unknown man rather than Lee. Fingerprints found also couldn't be identified. It is unclear whether the DNA profile and fingerprints are connected, Farrar wrote; they have been entered into national databases with no matches thus far.
"While the results obtained 29 years after the evidence was collected proved to be incomplete and partial, it is notable that there are now new DNA profiles that were not available during the trial and post-conviction proceedings in Mr. Lee's case," Nina Morrison, Innocence Project senior litigation counsel, said. "We are hopeful that one or more of these forensic law enforcement databases will generate additional information in the future."
Our state responded as I'd expect, by saying Lee had been convicted by a jury. So that's that.
But I've been personally and professionally involved in a half-dozen cases over the years where juries and/or investigating authorities got it wrong, including three wrongful homicide charges and/or convictions.
If Lee was innocent and put to death by our state, it would be a tragedy, yet apparently not that rare.
The Equal Justice Initiative, contends based on its findings, that "the death penalty in America is a flawed, expensive policy defined by bias and error."
Since 1973, the group says, 185 inmates have been exonerated and released from death row, while one of every nine executed inmates has been exonerated.
The biggest flaws in these cases stemmed from mistaken eyewitness identification, forced and coerced confessions and inadequate legal defense, the group reports.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.