Everyone knows two things

Unfortunately, the value of opposition research wasn't one of them at Stanford Law

Live and let live has been my standard for dealing with the world for as far back as I can remember. If people aren't bothering me, I leave them alone. I expect the same in return. It takes a lot to get me off of that.

I generally don't care about your politics, whether you are religious or not, what alternative lifestyle you might lead, or how many wacky substances you put into your body. Those all fall into the category of your business. My concern is you being someone with whom I'd deal without having my arm bent up behind my back. That would make you calm, polite, reasonably intelligent, trustworthy, reliable, in possession of a sense of humor and good in the pocket should push come to shove. With all of that, we can probably get along just fine. The rest mostly doesn’t matter.

But this ethos is not as common as it could be. I am amazed at the number of people who cannot resist, even under a potent threat of rebuke, from weighing in on the affairs of others. We have evolved into a society of busybody scolds - along social and political lines, of course. I'm quite sure that social media has a lot to do with this unsavory behavior. It's a lot easier to slag someone from a distance than it is from within an arm's reach. Just look at Twitter for all the evidence supporting this proposition that you'll ever need.

Not only do we suffer a surfeit of scolds, we suffer a surfeit of shamelessly clueless scolds. I have years of bitter experience informing this.

I once worked as a writer for a prominent motorcycle publication. I'm proud of the work that we did there. We performed exhaustive evaluations of the motorcycles that we wrote about. For several years, I participated in a number of middleweight and 1000cc sport bike shootouts. We'd gather between six and twelve new bikes from the OEMs, ride them for a few days on the mountain roads around Southern California, take the to a track for a day, then take them to a dragstrip. The dragstrip provided almost no useful data for real world evaluations, but was too much fun not to do.

After logging extensive miles on all of these bikes, in side by side testing under a variety of conditions, I felt confident in offering a valid opinion of how each bike performed in various circumstances. Some were great street bikes, but not potent track weapons. Others were track monsters that would unfortunately cramp every muscle in your body and set your butt on fire (in one case, literally) on any ride longer than six laps at the nearest track. Some looked cool, but would have difficulty doing the speed limit if you dropped them out of an airplane.

After a week of evaluating these machines, under a variety of circumstances, we'd write up the comparison and post our rider experiences in a feature article. It generally took about five minutes after the article went live on our website for the reader comments to light up with invective and abuse.

For every one intelligent observation or honest question, there were invariably ten rabid comments. I'm quite sure (more on this in a minute) that most of those pissing, moaning and complaining about our opinions had never been within as much as the same time zone of the bike they were ranting about. They'd almost certainly never ridden one - and if they had, probably not like we did in our testing and evaluation.

I can handle a certain amount of getting flamed – especially if it's apparent that the flamer possesses a sense of humor. That's all good fun. But the number of low and modestly-skilled riders who were unabashed in telling experienced club racers and pros that they were wussies, was nothing short of amazing. I kid you not.

As a personal aside, a common thread that has run through my life has been an attraction to activities that lure, like moths to flame, keyboard warriors: physics, motorcycles and bicycles, guitars, pro sound, climbing and public service. Get involved in any of these, particularly at a high level, and you'll quickly discover that everyone in any distant, highly eccentric orbit around any of these knows two things: their own name, and more about it than you do.

We devised a scheme to expose some of this by inviting readers to meet us for track days. Amazingly, some keyboard racers actually showed up. I'll never forget the joy of telling one of them that the secret to making his bike go faster around the track was understanding that there was absolutely no chance of getting a speeding ticket.

These observations are not intended as just a shot at dim-witted critics (though I'm delighted to include that as a bonus feature). They are intended as a general treatise on the ubiquity of people who are incapable staying out of things that, a) they know almost nothing about, or b) don't concern them. It's an overwhelming societal malaise.

Last week I touched upon those who broker no reticence in forcing their views on others - while being simultaneously hysterical over the notion that anyone should take umbrage over being on the other end of their nonsense. There is certainly no dearth of this in contemporary America. And though both sides in our society exploit this every time they are in a position to do so, it's the left that's currently got the Godzilla stomp going for them. This is because even when the left loses elections, they still control many corporate boardrooms, most of the federal bureaucracy and almost all of the legacy media. Right now they are, in my opinion, a bigger problem that the right when it comes to social tyranny.

Just this week, U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan attempted to give a speech hosted by the Federalist Society at Stanford University Law School. Duncan's speech was shut down by student hecklers and a DEI administrator who objected to his talk, The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns and Twitter.

I'm not a Stanford law school student (even I have my standards), but if I were, I'd want to listen to this talk. Judge Duncan is a high-ranking member of the Federal Judiciary. A law student ought to be interested in what he has to say on litigable topics – especially if they might be inclined to disagree. Our system of law is adversarial; it's in one's best interests to understand the how the other side thinks.

But that's not the way the student protesters and one administrator saw things. They had to shut it down. As if that were not enough, the same cabal donned masks and shut down a class a few days later being taught by a professor who publicly apologized to Judge Duncan over his treatment.

If these knuckleheads aren't smart enough to comprehend the value of understanding opposition research in the practice of law, or at least be willing to engage in civil debate, could they at least be content to wallow in their ignorance elsewhere, and leave the rest of us alone? Protest all you want, just let everyone who wants to listen, do so. I don't think that's too much to ask.

But that's live and let live, and it's no good anymore. These days you have to either co-opt or excoriate anyone who's not onboard. Right, wrong, facts, collegiality, professionalism, courtesy – none of these have anything to do with it. You're either with us or something's wrong with you. That's what was on full display at Stanford.

Just up the road from Stanford lies Levi's Stadium, where Colin Kaepernick used to play QB for the San Francisco 49'ers. He might still be playing there too had his footwork not provided a launch platform for frequently errant passes that afforded his receivers roughly the same chance of catching one as a fan in the stands.

I bring this up because Kaepernick recently published a book about his travails as a rich, famous black man, with legions of followers, seeking social justice in contemporary America. In the course of interviews to promote his book, he trashed the white parents who adopted, loved and raised him; throwing them under the bus for not appreciating his hair style as a teen.

Social justice expert Kaepernick is evidently unaware of the common social phenomenon whereby parents are generally unappreciative of their kid's hairstyles. My dad once threatened me with sheep shears.

Hey – I think I just hit upon a get rich quick scheme!

Kap is this week's segue into what has become the living, breathing antithesis of live and let live - DEI. DEI is an enterprise driven by chronically unhappy people who simply cannot leave alone those who aren't buying what they are selling. This despite calling the tune to which many must involuntarily dance.

Despite the ubiquity and general stupidity of DEI, I'm not for banning it. I just don't want to have to go to a reeducation camp for pointing out that most of it is illiberal, absurd and patently illegal. Leave me out of it and we'll figure out a way to get along. I know it's a tall order. Try really hard.

There are over a quarter of a billion people in this country, and all of them enjoy the same freedoms. That means that your freedoms have to compete beyond tip of your nose. It strikes me that the best way to make it all work for the most number of people is to establish just enough laws and directives to keep us all moving in the right direction, then leave everyone alone as much as we can.

Unless we are friends or family, I don't care who you love, who you voted for or where you go to church. I don't care to know if you like dressing up like the opposite sex, if you think that you are a member of the opposite sex or if you don't know what your sex is. I don't generally give a damn about where you are from or anything else that does not productively inform any interactions that we might have. I just care about how you treat me and mine. That's it.

It's when you insist on unnecessarily dragging me or mine along for the ride that I am forced to take stock of your personal business. That changes the lay of the land considerably. I, and I daresay many others, would much rather live and let live. You have the right, of course, to proceed along different lines, but you should do so with caution. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth