Unfortunately, the pendulum then swung too far, into the self-esteem movement. Children were told they were great no matter what, and various excuses were made for bad behavior. Was that behavior even called “bad” anymore? I suppose it depended on what identity group a child belonged to, or whether the school was in a red or blue area. And now, children are even made to feel bad for their race once again, only now the races are reversed and it’s the white kids who are supposed to think they bear some sort of mark of Cain.

At any rate, the context in which the word “shame” occurred to me last night was somewhat akin to Robert Welch’s question during the McCarthy hearings: “Have you no sense of decency?” This time, I was thinking about people such as Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith and Fani Willis, who are perfectly fine with stretching the law till it’s unrecognizable in order to charge a political enemy in a transparently partisan move. They don’t care. They probably feel pride. I don’t know much about their backgrounds, but I do know that they are all about the same age: Bragg is 49, Smith is 52, and Willis is 54.