The Illiberal Ezra Klein

Article here. Excerpt:

'Or, rather: What is terrible about this law is, in fact, what is wonderful about it. The law’s “overreach,” Klein says, is “precisely its value,” authorities having hit upon “a necessarily extreme solution to an extreme problem.” That “cold winter” of which he writes? That’s a feature not a bug, the measure’s virtue being, in Klein’s words, that it will “create a world where men are afraid” enough of the authorities that they “feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.” All in all, Klein adduces, “The Yes Means Yes law could also be called the You Better Be Pretty Damn Sure law.”

That’s one option, certainly. Another modest proposal might be, “An Enabling Act for the Salem Rape Culture Trials.”

Since the nation’s universities first started to go down this road, opponents of such enactments have leveled two key criticisms. The first is linguistic. As a matter of dull routine, progressives have taking to shouting “government in the bedroom!” at almost any available juncture. Don’t want women to kill their unborn children in a hospital? “Government in the bedroom!” Oppose the redefinition of marriage? “Government in the bedroom!” Believe that Catholic charities should be able to decline to provide contraception within their benefits packages? Etc., etc. And yet, now that states and colleges are drafting sexual-consent rules that, in Heather Mac Donald’s immortal phrase, “resemble nothing so much as a multi-lawyer-drafted contract for the sale and delivery of widgets,” there is nary a peep from the usual suspects. What gives, guys? Cat been given explicit written permission to clench your tongue?

The second objection is a more serious one: Namely, that attempts to micromanage the personal and subjective realm of private sexual behavior will inevitably end up undermining due process. Alarmingly, Klein doesn’t even bother to pretend that this will not be the case. Instead, he describes the subversion of presumed innocence as the idea’s central virtue:'