Not being a reporter, I have neither the skills nor the resources to discern fact from fiction in the Steubenville Rape Case. I trust that Stacy McCain has the right of the matter, and that the KoolKids from 4Chan (or whatever) are just desperately seeking lulz.

So I’d like to talk not about the particulars, but about the universal adolescent need to be stupid:

At the parties, the girl had so much to drink that she was unable to recall much from that night, and nothing past midnight, the police said. The girl began drinking early on, according to an account that the police pieced together from witnesses, including two of the three Steubenville High athletes who testified in court in October. By 10 or 10:30 that night, it was clear that the dark-haired teenager was drunk because she was stumbling and slurring her words, witnesses testified.
Some people at the party taunted her, chanted and cheered as a Steubenville High baseball player dared bystanders to urinate on her, one witness testified.
About two hours later, the girl left the party with several Big Red football players, including Mays and Richmond, witnesses said. They stayed only briefly at a second party before leaving for their third party of the night. Two witnesses testified that the girl needed help walking. One testified that she was carried out of the house by Mays and Richmond while she was “sleeping.”

Let’s break this down. A girl gets so drunk that people start making fun of her, then proceeds to go to another “party”, where she spends 20 minutes puking and then gets kicked out. Hey, we’ve all been there. The sensible thing to do is cut your losses and go home. Instead, she rallies for the third party, where two goons are charged with raping her.

Is it her fault she got raped? No, by definition it can’t be. Is it her fault she’s stupid? Yes.  Because getting raped is not the only bad outcome of her state. She might have driven a car and crashed it, killing herself or someone else. For that matter, she might have died from alcohol poisoning. Nothing good comes from getting blackout drunk, and even a 16-year-old girl should be expected to know that.

The boys are even stupider. Even if (and let’s assume that a rather gargantuan IF) they aren’t guilty of rape, they’re guilty of utter negligence and basic inhumanity. Inflicting yourself on a drunk girl just because you need your rocks gotten off is barbarian in every sense of the word: primitive, uncivilized, and not speaking the same language as the rest of us. A drunk girl is not an “opportunity,” she is a person in need of help, or at the very least, someone you should probably leave alone. Being full of beer and sperm does not abrogate these facts.

A deeper question: why is this normal? Why is a 16-year-old shambling around to house parties drinking herself to unconsciousness unremarkable? Why are teenage boys encouraging and reveling in their savagery just your typical Saturday Night? What the hell is wrong with us?

This is beyond “Rape Culture” or any other tedious neologisms that the academic Left would pin to whatever scapegoats they have in mind. This is about a consummate failure to instruct the young, to nurture in them the sense to know good from bad decisions and the will to prefer the former. We do not punish the young for risky behavior; we celebrate and envy them for it. We encourage them to have a good time, while they can, while they’re young, before they have to do the things that actually matter in life. It’s not about Rape Culture, it’s about Stupid Culture.