Herman Cain, the GOP candidate who both speaks the conservative talk and is good-looking is the subject of accusations of sexual harassment. It was bound to happen sooner or later because Democrats, the only authorized party of oppressed minorities, cannot allow a successful member of the largest oppressed minority to give the lie to their lies. The particular nature of the attack was also predictable. Liberals are not sophisticated by and large. Plus, half of the Democratic Party used to be in the Jim Crow South. There are collective memories: Black men in general have a trouble controlling their sexual urges; it’s a well-known fact.

Do I think there were sexual harassment complaints against Herman Cain when he was a powerful, highly visible official of an association? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were. I would be surprised instead if there were a single man corresponding to that description anywhere, anytime in the past thirty years against whom there were no such complaints at all. They go with the territory. Create new grounds to blackmail and there will be more blackmailers.

Do I think he did it? Yes, I do. I mean by this that Herman Cain almost certainly engaged repeatedly in behavior that someone somewhere would call sexual harassment. And since juries can be fickle, unpredictable, it’s rational (although detestable) for companies to settle. It’s especially tempting if they can settle on the cheap: $10,000 is “five figures.” I also mean something you all already know about sexual harassment but that you may have forgotten because of the pounding of dozens of years of political correctness.

First things first: Do I think it’s a good idea for people in positions of responsibility to have sexual congress with their subordinates? My answer is a clear “No,” and this, for several organizational reasons I need not go into here. However, worse things have happened and worse things happen every day, including in the work place. And the old cliché of sex for advancement and even worse, of sex for continued employment, are far from contemporary reality as I see it. Much greater forces are at play.

Power, the suspicion of power, the slightest whiff of the most minimal kind of power, are aphrodisiac to many women. I am tempted to say, “ to all women” but some smart aleck would be sure to point out that I have not known all women and that neither have I formal proof. Sure enough and sure enough. Females of all ages are drawn to power or to what they imagine is power like night butterflies to a reading lamp. It goes without saying for example that women students develop crushes on their male professors; it goes without saying that some women are bound to act on their crushes to some extent. That’s not all and professors have some real power after a fashion. Every thin-assed male teaching assistant also has had the experience. Note that schools would not bother to make rules against what does not happen or against what happens but rarely. And, incidentally, in more relaxed times, there were no such rules. And the principle of full disclosure forces me to admit that it’s how I met my wife: She will readily testify that she seduced me shamelessly that she hounded me until I had no escape route left.

The general rule that applies here is that female human beings actively seek a mate during a relatively narrow time window in their lives. There are no organized hunts and, in our latitudes, there are few arranged marriages. Unavoidably, young women are left to their own devices to find mates wherever they are. As it happens, in our fairly civilized societies, men are just about everywhere, in the schools and in work places as well as in bars and in sports venues. Picking men up at work is normal, expected; it would be a little demographic disaster if it did not happen.

Women proposition men in the workplace all the time. Much of the propositioning, or most, I would guess, takes non-verbal forms: a flash of this and a flash of that, swinging and swaying, and a great deal of eyelashes work. It’s not necessary to be a powerful man to be the target of such attempts; it helps to be handsome but it’s not strictly necessary. After all, almost all men with a steady job and no grave substance abuse problem marry, some several times. A good many with no job and obvious substance abuse issues also marry.

The non-verbal nature of most of female seductiveness naturally gives rise to ambiguity and to a fair number of mistakes. First, all men are no equally adept at deciphering signals (as every woman knows); second, this is an alcohol society and the use of alcohol makes not one more clear-headed or more timid; third, the fact is that some women are honestly not completely aware of the signals they are sending. Here is an anecdote: Once, when I was well past forty, a freshman student wanted to discuss something with me after class. There were several students gathered around my desk wanting to do the same. When her turn came, the young girl began to move forward in my direction. She kept moving, round chest first, until I had to take several steps backward to avoid physical contact. I would have liked to believe then, I would like to believe now, that she was consciously trying to seduce me. However, it’s pretty obvious that she would not have made such an attempt at ten AM, in the presence of several fellow-students, and mostly girls to boot.

Now that I have jogged your memory and your consciousness, please re-create the scene for Herman Cain circa 1997: a tall, imposing, athletic-looking, powerful man with a gift of gab. (I am assuming he did not develop that aptitude recently.) Is it possible that he was the target of the provocative moves of women in his outfit? Is it possible he was not but wrongly thought he was? And if you answer “yes” to the second question, how much exactly do you expect men to resolve ambiguity by themselves? Is it possible he made unprovoked allusive remarks to some female employees who were not in a receptive mood. I have two responses to the last question: 1 Why would he when he was probably surrounded by willing women? 2 What if he did?

Even if he did and even if it was a clear violation of policy, how should that be a concern of mine, of my wife, in our search for a president who will push for the kind of America we want? This is an America in deep economic trouble, and in dangerous decline in the world, an America where the problem of sexual harassment should be way down our list.

But some will object that he was married. I don’t know if he was, but he was, I still don’t care. It would have been an issue between his wife and him. I don’t care about my political leaders’ adultery unless it is connected with their violating the law. Two kinds of legal violation that come to mind are lying under oath in a judicial proceeding and using campaign donations to maintain a mistress. Incidentally, I understand that adultery is a matter of concern for the religiously inclined. I have no quarrel with them on this and it should be clear that I never speak for them.

Political correctness is a tool used by the Left to undermine and cloud our thought process. Through repetition, what should be one of many options comes to represent reality itself. Political correctness is one of the worst forms of tyranny because those it oppresses often don’t realize that it’s becoming part of them. Fortunately, every so often, an event transpires in the media that yanks us back to genuine reality. Below is one.

About two weeks ago, a female high-school teacher received four years for a variety of transgressions. The chief of these was rape. She had been convicted of having sex with four of her male students. Again, she received four years. You know that some violent rapists get less. This sort of grotesque event occurs as a result of the success of rabid liberals at influencing legislatures and even courts toward the wholly irrational. It occurs because reasonable people don’t talk loudly enough, not by a long shot. There is more to the story.

At the beginning of the sentencing part of the trial, a victim’s mother demanded to be heard. Since the teacher had already been convicted, the woman’s only purpose was to try and influence the judge toward a more severe sentence. The woman sobbed violently about how the teacher had ruined her son’s life and her own. She even came very close to blaming the teacher for her husband’s throat cancer. The victim was absent from court. He is a freshman in college which would make him eighteen or possibly seventeen. How much would you bet that Mom couldn’t force him to come to court and ridicule himself and lie through his teeth? The only suffering he incurred was that he wasn’t able to brag freely to his friends about his conquest. I know that would have nearly killed me at 18. When I become aware of this kind of event I wonder how this society could have become so insane in such a short time.

Well, Professor Delacroix: Do you mean that teachers should have sex with their students? I would say that mostly not, that in most cases it’s counter-pedagogical.

And do you think male high-school teachers should have sex with female students? I do not. Sex is much more consequential for young women than for young men. Much more. It’s one of those many cases where:

What’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.

And, not my fault, not my decision. It’s Mother Nature’s decision. You have to be functionally stupid not to keep this in mind. And Mother Nature is a real bitch!