To this day, a decent human being named Clarence Thomas, who has become a major Supreme Court thinker, is identified by his political enemies with sexual harassment (of the most innocuous variety, even if true) and of having looked at pornography (along with the majority of other decent men in America), as if those charges define his life.

What do we have in life, after all, that is more valuable than our name and reputation? What do good people work hardest at maintaining, if not their good name?

The lying woman in the Duke lacrosse case, Crystal Mangum, raped three men. Generally speaking, it is meaningless to speak of women raping men's bodies; it is men who rape women's bodies. What women can rape is a man's name.

It is a symptom of the major sexism of our time -- against men (see Christine Hoff Sommers' "The War Against Boys" for a detailed discussion of this sexism) -- that not only is the rape of men's reputations not considered anywhere near as serious as the rape of a woman's body, but the women who perpetrate such destruction are protected by feminist, politically correct news media. That is why, to this day, The New York Times and most other liberal newspapers refuse to publish Crystal Mangum's name, let alone advocate that she be tried or punished for her cruelty.

The Talmud, the set of books of Jewish law and philosophy that rank in Judaism second in importance only to the Torah, says, "Whoever humiliates his friend in public is considered as if he has shed his blood." That is why some rabbis call undeserved public shaming "emotional murder."

That was written nearly 2,000 years ago. The lack of interest by elite America in even identifying, let alone punishing, a woman who "emotionally murdered" three young men proves that those who believe in the inevitability of moral progress frequently delude themselves.