Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Friday, March 12, 2004

This is NOT What I Wanted to Read


The New Orleans Times-Picayune had a recent piece (minor piddling registration required) on a recent speech given by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the rightest of the conservative right-wing justices on the Court.

What did Scalia say that I didn't want to hear?
"It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution," Scalia said at a conference Uptown on the merit selection of judges.
Well, I've believed that for some time, but hearing it from a sitting Justice doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. He says also:
Ideally, Scalia said he would choose merit selection of judges. But when you have courts trying to rewrite laws, he said, "there's a lot to be said for electing judges."

Scalia blasted the existing system, which he said allows courts to change the laws, and not the people.

"What 'we the people' want most of all is someone who will agree with us as to what the evolving constitution says," he said.

"We are free at last, free at last," he said. "There is no respect in which we are chained or bound by the text of the Constitution. All it takes is five hands."

Scalia, who was nominated by President Reagan in 1986 and confirmed by a Senate vote of 98-0, said these days a so-called conservative judge is politically frozen out of the process.

"What in the world is a moderate interpretation of the text?" he asked, drawing soft laughter from the audience. "Halfway between what it really says and what you want it to say?"
This is supposed to be a nation based on the rule of law. We know what happens to societies in which the rule of law fails, yet what Justice Scalia has said leaves no doubt that the rule of law has been essentially abandoned all the way up to the Supreme Court. Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in his dissent to U.S. v. Olmstead -
Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subject to the rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.
And we're seeing that, more and more, every day. Aren't we.

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