| The Hand-Crafted Leather Wing-Tip That Will Prance on Your Face for the Next 12-18 Years |
Obama and his media allies have promoted Garland's candidacy in terms of his technical skill. Having been lectured by the Left, e.g., here, about how there is no law, no legal method nor technique that determines constitutional justice, we should try to understand the meaning of the nomination in the Left's terms. When they speak about Garland's technical skill, you should imagine a hand-crafted leather wing-tip stepping with technique on your face forever. You will be made to serve Mammon in Babylon with commas and citations in perfect order.
No one outside a remnant of the American right believes that law or legal skill in interpreting law should be the touchstone of American constitutional justice. For the rest, enforcing the elite's amoral ethos and bludgeoning the American people with its idolatry is American constitutional justice, not faithful implementation of preexisting constitutional law. Constitutional law exists for the Left, and most Republicans, only as a tool for transforming America into a piece of the global market, never as a break on its economic and social goals. Even the ability of Supreme Court justices to produce predictable law is important to the Left only to the extent necessary to be useful to its corporate allies and to coordinate the mop-up work against the last resisters and the policing of the achievements of the American social revolution.
Garland, like Obama's previous non-diverse nominees Sotomayor and Kagan, belongs to the same American "meritocratic" class which defines itself in terms of cosmopolitanism, intellectual ability and hatred of God's ordained social orders. They hate nation, church, family, tradition. The meritocratic class disdains any particular loyalties, except for carefully cultivated ethnic grievances useful for pushing the further marginalization of the remaining customs and identity of the American people. Like Garland, this class certainly does not practice any religion.
His non-diverse nomination ensures that the Court will continue to look like Harvard Law School's entering class and unlike America. Many on the left, e.g., as Joseph Stern here, have complained violently that Obama dared to nominate a "non-diverse" white man who is married to a woman to the Court. White males, even if they aren't Gentiles, are supposed to be ineligible for the Court now. They miss the real nature of the Court's non-diversity entirely.
I "will be made to serve Mammon"? What does that even mean and how will that happen, exactly? Eric, your rhetoric sounds like Daniel Berrigan, and, like him oftentimes, I have little idea what your talking about. Maybe my own ethos is too amoral to see how my face is going to be danced upon. I am not sure on what basis it is said that Garland (who I admittedly know little about) hates his family, or even the idea of family, or "disdains particular loyalties" but it sounds like you're just venting, making these wild-eyed claims without explaining much, let alone offering any evidence that what you say is true about any particular people. Am I misunderstanding that you claimed he hates his family? I have to admit I'm frustrated by your wanting to sound like you are siding with common Americans against nation-hating baby-killing elitists, presuming to know the heart or concerns of us "fly-over" folk here. I'm one of those ordinary fly-over people, I suppose, living here in my small town, but your vitriol (and claim we are now merely being "mopped up") doesn't sound like any of my friends or neighbors, but sounds, well, nearly elitist. Who talks like this? -- nobody I know (and not even you when we're face to face, speaking calmly and kindly.) I know lots of folks who are frustrated with the nature of our current politics, and some who are deeply worried about the direction of our culture. But I don't think I know anyone who would say some elite group is "enforcing" an ethos, "bludgeoning (us) with idolatry." Paint as you often do here with this splashy, colorful brush, but don't be under an illusion that your accusations make sense to many, who I suspect, have little idea what your talking about. Apart from your grand lingo about Babylon and ominous claim that Garland will "dance on your face" what we've heard so far is that he is mostly moderate, rather centrist, sensible, won't become a lefty firebrand, is appreciated by his colleagues, will stick to the law. What am I missing?
ReplyDeleteByron! Great to hear from you. You are kind to describe my prose as colorful when it’s really monochromatic: purple. As to the reasons you find me unintelligible, given that you are the reader at issue, I’m sure any wrong is wholly mine. Not only are you not amoral, I suspect it’s precisely your own superbly developed morality, Christian virtues really, and that finely formed Christian culture with which you constantly surround yourself, that gives you no idea what I’m talking about.
DeleteIf I spent my time reading all the wonderful books you read and review at Hearts and Minds, I wouldn’t have any idea what I’m talking about either. I’m certainly better for all the books of yours I’ve bought and read. But, for better or worse, by profession, I read a lot of things you would never recommend: mostly, modern secular legal theory and U.S. case law. These lack the edifying features of the Christian culture which you so diligently disseminate and to which you address yourself and in which you stand apart from the world around you and show your true citizenship in such an exemplary way. I am reacting, not to the world you attend to, but to the public culture of the courts, the legal academy and the legal journalism in which I am immersed and through the understanding of which I am trying to make my own sojourn.
Let me try to be less purple: the dominant theory of the “centrists” in American constitutional jurisprudence is that constitutional justice can only be done by rejecting the notion that law and legal method should determine outcomes in important constitutional cases, e.g., abortion, same-sex marriage, prayer. Instead, the correct outcome is determined politically by making sure that abortion is legal, marriage is abolished in its traditional form, secularism enforced, etc.
Thus, it is wholly disingenuous of the Left to defend a nomination to the Supreme Court in terms of a candidate’s legal skill and intelligence. According to their theory, it is not legal skill and intelligence that make a good constitutional jurist. A good constitutional jurist is one who has the will to enforce the social changes approved by the political elites. For them, legal skill is secondary, just the tool that sophistry needs to dress radical acts of political will in the robes of the law sufficiently to create propagandistic obscurity about what is really happening. With this propagandistic element in mind, I employed Orwell’s figure for the future of humanity, but instead of a boot, the Left says they will give us someone who can press its agenda against (what Christians regards as) the common good and public will with skill and technique instead of crass, boot-like acts.
Now, of course, my analysis depends on beliefs that you and I share -- I think -- that abortion, same-sex marriage, and French-style secularism are contrary to justice and the American constitution. Being forced by judicial fiat to live in a former constitutional republic, which now is dedicated to material prosperity and opposes public recognition of any supreme Person or value other than the deified individual will is what I mean by our being coerced to worship Mammon. Perhaps, given that we are not allowed to defend the unborn or marriage as God sanctified it, I should have mentioned Molech and Astarte, too.
With respect to a lack of evidence and the question of “who speaks like this,” I did link to my previous post which discusses the overt statements of Laurence Tribe openly avowing all these things. Tribe is the author of the most widely read U.S. constitutional law treatise and casebook and importantly the former teacher of the nominee, Garland. Tribe endorses Garland in the Harvard Alumni magazine as brilliant but ominously not “naïve” about the need or possibility of the separation of law and politics.
Besides Tribe, lots of people think that the Supreme Court’s legal actions are anti-democratic and driven not by law but by political ideology. They just don’t draw the conclusions I do because they agree with its politics. When Garland is called a moderate or centrist, it is meant in the same sense that Kennedy is called the most moderate Republican jurist, i.e. he agrees with the elites on abortion/against marriage and prayer. According to the media and the academics, there are no extremists on the left. The only extremists are people like Scalia or Thomas who want the constitution to be treated like law and interpreted in accordance with ordinary legal methods.
ReplyDeleteBut there truly is no center on the Court. It’s just divided between Democrats and Republicans. With Garland, it will still not have an ideological center; it will be a functional leftist court with sufficient unity to cement its agenda, e.g., by eliminating accommodation for Christian conscience on issues like businesses paying for birth control and abortions.
With respect to whether you or I am more authentically a representative of common American views, I cede the ground to you entirely. Although I live in a smaller rural village than you … it’s not even an American town! I agree most Americans do not regard the Supreme Court as a superlegislature which has tyrannically thrown off its obligations to interpret rather than make law. I think you have to study constitutional law a long time to realize just how unguided by law the Supreme Court is in legalizing the murder of unborn babies, banning prayer and abolishing traditional marriage. But I think you are unfair in discounting the degree to which elites drove the degeneration of our culture. Kennedy spoke specifically in Obergefell about how society had to be made to give material support and social recognition to homosexual relations. As Christian bakers and photographers have discovered, we are forced to do just that. Certainly, describing the Court as prancing on our collective face in the way it has disrupted traditional American social mores and religious expression is strong, but I think it’s an apt description of the Court’s contempt for the social ways of Americans. The Court does hates Family (though I am sure as God planned the Justices are instilled with a desire to treat their own families quite well and take good care of them.) But the Court has shown its hatred for Family in that they authorize baby killing, deny the right of states to punish adultery, abolish traditional marriage, uphold no-fault divorce, and generally have supported all the legal policies that have led us to the current collapse of the family in the U.S. They obviously don't say they hate the Family; they show it in their actions. On the other hand, they don’t hide the fact that they have a cosmopolitan philosophy that views individuals – devoid of any other collective attachments – as the sole moral agents in society. I think you would agree with this if you were more familiar with their writings.
Thanks for your comment. I hope for another one of those agreeable face-to-face chats soon. Blessings!