How Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court is mysterious — oh, wait, no it’s not, he was appointed by Reagan and congress basically rolled over for him — but he’s always saying such stupid stuff. The latest is a dismissal of the right of atheists to exist in America.
[Scalia] told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is
no placein the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.
To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?he said.To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?
That’s right. I thought it was clear: the government doesn’t get to interfere in private matters of conscience. It’s a concept that really isn’t that hard to understand. There should be no federal bias in favor of Baptists over Catholics, or Christians over Muslims, or religious vs. non-religious — it’s just not their job. It’s worrisome that a Supreme Court justice thinks it is their job.
His excuses are also incredibly stupid.
God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways,Scalia said.
We won independence in the American Revolution not thanks to a god, but to the French. It wasn’t that extraordinary — the colonies were a sideshow in a clash between the two great world powers of the time.
Why the Battle of Midway? It wasn’t a particularly prayerful event, there were no miracles, no angels, no Jesii with flaming swords. There was code-breaking and the intelligent deployment of massive military resources, and there was death and destruction. Is that honoring his god?
He names some battles we won. But what about the War of 1812? We lost that. God must disfavor us now. What about our several failed attempts to invade Canada? Clearly, even if God likes us, he must really love Canada best. What about the Korean War, which ended in a stalemate? Does that mean he likes North Korea and the US equally? How about the Vietnam War? We lost that one badly, had to abandon the country altogether and retreat. And look at the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan — we were definitely not blessed to be left holding that bloody wreckage.
As for bland political rhetoric, it’s common. Other countries do invoke gods all the time; if the US is unusual (but not unique) in any way, it’s in refraining from calling on gods in our Constitution. If name-checking a god in a speech is a mark of special favor, then why aren’t the fundamentalist theocracies ruling the world?
Calling on a god to favor your cause is not at all rare or particularly indicative of merit, especially not when the success of those prayers is effectively random, as if name-dropping a deity wasn’t the useful part of an action.
But hey, the real divine match-up is this weekend, when the Seattle Seahawks battle the Minnesota Vikings. Does the winner get recognition of their divine favor in the distribution of federal largesse? Will Scalia take sides based on the religious fervor of the fans?
If name-checking a god in a speech is a mark of special favor, then why aren’t the fundamentalist theocracies ruling the world?
But you have to name-check the right god, dontchaknow!
Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury baptists and Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoly spring to mind as part of the tradition of secular government.
Oh for…’scuse me while I go pound my head into a wall.
Oh yes. When you idolize a vicious, bloodthirsty, genocidal maniac with the patience of a spoiled two year old, it’s violence, always violence, as the prayer and the answer.
John Pieret @ # 1: But you have to name-check the right god, dontchaknow!
So why hasn’t the Vatican’s Swiss Guard conquered the world?
…he loves Canada besr…
Clearly a god of taste and refinement, then.
If Scalia really wants to honor the one true god, then, he ought to resign and move to Toronto. Or White Horse. Something.
Claiming American independence is a result of divine intervention is nothing new. Al Hartley did the same thing in comic form.
Heck, I don’t even care if he moves, as long as he resigns.
Mr. Prof. PZ Zachary Myers, I am a fan of your blog and have been reading it for years. But if you ever, EVER suggest dumping your bigoted, hateful, “actual innocence doesn’t matter” Supreme Court detritus on my country again…
Citation please.
You don’t have to worry. God loves Canada so much , that if Scalia even tried to get close to the border, He’d fry him with a lightning bolt.
Well, he’d try. He’d probably miss, and take out a delicatessen owner in Poughkeepsie. But the INTENT would be there, and we all know how much Scalia values intent.
but can’t favor religion over non-religion?
Atheists are lower than muslims. Because, uh, Sam Harris.
And what were the French in 1776 if not Catholic?
Checkmate!, athiests!
I don’t know about much about Seattle but since a fair number of your Minnesota neighbors are either Lutherans or semi godless Scandahoovians I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Scalia won’t be wearing purple and white this weekend.
Scalia likes to think he is a special snowflake and therefore his country is a special snowflake.
But Seattle is also one of the most godless regions of the country. If god mattered, he’d somehow arrange it so they both lose.
Seahawks and Vikings square off at the 50 yard line. Suddenly, there’s a crack of thunder and a new team appears on the field: The Notre Dame Fighting Irish! Armed with greatswords! They rush the field, hacking left and right, and the two heathenish teams are left in a bloody heap of twitching, dismembered corpses. Notre Dame picks up the ball. The tight ends start swinging censers, while the whole team chants in Latin, and the quarterback marches ceremoniously down the field, the ball held on high. He drops to his knee in the end zone, crosses himself, and the scoreboard explodes.
God wins.
I don’t like concussionball and I don’t like cultural appropriation, but the Seahawk’s logo is one of the nicest looking sports logos out there (and one of the few that has appropriated from Native Americans without being outright racist).
So the Seahawks win for having the nicer costumes.
one of the few that has appropriated from Native Americans without being outright racist
Wow, that’s a huge step in the right direction, status quo!
Marcus, considering they play in the same league as a team with a slur for a name, it’s downright progressive.
It’s still cultural appropriation though.
Tabby Lavalamp@17, Isn’t that the logo we stole to use at the Postal Service? Not stole, um… borrowed? No, no, just by sheer coincidence happened to look vaguely similar. Yeah that’s it!
Tabby @17
Exactly the criteria my wife uses when she bets the company football pool.
@Tabby Lavalamp
Not anymore. They’re the Bonercats now. And if Dan Snyder doesn’t like that name, he can some up with a better one.
@tbtabby
I prefer the generic “Washington Football Team”. Just the thought of the merchandise brings a faint sparkle to my cold dead eyes.
What about the Civil War? Both sides claimed they were on the side of god. I guess the North could claim the ol’ supernatural bully was really on their side since they won, but couldn’t ol’ Yahweh have given them victory in less than four years and spared a lot of northern blood?
As to Scalia’s absurd Constitutional Originalism: before Darwin it would have been really difficult to flatly deny the existence of a creator, so it would be pretty surprising if there was a reference to non-belief in an Eighteenth Century document. Also, I’m pretty darn sure the Constitution does not give the government explicit rights to possess nuclear bombs. Why isn’t Scalia opposed to that idea?
It sounds very similar to bovine excrements we get from Catholic Church and their minions in Poland – constant appeal to traditions and assigning all achievements of people to some sort of providence and patronage by the Church and god.
The Navy seems to revere the Battle of Midway for some reason. My husband is in the AF, but we were living on a joint installation at one time. We once attended a lovely dinner that was held annually by the Navy folks on the installation.
I never understood why we were honoring the Battle of Midway, but the dinner was excellent and the dancing was fun.
Don’t bring up the Civil War because it evokes the Dred Scott decision and Scalia is very touchy about that. Scalia is very upset that he has never gotten to be as blatant as Chief Justice Roger Taney in re-writing the Constitution when he penned his opinion in the Dred Scott case.
(Of course, my joke doesn’t quite work for people who remember Bush v. Gore.)
From the Rachel Maddow blog, This Week in God:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-1216?cid=eml_mra_20160104
A recent survey shows:
(Sorry, haven’t learned the HTML yet)
“Remarkably, plenty of Americans also appear comfortable with different standards for different traditions. According to the survey’s findings, 82% of the public agreed that protections for Christians are important. For Jewish Americans, support slips to roughly 70%. For Mormons, it’s 67%. And at the bottom, 63% of Americans are on board with protections with those with no religion, and only 61% say the same about Muslims.”
I’m sure it is even worse for us atheists since we are the least favored group in the country.
Sent from my iPad
Scalia is one of the reasons I’ll gladly vote for Secretary Clinton next year. I’m terrified of what will happen if more Justices like him are put on the Supreme Court. Minority rights and women’s reproductive rights would be eviscerated.
It was the most decisive naval battle of WWII. Four of the six Japanese aircraft carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor a few months earlier were destroyed by naval aviators from 3 US carriers. The most important result was a significantly diminished capability of the Imperial Japanese Navy to project itself aggressively.
It was partly a matter of luck that the US dive bombers found the Japanese carriers first. The clouds over the Japanese fleet parted enough for the carriers to be found first.
One of the things i backed on kickstarter was a movie, finished, but not released officially yet, and backers got a preview. Among the gems – Scalia and the other idiot on the bench only get their “news” from right wing sources. Not a shock, really, but… one of them admits to get no other news *at all* except from talk radio, and Rush Limbaugh. Why the F doesn’t this shit disqualify someone for like.. “any” F-ing post?
Oh, and, another gem – the guy that is paid by Rupert Murdock to “vet” news for his vast empire… is the asshole that taught Nixon to stop sweating on film, and baffle everyone with patriotic sounding bullshit sound bites. Again… are we at all surprised by this?
Ah.. right, forgot, its called “The Brainwashing of My Dad.” Apparently the cure is – unsubscribe people from right wing BS sites, subscribe them to just about anything else, at all, and reprogram the TV remote, so you can’t get Fox News on cable. lol
Because he alone is right, and the decades of previous Supreme Court rulings are all terribly wrong.
Simple reason. At a time when both Japan and the US had only a handful of full aircraft carriers each, due to the breakage of the Japanese code, the US was able to sink 4 major aircraft carriers to the loss of one. And the one US aircraft carrier was already considered sunk by the Japanese in the battle of the Coral Sea (the Yorktown).
Japan took 2 years to replace one aircraft carrier. And after that battle, the US ability to replace and supplement its fleet, both floating and in the air, caused to naval war to become one of attrition, which Japan would lose due to its lack of resources.
Go Hawks.
We won independence in the American Revolution not thanks to a god, but to the French.
I bet Scalia hates Hamilton.
The War of 1812 was a stalemate, from the perspective of the US, the UK, and Canada. Of course, the real losers were the Indians.
Our winning the wars against the Indians, Mexico and Spain is pretty much proof that there either is no god, or that it’s a colossal asshole.
(And despite all that, Go Pats!)
It reminds me of one of my favourite scenes in Tamora Pierce’s “Protector of the Small” books:
A male knight challenges the female protagonist, proclaiming loudly that her becoming a knight is against the divine order and he will re-establish that order because the gods are with him.
When he scrambles up from the dirt he cries out “this proves nothing!”
When a war is started to attempt to annex territory, status quo ante is a defender victory.
Now, the US didn’t end up as badly off as they might have but that still doesn’t change the fact that it attempted to invade British Canada and can only say that the British agreed to stop doing something it had already stopped before the war and actually stopping something it was finished with.
It always amazes me (perhaps it shouldn’t) when skeptics who are so insistent on evidence and facts when it comes to creationism or vaccines find themselves opining on politics or law without applying the same rigorous standards. Or in the case of Scalia, any standards at all apparently.
Have any of you actually heard Scalia talk? Do you understand his judicial philosophy at all? PZ doesn’t. And what’s worse is that he doesn’t appear to care that he doesn’t.
Scalia was confirmed on a vote of 98-0 at a time when supreme court appointments were not nearly as politicized as they are now. Progressives got wise with the next Republican appointee – Bork – and mounted vociferous political opposition. But Scalia’s judicial philosophy is not politically based – in fact it is apolitical.
It is called originalism and its quite simple to understand. The Constitution of the US had a meaning when it was enacted. That meaning is immutable. The question of whether a law is constitutional or not is, for Scalia, based on that original meaning of the constitution. Fans of a “living constitution”, as many progressives are, believe that a Supreme Court justice SHOULD be political and confer meaning to a passage of the Constitution that is never had when it was enacted. Scalia was confirmed to the Supreme Court because at that time all that was required of a Supreme Court justice was to be an exceptional lawyer – which he clearly is. Dismissing him as “stupid” is – well – stupid.
Now, on to his argument. He’s made this argument before: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/antonin-scalia-religion-government_n_5922944.html
And here’s another link to coverage of his speech (I couldn’t find the full text of his remarks online):
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/government_can_should_support.html
If people want strict prohibition against government endorsement of religion, let them vote on it. I can’t tell if this is one of the “stupid” things PZ thinks Scalia is always saying. But if that were on the ballot I would vote for it, as would I assume everyone else here.
Look at his comments again – he’s saying that the founding fathers were essentially religious people (true) who didn’t want the government to favor one religion over another (true) but were fine with the government promoting religion over atheism (also true). If you disagree with the last point they you’ll have to ask yourselves why there is a Senate/House Chaplain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain_of_the_United_States_Senate#Constitutionality), why there are Chaplains in the Armed Forces, and what’s all this stuff about God adorning most of the buildings on the National Mall and all of our currency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_we_trust).
Also note what Scalia doesn’t say: he doesn’t say it must always and forever be this way! A politician would promise to keep God embedded in the US’ political institutions forever, but Scalia says essentially the opposite. He says if the American people don’t like it, they can change it! What a concept. Holy crap we’ve found Scalia’s kryptonite.
Except, being an atheist is considered as having a religion for purposes of law. SCOTUS says so.
Scalia is a religious bigot. He thinks incorrectly, that religion should trump constitutional law, but can’t point to one whit of evidence in the constitution. His own words and attitudes are what makes him a religious bigot.
Penny L
There’s no such thing as “apolitical”. You can kid yourself and say you’re “not taking a political stance on this”, but that is, in fact, taking a political stance, usually in favour of the status quo.
So black people can still be owned as slaves and white women are not allowed to vote either, right? Because quite clearly that’s what your constitution meant when it was originally written, right? “Men” and “citizen” meant white guys with property.
Sounds like typical catholic bullshit to me: Even after changing something 500 times you still claim to be true to the original meaning…
Penny L. says
This sounds reasonable on its face, but a closer examination quickly reveals the fallacy of such an approach, at least so far as our system of governance is concerned. We generally do not put to popular vote fundamental rights. The most recent example of this was the highly contentious battle of homosexual Americans over the right to marry. Many states did put marriage restrictions on the ballot and the result was that they did indeed forbid marriage rights to gay couples. Many lower courts declared the results of these ballot measures to be unconstitutional and the current Supreme Court upheld this view, albeit by the slimmest margin. Characteristically, Scalia sided with the minority.
Using Penny’s logic, one can imagine a scenario where a given state might attempt to endorse a particular religion, or limit the rights of non-religious minorities through the ballot. A state like Mississippi might well have the votes needed to pass such laws. Then what? It would wend its way through the courts and in the end it would be declared unconstitutional.
I’m sure that there are other issues that could be brought to the ballot that would garner majorities in some states. The right of women to vote? Utah might void that. Should black Americans be considered full citizens? Alabama might reject that.
This is why Scalia’s comments can be dismissed as stupid. His ‘originalism” is a smoke screen for his own prejudices. And the fallacious claim that the Constitution is ‘immutable?’ Tell that to the descendants of slaves who have gone from being 3/5ths of a person to fully enfranchised citizens. Or to Penny L. herself who, thanks to a change in the Constitution, can now vote and run for public office.
Constitution should change with changing times. US infatuation with it is unhealthy.
The fact that it is possible to Amend the US Constitution makes it stupid to say that it is “immutable”.
I still haven’t seen even the tiniest bit of evidence that the Founders thought atheists weren’t protected by the Constitution.
Let’s see, the preamble to the US Consitution:
It comes from the people to protect the people. No imaginary deities, or religion, mentioned.
Article VI, third paragraph:
No religious test permitted. For purposes of the law, atheists are considered a religion solely for purposes of being equal under the law, hence atheists were not blocked from office at any time.
First Amendment (from Wiki):
There will be no “official” religion. Period, end of story. The US government is NEUTRAL on religion.
The Fourteenth Amendment applied the US Consitution to the States. Hence the above applies to all government agencies and departments, from the US down to the local government.
The only mention of something remotely religious in the original Consitution was the phrase “In the year of the Lord”, which is only a translation of AD, giving the year the Consitutional Convention ratified the draft. No way around it.
So, show me with as solid of evidence where the Constitution gives religion any special rights over the US. Can’t be done. It is an utterly secular document. All else is BULLSHIT.
And SCOTUS has said that if any form of government tries to deal with religion, it must be either totally inclusive of ALL religions (including atheism), or must ignore religion totally.
That is why religious bigots have a problem with the US Constituion, and must invent the inane non-sequiturs Penny L show inaptly paraphrased. And is why Scalia is a religious bigot. He is also a homophobic bigot.
@47
I am continually amazed that even when it is pointed out within the text, supported by numerous details of the history and the ferment of the time and the subsequent numerous court decisions that the myths promoted by the religious bigots that the U.S was founded on christian fundamentals still get listened to with anything close to respect.
uncle frogy
Scalia’s theory that God favors societies that honor him also runs exactly counter to the direction of the correlation in the real world, where highly nonreligious countries like Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands rank higher than the U.S. on indexes like life expectancy and education, while the poorest countries tend to be the most religious.
I’ve written more about this here.
Scalia comes off as an idiot in other cases as well, which are generally not part of the discussion in the atheist and social justice spheres. They are in plenty of other equally interesting spaces. Scalia will contort anything to form am “opinion” that supports the status quo, previous zones of privilege, or anything aggregating more authority and power to corporate interest and state violence.
That is Scalia’s philosophy. It’s the current flavor of extreme conservatism. Just as long as we don’t go back to the days when Catholics and Italians weren’t White Enough. You can’t have his Whiteness back.
This is the perfect example of what Scalia’s broader point it. Why can’t US citizens own slaves in 2016? Anyone? Bueller?
The people voted to enact the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Why can women vote? The people voted to enact the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
The people did not ask the Supreme Court, in either case, to re-interpret the constitution to mean that slavery was now illegal or that women would be granted the right to vote (as happened with abortion and gay marriage). Clearly the people who drafted the Constitution didn’t mean to extend full citizenship rights to either blacks or women, so the people went out and voted to change the constitution.
This is Scalia’s point. Today, in 2016, the people of the US might want to prevent the government from promoting religion over atheism – even though for 200 years the opposite was true. If the people want that, then they can change the constitution. We should not, in his view, appoint pliable judges to “re-interpret” a clause of the constitution to mean something today that it never meant for 200 years.
This is exactly backwards (and I won’t say stupid, just very confused). The only reason to amend the US Constution would be if its meaning was immutable. If it can mean anything we want it to mean (or what Supreme Court justices decide that it means today) then there is no reason to amend the Constitution.
You are not describing the popular vote I, or Scalia, was referring to.
This would be the vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Marriage_Amendment
Here is Roberts’ dissent in Obergefell, with Scalia joining:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Understand the disctinction they are making – they don’t take a stand on the policy question of gay marriage. They’re not supposed to, they’re judges! If the Federal Marriage Amendment, however, were to pass then Scalia and Roberts and Thomas would all be on board. The constitution would then have a theory of marriage, courtesy of that amendment.
I answered your last two points above – I’m in full agreement that the meaning of a legal document should not change over time. Are you? Only in constutitonal law does that happen with regularity, try getting a court to change the interest rate on your loan, or try getting a court to “re-interpret” custody in a divorce settlement.
Your first point is equally wrong. Scalia has written prolifically, has lectured at law schools, etc. He is a serious constitutional scholar and while he does have his prejudices (we all do!) his philosophy is an open book. There are no surprises with Scalia like there are with Kennedy or some of the other justices. He knows what he is looking for (the original meaning of the Constitution) and once he finds it he is bound by that meaning. He will not wake up one day next week and decide that the Constitution requires all states to recognize gay marriage, because he’s already looked and decided that the Constitution does nothing of the sort. With Kennedy or Breyer…depends on which way the winds are blowing.
Nerd – I apprecite the research and the thoughts you put into your comment, but I still think you are wrong.
Here is Justice Kennedy (again!) from the Galloway decision in 2014 (citations omitted):
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-696_bpm1.pdf
What all this means is that your assertion, according to Justice Kennedy, is invalid:
It is not neutral. The US government may employ chaplains, start meetings with prayers, etc., as it has done since the Constitution was enacted.
I don’t like it any more than you do, but the answer is not to whine about Scalia being a bigot (he’s clearly not, really wish you’d listen to a talk or two of his). The answer is to change the Constitution. Persuade your fellow citizens that the establishment clause didn’t go far enough and we’d like the government to be completely neutral in the area of religion. This is, as I’ve said before, Scalia’s kryptonite.
Listen to this short segment from his interview with Piers Morgan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_MhS2u-Pk
Morgan tries to corner him on his public views on abortion – but to Scalia it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have public views on political questions, he has public views on what the Constitution says and what it doesn’t say. He is, again, apolitical.
In which case it didn’t, in fact, mean what it means today and couldn’t be amended to have a meaning that is contrary to what it meant when if was implemented if this meaning was indeed immutable.
That’s a gross misrepresentation of the legislative process. You’re not Switzerland after all…
Of course, 50% of “the people” were not allowed to vote in the elections, so declaring that the outcome was a vote of “the people” is dishonest.
So basically laws abolishing slavery and giving the vote to women are not sticking to the original meaning of the document, because these are amendments (therefore changes) to the original document, altering its original meaning, which we must stick to, according to Scalia. This is rather problematic, because, in Penny L‘s opinion,
… And I’m not in favour of anyone being bound by the original meaning of a document created in the late 18th century.
Lies. The governement has to be neutral, and your example is irrelevant fuckwittery. Nobody is forced to pay any attention to the chaplains. And most congresscritters and senators don’t. You don’t understand what you are saying, as being a member of congress is a voluntary act to begin with.
Nobody is forced to pray in congress.
The story is different where there the act of being there isn’t voluntary, and one is compelled by circumstances to pray to imaginary deities.
The constitution is not a document carved in stone. The constitution can be amended, unlike holy books, and SCOTUS keeps saying how it works in the present day.
I saw Penny L’s name and immediately knew they’d be on the wrong side of this issue as well.
Never ever fails.
Saad
I think you’re psychic. Here’s a million dollars.
ITT: Bumbling homophobe deified uplifted to the rank of “Constitutional scholar” courtesy of Penny L
Peny L, do you recall the time the people of the United States voted that Albert Gore should be the next president? The Supremes jumped into an area where they had no jurisdiction at all, and quite un-Constitutionally imposed their will upon the nation. What is Scalia’s stand on that?
I put a lot of time into figuring out the original meaning of the Second Amendment. I am quite sure that I have worked it out correctly, yet Scalia’s view differs. His opinion is the same as the most popular right-wing view, the extremely simple one. That doesn’t seem like great scholarship or a dedication to original meaning.
Ignore the “deified”, I had meant to delete that.
I’m apparently not explaining this very well, or you’re misreading what I’ve written.
When an amendment to the constitution is enacted, the part of the constitution that was amended has no more meaning. It’s gone, disappeared. What replaces it is the language chosen by the people. If a clause of the constitution is not so amended, then in Scalia’s view (and mine) it ought to have the same meaning it did when it was enacted.
Again, the original meaning of the parts of the constitution which were amended have no relevance. What’s the original meaning of the Articles of Confederation? Who cares, no one in the United States is governed by that document anymore.
Bully for you. Here is how we as a society should fix that problem: Change the constitution to make it read the way you’d like it to read. Here’s how we shouldn’t fix that problem: appoint a slew of judges to the Supreme Court who will interpret that legal text just about any way you like. We either live by a set of rules or we don’t and right now that set of rules in the US is the Constitution. Scalia’s philosophy treats that document like it means something. If we decide it doesn’t, or if we decide we don’t like what it means, then lets change it or call a constitutional convention to draft another one. The absolute worst thing we can do, in my opinion, is treat the Constitution like it could mean ANYTHING depending on who is in power that week. Which is, coincidentally, where we are now.
Have you read Scalia’s decision in Heller? I have, and it is a well thought out and scholarly piece of work – regardless of where you stand on the issue of the 2nd Amendment. It is quite off topic but I’d be interested in hearing where you think his scholarship runs afoul of yours. Four other Supreme Court justices concurred with Scalia’s reasoning – are all five of them guilty of the same lack of scholarship?
ITT: Legal ignoramuses beclown themselves trying to smear a Supreme Court justice someone has told them they have to hate for reasons they don’t understand.
As I said before: Typically catholic: Things mean exactly what I want them to mean.
You are defending a religious and homophobic bigot for reasons you fail to understand.
Scalia looks for “evidence”, same as creationists, to back up his bigotry. That is why he is reviled by those of us here, and a good portion of the legal community. Nothing about us being stupid, rather we understand what is happening.
You don’t seem to grasp real concepts, like defacto establishment of a religion by the state.
So, Penny L., I presume that you and the other originalists would say that the 2nd amendment merely decrees that the right of the people to bear and keep muskets shall not be infringed, right? Because how would the founding fathers have foreseen the invention of assault rifles?
Calling a homophobe a homophobe isn’t “smearing” anyone. Maybe your definition of homophobia allows people to vote against giving us rights without being considered a homophobe, but mine doesn’t.
Penny L, I went and read Scalia in Heller, at least as much as I could slog through on this dreary day. I hadn’t read it before, and it was much as I expected. As folks in this thread have said, Scalia knew what he wanted to see, and he saw it. Despite, mind you, the opposing arguments making good points. Scalia seemed to be just arguing from words and perceptions, not from the reality of the times, despite saying that such would be the right thing to do.
My case is based on the state of warfare at the time, the mechanics of the weapons, and the needs of the drill field. It is backed up by documents including the body of the Constitution and the Militia Act.
See, guns of the time were incredibly expensive. A skilled craftsman took about a month to make a gun, which meant it cost a few months salary for a working man at a time when most folks didn’t earn cash salaries. The frontiersmen who needed a gun only owned one, and it was passed down the generations. The average city dweller, which was a lot of the population, didn’t own a gun. The body of the Constitution makes it quite clear that the militia was to be supplied arms by the government. Militia arms were state-owned.
Firing a musket of the time took many steps, and required practice. The way that armies and militias used their muskets at the time was in formations that maneuvered as a whole and fired in simultaneous volleys. The marching in formation that soldiers still learn on drill fields is a relic of that time – well, all time, as it started with spearmen and didn’t end until the American Civil War killed it. It took immense amounts of practice, in both marching and firing. A well-practiced militia needed to load and fire thousands of rounds.
Now, the state-owned arms could have been kept in armories, and only issued when needed for wars, but the arms were needed for practice. The people of the militia had to keep the arms so they could be well-practiced. The people of the United States had a right to have a well-practiced militia, and to be in it.
See, the country could have hired mercenary soldiers. But the hated Hessians had been mercenaries, and the government would have had control of any mercenaries it was paying. The body of the Constitution forbids getting money for an army for more than two years. The people’s militia was the defense of the nation … along with the navy, which was funded and provided for in the body of the Constitution.
So as long as a regularly-practiced militia was needed for the defense of the nation, the people had a right to be in it, and to practice, and to fight, using the arms that their taxes paid for.
The Militia Act says that a militia man could bring a gun, and take it off his taxes. It describes the specifications, and allow him six moths to get it. Nothing implies that he already had a gun, nothing even says he gets to carry that particular gun, and certainly not that he got to take it home after. It simply farms out the building and buying of military guns, and cuts down on paperwork.
There is more to support my argument, but it can all be summed up by saying that the key word in the Second Amendment is “well-regulated”, and that private gun ownership is nowhere in the Constitution. Scalia hrumphs away the entire militia, and argues what he believes. If he were truly going for original intent, he would compare the militia to the current National Guard, and hrumph at our Army.
Menyambal,
Do you have sources? I’m not doubting what you say, I’d just like to read more about it.
No, not individual sources, except for the body of the Constitution. This is all general knowledge, picked up from all over. Well, there was one article in the NRA magazine, describing how long it took to load a musket, but they didn’t seem to realize what that meant. I already knew that stuff, so only kept the mag for a while.
Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series covers some of it in fiction, if you like.
Ah, well, I was hoping for a smoking gun, as it were. I mean what you say makes a lot of sense, and fits with what I’ve read about the era, but it would have been nice to cite George Mason or Jimmy Madison saying something like “Hey, goobers, the guns aren’t for your own personal use, got that? There’s a reason we front the well-regulated militia.”
Why not? Four didn’t concur, after all. Indeed, they agreed on two separate dissenting opinions, not just to address historical or ideological concerns but matters of fact and logic relevant to the specific case they were supposed to adjudicate.
But you’re saying four whole Supreme Court justices were wrong. What exactly was their mistake? And once you’ve gotten that far, where the fuck do you get off acting so fucking astonished and dismissive, when someone else claims the number happens to be five instead of four?
Why Scalia is wrong in Heller:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-freedman/dc-v-heller-scalias-decis_b_110017.html
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD1.html
Wrong is wrong. Typical of Scalia, where the constitution only means something when it backs his prejudices, and is otherwise ignored if it doesn’t.
Nerd, it is you who do not understand. You have no evidence he is a bigot, or has acted in any way contrary to his originalist philosophy. You may think he is wrong, as do many people, including other sitting justices on the Supreme Court. This is law, not biology or physics where problems have verifyable solutions. The most contentious legal questions – the ones that split the court 5-4 – turn on questions of principle and interpretation.
Here’s the other thing you don’t understand about Scalia: unlike creationists, who cannot be swayed by evidence, he has given all of us the key to changing his ruling – change the constitution. Don’t like the policy implications of his ruling in Heller? Persuade your fellow citizens and pass an amendment. Don’t like his opinion on Citizens United? Change the constitution. Scalia is thus rendered impotent (according to his own philosophy!).
No he doesn’t.
He addresses it in pages 22-24 here: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-290.pdf
And it goes on. Maybe on a sunnier day you can make your way through the whole opinion and read it with an open mind, trying not to succumb to confirmation bias.
I’m not arguing that any of the Supreme Court justices make “mistakes” in the same sense that PZ and others here claim Scalia does. That’s a dumb argument to make because all of these justices – regardless of what you think of their political ideas – are highly accomplished lawyers and jurists. That they issue contrary opinions in a case where they have seen and considered all the same facts is attributable to the imprecise nature of constitutional law.
What is highly stupid, in my view, is dismissing Scalia as an idiot, or a bigot, or a homophobe. He is a nigh brilliant constitutional scholar and thinker. That his legal opinions don’t generally benefit us politically is incidental, but it is the source of the hatred for him by political advocates on the left. So if you want to say “I don’t know much about the law or what Scalia thinks, I just hate him because of his opinion on Roe v. Wade,” that’s fine. That’s a belief, not unlike creationism, that’s based on the flimsiest of evidence. And I kind of thought we all liked to use reason and evidence to support our assertions around here.
Thanks, Scalia, for admitting that all your rulings where you used ‘ceremonial deism’ as an excuse to wedge religion into more and more government functions, was always bullshit.
So can we get the court to review all those cases again, with Scalia obviously recused?
This is painfull to read.
Premises:
1) There are nine justices in the supreme court and
2) They are all highly skilled scholars and thinkers.
3) Despite 2) they give different interpretaions of the constitutions on some issues.
4) Some of those interpretations are bigoted and/or lead to maintaining current bigoted status quo.
5) Scalia interprets the constitution as in 4)
6) there is no objective way to say which interpretation is objectively true due to imprecise nature of constitutional law.
Consclusion:
The interpretations the justices reach cannot be wholy objective, therefore they are at least in part subjective. Therefore they are informed at least in part by the prejudices and forgone conclusions of those interpreting them. Therefore bigots are more likely to give bigoted interpretations. Therefore Scalia is in all probability a bigot.
Penny L, you should sometimes try to read what you actually write and think about it, because you contradict yourself.
There’s ample evidence for his bigotry especially against LGBT people and women. That is independent of whether that is true to his “philosophy” or not, how smart he is, etc. The fact that Nietzsche was a brilliant and most influential philosopher doesn’t detract from the fact that he was a vile misogynist as well.
Penny L,
He preferred that states should be able to treat same-sex couples as second class citizens. That is bigotry. I’m really shocked you didn’t know that. That was a very recent court decision.
You really need to become more educated on like every topic you attempt to discuss here.
Yes, his attitude toward the LBGT community. He thinks they are abominations. Prima facie evidence. You lose as always.
Stone me, but you’re stupid. Hate is not a belief of any sort, let alone one “not unlike creationism”. Since that claim makes no sense at all, I deduce that you just put it in in an attempt to smear people you disagree with.
Oh, and what’s the point of pretending you’re part of any political “us” with the majority of those who comment here?
Here is an excerpt from Scalia’s dissent. I may have made a slight modification in there somewhere to see how the great non-bigoted scholar would have felt about Loving v. Virginia (unless he’s a hypocrite).
I didn’t read the entirety of his angry bigoted nonsense, but is there any part of it that doesn’t automatically express dissent towards the interracial marriage ruling?
Also, he says “individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views”.
I would like for Penny to explain what is respectful about intruding into consenting adults’ personal lives and telling to to live as second class citizens without the full rights and privileges enjoyed by other couples.
“No evidence that he’s a bigot”
See: Scalia’s Obergefell v. Hodges dissenting opinion.
Sorry, if you’re going to try to deny me rights because of who I love, you’re a bigot.
Citation please, he’s said nothing of the sort. Your assertion is not evidence. You did so well in your first comment to me on this thread but its been downhill since then.
You’re right, hate is an emotion. The “belief” is thinking Scalia would like to use the Supreme Court to make abortion illegal, when he would do nothing of the kind. And I’m not the one doing the smearing on this thread, for the record.
As for your other comment, I am a lifelong liberal but I’m starting to believe that maybe I don’t align politically with many of the people here. I try to build fences rather than burn them down. I try to understand my political opponents instead of dismissing them as stupid (especially when they’re nothing of the sort). Despite the fact that Scalia and I would very likely not agree on much politically I find there is much to admire about the man as a legal scholar. Is that ok or do I have to hate everyone to the right of Joe Lieberman to be accepted here?
Intruding into consenting adults personal lives is never respectful, and Scalia has not now, or ever, done that. Did you completely gloss over the comment where I explained Scalia’s view on gay marriage above? The only major point he – and more precisely Chief Justice Roberts in his dissent – makes is that same sex marriage is not something that is addressed by the Constitution. How on earth is that bigoted? I understand that advocates desperately wanted the Supreme Court to suddenly discover a right to same sex marriage in the Constitution that hadn’t been there before, but Scalia’s argument (and that of Thomas and Alito and Roberts) is that’s not the way new rights should be enshrined. If the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court can taketh away. An amendment to the Constitution is the only way that should have codified same sex marriage as a fundamental right for US citizens.
@80 Saad
Don’t you know that calling people “abominations” and “perverts” is just being a good, moral citizen, but calling people “homophobes” is an slanderous insult that disrupts the conversation with offensive name-calling?
The man is not being dismissed as a homophobe, he is being identified as such, then his ridiculous arguments against marriage equality, dismissed on their own lack of any validity whatsoever. Stop pretending that identifying a bigot takes is a conversation stopper…it only is because that’s the excuse bigots take to irrationally and illegitimately claim the high-ground which they don’t fucking own…
Scalia did nothing of the sort.
Once again, none of the dissenting justices in that case take a policy position on same sex marriage. That’s not their job, they are judges, not policy makers. The only position they took was on whether or not the Constitution addressed same sex marriage, and they concluded that it does not.
What does that mean? It would have meant – if they had prevailed – that the States would decide whether or not to recognize same sex marriages.
This exact idea is what I was addressing above – you think Scalia is a bigot but you have no comprehension of his actual position and don’t, apparently, care to learn about it. Just like a creationist, I can’t help you if you’re not willing to try to understand reason.
Penny L:
It’s dumb because they’re accomplished. Looks like you’re making an awfully dumb argument to me.
What the fuck does this mean? Are you now saying that there is no precise matter of fact, about what the constitution means? You can’t consistently say “it in fact meant this originally, not any old thing you want it to mean, but … oh, right, also, due to the nature of the subject we’re not dealing with precise facts that people are capable of being mistaken about.”
If you’re not creating a double standard here, then simply own up to it: you’re saying four of them in fact are wrong in that case, while we we’re saying the other five were.
Then he’s an idiotic, bigoted and homophobic brilliant constitutional scholar and thinker. He could be all of that at the same time, although his supposed brilliance as a constitutional scholar is also doubtful. In any case, being a certain kind of authority or expert does not an insulate a person from idiocy or bigotry or homophobia.
Public servants should do things that generally benefit us politically. That makes him terrible at his job (incidentally?), and you wouldn’t need to hate him or be on the left to see that.
What does this mean?
My rights should not be put up to a vote.
I don’t give a shit in a handbasket what Scalia’s reasoning was, the practical effect would have to gamble on states that within my lifetime had sodomy laws suddenly respecting my rights.
He is not a bigot, he just cares more about the “traditional” (meaning modern) usage of a word, than he does about the dignity and rights of human beings. Totes legit.
Penny L, #82 and #84
Holy shit, you are extremely stupid (goes hand in hand with your standard bigotry apologia you spew in every single thread you take part in).
A supreme court justice saying in his official capacity that his institution should not prohibit states from treating same-sex couples a second class citizens is precisely the same thing as endorsing the oppression, you stupid shitbag.
See Brown v. Board of Education
See Loving v. Virginia
I’d love to hear the fuckwad bigot homophobe expalin how SCOTUS did the right thing in those cases but the wrong thing in Obergefell.
Penny L, #
Because a fucking supreme court justice with all the power he has is choosing deliberately to use it to speak AGAINST the moral and correct thing to do: equal rights for human beings.
Just as a justice who had spoken against Brown v. Board of Education would be a vile bigot, so is one who dissents in Obergefell.
The reason this is difficult for you is because you’re also a clueless bigot.
This is “Directly” from the Wikipedia entry on Scalia: “In an October 2013 issue of New York magazine, Scalia revealed that he scans the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, gets most of his news from talk radio and does not read the New York Times nor the Washington Post.”
Now.. The Wall Street Journal is Rupert Murdocks. The Washington Times.. ((not the Post mind you)) was created to “fight liberal bias and communists”, was originally funded by a church, who apparently later become too “liberal” for them, and one of the quotes on the page for it is:
As for talk radio.. Something like 80-90% of that is all right wing news, and the most popular member of the right wing radio “news” is Rush Limbaugh (or was), but it also include a long list of other assholes, all of whom have very warped views on blacks, liberals, atheists, government programs, and anything else you can name.
In short, Scalia seems to drink deeply of the poisoned waters of the right wing, and we are supposed to presume that, because he isn’t obviously public about it all the time, that this isn’t negatively effecting his common sense, never mind views on every single issue he judges Penny L? Give me a break.. The guy couldn’t have picked more horrible sources of information about how the world really works, and the people in it, if he had rejected all forms of media, in favor of his personal Bible, and collection of, “Memorabilia of past dictators and fanatics”.
Lets reiterate – he gets his news from the shills for Wall Street, a religious based paper, which considered its own founding church to be too liberal, and heavy doses of some of the most insane conspiracy theorists and talk radio half wits in the continental united states. Even if he didn’t start out being a bigot, there is not way you can use those as your only, or primary, sources of news and not **become** a raving ass.
And? Therefore?
I just did a quick text search, apparently the constitution doesn’t mention marriage at all, which means it must be a question that touches on other issues, like equality.
As others have mentioned, please explain the difference between Loving v Virginia and Obergefell v Hodges.
How is one a question covered by the Supreme court and the other not?
Scalia the Great Legal Scholar adheres to a strict interpretation of the constitution, disparaging his co-SCOTUS judges on going against ‘the will of the people’, and whining about judges who ‘make laws’. On the other hand, when it suits him, he does just that and strikes down laws enacted by the majority, discerning rights that are nowhere to be found tin the constitution, see Citizens United.
Also, small hint: if someone makes comparisons between LGBT people and paedophiles, it is a fair bet they wallow in homophobic bigoted views.
Christ, you’re an idiot.
Golly, there’s just no mention of the constitution in deciding that marriage is a fundamental human right, no, not at all. This would be because marriage isn’t covered at all in the constitution. (Are you getting even a glimmer of your stupidity and bigotry yet?)
Then there’s Scalia, your “brilliant” scholar:
@94 zenlike
Don’t be silly, that’s just concerned citizens using their freedom of speech to passionately, but respectfully, attempt to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views. You dirty liberals calling that homophobia are just resorting to disrespectful attacks and injurious insults!
Meanwhile, in reality, Scalia is a fucking textbook homophobe.
Saad – This is exactly the same creationist belief bullshit that you and others around here despise. You have no fucking idea what the Supreme Court’s role is or what they can and can’t do. Scalia did something you don’t like – he didn’t find a right to same-sex marriage in the text of the Constitution. And without caring about WHY he did that you decide, like a petulant teenager, to lash out and smear him.
In fact he found the same thing that Giliell just found in her search of the Constitution – it doesn’t mention marriage! Read Justice Roberts’ dissent again that I quote above, that is his main point! You have no desire to understand his philosophy, understand his opinions, or give them a fair reading. I guess some people like you just prefer ignorance, just prefer to be bigoted and not understand why someone holds the opinions they do.
Also, if you can’t tell I’m more than a little tired of your constant vicious personal attacks against me…a typical tactic of those losing an argument.
Yes, and I asked a follow up question you keep ignoring: What’S the difference between interracial marriage and same sex marriage? You can quote Scalia on this
Ah, i see, he never actually said “i hate f*gs” in those words so nothing he does or says can be interpreted as homophobic, ever, because that would be smearing.
Does this count?:
“In my case, that means putting aside my longstanding and profound fear of homosexuals.”
But look, he says he is magically impartial and objective because his saying so, so even though he has explicitely declared himself to be a homophobe and his actions and words are transparently homophobic, i suposse we still can’t call him a homophobe lest people like Penny are offended by reality.
I’ve said this before: fuck you Penny.
Penny L
But he DID find a right for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in politics. How convenient!
No, YOU lost the argument before it started. By being deliberately ignorant, ideological, and failing to understand things like Political Dog Whistles, which allow bigots to tell the faithful that they are bigots, but give a veneer of deniability “I didn’t say that”. No, they did mean it, so they said it indirectly. The bigotry is clear.
Scalia is just a RW ideologue and bigot, who attempts to rationalize his ideology for political gain for the right.
Penny L, example of a political dog whistle. Scalia is reported as saying:
This is code for saying it is OK to shove imaginary deities into all situations, and down the throats of non-believers. But he didn’t say so directly. But it is what he meant. And it shows in his decisions, where he would allow for forcing religion into the public domain where it doesn’t belong, and isn’t needed.
And if you explore his reasoning in each case, perhaps you’ll get a little closer to understanding why he decided that case the way he did. Just like almost everyone else here, you’re like a two year old touching a fireplace and knowing it hurts your hand but not understanding why.
Yes, I can. Scalia joined in Roberts’ opinion, which says the following:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
The minority argues that the racial bans on marriage were fundamentally different than the same-sex bans. You can disagree with their reasoning – and I do! – but they lay their argument out in plain English in their dissent. Not a whiff of homophobia in that dissent, btw.
Hey asshole – that Scalia quote is fabricated by The New Yorker in a satire piece :http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scalia-says-marriage-views-not-affected-by-lifelong-fear-of-gays
So, try again. And fuck you while you’re at it.
Nerd – so let me get this straight. Scalia created this theory of Constitutional interpretation called originalism, worked out the theory and the philosophy and even wrote a massive volume explaining the principles of interpreting a legal text, but all of it was a ruse. All of it was cover so he could shove the Christian Right’s view of America down all of our throats. Have I got that about right? And now you come along, one of the few people entrusted with the wisdom and knowledge necessary to de-code his terrifically complicated “dog-whistles”, to give us the real truth behind what he’s saying.
He’s not really a Constitutional scholar, he’s a homophobe and a bigot and a racist.
Well played Scalia, well played.
Penny L
Oh my fucking non-existent god, you can’t be THIS dense, can you? His ruling in CU shows exactly why his ‘originalism’ is a crock of shit. Corporations DIDN’T EVEN EXIST at the time the constitution was written. He gave them rights based on HIS INTERPRETATION of the constitution, just like other SCOTUS judges have discerned a right for SSM based upon their interpretation of the 14th amendment.
Just like Scalia, you define rulings you like as ‘originalist interpretations’, and ruling you don’t like as ‘judicial lawmaking’, without actually being able to explain why the first is the former and the second is the latter.
Be careful when insulting other peoples intelligences when you yourself are as dense as a brick wall.
Scalia wrote this when he was upholding the laws that could get people thrown in jail for simply engaging in consensual homosexual sex. But don’t you dare call him a “homophobe” because that would get “liberal” Penny L quite mad.
@103
Wasn’t aware of that. I take the correction. You know, it really sounded like something he would say, though…
Also, see @105, fabricated quote aside, he is still a fucking textbook homophobe.
I’m starting to suspect that as with racism, Penny appears to be homophobia-blind. Or deliberately bigoted, you know, one of those…
106, Dreaming of Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia
Fabricated quote? You can literally search on the entire quote here:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/558/case.html#opinion-pdf
Penny L, your hero has feet of clay, and lack morals. So do you. Those who defend bigots are usually bigots. I’m not surprised you defend a bigot.
So, tell us who in the US aren’t full citizens deserving of all the privileges and protections our Constitution offers?
Let me LITERALY QUOTE from Scalia’s dissent even further:
So what is this ‘agenda’ and the rights gays should gain through ‘democratic means’ in this particular context, which Scalia acknowledges in his very next sentence?
The right not to be thrown in jail by engaging in consensual activities that do not interfere with your fellow citizens lives AT ALL is not something we should vote on. In fact, it is a right guaranteed by the equal protection clause of the constitution, as noted in the commentary of the SCOTUS judges who DID strike down these laws. Scalia is nothing more then a bigot, who justifies his bigotry through ‘original intent’ when it suits him, and throws this interpretation out of the window when it is convenient.
And then we are not even touching the subject of WHY ‘originalism’ is a correct way, or in case of some commenters the ONLY correct way to interpret the constitution. Because a lot of legal scholars have written a lot of text on that subject.
Blockquote fail, the first blockquote is entirely Scalias text.
Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia,
I now see you refer to another quote that is fabricated, and that you do not refer to my 105 quote as being fabricated. My apologies. Anyway, a citation is never superfluous.
Scalia appears to be totally unaware that the whole construction of the Constitution was to protect the minority from the majority. The Federalists promoted democracy as “mob rule” that often persecutes minorities for simple disagreement.
If Scalia is such an originalist, he needs to reread The Federalist Papers.
The real problem with “originalists”, be they bible fans or strict constitutionalist, is that in any quality system, there is continual improvement built in. Which is why the constitution is allowed to be amended, and SCOTUS decisions to update the meaning of the document.
Equal protection means that NOBODY can be treated as a second class citizen by popular vote. That popular vote is irrelevant to application of basic human rights. Any Justice who fails to acknowledge that truth deserves to be criticized.
Penny L
But haven’t we already established that the constitution doesn’t say anything about marriage? So where does he get that definition from?
Yeah, we get his bullshit reasoning. See, the problem with it is this:
1. Is a corporation a single person? No.
2. IS a corporation legitimately capable of representing the political views of all of its employees? Maybe, but only if you presume that the issue effects the business, and that the employees actually agree with the direction and decisions of the company.
3. Is there any legal grounds by which, like in the Fox Meridian novels I recently read, by which ones votes and voting rights, may be signed over to another individual, or organization, who can then use them to represent individual private citizens. Hell no. And probably so damned illegal its not even funny.
4. Can a corporation then be classed as a voting citizen, which has personal rights to influence politics, via any of the methods allowed to individual citizens, or are they acting “against” the actual, legit, interests of their own employees, by doing so? The are acting as though they are, or have, the rights to the political views of their employees, and influencing policy, via election funding and other avenues, which ignore and circumvent the rights of their employees, who are the people who are **supposed** to have the politic power to make such decisions.
Should it therefor be legal for them to spend infinite, or even any, amount of money to do an end run around the interests, or political views, of their own employees? And, more to the point, even in some scary world in which you could sign your rights over to your company, would it make sense that they could use their power and influence to undermine the vote of people who they have no rights over at all? No, and no.
So… I can read his BS argument for why corporations have the same rights as people in this until I am blue in the face, and will never see the logic behind it. Its undermines the rights of real people, by placing the power to influence the electorate in ways that real people cannot, entirely in favor of corporations, and, as history shows, time and time again, as does the current arguments over wages, insurance, benefits, etc., ***AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF ITS OWN EMPLOYEES***. You know, those funny things called “actual people” who work for them, and are, supposedly, the ones who have the constitutional right to decide who gets elected, and what the government does.
@111 zenlike
Yes, sorry, my wording was confussing.
Zen – you are the one who is ignorant, and willfully so. Instead of me going into a dissertation on Citizens’ United, see this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-glasser/understanding-the-emcitiz_b_447342.html. Very likely, the things you think you know about Citizens’ United are wrong.
It is a fabricated quote – you won’t find it in the Lawrence decision or anywhere else for that matter.
This is the confirmation bias I’m attempting to counteract here – but no one seems to care. Apparently if you’re a progressive and think all the right things, it doesn’t really matter if the facts line up behind you. That’s a luxury we don’t give to creationists.
It sounds like something he would say only because you’ve likely been innundated with like-minded political advocacy which has for years placed a target on Scalia’s back. I’ve seen calls for his impeachment, for him to resign, etc. Not when Bush was in office mind you – no one on this side wanted him to resign when the other side could appoint his replacement. It sounds like something he would say because it confirms your pre-existing biases about Scalia, but I would be willing to bet that, just like the quote, your biases are almost entirely based on falsehoods or half-truths. This is why echo-chambers are huge problems. Spend enough time having your biases confirmed or not challenged and you end up believing some wacky shit.
Once again, let me see if I have this straight: bigots defend bigots. So the ACLU is full of bigots for defending the right of the KKK to march in Skokie, IL? What about the people who defended Westboro Baptist in court? Or the justices who sided with Westboro Baptist, saying the 1st Amendment protects their activities? Bigots all?
Should we be checking in with you daily, Nerd, not only to see what “dog-whistles” you’ve heard in the last 24 hours but to see who you’ve determined is bigoted today?
Why don’t you start with who shouldn’t be full citizens enjoying the rights and priviledges of the US Constitution – gun owners? Businesses or unions wanting to run political ads? Bigots maybe? Should bigots have full rights and priviledges?
I saw this argument above but didn’t address it because while it sounds like a wonderful argument, it’s really just dumb.
Every right Americans enjoy was voted on at one point. Every single one.
Except for those rights that the Supreme Court simply decided Americans should enjoy. Rights we voted on can’t be easily taken away. Rights the Court gives can be taken away by the same mechanism.
Would you like to vote again on the right to bear arms? Or the First Amendment? Or is those rights that are so inherent to being that it shouldn’t be voted on? After all, owning a gun is a consensual activity that doesn’t interfere with your fellow citizens. So is buying a campaign ad.
Constitutional interpretation has been Scalia’s profession, and he’s been doing it for the highest court in the US, for the last 30 years. If your assertion starts with “Scalia appears to be totally unaware of X” and then X turns out to be something simple and/or fundamental – YOU are the one who is “totally unaware.”
Think for a second about amount of arrogance and hubris that takes – to think that you understand something fundamental to the Constitution better than a judge who has been sitting on the Supreme Court for decades. I suppose there’s something fundamental about being a daytime talk show host that you understand, but Oprah doesn’t. Or something about football that Bill Belichick doesn’t. That’s equally as silly as what you said above.
And your point is?
You can’t change history, and for most of the history of the United States (and every country around the world for that matter), homosexual conduct was seen not only as morally wrong but in many cases legally wrong.
So instead of cherry-picking quotes designed to make Scalia look bad, how about we look a paragraph from the very next page of the dissent you are quoting:
Kinda cuts against your Scalia-as-bigot theme, so I can understand why you didn’t want to include this part of the dissent.
Here are a couple follow-on questions based on Scalia’s theme: Is there a Constitutional right to polygamy? Beastiality? Child porn – should just looking at pictures be criminalized? Prostitution? These are all things that are done by consenting adults (child porn is the exception, but if people are just trading pre-existing pictures there’s no real harm) and are criminal for the most part right now. Is there a Constitutional right to any or all of them?
So why no vote on interracial marriage?
Penny L
That article talks about why the CU ruling is a good ruling. That was not under discussion. The article says NOTHING about how an originalist interpretation of the constitution would have led to the ruling, which was the point under discussion.
I think we are done here.
Scalia can profess he’s not a bigot until the cows come home. I care about the actions. He wants my rights to be up for vote, when there are states that would have put me in prison for having sex a little over a decade ago. So no, fuck Scalia and fuck you.
Vivec,
Way, way, worse. He would have your right not to be thrown in jail to be put up for vote.
You have the equivalent of a creationist belief – you don’t care about facts or reasoning, all that matters to you is the practical outcome of his opinion. You want same-sex marriage rights to be special, different from every other right in the Constitution which were voted on – every single one. All of them were up for debate, and all of them had people on either side of the argument.
I think we are done here.
byebye
“You want interracial marriage rights to be special, different from every other right in the Constitution which were voted on – every single one. All of them were up for debate, and all of them had people on either side of the argument. ”
Byebye
Penny L, #123
It is bigotry to say that equal rights for minorities is something to be voted on by the privileged majority. You are, of course, a bigot too.
Fuck off.
Oops, I mean bye bye.
Yes, I want my rights not to be up for a vote. I want everyones rights not to be up for a vote. Rights are not a thing that should change based on the whim of the majority.
So yeah, fuck off, bye bye.
Basic human rights are covered under the fourteenth amendment, and apply to EVERYBODY. Being a minority doesn’t mean your rights are up for votes. They exist, PERIOD.
You were done here before you started your defense of bigotry. Usually done by a bigot. You need to fuck off this thread, and fuck off this blog.
Reality has a liberal bias, as you so easily confirm. You are out of touch with reality.
Are all of you this congenitally stupid?
I mean, can you not see the irony of this argument?
The 14th Amendment was VOTED on! That’s how it became an amendment! Fuck me the stupid burns so bright sometimes.
Yet that’s exactly what you wanted to happen in Obergefell, and its exactly what you’re criticizing Scalia for opposing. The whim of the Supreme Court majority gave same sex marriage rights to the country, and all it will take is one justice to change his mind and those rights are gone.
Changing the constitution, while harder to do, is much more permanent, and you won’t have to worry about Originalists like Scalia. He will, at that point, be fighting right alongside you to preserve the original meaning of that amendment.
And we’ve come full circle with the stupid. You are truly amazing in that you apparently cannot be reasoned with on this issue, it is truly a belief and it doesn’t matter to you how much of that belief is based on lies. Incredible.
Rather than addressing our resident bigot-loving-bigot, let me just say that there is a silver lining. I doubt we’ll have too many more years of Justice Scalia.
Unfortunately, that also means we wont have too many more years of actually good justices like Ginsburg. Still, one must take the bad with the good.
Penny L
I thought you were leaving.
You probably should, this place is clearly not good for your blood pressure.
From the Scalia bit you quoted:
You at #118
No, that is Scalia being quite homophobic and bigoted.
What if Scalia was saying that about abolition of slavery, desegregation or interracial marriage? What are the black people living in segregation at that time supposed to do? Just live miserably and die? So what are the gay couples living unequally supposed to do? Wait for the asshole straight couples to die so that a FUTURE gay couple can live equally?
You simple-minded, bigoted little fuck.
Scalia is a straight man legally married to a woman telling gay couple forced to be treated like second class citizens to be patient until the states decide it’s convenient for them to finally treat the gay couples as equals in the eyes of the government.
That you don’t see that as oppressive homophobia and bigotry puts you in no position to call anyone else stupid, you homophobic asshole.
Kagehi @91
I think you may have done some misreading. The founding church was the Unification Church (aka the Moonies), and said church wasn’t happy with the paper drifting away from the far, far right.
The Moonies ended up buying the paper outright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times
So yes, Scalia gets his news from the Moonies.
Penny L@83,
That’s not what you said @72. And even if it was, and even if the belief that Scalia would like to use the Supreme court to make abortion illegal is wrong (I’m impressed that we have a telepath among us, able to see into Scalia’s inmost desires), it would be absolutely nothing whatsoever like creationism. And you have repeated this “creationist” smear numerous times. The only other place I’ve come across it used so systematically is by self-styled “race realists” who argue that scepticism about racial differences in innate ability are “liberal creationism”.
You should take your act on the stage. You’d have them rolling in the aisles.
Also protip if you can’t tell that my “whims of the majority” was referring to the american people at large and not “any majority at any level”, you’re either stupid or dishonest.
He should quit his job then…
That’s also just horrifically poorly advised. If we left rights decisions to the people at large, I have no doubt that we’d still have states with sodomy laws and criminalized homosexuality. Maybe even anti-miscegenation, depending on how much of a gerrymandered mudhole said state is.
The will of the people cannot show bigotry, and treat people differently. The constitution was there to protect minority rights, and it clear with protections for religious freedom (1st), and equal protection (14th). Some people don’t like that, as they feel entitled to be bigots, and want to require everybody else to agree with them.
Who other than SCOTUS is there to protect minority rights? Definitely not congress these days of rethug control.
So, where in the 14th does it say anything about segregation being wrong and the right to interracial marriage?
Weird how that point just keeps on getting ignored.
Brown vs. Board of Education (from Wiki)
Examples of “separate but equal“.
Doesn’t take a rocket/brain scientist to figure out the inequality. Therefore, everybody is equal. And unlike Orwell’s book Animal Farm, some are not more equal than others, which was the case up to that point.
@Penny L:
You might want to reconsider your accusations of stupidity, here. You are conflating the concept of rights with the formal legal recognition of those rights.
And since no-one has pointed it out yet, the Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
There were indeed arguments that providing some formal legal recognitions of rights would leave the implication that other rights, not explicitly or formally recognized as law, did not exist or would not be recognized. But the Ninth Amendment paves the way for the Fourteenth.
Yes, I have repeated it numerous times because the analogy is quite apt.
Starting with the OP, there are numerous misstatements of fact on this thread that all align with talking points intended to smear Justice Scalia:
That is clearly not what Scalia said. Only in an echo chamber can one so easily get away with such a blatant misrepresentation of his comments.
Scalia does not think it is the government’s job, he does not think the constitution dictates that the government must be neutral between atheism and religion.
Incidentally, when I pointed this out in my original comment @40 and laid out Scalia’s reasoning, no one disputed the facts as I presented them.
To the contrary, the very first comment after mine (from Nerd, natch) said this:
Screw the facts, Scalia is a bigot because…well…he JUST IS. Vivec and Zen and Saad are on the same bigot bandwagon based not on any actual evidence, but on their feelings. Here’s Vivec:
Which, once again, is one of the stupidest reasons to think someone is a bigot. It’s like that joke Seinfeld did once about his uncle who was always claiming anti-semitism – the guy that undercooked his sandwich much be an anti-semite, the guy that dinged his car: anti-semite. All rights are voted on – every one of them – except the ones tenuously granted by the Supreme Court which is what Scalia wants to prevent.
Quick aside – Owlmirror has one of the few reasoned criticisms of this proposition:
Until the Griswold decision in 1965, the 9th Amendment was generally read as preventing any expansion of government power (See this for a basic discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Background_before_adoption)
Griswold introduced the idea that there were other rights that the court could enforce which were not enumerated, which lead to the decision in Roe, then Lawrence, and now Obergefell. Scalia, of course dissents from this view, saying
Back to the Scalia as bigot belief. People conspicuously stopped arguing about Scalia’s comments as reported in the OP and started generally attacking me and Scalia:
There followed a 2nd Amendment digression, a Citizens’ United digression, and a dissertation from Nerd about dog whistles. Then came the fuck you and fuck off chorus:
All the while almost no one critically addressed any of the points I was raising. A fabricated quote was posted to “prove” Scalia’s bigotry, and when I pointed out that it was fabricated the reply was: well, it sounded true.
Are these not the charateristics of a belief system? No amount of evidence (that I can tell anyway) will convince any of the people arguing with me that Scalia is sincere in his originalist views of the constitution. My counter-arguments do not persuade or cause people to re-think. To the contrary they dig in deeper. When facts, evidence and reason fail to sway someone, we’ve left the realm of skepticism and entered into belief, have we not?
If that’s what this blog is becoming, maybe Nerd is right and I should leave.
Hey, we finally agree on something.
No it isn’t. It’s utterly fucking absurd. Creationism is an organised politico-religious movement, distorting and denying an entire science – actually several sciences – over a period of decades. Making allegations about a single individual on a blog post, even if false, irrational, and politically motivated, is not even remotely comparable. That you think it is, is evidence of your stupidity, but nothing else.
Penny L,
Based on this thread I think you should stay. You made a reasoned argument that an originalist is not someone who thinks the constitution is immutable, but rather one who thinks that, generally speaking, it should be amended rather than re-interpreted. (Do I have it right?) Only the original intent is immutable, which is manifestly true. (Although, to be fair, often unknowable.) One could certainly make a reasoned counter-argument, but for the most part you didn’t receive one. Instead you received feelings, insults– i.e. you received the nerd treatment, and not just from its creator. For example it was suggested in #42
This is so clearly not a consequence of what you wrote, and in fact the illegality of slavery and the right of women to vote being (as you pointed out) perhaps the best examples supporting your point, that I am amazed that anyone with an ounce of sense would make the claim.
I say this with no opinion on originalism. It is only to tell you that you represented your position infinitely better than most of your critics.
Bill Buckner, #146
Except the position that Scalia is not a homophobic bigot.
I’ve already proven that Scalia is a hateful bigot in the second portion of my #132.
Wanting gay couples to live unequally when the SCOTUS clearly has the ability to end their oppression is bigotry.
It’s very, very basic stuff.
Penny L,
1. What harm comes from granting gay couples equal status without a vote?
Answer: None
2. What harm comes from putting gay couples’ equality to a vote?
Answer: Gay people have to put up with being treated unequally
Just thought I’d throw in another little proof of Scalia’s hateful bigotry.
I’m still amazed at the claim that everything should be decided by democratic voting of the people…(which is not how a democracy works) coming from a member of SCOTUS….whose fucking job it is to make rulings that everybody else has to fucking accept.
These institutions exist precisely so that NOT everything has to be voted on by the public…you elect representatives, yadda yadda yadda….
Once again, it’s telling that when it comes to any other ruling, there’s no “you can’t impose this on people, they have to want it themselves” whining….but when it comes to something you don’t want to aprove, suddenly shielding yourself with the masses becomes superuseful…and superdishonest…
Nobody gives a flying fuck about Scalia’s sincerity, which is non-sequitur, being irrelevant to the effect his decisions have upon people, which is what we are discussing. Bigots can be sincere. Doesn’t change the fact they are bigots.
You fail to understand that.
Nobody should have their basic human rights up for vote. Which leads to discrimination by bigots.
Saad, #147
Except the position that Scalia is not a homophobic bigot.
Perhaps I am being over generous, but I did not read Penny L as stating categorically that Scalia is not a bigot, I read the argument as this: Scalia’s originalist position does not prove that he is a bigot. We can stipulate that Scalia is (a) a bigot and (b) an originalist, but you cannot argue that (b) implies (a).
As for your comments, they include:
On a scale of 1 to nerd, you’re a 9.9, at least on this thread.
It seems to me to argue against Scalia’s position regarding same-sex marriage I (off the top of my head) would say–sure it is easy to take an originalist position (“if it’s broke, then just fix it”) in all the obvious cases, like slavery or women voting, where the intent of the framers was both clear and now clearly wrong. That is relatively easy to fix. But like in science, all the easy problems have been solved. Same-sex marriage doesn’t fall in that category, it can be affirmed as constitutional without doing violence to the original intent, and you do not have to subject peoples’ rights to a difficult process and the tyranny of the majority.
You never chose (as far as I can tell) to argue why Scalia is wrong from a legal standpoint. You displayed zero critical thinking. You simply chose to call him (and Penny L) a bigot, the truth of which is irrelevant to the argument Penny L presented.
Bill Buckner,
‘over generous’ is putting it mildly. I mean, Penny L literally said:
pentatomid #152,
I stand corrected.
For the record I don’t believe Scalia is a bigot. I’ve heard him speak (several times), have read his decisions and although I did not go to law school I have some Constitutional law training. Scalia has a passion for law, a passion for the Constitution, and a passion for originalism. Those three things are all that is required for him to reach the judgements he has on abortion and same sex marriage.
But for Saad and others, that’s not enough. Scalia MUST be bigoted:
This is ludicrous. The only thing this is “proof of” is that you’ve no idea what I’ve been talking about this entire thread.
Nor does Dreaming, apparently:
I’m curious, Dreaming, to hear the way you think the US Constitution came into effect. Did it simply appear, fully formed, after the Revolutionary War? Was it thrust forcefully upon the country at the hands of George Washington? Did John Adams descend from Mount Vernon one night with enscribed on stone tablets?
Or was it, perhaps, hotly debated and then voted on?
Was it hotly debated and voted on by all citizens, or even all adult, white males?
And no, it’s not that Scalia must be a bigot…it’s that to us, he is, based on his actions and motivations. His passion for originalism or some other bullshit doesn’t prevent him from simultaneously being a homophobic catholic finding excuses not to treat LGTQA people as equals. I’ve heard people defending that the word marriage shouldn’t be used for same-sex couples because of the “original” meaning of the word and how they are passionate about maintaining the meaning of that word, but hey you get to use some other word, just not this one, so it’s totally not homophobic and the only motivation here is a passion for language, promise, cross my heart and hope to die…
Also, according to the latest polls at the time, marriage equality actually was what the people democratically wanted…which incidentally is why this even became an issue for SCOTUS to rule on in the first place.
1. Oppposing the legalization of gay marriage and the removal of sodomy laws,
2. Not being a bigot.
Pick one.
Scalia could be the worlds biggest pro-LGBT advocate, and donate millions of dollars every day to LGBT charities, and it wouldn’t change a thing.
He’s a bigot.
There’s literally nothing he could do to change that fact, aside from stop trying to block me and people like me from having equal rights.
And Inb4 “He just wants the states to vote on it”, there are plenty of states that would gladly deny me equal rights, and actively were doing such until Lawrence v Texas. The effect is the same.
I see some people don’t understand what a constitutional democracy means in modern politics. Hint: it does NOT mean that the majority gets to vote on the basic human rights of minorities. In fact, it kind of means the opposite of that.
Ah, well, its nice to know that my misreading means that the paper he reads is **more** insane than I thought…
Vivec, thank you for so clearly demonstrating your creationist-like belief. It’s never been clearer to me that I can’t change your mind because this issue for you has no basis in reason or logic, it is apparently all emotion. It doesn’t matter to you that Scalia does NOT oppose the legalization of gay marriage or the removal of sodomy laws (what he opposes is idea that the Supreme Court should dictate both of those things to the rest of the country). It also doesn’t matter to you that if Scalia were really a bigot, he’d be calling for the Supreme Court to dictate that states must criminalize those acts. And he’s not doing that either.
So the next time you criticize someone for their creationist beliefs or being swayed by pseudo-scientific woo – realize that your mind works the same way, just on a different issue.
Yes, it does mean that the majority gets to vote on basic human rights. How else are these rights codified? Prior to the US Constitution, Kings decided what their subjects’ rights were, and that’s still technically the case in some countries. Is that what you want to go back to?
The point of the US Revolution was the idea that the people should decide how they are to be governed – not Kings who rule purely as an accident of their birth. The US Constitution was debated and every state in the US had to vote on adopting the Constitution as their binding social contract.
It’s a nice thought that somehow human rights are basic or universal or have some scientific basis, but the truth is that human rights, like any other laws that govern us, must be agreed upon and voted into effect by the consent of the people. When blacks and women acheived equal rights in the US, it wasn’t as a result of a Supreme Court ruling. It was because of a Constitutional Amendment voted on by the people.
But now, in 2016, this is apparently the bigoted position. You’re a bigot if you agree with the legalization of gay marriage and the removal of sodomy laws but disagree with the legal strategy used to achieve those ends.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to deal with the mysogynist managing my investments. I think we should get out of large-cap stocks and he wants to hold on to them. He’s clearly a bigot.
Dictating “things” is what the Supreme Court fucking exists for. It never bothered himm to do his job when it was about something else he doesn’t want to support.
Ah yes, a “real” homophobe would be hanging queers from a rope. Christ you are an idiot…
That should have been “he wants to support” at @161. Sorry.
Penny L, #160
Suppose that 10% of the U.S. population is gay and wants to be married.
State one reason why 90% of the population should have a say in something that doesn’t effect them one bit. Not one bit.
A vote should be needed if the issue effects everyone or at least the public at large.
Second, was there a vote done to see if rich white land-owning men can vote? If there was, who voted in it?
Also, you are saying that if segregation was still officially enforced today in 2015, you’d like to put it to a vote (of mostly white people) instead of immediately ending it so black children can stop suffering.
I’m actually glad you’re still around. It’s so fun to laugh at your stupid (racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic)* dumbass.
* Because you’d disagree with the SCOTUS ruling for all those groups’ equality instead of having people who aren’t effected by it and many of whom are the very oppressors voting for it
Bill Buckner, #151
Yeah, no. I post nothing like that.
You must not have read any of Penny’s posts besides this thread.
Penny, #154
Ducking the two simple questions, are you? That’s what I thought.
Answering those those two questions is necessary (and sufficient) to settle the same-sex marriage issue. Also for women’s rights, desegregation, trans rights, etc. Because that’s all that matters: Does legalizing SSM hurt human beings? Does not legalizing SSM hurt human beings? Done. Really simple stuff. Too complicated for your simple mind though.
I still don’t give a shit what Scalia’s views are. The long and short of it is that if he had his way, we’d still have enforcable sodomy laws. Maybe your definition of bigotry requires him to physically go out and hang people like me, but mine doesn’t.
Repeat the creationist thing all you want, doesn’t make it anything but a silly ad-hominem.
Saad,
You are correct, I have not. Nor, if memory serves, have I read any of your posts other than on this thread. At any rate, to judge your or Penny L’s arguments on this thread based on what was written on other (unrelated) threads would, in my opinion, be a form of ad hominem. On this thread, again in my opinion, in a debate-points sort of metric, Penny L thrashed you.
Nope, she wasn’t even in the game. Why Scalia is a bigot is not important. The fact he puts his bigotry into his decisions is what is important. You are wrong.
Bill Buckner, #166
I have yet to take part in a debate about originalism or how previous constitutional amendments were ratified. Can’t be thrashed in a debate you aren’t a participant in. You’re not reading all the posts you’re commenting on. Just like you didn’t read before saying Penny hasn’t said Scalia is not a bigot.
And originalism is not a valid excuse to denying human beings equal rights. Many legal precedents and laws around the world have supported oppression of minorities. They’ve all been wrong and their supporters have all been bigots.
Quite simply put: Following a law or a legal precedence does not mean you’re not a bigot.
But Penny used jargon and shit, so debate points.
No, right or wrong, Penny made actual arguments. The responses were largely shit. So, you know, debate points.
@170
Penny was arguing an entirely different argument than the rest of us.
I don’t care if Scalia is an originalist or not. What reason he has for doing things is irrelevant to me. He fits my definition of a bigot, however, be cause he threw his vote in against me receiving equal rights several times.
No, Penny never argued successfully that Scalia isn’t a bigot, which is the point. She only tried to explain why he is a bigot, which is irrelevant to being the bigot that Scalia shows himself to be in his decisions. This thread would have died a natural death over a week ago, but Penny L is unable to accept that most of us here think/know Scalia is a bigot.
So, where in the 14th does it say anything about segregation being wrong and the right to interracial marriage?
Weird how that point just keeps on getting ignored.
Yes, I know that I posted this before. But, you know, ignored as before.
It was responded to in #141, where SCOTUS used the 14th amendment to strike down school desegregation, and essentially Jim Crow laws.
So, what did you find deficient in the equal protection part of the decision?
I’ve said it before, Scalia not being a bigot because originalism, is like someone who claims that the word marriage shouldn’t be used for same-sex couples because linguistics. The fact that they have a (shitty) rationalization for their bigotry doesn’t mean they are not bigots.
The Wiki article on the Fourteenth Amendment is a good primer for how it is seen.
The Due Process clause and Equal Protection clause are germane to the above discussion, and include gay marriage, bedroom and other privacy, and non-discrimination.
Penny’s actual argument can be summed up as a No True Bigot. In Penny’s mind, the only people who qualify as bigots will 1) always push the most draconian measures possible (“if Scalia were really a bigot, he’d be calling for the Supreme Court to dictate that states must criminalize those acts.”) and 2) be reduced to helpless stammering when challenged to support their prejudiced worldviews. So basically, as defined by Penny L, a bigot can only be a cartoon villain.
Just as Christians have enjoyed Biblical support for whatever position they took, whether it was advancing slavery or opposing slavery, or punishing gays or accepting gays, and just as creationists will find facts falsifying evolution in every publication they read, biased people will always find whatever they need to prop up their worldview. This is no exception for a “nigh brilliant” “exceptional lawyer” with access to an entire history of legal precedent and case law. And Penny pretty much all but admits this @72 when she escapes impugning the conclusions of the opposing by appealing to difference of interpretation based on the “imprecise nature of constitutional law” (though, amazingly, it’s not too fuzzy that she can’t absolutely declare Scalia’s position originalist and apolitical!). It’s almost as if any possible stance a constitutional scholar could take would be impartial by nature.
But I’ll try to remember the serious thrashing that took place once Penny L declared herself the sole arbiter of what constitutes motivated reasoning. I guess we’ll just chalk our differing interpretation of the facts up to the imprecise nature of social dynamics.
Picking and choosing a few points that I can see are obviously wrong — I may return to earlier points later as well.
Penny L @ #143:
The analogy is utter bullshit.
Creationism is a denial of actual scientific facts; everyone here has been making reasoned inferences about someone based on their words and actions.
The reasoning might have problems (by and large, they do not), but there’s no analogy between the situations.
It’s also somewhat ironic, given that Scalia is on the record dissenting in Edwards v. Aguillard. Someone who thinks that so-called has any secular grounding, or that any of the arguments used against evolutionary biology were valid, has completely failed to understand anything about science.
“Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so” — Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia has at least the intelligence of a 6-month-old or so.
No, you are wrong.
If the situation were reversed; if homosexuals were not discriminated against, and Italians and/or Catholics were the ones being discriminated against, would it really not be bigotry to say that people should vote on whether or not discriminate against them?
Bad analogy. The point of the joke is that the people causing the uncle minor harms have no reason to be aware of the uncle’s ethnic background; Antonin Scalia is making explicit statements about how a social minority should be treated — he knows that they exist, and is fine with them being discriminated against by the majority until the majority changes their mind.
Should the legal rights granted to Jews be voted on by the majority? Is it OK to discriminate against them until there’s a vote to make such discrimination illegal?
Obviously false. Once again, the rights were not voted on; the formal legal recognition of those rights were voted on.
Is there an explicit right to not be segregated? Was this right voted on?
Is there an explicit right to marry someone of a different color than yourself? Was this right voted on?
Does Scalia want to overturn Brown v. Board of Education or Loving v. Virginia?
Your argument, and Scalia’s, are fundamentally flawed given that the decisions mentioned did not invoke new rights, but rather were against violations of the existing legal recognition of existing rights.
And the same holds with Obergefell v. Hodges, as has already been noted above.
Actually, Griswold v. Connecticut argued from the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth, and the Ninth.
I’m actually curious: Do you believe that American citizens do not have any right to privacy, given that this right was argued by the judiciary as deriving from the above rather than being voted upon?
I note that the majority in Roe v. Wade also made a broader appeal than to the Ninth Amendment: This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
The WikiP pages (Ninth Amendment/Roe v. Wade) also say, from Justice Douglas on Doe v. Bolton: “The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights.”
Hm.
===
Penny L @#160:
This ignores that bigotry and bias can have more than one way that that bigotry and bias can be expressed, and that some are far worse than others. It’s like saying that all of those people who specifically opposed allowing Jews into their clubs weren’t anti-Semitic because they weren’t calling for Jews to be expelled from the land or genocided. Or for that matter, saying that the expulsion of Jews from Spain wasn’t anti-Semitic because at least Ferdinand and Isabella weren’t massacring Jews outright.
There’s far more than one way to be a bigot, and I think it’s quite reasonable to note that Scalia’s statements are tainted by his bigotry.
This is still bullshit.
As an example to the contrary, the Magna Carta (obviously not universal rights, but nevertheless). There are probably other examples.
Valiant Penny, defender of a point nobody challenged.
I must have said at least like three times that the exact reasoning Scalia uses to come to his conclusion is irrelevant to me.
What matters is that he’d be totally cool with, say, Texas and Alabama deciding that yes, they want to continue denying me rights.
Poor, willfully ignorant Vivec. Or are you simply authoritarian? I’m not sure. Scalia’s reasoning – deciding who gets to decide what exactly are “rights” – is incredibly important to the future of the US democracy. But like a petulant 2 year old, you just want your bibi and your blankey and you don’t care who gives them to you, including those sketchy looking people in the windowless van across the park.
No, the inferences were in almost every case not reasoned. No one, for example, has yet to provide any evidence at all that Scalia is a bigot aside from his opinions in Lawrence and Obergefell, which are based entirely on originalist interpretive principles.
Some of the evidence, btw, that has been presented in these comments section was fabricated. Which brings me to this: do you know where your Scalia quotation came from? The title of the article at the WAPO was “Justice Scalia takes on commencement cliches in humor-filled speech.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/justice-scalia-takes-on-commencement-cliches-in-humor-filled-speech/2015/06/04/a8c32f7e-0a27-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html
You framed that quote in a completely misleading manner as well, making me think it was included in his dissent in Edwards. Additionally, his dissent in that case essentially mirrors the comments he made that were deceptively and wrongly presented and interpreted in the OP.
This is a distinction without a difference. I’ll once again ask a couple questions that no one has answered – do I have a right to marry multiple partners? Do I have a right to look at child porn? I might be in the minority and be the only person in the country who thinks each of these things is a “right.” Both are criminal until a large majority of the country agrees with me. It is the same for almost all of the other rights enshrined in the Constitution – in other parts of the world these things would be criminal.
Absolutely false.
This appears to be the basis for most of the misunderstanding on this thread. He is offering no opinion about how a social minority should be treated. He is only offering an opinion on who gets to decide how that social minority should be treated.
Your analysis/argument is completely confused and I’m having a hard time following it. But I will mention, once again, that if you start an argument with “Scalia’s argument is fundamentally flawed” and you’re not a lawyer and constitutional scholar, it’s quite likely that your analysis is the one that is fundamentally flawed.
I don’t think you need much more than the 4th Amendment to find a right to privacy in the Constitution. An Amendment which was voted on:
Bullshit. Once again, no one has presented ANY evidence that he’s a bigot. When I’ve asked for it, I’ve been greeted with quotations from his opinions (without context), fabricated quotes, and let’s not forget the misleading one you quoted above. You’re making a circular argument: I believe Scalia’s a bigot therefore it’s quite reasonable to note that bigotry in his opinions.
This is pure historical ignorace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
What does this mean?