Well, this is a fine how-de-do. Clarence Thomas is arguing for theocracy.
Thomas, 77, the Court’s longest-serving conservative member, laid the blame at the feet of
intellectualsand the nation’s colleges and universities, which he said have allowed founding values tofall out of favor.He did not reference specific political figures or contemporary events.
He also did not reference specific values, but only platitudes. He simply took the time to condemn intellectuals, colleges, and universities — I guess he was corrupted by his time spent getting a JD from Yale.
Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government, Thomas said.
[It] holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.
Hang on there, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, do I need to explain to you that our form of government was specified by the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence? That document was a dramatic announcement of our grievances and intent to sever our subservience with a colonial power, England. The Declaration does have some wording about “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, but it is otherwise a secular document focused on civil complaints and disagreements with a government. Officials do not swear to uphold the Declaration of Independence, which would be a weird thing to do, since a list of 18th century grievances is not relevant to a 21st century state.
It’s our Constitution you should care about. You know, the document that starts out
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
You know, the document that says our government comes from the people. Not god. It doesn’t even mention god or religion except in the first amendment, where it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But now a Supreme Court Justice has decided that no, our rights come from a god, on the basis of reading the wrong document? And by ignoring entirely a wholly secular document that is the actual source of any authority he might have?
“Progressivism,” whatever that means in his decrepit brain, does not require subservience and weakness
, nor is it dependent on a transcendent origin of our rights
. Some of the founding fathers he reveres weren’t particularly religious and didn’t need a clerical excuse to see a reason for establishing a government. You can be an atheist and support the Constitution!
Thomas also took aim at officials in Washington, he said, who lack commitment to
righteous cause, to traditional morality, to national defense, to free enterprise, to religious piety or to the original meaning of the Constitution.
Yes, do take aim at government officials. I don’t think Donald Trump is at all pious, and is more committed to corruption than to free enterprise or righteousness, and he’s filled the upper levels of government with selfish hacks like himself. He’s also appointed several of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s peers. Any complaints should be rightfully directed at the institution he represents.
And hey, does taking bribes from wealthy conservatives count as a righteous cause?
Fuck your traditional morality, Clarence. It’s more like a traditional venality.
Imagine how different SCOTUs would look if HRC had won in 2016.
Imagine how differnt itand everything els ewould be had kamala won in the final ever legitimate~ish USoA Presidential election.
What a differnet world we’d live in now.
Thanks Bothsiderists, Only-A Unicorn-will do klowns, Abandon Biden-Harris utter douchebags, non-voters and the rest of the Trump voters all of whom have totally screwed the rest of the entire planet. This reality, all the incalclulable harms of two Trump terms wth all their beyond merely horrendous consequences is on you.
I always find it rich when the US is criticising the UK for colonialism.
I just watched a report on PBS News Hour about small liberal arts colleges closing, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, and higher education struggling generally because of low enrollment. And in this climate we have a jurist of the highest court in this country attacking higher education and intellectualism.
The decline is undeniable at this point.
I was not a fan of Clarence Thomas from the first time I heard of him, but realized just how ant-intellectual he was when I heard a piece on NPR in 2011 about what kind of writing the Supreme Court Justices looked for in legal briefs. They all said the writers they liked were ones like Hemingway, Shakespeare, Proust, Montesquieu, and so on. Except Thomas, who said a good legal briefs reminded him of the TV show “24”. You may remember it; it was the one that glorified torture. https://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/137036622/skip-the-legalese-and-keep-it-short-justices-say
I also once heard someone observe that Thomas believes anti-black racism exists in this country; and that he is its only victim. Which would certainly explain a lot.
I think the language of the Declaration when it comes to god is important.
It says the people’s rights are endowed by THEIR creator. Not “THE” creator and not “OUR” creator.
IOW, it leaves it to the person to define what that creator is. It doesn’t take a stand on who or what the creator was.
I think this is an important distinction.
@2 “I always find it rich when the US is criticising the UK for colonialism.”
I think the point was that in the 1770s the American colonies did not have their own colonies.
Maybe the problem is that so few people understand (or even know) what was happening in “church-state relations” during the 1760s-1780s… particularly in England, with substantial foreshadowing of the French Revolution. The theocratic/divine-right-of-kings response to the Declaration of Independence in England (and the rest of Europe) really could have led to only two responses in colonies breaking away on policy/individual rights grounds:
• “No, it’s our interpretation of God’s Will that matters, and we’re going to enshrine an Established Church in our government and entire way of life. Theocracy FTW!”
• “We’re not arrogant enough to proclaim we have the exclusive vision of some divinity’s will based on a dubiously-edited 1500-year-old document that came to us through three layers of translations (two from dead languages), so that just doesn’t belong in our government.”
The Founders chose the latter. I think this particular Justice — essentially raised by nuns — hasn’t forgotten that; he never knew it. The entire point of having “a Constitutional form of government” is that context matters… that is, that when declaring meaning one must know and acknowledge the context of the words used, but that those words no more fail to change over time than has theology. (Oh, there’s my problem: I’m using that “elitist education” to actually try to understand something — including the understanding that it’s not definitive — instead of as an entré to a well-paid position as a partisan pundit.)
@6 davetaylor
Even if the USA never would have colonized further from that point on, it would still be hypocritical. “Stop skimming from our exploitation of colonized land, we want it all to ourselves instead.”
Oh, “the original meaning of the constitution!” You mean where white, male property-owners run everything and you’re picking cotton on some plantation, Uncle Thomas?
Although, he probably fancies himself to be “house slave” material.
Thomas’s latest blithering wasn’t even coherent. Like I said elsewhere, either he’s following Master Trump on the path to dementia, or he’s just robotically phoning in the same crap he’s always been expected and rewarded for phoning in. He’s always been a hateful miserable idiot who made his separate peace with the racists and hates everyone who tries to get a better deal than he got.