Justice Scalia and Originalist Doctrine

The "Originalist Doctrine" is an idealism that does not address the very real hurdles that modern Americans have today to solve problems through the legislative process.

There are historical (read: deep-seated, ingrained, institutionalized) reasons for this sad state of affairs that pre-date Justice Scalia's birth.

But, the reality is that Benjamin Franklin's democratic "republic if you can keep it" set up for us 240 years ago is broken. And, its broken-ness has only been exacerbated by the disastrous SC/Scalia decision on "Citizens United."

While in a perfect world, the courts would not be used to create law, it came to that reality long ago. Citizens United, which undermines citizen democracy, will only make it more likely that courts will be forced to play a central role in order to remedy legislative and executive branches that becomes less interested in the concerns of common voices; and more in favor of those able to fund campaigns.

If Scalia's idealism was intended to correct our democracy back to using the legislative process most frequently, he (along with many other originalists) may have inadvertently produced the opposite effect.

Sorry Presidents

G.W. Bush says "I am sorry" for:

• Having 9/11 happen on my watch.
• Having the financial meltdown start on my watch.
• Having gas prices go to almost $5/gallon on my watch.
• Having the real-estate market meltdown start on my watch.
• Starting a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
• Failing to get Osama bin Laden and saying I wasn't too concerned about it.
• For not punishing a country (Saudi Arabia) that did have something to do with 9/11.
• Declaring "Mission Accomplished" long before the job was done (and still not done).
• Being responsible for the death of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
• Being responsible for the maiming of thousand American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
• Failing to address the increasing number of Americans without health insurance.
• Increasing the militarization of America (Police State) a/k/a The Patriot Act.
• Spending $800+ billion taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street and banks.
• Creating a Third-Reich-sounding "Department of Homeland Security".

The reality is that Bush has never apologized for anything. And, it's not because he's never been asked. My guess is that it's either in his MBA training to not look back (or at least to publicly admit mistakes if you do); or he has no capacity for introspection and the subsequent personal growth that comes from it. In either case, I pity him for his inability to evolve personally.


Barack Obama says "I am sorry" for:

• Not starting another war, killing thousands of American soldiers and innocent civilians.
• Not starting another war, maiming thousands of U.S. soldiers and innocent civilians.
• Providing healthcare for more Americans, even if unappreciated by the uninsured.
• Not driving up gas/heating prices from launching a war that was not necessary.
• Killing Osama bin Laden (and several others) leftover from G.W. Bush regime.
• Reducing gas prices from $4 to below $2. You're welcome, petroleum-lovers.
• Increasing US oil production to its highest ever (is this drill baby drill?).
• Giving go-ahead to take-out Somali pirates who took over U.S. ship.
• Keeping economy from spiraling out of control (saved capitalism).
• Increasing wind and solar power utilization (+273%).
• Reducing unemployment to near historic average.
• Putting a floor under US housing market.
• Wall street market up over 100%.
• Petroleum imports down 62%.
• New car MPG up 19%.
• Rebounding 401(k)s.
• But you still suck?

Next time you see a liberal, thank them for their centuries-long struggles to incorporate humanism and sanity into ideas on "the General Welfare":

• Graduated Income Tax
• Family Medical Leave
• Consumer Protections
• Second Bill of Rights
• Anti-monopoly Laws
• Eight-hour work day
• Five-day work week
• Same-sex marriage
• Women's suffrage
• Highway System
• Social Security
• Labor relations
• Public works
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• Abolition

Much of these "socialistic" ideas were stirred around in the late 19th century, but were brought to fruition in the 20th century. 

And, if you can imagine, one proponent of many of the early 20th century liberal victories was a fundamentalist Christian (William Jennings  Bryant), who was a Democrat! Sacrilege!

You see, back then, Christians actually followed Jesus' admonition to help the "least of these" among us. And not to just be shills for a party that tickles their theology to "win" their vote. 

Bryant was in favor of helping the common man, using government to protect the vulnerable from a laissez-faire capitalism run amok and that was steamrolling the average American worker for maximum corporate profit. Sound familiar?

How non-College-educated Americans are Disadvantaged

Both American political parties are near-sighted. Maybe, one more than the other. But, they've both abdicated on their responsibility to ensure that gutting the Rust Belt did not leave people hanging out to dry - to fend for themselves (a process ongoing for decades). 

 
Smart policy would have been to incur the short-term expense (read: higher taxes) to help our fellow Americans improve their skills/education to be more competitive for the more affluent jobs. This strategy would have paid for itself many times over in terms of increased productivity, more tax revenues, less need for social welfare, etc. 
 
Instead, the unemployed were left twisting in the wind, which has been far more costly to them and us -- productivity lost and not replaced by higher productivity jobs; and higher cost to taxpayers to supplement their lost income (Medicare, SS, food stamps, etc.) because we're not monsters towards our fellow citizens (at least, I hope). 
 
To add insult to injury, the same negligent politicians delivered to their corporate masters by making it easier for foreign educated workers to fill the void of high-tech jobs and other intellect-oriented professions. 
 
From there, you can question who advocates policies more conducive to bootstrapping American workers to be competitive. As someone who reads legislation and watches our supposed deliberative congressional bodies, I know that one party is far less interested in asking about or solving these difficult problems. 
 
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure that out for themselves if they’re so inclined toward inquisitiveness. If you're honest, you'll discover the reality of the situation by watching for yourself (from the horse’s mouth) and not by being told "facts" from partisan publications and TV.

Fundamentalist Endorses Greed Candidate: Big Surprise

So, Jerry Falwell Jr. (of Liberty University), endorsed Donald Trump, who has almost no values preached by Jesus and many values Jesus warned against (e.g. pride, greed, wrath). Camel passing through the eye of the needle and all that (Matthew 19:16-26).

But, hey, the Falwell clan and Liberty University have never been about the Christianity of Christ, but rather the Christianity of Reactionary-ism and the Republican Party. Or more accurately, the version of Christianity that Republicans have found useful to hold/gain political power by recognizing and exploiting the red meat that this brand of Christianity feeds on.

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." --Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Falwell, Jr. is merely extending his father’s practice of politicizing Christianity for his own purposes; and making Republicanism and Fundamentalism a blurred distinction. The shame of their act will be paid for one way or the other. Either in hell, if it exists. Or by the march of progress that steamrolls them as it did Falwell Sr.

Falwell Sr. concocted God in his own image – by preaching a gospel that re-enforced the Old Time Gospel’s Hour preacher’s philosophy, politics, prejudices, etc. So, what’s new? That’s what every believer does. It’s called projection. There are as many flavors of God as there are theists.

The peak of Falwell Sr.’s absurdity was when he wrote a 1994 World Net Daily article rationalizing how God was Pro-War. Why did Falwell do this? Because Falwell Sr. loved the Republican Party because they promised to roll back progress that Falwell opposed (e.g. “the Gay Agenda” and all that fear-mongering claptrap). The GOP was Falwell’s ticket to impose his own version of what he thought God wanted (something all believers of all faiths do, by the way). Also, Bush Jr. was endorsed by Falwell Sr.

So naturally, Falwell Sr. had to rationalize and justify the unconstitutional Iraq War 2 because his reputation was on the line. So, Falwell did what all good religionists do – dig through their holy book to find verses to justify what they already want to “prove” beforehand. After all, it’s not as if God actually sat next to Falwell and spoke into a recording device to share "his" actual thoughts on the matter. Funny how God talking to people never happens in reality. Only in stories. But, I digress.

Justifications and Rationalizations always originate in the mind of believers. It’s the nature of belief. And, it’s the nature of not having actual empirical or testable means to verify what you believe. You essentially have to make stuff up that sounds good enough to be believable by the non-discerning and has no means of being disproved.

That’s how you end up with Christians on opposite ends of an issue (e.g. gay marriage), yet each fervently and honestly believing the same Bible proves their points. Obviously, this cannot be the case. At least if one is to believe in inerrancy and guidance by a Holy Spirit. But, alas, a better explanation is that it’s just a book held needlessly in high esteem that has been used by individuals to justify what’s in their minds already. For better or worse ... throughout the centuries.

Every step of progress in the United States has been made with constituencies of believers of the same faith coming down on opposite sides of the progress and yet all claiming equal backing by the same God (ex. Abolitionism).

In the ebb and flow of U.S. culture, we’ve had periods where progressive religious forces have prevailed (e.g. those that were part of the now out-of-style “social gospel.”). Of course, today the pendulum has swung the other way, largely as a reactionary mood emanating from the rapid change and progress of the 1960s. It’s hard to imagine that 50+ years later.

But, as you can see with modern events, reactionary-ism is global and not limited to fundamentalist Christianity. They won’t admit it, but fundamentalist Muslims and Christians share more in common than they may care to acknowledge. They may differ in means to achieve their goals, but they are largely anti-science, anti-education, anti-progress and anti-modernity.

The Second Amendment is not Absolute

In fact, no amendment is absolute. Let’s take a few examples.

Amendment I – free speech. Yell “fire” in a crowded theatre and you’ll soon discover that this particular form of free speech is deemed a danger to the public and there are often penalties for exercising it. Societal good trumps this particular expression WITHOUT throwing out the entire amendment. No slippery slope here.

Amendment XV and Amendment XIX – extended voting rights because the right to vote was never absolute from the get-go. Women and slaves were excluded. Yet, even now, after having those exclusions removed, voting rights are still not absolute. Ask prisoners who have been stripped of their right to vote. Permanently in some cases when they are unable to exercise that right even after they’ve paid their debt to society. This does not kill voting rights altogether. No slippery slope here, either.

But for some reason, many Americans imagine that putting restrictions on certain expressions of Amendment II (e.g. owning weapons deemed as assault or military grade) will lead to ban/confiscation of all guns. Apparently, this amendment is more prone to a slippery slope than the others.

Those who believe in an absolute interpretation of Amendment II, dig up quotes of activists who want to ban guns outright, saying that there are “enemies” of Amendment II in its entirety and therefore caution and vigilance for this amendment is particularly warranted.

In the first place, these people are not “enemies,” but fellow-citizens exercising Amendment I to petition their government. Secondly, given how many gun-owning citizens there are compared to complete-gun-ban citizens, this isn’t even a realistic concern. And even if there should come a day when there are more of the latter than the former, it will be democracy at work. Because no amendment is permanent (see Amendment XVIII).

The framers put mechanisms in-place specifically for inserting AND removing constitutional amendments. And the first ten amendments (a/k/a The Bill of Rights) are no more sacred than any of those added later. To think otherwise is to suggest that the politicians and citizens of 1789-1791 have a right to permanently control certain existential aspects of citizens ever-after.

We can show admiration and gratitude for the framers and early citizens, but they were not divine, all-wise or flawless. They, like all humans ever born, were bound by space and time and tried to make rational decisions within the circumstances and constraints that existed at that time. This is what allows us to temper hindsight criticism (e.g. re: slave-owning framers) based on the fact that they were human – flawed and prone to make imperfect choices/compromises.

To elevate them, or somehow attribute near-divinity to their spoken and written words as if they were the second coming of Mount Sinai, is absurd. We can revise their words, decisions, amendments, etc. when circumstances deem it necessary for OUR times. And we can do so without denigrating or demeaning their legacy. It’s as much our right to add, revise and remove their effects as it was their right to declare independence. After all, rights do not come from government, let alone politicians that create those governments.

Hint to Theologians

This is not my work, but rather the words of H.L. Mencken in 1924. The reason I am posting it here is because with satire, Mencken makes a simple point that should be evident, but is not. Namely, that we should try to explain things using logic and common sense or not all; and certainly not by inventing explanations with no basis in any other experience of reality we have.

But, since humanity seems bent on needing to “know” things rather than admit uncertainty, we are left with bizarre explanations that are nothing more than an exercise in fantastical intellectual gymnastics. To wit, people coming up with nonsensical explanations for the anatomical imperfections of man.

Read Mencken’s own account of this state of affairs below, and ask why his explanation is less believable than the supposed conventional rationale? I’d argue that it’s better, even if still non-demonstrable and only slightly less absurd.

“HINT TO THEOLOGIANS

The argument by design, once the bulwark of Christian apologetics, is so full of holes that it is no wonder that it has been abandoned. The more, indeed, the theologian seeks to prove the acumen and omnipotence of God by His works, the more he is dashed by evidences of divine incompetence and irresolution. The world is not actually well run; it is very badly run, and no Huxley was needed to point out the obvious fact. The human body, magnificently designed in some details, is a frightful botch in other details; every first-year student of anatomy sees a hundred ways to improve it. How are we to reconcile this mixture of infinite finesse and clumsy blundering with the concept of a single omnipotent Designer, to whom all problems are equally easy? If He could contrive so efficient and durable a machine as the human hand, then how did He come to make such dreadful botches as the tonsils, the gall-bladder, the uterus and the prostate gland? If He could perfect the hip joint and the ear, then why did He boggle the teeth?

Having never encountered a satisfactory—or even a remotely plausible—answer to such questions, I have had to go to the labor of devising one myself. It is, at all events, quite simple, and in strict accord with all the known facts. In brief, it is this: that the theory that the universe is run by a single God must be abandoned, and that in place of it we must set up the theory that it is actually run by a board of gods, all of equal puissance and authority. Once this concept is grasped all the difficulties that have vexed theologians vanish. Human experience instantly lights up the whole dark scene. We observe in everyday life what happens when authority is divided, and great decisions are reached by consultation and compromise. We know that the effects, at times, particularly when one of the consultants runs away with the others, are very good, but we also know that they are usually extremely bad. Such a mixture of good and bad is on display in the cosmos. It presents a series of brilliant successes in the midst of an infinity of bungling failures.

I contend that my theory is the only one ever put forward that completely accounts for the clinical picture. Every other theory, facing such facts as sin, disease and disaster, is forced to admit the supposition that Omnipotence, after all, may not be omnipotent—a plain absurdity. I need toy with no such nonsense. I may assume that every god belonging to the council which rules the universe is infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, and yet not evade the plain fact that most of the acts of that council are ignorant and foolish. In truth, my assumption that a council exists is tantamount to an a priori assumption that its joint acts are ignorant and foolish, for no act of any conceivable council can be otherwise. Is the human hand perfect, or, at all events, practicable and praiseworthy? Then I account for it on the ground that it was designed by some single member of the council—that the business was handed over to him by inadvertence or as a result of an irreconcilable difference of opinion. Had more than one member participated actively in its design it would have been measurably less meritorious than it is, for the sketch offered by the original designer would have been forced to run a gauntlet of criticisms and suggestions from all the other councillors, and human experience teaches us that most of these criticisms and suggestions would have been inferior to the original idea—that many of them, in fact, would have had nothing in them save a petty desire to maul and spoil the original idea.

But do I here accuse the high gods of harboring discreditable human weaknesses? If I do, then my excuse is that it is impossible to imagine them doing the work universally ascribed to them without admitting their possession of such weaknesses. One cannot imagine a god spending weeks and months, and maybe whole geological epochs, laboring over the design of the human kidney without assuming him to be moved by a powerful impulse to express himself vividly, to marshal and publish his ideas, to win public credit among his fellows—in brief, without assuming him to be egoistic. And one cannot assume him to be egoistic without assuming him to prefer the adoption of his own ideas to the adoption of any other god’s. I defy anyone to make the contrary assumption without plunging instantly into clouds of mysticism. Ruling it out, one comes inevitably to the conclusion that the inept management of the universe must be ascribed to clashes of egos, i.e., petty revenges and back-bitings among the gods, for any one of them alone, since we must assume him to be infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, could run it perfectly. We suffer from bad stomachs simply because the god who first proposed making a stomach aroused thereby the ill-nature of those who had not thought of it, and because they proceeded instantly to wreak that ill-nature upon him by improving, i.e., botching, his work. Every right-thinking man admires his own heart, at least until it begins to break down; it seems an admirable machine. But think how much better it would be if the original design had not been butchered by a board of rival designers!”

--[American Mercury, January 1924]
http://epubbookonline.com/b/2892/h-l-mencken/h-l-mencken-on-religion/13

How Racists are Cultivated

Racists are Cultivated (Cultured), not Born

I came across this picture when reading a Washington Post article on how Mississippians are (again) bucking history to maintain racism masquerading as "heritage."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mississippi-resists-calls-to-change-its-confederate-themed-flag/2015/08/18/cd590924-41d3-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html

It has to be said bluntly (Trump-like): This is how racists are born. No, I’m not accusing these parents of explicitly educating their child to grow up as racists. I’m talking about racism of the indirect / complacent variety.

Generations of Southern heritage admirers have sat silently while Klansman, Jim Crow proponents and outright racists have marched under their supposed “Flag of Heritage.”

If non-racist supporters of their “Southern heritage” and its ostensible cloth symbol really cared about what they claim, they would have been on the front line of denouncing racists and haters that have marched under their banner for years.

But, instead, they have sat idly by, year after year, generation after generation. Do they really care about defending their heritage and its symbol? I say the history of their silence says enough about that.

And so, I suggest that teaching impressionable children to hold a symbol and the “good” things it stands for, should also go along with teaching said children the need to protect those “good” things and not allow people to abuse or misuse it for malevolent purposes.

But, does anyone think these parents plan on doing any of this additional teaching? History says, not likely. And so, another generation of racist-enabling citizens will grow up in red states, sitting by as people use their symbol of pride for nefarious and hateful purposes.

In closing, one should not be surprised that this photo came from Mississippi, the most backward, uneducated and regressive state in the Union. It was the last hold-out in defending Jim Crow one century after slavery was supposedly abolished. You’d think the citizens of that state would have some sense of shame and perspective given their history, but their ignorance dooms them to repeat it.