Affirmative Action in College Admissions Ruled Illegal in US

 

Great news. Let's hope that, as usual, little brother follows big brother's example.

https://youtu.be/5LK0GoZf5LU

The Supreme Thing

America is caught in an ethical debate. Do the Republican Senate majority have the moral right to approve a new Supreme Court Justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg so close to an election—something they refused to do for Obama in 2016?

If they do it, Democrats are charging hypocrisy.

Is the situation now different from 2016? It is, in several ways. First, in 2016, Obama was in his final term. No matter what happened, there was going to be a new president. This time, there is only a 50% chance. Second, in 2016 the Senate and White House were held by different parties. If the Senate has the right to refuse to appoint, does it follow that they have a duty not to appoint? They have a right to pass a law against jaywalking; not an obligation to pass a law against jaywalking.

Are these differences significant?

Suppose they aren’t. Even so, it looks like a wash: then the Republicans are doing the opposite of what they did in 2016, but the Democrats are demanding the opposite of what they demanded in 2016. Everybody’s equally a hypocrite, then.

Two wrongs, you might respond, never make a right. If Democrats are hypocrites, that does not give the Republicans the right to be hypocrites too.

Yet there are cases in which two wrongs do make a right. You pick my pocket, then I pick yours in turn, and get my wallet back. If the Holy Roman Empire invades, France has not only a right, but a duty, to defend. Even though war is a wrong, and killing people is a wrong. If the French win the war, right is restored. Sending a criminal to jail is another example of two wrongs making a right: it is, in itself, a wrong to restrict someone’s liberty.

In this case too, one side may be in the wrong, and the other side merely playing defense.

Appointing a Supreme Court judge used to be a bipartisan affair, with the Senate assuming the president had a right to appoint his preference, and looking only at their legal qualifications. The Democrats ended that in 1987, in refusing to ratify Robert Bork because they thought he would vote against Roe v. Wade. In 2013, to get the candidates they preferred on the bench, the Democrats used their Senate majority to end the right to filibuster judicial appointments. That ended any need for bipartisanship, and made it a strictly partisan process.

Moreover, their basic premise in approving judicial appointments has long been to install justices who intend themselves to break the rules: justices who will not simply interpret the constitution, but who will impose a political agenda. Had they not done so, judicial appointments would not matter politically: to the point at which, now, the appointment of the right judges seems to have become the Senate’s main job.

In such a situation, it is just stupidity, or moral cowardice, for Republicans to refuse to defend their interests. It is like refusing to take up arms when invaded.

They must act swiftly on a new appointment; for the good of the country. The Democrats have been tinkering with the election rules as well. They have introduced large-scale mail-in voting for this election. The system is untried; it is likely that there will be legal challenges. Unless there is a decisive win, it is going to be a mess. Such challenges will go to the Supreme Court, as they did in 2000. With only eight justices, it is theoretically possible that the court could split 8 to 8, and be unable to resolve the matter.

The civil war that might result would not be pretty.

Between the Crosses, Row on Row

The offensive image.

The US Supreme Court has just ruled that Maryland does not need to pull down a century-old WWI memorial because it is in the shape of a cross.

I am not a lawyer, but the initial demand seems to me another example of our social madness. And the reasoning of the USSC ruling is not reassuring. It seems they find the monument okay on the spurious grounds that the cross is not really religious in this context, but a recognized symbol of the war.

So symbols of war are okay on public lands, but not anything that suggests religion?

Is this not self-evidently mad? Is this not self-evidently anti-human?

The US Constitution, wisely, reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion.” But this has apparently been reinterpreted to mean the government must be opposed to all religion. This new interpretation is in fact in direct violation of the constitutional provision: it amounts to establishing atheism as the state religion.

The government actually has a legitimate interest in promoting religion; promoting atheism is a violation of trust. Religion contributes directly to peace, order, and good government, their prime responsibility, at least according to the Canadian Constitution. Religion promotes morality and ethical conduct; it provides a social safety net, at no cost to the taxpayers; it offers a sense of belonging, and so community cohesion. It increases the general store of happiness.

All this is objectively true, whether or not you even accept the truth of religion. These are just byproducts. If it is right in its basic assumptions, of course, its value, and its social value, is beyond calculation.

And yet we are to tear it down? Why this urge everywhere now to destroy civilization?

The proper approach is obvious, and it is obvious what the Constitution means: the government treats religions equally, favouring none. The government fosters and encourages all religions, but does not erect or pay for monuments or structures that are specific to any one to the exclusion of others. If some private group, like the Knights of Columbus or B’nai Brith, or the American Legion, chooses to generously donate something, as in this case, to the government and the general public, and it is open and available to all, of course the government should gratefully accept.

Instead, we have what John Paul II called “the culture of death.”

SCOTUS on Gay Marriage

Arent some of those men wearing dresses?

It is important to see that there are two issues, not just one, involved in the recent US Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage: 1. whether gay marriage ought to be legal, and 2. whether it is a human right. Proposition 1 legalizes gay marriage. Proposition 2 makes it mandatory.

I see nothing wrong in principle with legalizing gay marriage; and I suspect most Christians would agree. It is in the public interest to encourage stable, long-term relationships. However, in embracing Proposition 2, the Supreme Court ruling becomes a significant concern, for reasons I will explain in a moment. And why do it? Homosexual marriage did not need the help: it was spreading across the nation at a pretty good clip in any event. Polls show a majority of Americans accept it, and so making it legal everywhere was probably only a matter of time.

Accordingly, the ruling did little for gays, or for gay marriage.

Some have argued that the ruling was undemocratic, taking the decision out of the hands of voters and legislators. Some have called it judicial overreach, or “legislating from the bench.” This in itself is a serious constitutional concern, a precedent that could lead bad places and be very difficult, even bloody, to undo. It moves in the direction of creating and empowering a ruling class.

But that, I fear, is only a part of the problem. Making homosexual sex a supposed human right also puts the doctrine of human rights at odds with all the major religious and moral traditions, all of which declare it immoral. This is a big problem for the effort to get universal recognition for the doctrine of human rights itself; it tends to discredit other human rights by association, in many foreign lands and quite possibly, eventually, in America itself. There is a good case to be made that al Qaeda, ISIL, and their ilk arose as a direct result of American promotion of feminism and gay rights.

If this were not enough, including a “right” rejected by religion makes the doctrine of human rights, in fact, self-contradictory. The doctrine of human rights is founded on religious assumptions. As the Declaration of Independence puts it, men are “endowed by their Creator” with their rights. John Locke based his claim of human equality on the premise that all are descended from Adam and Eve, with no “senior line” of ancestry. It is a moral equality, an equality of worth before God. By introducing a supposed human right at odds with religion, with our traditional and generally recognized covenants with God, the Court is undermining the concept of human rights altogether: if God can be wrong or superseded on A, he can also be wrong or superseded on B.

This self-contradiction is likely to become apparent over time. As Abraham Lincoln once noted, quoting the Bible, a house divided against itself cannot stand. And, as he also noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time; such truths will out.

But wait; there's more. Homosexual marriage is an experiment. It has never been tried before, at least in any society remotely similar to our own. It is possible that it will not work; it is possible it will have unintended consequences. It is possible that all our ancestors were not idiots. If permitting it were simply a matter of law, this would not be too worrisome. We could try it in state A, and not in state B, and then compare what results. We could, after giving it a fair trial and discovering we do not like what results, repeal the law. But the Supreme Court ruling binds our hands tightly behind our back. We cannot repeal a human right, and we must recognize it immediately. A human right, by definition, is inalienable. All states must immediately recognize gay marriage, and it cannot be repealed no matter what. The fact that rescinding the right would now require a constitutional amendment is the least of it—in principle, human rights cannot be repealed even by the constitution. If the constitution is amended to do so, this is, per the Declaration of Independence, reason to overthrow the government. After all, if one human right can licitly be erased by legislation, they all can.

We are left to hope that all our ancestors were indeed idiots, God was wrong as we understood him, and there are no possible ill effects to the wider society from homosexual sex.