Scalia the ranting old man
In yesterday’s SCOTUS decision in Arizona v. US, something about Justice Scalia’s dissent seems to have outraged quite a few commentators, including law professor Paul Campos, who wrote a piece in Salon entitled “Antonin Scalia, Ranting Old Man.”
At 76, I’m not sure Scalia qualifies as definitively “old,” at least not in SCOTUS terms. And although he may not be climbing Mt. Everest, he seems to still have his wits about him. Not according to Campos, though:
Scalia, who 25 years ago had a certain gift for pointing out the blindness and hypocrisy of certain versions of limousine liberalism, has in his old age become an increasingly intolerant and intolerable blowhard: a pompous celebrant of his own virtue and rectitude, a purveyor of intemperate jeremiads against the degeneracy of the age, and now an author of hysterical diatribes against foreign invaders, who threaten all that is holy.
What is the passage Campos gives to illustrate this intolerant, pompous, intemperate, hysterical jeremiad against the foreign invaders threatening all that’s holy? This:
As is often the case, discussion of the dry legalities that are the proper object of our attention suppresses the very human realities that gave rise to the suit. Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so. Thousands of Arizona’s estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants ”” including not just children but men and women under 30 ”” are now assured immunity from enforcement, and will be able to compete openly with Arizona citizens for employment.
Now, a person may certainly validly disagree with those sentiments or with Scalia’s opinions in general. A person may think that such remarks have no place in a legal opinion written by a Supreme Court Justice. But it’s really really really difficult to see them as meeting Campos’s description of Scalia as ranting and hysterical.
Puzzled, I turned to look at Scalia’s entire dissent (which runs about 20 pages long, beginning at page 30), assuming I’d find a lot more there to justify the criticism of Scalia. But the only other passage I could found in a quick reading that could even remotely be considered to be intemperate editorializing on Scalia’s part was on page 48, when he calls Congress’s allocation of funds for federal enforcement of immigration laws “inadequate” (keeping in mind, though, that the administration itself has said it lacks the resources to enforce federal laws on the matter) and refers to Obama’s targeting of that funding as “unwise.” That last word—unwise, as applied to Obama—is probably the most incendiary passage in Scalia’s entire dissent, and it hardly qualifies as a dreadful rant, even for usually sedate SCOTUS justices.
Although Scalia has never been what you might call sedate, he’s hardly the raving and decrepit old bigot depicted by his critics, who are doing a fair amount of ranting and raving themselves. Perhaps it’s pre-Obamacare-ruling jitters.
“Scalia, who 25 years ago had a certain gift for pointing out the blindness and hypocrisy of certain versions of limousine liberalism, has in his old age become an increasingly intolerant and intolerable blowhard: a pompous celebrant of his own virtue and rectitude, a purveyor of intemperate jeremiads against the degeneracy of the age, and now an author of hysterical diatribes against foreign invaders, who threaten all that is holy.”
Wow, I wish someone would castigate me in that manner. It would allow me to consider that maybe my later years were not entirely wasted. Methinks Justice Scalia will react in that fashion. Maybe he will muse, “Yeeesss, I pushed just the right liberal buttons.”
“Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so.”
The current administration is not unable or unwilling, and it obviously does not see illegal aliens as a ‘problem’. Instead, it considers them an addition to their voter base. And, I wish people would stop using the term illegal immigrants; they are illegal aliens and every single one of them is a criminal under the law of the land. Way to go Scalia.
20 pages… not too long? (ha ha)
ah.. but when your electorate has a 5th grade reading level, attention spans of gnats, wont sit for 4 pages let alone 48 pages of clear prose…
you can say anything you want to create a tiny fake universe in the people that trust you and in that W lippman reality, they will gin themselves up to remove the old senile person.
welcome to communism
where the only thing that really matters is if the code you feed the believers gets enough of them to act en masse in the real world.
as i said, do you care what the horse thinks when you make it turn right? no. you only care that it turns right when you need him to.
duh… been explaining it for years now, but how do you prove to the horse that someone is making him turn right, and his thoughts don’t matter (when the horses ego may get bruised)?
you dont need everyone, just enough noisy ones
you dont need functional people who can think in principaled form, you need something else, so that they depend on you to guru them to the right thing.
then all you do is betray their trust and make up some angle that mobilizes them… like your home is a happy gulag… or scalia is senile… or what not…
the horses believe, they turn, and you feed them some more dumb dumb oats.
what are we missing here? the people trying to rationalize how he can say that or think that? easy. he knows your either dumb enough to believe him, or smart enough not to think he would be that evil and you will work diligently to save him from such judgment – with the worst your willing to say is he is nutty this time…
to be clear, when i said clear prose, i was not referring to my writing, but scalias… 🙂
In yesterday’s Best of the Web Today column, James Taranto comments on the same subject in an item titled, “Can Paul Campos Read?”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303640804577488761267333858.html
Can you imagine having to take a class from a preener like this guy? Anh he calls Scalia a blowhard.
Artfldgr: yes, indeed. Those who misstate and mischaracterize what others have said are relying on the fact that few people will go back and actually read the source and independently make up their minds.
Kind of off topic:
Today, ex-President Jimmy Carter said that the U.S. is doing widespread human rights abuses, by using flying drones to kill terrorists + guerrillas in the Middle East. he doesn’t name it directly, but by [The U.S.], he means the Obama White house.
Pardon me for shouting, but: President Carter, if you think these killings, by the Obama Administration are bad, then:
GET IN OBAMA’S FACE ABOUT THIS PROBLEM AND SCREAM AT OBAMA ABOUT IT!
That kind of screaming and chastising, Mr. Carter, will put any President in his place.
[By any president, I mean any president, past, present or future].
“Can Paul Campos Read?”
Now that’s funny!
The “illegal immigrants group” is a pawn in Obama’s game of political chess to increase his Hispanic vote and turnout. He doesn’t give a damn about them and the Hispanic voters (like so many USA voters) are too dumb and ill informed to see how these people are being used.
On top of that, the limousine and twenty something liberals (who don’t know much about life) get tears in their eyes and chills up their legs thinking how open minded and tolerant Obama is.
Scalia just showed (again) he has some common sense which all those people do NOT have.
Scalia’s remarks were entirely appropriate. They refer to rights guaranteed to citizens (i.e. “We the People”) in the establishment document, The Declaration of Independence, and the organizational document, The Constitution. Others who are non-citizens, including: legal residents, illegal aliens, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Constitution, but of lesser legislative laws, and do not enjoy the rights delineated within the Constitution and, purportedly, upheld by our government.
Without reading the full context of Campos’s rant, I can only assume that he supports the commission of civil rights violations of every American citizen and legal resident. His indignation is unbecoming an individual of integrity and certainly someone who, I assume, earned the respected title of “professor.”
As for Scalia, we need more individuals, and specifically civil servants, who respect our rights as described in the founding documents, and who respect the dignity of the people they serve.
There is reasonably cause to constrain legal immigration and there superior cause to, once and for all, end illegal immigration (i.e. unmeasured).
Who was it that expressed concern for overpopulation? I thought it was the American left, but perhaps I am wrong. In any case, whoever supports unreasonable and, certainly, unmeasured immigration, cannot possible comprehend the premise of that condition nor, apparently, the rights of people.
Anyway, I hope Americans are paying attention to how little regard is offered to their rights. I further hope that they reject dreams of instant gratification and will not elect to exchange their liberty for submission with benefits. The former is unsustainable and the latter should be beneath their dignity.
illegal immigrants … strain their social services
If people wonder why the federal government is nearly $16 trillion in debt, this is a contributing factor to not only that progressive shackle, but also to inflated costs throughout our economy, including health care services, education, etc.
Meanwhile, leaders of nations in Central and South America, Africa, etc. escape scrutiny for fostering or tolerating the conditions which would motivate the departure of millions of their people. Supporting immigration without accountability, and especially illegal immigration, does disservice to both Americans and immigrants. At least Reagan had the courage to confront the regimes which sponsored a progressive decay of their societies.
Nothing made me sadder for my education then when, during a visit by Scalia at my law school, my fellow law students decided to protest him. Are they not even aware of the fundamental nature of the SCOTUS and its role in the Constitution? “WTF have you learned?”
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Justices are appointed for life, for the sole purpose that they will not be influenced by “the mob” and demagogues. Protesting, the very act of publicly expressing an objection to particular events or policies, is the very thing Justices are not supposed to be intimidated or influenced by.
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“WTF have you learned when sitting in classes for the last 3 years?”
Today, ex-President Jimmy Carter said that the U.S. is doing widespread human rights abuses, by using flying drones to kill terrorists + guerrillas in the Middle East…
This is rich, coming from Jimmeh. Maybe if he’d been more effective (at all, even) in dealing with that big Islamic revolution that took place on his watch, terrorists wouldn’t be such a problem today. Incompetent little putz.
As for Justice Scalia, I’d say he’s hitting all the right notes at the moment. If he weren’t scoring points, even in dissent, as here, the libs wouldn’t be on their hind legs shrieking at him. American immigration policy is broken, has been for years, and neither party has shown much resolve in attempting to come up with a workable solution. Since there’s a vacuum in Washington, it shouldn’t be surprising that the states closest to the issue–which often get stuck with the bill for services provided to illegal aliens–have sought their own answers. Keep at it, Mr. Justice Scalia, they’re not ignoring you, and their ad hominem attacks only highlight the issues more.
Well, we have gone round and round wondering if they really believe the stuff they say about other opponents (anti science, ideologues, et cet). This is just a targeted version (re: to one person) of the same nonsense.
It’s Paul Campos. He escaped from the same asylum as Krugman.
A Genius of the Law and our Constitution.
Always tickles me that Justice Scalia’s best friend on the court is Ruthie G. Must drive the little lefties nutz!! May Romney win, Repubs keep the House & regain the Senate and may Ruth subsequently retire and be replaced by a Constitutionalist.
Can they write a critical piece without name calling and character assassination? Just one piece?
This is battlefield preparation and an attempt to establish a narrative “Scalia is an old coot”! It really has little to do with reality.
Ed Whelen uses the procedures and traditions of the
Supreme Court to determine that Roberts is writing a 5-4 takedown of Obamacare.
http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/304121/my-prediction-tomorrow-s-obamacare-ruling-ed-whelan
This is so pathetic, are they not embarassed about their lame ad hominem attacks on Scalia.
Note the remark “ranting, old” etc. It s age discrimmination really, so typical in the superficial USA. Yet strangely the lefties had no gripe about Robert Bird who was the epitome of doddering, they all cried buckets of tears over the election LOSS of 80 y/o RINO Dick Lugar, (thank you Indiana voters)& let us not forget the latter day 80 Y/o Benedict Arnold, Arlen Specter
who has been described as so throughly enjoying his RINO position as “The Swing Vote” on many issues that he was giddy with excitement at being pursued by Dem & Repubs. Just as happy with the PA voters who retired this dinosauor (sp?) & happy to hear the resentment Specter expressed when being shown the door.
For sure 80 is plenty old enough for senators, the Supremes, yeah they might be there for life but their job is less demanding then a senator besides there are fewer of them.
I’ve never been able to discover the exact process, ahem, used by political progressives to determine which laws progressive authorities may scoff at and ignore without simultaneously undermining their own right to be considered as within and as part of the law-abiding community themselves.
The same pretty much parallels their ideal of worshiping the unfettered “general will”; unless of course, it contravenes what they want.
I’m sure they employ a principle of evaluation which would withstand the test of logical coherence, or even a mere critical look, but I have never been able to get a progressive to explain it.
Perhaps one of your progressive readers will …
For starters, as a 76 year old, on the verge of 77, I take umbrage with the description of the esteemed Justice. But, we all know that the objection to Scalia is not because of his age, but because of his laser like mind that cuts through Leftist arguments.
I do regret one aspect of his dissent; and I picked this up from a caller to Rush Limbaugh. Yes, I do listen for a few minutes on most days, and occasionally pick up useful information or insight. This particular caller objected to use of the term “illegal immigrant” on the basis that it was an erroneous description. His point was that an immigrant is by definition in the country legally; whereas a more correct term for someone in the country illegally is “invader”.
I agree with the caller. The touched a chronic sore spot for me. I have long believed that one error that Conservatives make consistently is letting the opposition define terms to suit their agenda. It seems indisputable that we have let language become so corrupted that words, and terms, are used to disguise and obfuscate, rather than clarify. If you can define the language of an argument, you have gone a long way toward winning the argument.
DNW-
I believe it’s called “Heads I Win, Tails you Lose”