Laurence Tribe on Chuck’s Schumer’s SCOTUS threat
Laurence Tribe is as partisan a Trump-hating leftist law professor as you might ever find. And yet even Tribe cannot defend Schumer’s threats against Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.
Here’s Tribe’s tweet on the subject:
These remarks by @SenSchumer were inexcusable. Chief Justice Roberts was right to call him on his comments. I hope the Senator, whom I’ve long admired and consider a friend, apologizes and takes back his implicit threat. It’s beneath him and his office. https://t.co/xbNnUeznRR
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 4, 2020
If you look at the replies to that tweet of Tribe’s, the responses mainly come down to one of two things. The first is the idea of an equivalence (a fake one) between Schumer’s threats and Trump’s past criticism of some SCOTUS justices. The second is that all Schumer was doing was defending women’s reproductive rights (that is, abortion) in a perfectly reasonable manner.
There is no equivalence between a threat and a criticism. And trying to argue for a certain policy does not excuse making a threat.
Tribe will recant tomorrow, if not sooner.
Lee Merrick:
You may be correct. We’ll see. I think very little of Tribe, but I think the word “inexcusable” is a pretty strong one, and that’s the word Tribe used. He may really not like what Schumer said. Or he may just be trying to warn Schumer that this sort of rhetoric could be counterproductive in an election year.
In the novel Shogun, Anjin-san claimed there was one excuse for rebellion … if you win. Give Dems credit, they are in it to win.
Politics is politics, but whenever the issue is killing babies the left becomes unhinged. It is bizarre to witness.
A woman considering an abortion is a tragedy, no matter the circumstances. They need counseling, medical care and compassion. Even in a situation where the mother’s health is at such risk, or the baby’s viability is so diminished that terminating the pregnancy may be a consideration, it’s not a political football to be forced over a goal line. Anyone who ignores the impact on the mother’s psyche, or claims there will be no impact is evil.
All humans innately know this, so politicians like Schumer have to obfuscate and shift focus. If the debate ever goes beyond screaming, threats and shrieking they know they will lose. They cannot permit rational thought to enter the debate.
Jim NorCal,
When the result is harming mothers and children “win” is not an apt word, nor is, “credit.”
A woman considering an abortion is a tragedy, no matter the circumstances. They need counseling, medical care and compassion.
“No matter the circumstances”? Ptaah.
Whatever the young women and their various enablers fancy they ‘need’, the first order of business is to tell them what their legitimate options are.
Anyone who ignores the impact on the mother’s psyche, or claims there will be no impact is evil.
I’m happy to ignore the impact. You help people cope by not treating them like invalids.
Prof Tribe sees himself as an upstanding member of the SCOTUS bar. It’s from that stance, I believe, this declaration issues. Other such members may now be looking to their own appearance before the eyes of the Court. “Are they watching how we react?”, they’re pondering. Why yes. Yes, the Court is watching reactions and taking down names. Best get to it, ladies and gentlemen: don’t let Larry leave you in his dust.
Harry Reid regarding his lying about then presidential candidate Romney’s not paying taxes: “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
(https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/03/31/harry_reid_on_attacking_koch_brothers_romneys_tax_record_no_regrets_romney_didnt_win_did_he.html)
Abortion is the most divisive issue in American politics. It probably did not have to be but the Supreme Court in Roe assumed a role that had not been seen since Dredd Scott. The result may be similar. California made abortion legal in 1969. It did not have to be this sort of controversy. Had this been left to states, we might have avoided much of the coming civil war.
Aesop Fan,
“I’m happy to ignore the impact. You help people cope by not treating them like invalids.”
I assume I’m missing some deeper meaning, because this sounds like you are arguing against informing patients of the physiological and psychological affects of a medical procedure. (?)
I assume I’m missing some deeper meaning, because this sounds like you are arguing against informing patients of the physiological and psychological affects of a medical procedure. (?)
I’m Art Deco, not Aesop Fan, and you’re missing the plain meaning, not the deeper meaning.
Rufus T. Firefly
That was Art Deco in his nuanced manner of speech. Aesop Fan is no such blunt instrument.
http://ace.mu.nu/
March 05, 2020
The Morning Report – 3/5/20
—J.J. Sefton
” …..Cuck Schemer plainly threatened Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch with the phrases “you will pay the price” and you “won’t know what hit you. Given that both are lifetime appointees and part of an independent, coequal branch of our government, “pay the price”, exactly how? And “won’t know what hit you” is straight out of Virgil Solozzo’s Book of Handy Phrases a few pages after “if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”
From the opening paragraph, not mincing words.
I, too, am missing the plain meaning of this:
“I’m happy to ignore the impact. You help people cope by not treating them like invalids.”
Would you care to elaborate?
Don’t you just love how they say they have to stop being political right after being very political? as if its a outright… i did it, but now you cant…
too bad the young people trained by the feminists are going to vote in communism eventually… which was the whole point of taking over the womens movement… right from the early time in the 1960s, you can read people like Erin Pizzey who had to leave their home, country, and were going to get killed by them (at that time they were a terrorist organization planting bombs and breaking bones)… She started the first shelters… Like the man who is credited with DNA structure, she and he had been erased from their own institutions
since you cant stop them, its inevitable..
the question stopped being whether, but when.
which is why you see things now…
we will change to an authoritarian state that claims it isnt..
we will change to a communist state, just as i said 10 years ago
we did NOTHING to stop it, and hopes otherwise are unfounded
because we are old and remember what will be forgotten the minute we die off
and the young, have no idea of what it was like or what happened
in fact, they are told those are stories that are exaggerated
to think… the Shoa is an exaggeration making it OK to reference Israel that way
to think… the gulags were, as Friedan put it, happy… and necessary
before you could speak out… now you cant..
its a done deal now…
The door is closed and all you can do is be frustrated by such things as Schumer
Suum Cuique
to each what he deserves…
The more unhappy the women are, the more necessary it is to change the whole society to make them happy… which it wont, because if it did, it would remove the core productive force creating communism… they do NOT desire to be free… freedom is unsafe and scary.
Johns Hopkins
Why Is There No Feminism after Communism?
“Communist feminism is a contradiction in terms.” – Mihaela Miroiu
Cambridge
Feminism, Communism and Global Socialism: Encounters and Entanglements
“If women’s liberation is unthinkable without communism, then communism is unthinkable without women’s liberation.”
—Russian revolutionary Inessa Armand
The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 190-225, August – A open copy is available from YALE if you look
Women are increasingly unhappy. This comic explains why.
The gender gap we’re not talking about. – Vox
Women Are More Unhappy Than Ever – Slate
The Fertility Gap and Women’s Happiness – institute for family studies
Meet the Least Happy People in America – Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/high-octane-women/201109/meet-the-least-happy-people-in-america
the unhappiest profile?:
Female
42 years old
Unmarried (and no children)
Household income under $100,000
In a professional position (doctor, lawyer, etc.)
Hurry up ladies… finish the job and Schumer et. al will make you happy!
at least he says so as the others do…
in the big picture this is quite comedic… a Greek tragedy..
I was reading the previous thread, wherein Schumer had one defender (I didn’t get all the way to the end, so maybe someone else threw in with Montage lower down). So I was thinking about the false equivalence that neo references and that Montage obligingly illustrated (sorry to finger you, Montage, but you did).
Criticism is a stated or implied “because” statement: you’re ugly [because of that giant mole with the hair curling out of it]. Your decision is terrible (to restate a Trump criticism) because it’s not in line with what I wanted.
A threat, on the other hand, is a stated or implied “if-then” statement: if you come one step closer, then I’ll shoot (which can be restated “Come one step closer and I’ll shoot!” without change of meaning). “Nice court there – it’d be a shame if something happened to it” can be restated “if you don’t comply with my demand, then something will happen to your nice business.” And in the case of Schumer’s statement, “…you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!” can be restated, “If you go forward with these awful decisions, then unspecified action will be taken to make you regret it!” Or, more charitably to Schumer, “If you go forward with these awful decisions, then you will deserve whatever unspecified action is taken to make you regret it!”
I suppose you could argue that Schumer’s sense was the second version – a warning, not a threat. But a warning is a threat, even if the person giving it doesn’t control the outcome: “if we don’t change our ways, then climate change will kill us all!” The question is, is the speaker trying to bring about an action on the part of the target of the speech? If yes, then it’s a threat. (“Threats” can be benign under specific circumstances – “Keep saying things like that and I’m just going to have to kiss you,” for instance.)
It seems clear (pretty sure even he and his spokespeople are not denying it) that Schumer’s statement was intended to bring about a certain action, despite the past-tense construction of the one clause (“you have released…”). Trump’s statements about justices came after their actions and (ahem) had no quid pro quo.
Oops! Missed a closing tag…
Would you care to elaborate?
The point in these circumstances is to avoid acts which violate categorical imperatives. Unless she has an ectopic pregnancy or some such, that means no abortion. If her personal situation does not permit of a proper domestic life, the child goes up for adoption. A physician or a surgeon talking to a patient needs to be cordial and professional; not only do the capable doctors do that every day, so do the mediocre ones. The physician is NOT YOUR MOTHER. It isn’t his job to make a cloying pest of himself fussing over your ‘psyche’ or your ‘feelings’. The physician has his own family to attend to in regard to such matters.
As for the family of the pregnant woman, they’re stuck with the same dilemmas as anyone else with some responsibilities for a person in distress. Don’t overwater your plants.
Schumer’s threat was performance politics.
Not to be taken literally, altho it was definitely a threat.
It was a message that he’s being really really tough; a message mostly for his pro-abortion Dem audience.
Robert’s reply was a serious, mild rebuke. Similar in mildness to his rebuke of Trump (“only judges, not Obama judges or Bush judges”). Trump was speaking a truth, clearly and often articulated by Dems and Reps, that many US judges are making decisions based on their politics more than on the law.
Here, Schumer making a drama-threat is over the line of acceptable criticism, where most of Trump’s criticisms are on the acceptable side. Including naming judges, which many don’t like when Trump does. (It’s OK with me.)
Tribe, too, is doing performance politics. Tribe condemns the remarks and calls them “inexcusable”. But of course he’s lying. He knows his friends and political allies will, in fact, excuse those remarks by a Dem, whether Schumer apologizes or not.
Montage seems even more reasonable than Manju in presenting the very very blurry line the Dems want to draw: Trump criticizing a judge is as bad as Schumer threatening a judge. In a social media atmosphere where bad words that lead to bad feelings are considered, “literally an attack”, it’s easy to see how Dems think there is an equivalence.
In most of the above cases, Trump, Schumer, and Tribe are all using their positions inside of their respective institution to increase brand awareness of their personal brand, rather than support the nominal mission of the institution. Roberts is, arguably, trying to support the mission of the SCOTUS.
From askblog I read a great podcast review of Yuval Levin’s book about institutions, where this use of institutions as a platform to promote a personal brand is central to the book:
https://www.econtalk.org/yuval-levin-on-a-time-to-build/
There’s also a huge relationship with taking folk seriously but not literally (often your allies), or literally but not seriously (Dems usually do so vs. Trump).
Performance politics. Personal brands. Institutions as platforms.
Neo’s so often on top of what I’m thinking about as important.
Rufus T Firefly:
Abortion is an issue over which BOTH Democrats and Republicans extremes become unhinged. There is probably no other more emotionally divisive issue in politics.
My post was removed either in this thread or the other..
they both dont have it… gone.. poof…
good… Jedam das seine (“to each what he deserves”) made right…
I fear the leftist Germans of the past were sadly right and macabre about it.
[During World War II the phrase was cynically used by the Nazis as a motto displayed over the entrance of Buchenwald concentration camp]
there is no stopping this steam roller…
even less so if there is not even discussion as its verboten
we will get what we deserve for it, eventually a communist state and ALL that entails…
Here’s why kids these days love socialism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=kxb4kN06XGk
[and what movement took over and made them this way? Verboten!]
Just remember…
Sanders is the SAME PARTY as Lenin was at the start…
The only defenders of any sort of freedom, are now evil and the very anti-thesis to diversity and the verboten ideology…
Gulags were ‘compassionate’, ‘educational’ institutions, say trans rights campaigners
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/11/soviet-labour-camps-compassionate-educational-institutions-say/
you can discuss atomically these things, and rail that there is an atom of this or that, but what does the atomic create put together? ah… what does it matter… with our noses pressed up against this small part or that small part, we can believe what we want until we are forced otherwise..
It’s just the party of personal and national destruction doing what the party of personal and national destruction has to do.
Schumer is merely taking Sotamayor’s incendiary, injudicious “dissent” to the next level.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sotomayor-supreme-court-trump-dissent-957020/
And what will the level after that be?
Perhaps the old lovable icon of “Liberte, egalite, fraternite”? (only symbolic, mind you—not to be taken literally!)
https://apnews.com/ac5768f14fe3fcd1298a10430952e8f6
Or perhaps Nancy will lend Chuck her vorpal blade?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nancy-pelosi-will-cut-your-head-off-and-you-wont-even-know-youre-bleeding-daughter-alexandra-pelosi-says/2019/01/02/959ea7da-0ebe-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html
Or maybe one should just consult with James Hodgkinson…
Great dissection, Jamie!
Art Deco,
Thanks for elaborating. It looks like you missed my point.
A good physician should list potential outcomes or side effects of a treatment/medication/procedure when advising a patient. Let’s say I become blind in on eye. Removal of the non-working eye is an option. But if we take that route my physical appearance will change, and it may affect how some of my interactions with people. Or I can wear a prosthesis, but I need to understand the importance of hygiene to avoid infection. Or there may be a future procedure that would correct the vision in that eye, but I would have missed the opportunity to regain my vision because my non-working eye had been removed and discarded.
The statistics on women’s health after having an abortion are rather alarming, and the percentages of women who later have regrets are overwhelming (and how they often try to mask those regrets). Sharing those medical facts with patients should be a part of any proper, medical consultation.
Abortion is an issue over which BOTH Democrats and Republicans extremes become unhinged.
No, only one side is unhinged.
Thanks for elaborating. It looks like you missed my point.
Your point is what? That discharge instructions need to be clear and precise? If the antithesis to a statement is absurd (e.g. ‘discharge instructions should be vague and incomplete’), the original statement didn’t need to be made.
The statistics on women’s health after having an abortion are rather alarming, and the percentages of women who later have regrets are overwhelming (and how they often try to mask those regrets). Sharing those medical facts with patients should be a part of any proper, medical consultation.
And who is going to do that? Gynecologists who do this sort of work are degenerates, and it’s a business with them.
Art Deco has just proved my point.
For the ideological extremists, no compromise is possible. This is an issue in which the middle ground must hold, if we are to continue as one people.
Art Deo is of course the final authority and of course a physician, philosopher, counselor, confessor, and friend, ….. Or maybe he is just blowing smoke. He should water his plants and check his pants.
It is so sad that so many have been “reasoned” into believing fallacies that go against millions of years of genetic programming through evolution. We can ignore our instincts and DNA, but that won’t change our physiology, nor the physical world.
One sees the DNA play out even in species of animal with a limbic system, let alone a neocortex. Try to take a Robin’s egg from her nest and watch what happens.
Art Deco has just proved my point.
The term ‘proved’ does not mean what you fancy it means.
It is so sad that so many have been “reasoned” into believing fallacies that go against millions of years of genetic programming through evolution. We can ignore our instincts and DNA, but that won’t change our physiology, nor the physical world.
This is in response to what?
Sen Schumer quadrupled down this morning on the Senate floor. Oh sure, he pretended to sorrow for speaking wrong words, but the political issue, he thinks, is both paramount and a winner. So. He’ll have none of your rebukes. He’s good, you see. Everyone else is simply mistaken. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, whose names I don’t think he spoke again, be damned. You too, Roberts.
It is ironic that Chief Justice Roberts who was so careful during the impeachment to avoid all questions regarding Eric Ciaramella gets the Supreme Court abused by Schumer and the democrats so soon afterwards. The democrats demand a lackey and lap dog in the Supreme Court.
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
The passage reads: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
I am amused that the threat from this fool to retaliate against a future SC decision is tolerated by the Left.
Dem jokers wild!
Here’s some Schumer humor at its best:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/sen-hawley-to-censure-schumer-after-intimidation-of-supreme-court-justices_3261501.html
(Timing still needs a wee bit of work, though.)
File under: Why are those nasty, pouncy Republicans always taking us out of context??
If you made Schumer’s statement about any judge in any courthouse in America, you’d be subject to sanctions from the judge and the state bar. Schumer and those idiots who wrote that letter to the Supremes back in August should be sanctioned.
I think Firefly is trying to make a broad point about abortion views in our society. It’s a point I appreciate.
My generation grew up being told that abortion was a necessary part of women’s liberation. The narrative created to support that political perspective was that an abortion is no big deal. It was just a bundle of cells — no harm removing a blastocyst, it doesn’t actually count. Then that argument was stretched to include a fetus in the first trimester, then beyond, to the point where today you can actually find straight-faced arguments for infanticide.
The pro-choice movement is invested in ignoring the rationalization Firefly refers to — the fallacy that abortion doesn’t matter emotionally, that it’s a normal part of women’s reproductive health, that it’s appropriate to have abortions as desired as a matter of convenience. This is what the pro-choice movement is re-enforcing when they say “abortion is healthcare,” and when they encourage you to “shout your abortion.”
I agree with Firefly that the promotion of this fallacy has been a terrible thing for our society. It seems to me that it is linked to the de-valuing of motherhood and families, and to a broader societal tendency toward de-humanization. In my view, this cultural aspect of abortion doesn’t get enough consideration.
The culture taught me that also, Sarah. In my early 20s I encouraged a friend and his girlfriend to abort their “unwanted” pregnancy, but they didn’t listen.
That clump of cells is now a beautiful, happy and very successful adult woman.
Portuguese novelist Sarah Hoyt recently wrote on her blog, “And if there is one law of nature we know of, it is that if you’re at war with reality, you eventually lose.”
A human fetus deserves human rights, tho I haven’t yet seen banners proclaiming:
Fetal Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Fetal Rights
The Libertarian position of freedom to act, as long as one doesn’t hurt somebody else, comes up against the biology of a different DNA being, biologically, a somebody else. So does the mother have a right to kill an unwanted fetus? Should that killing be legal or not?
With sonogram technology, as well as the increasing demographic neutron bomb (of fewer kids than replacement), the pro-life arguments in favor of protection of human rights for the innocent fetus are getting more popular.
The pro-abortion folk, who “won” in the Roe v Wade neo-amendment, are starting to feel the democratic forces against them. They are becoming loud reactionaries against human rights “progressing” to include human fetuses.
–
But an important part of the cultural war is sex. Out of wedlock sex. That’s how all unmarried women got pregnant. And most people, women and men, want to have a society where women can enjoy promiscuous sex as much as men. Reality, that sexist pig, is unfair about only women getting pregnant.
Most college graduates had sex before marriage, but are getting married and remaining monogamous. Far too many of the non-college folk aren’t even getting married — which is why the divorce rate is going down far faster than the rate of the number of births outside of marriage.
A child raised by an unmarried mother can never have all the same advantages of a similarly gifted child raised in a married family with a father and mother. And it’s certainly “not fair” that the kids from single moms are disadvantaged, but there is also “no fair way” for a gov’t to compensate for the (sinful?) sex enjoyed by the parents at conception.
Here’s a quick review of a book claiming the sexual revolution is the chief cause of current identity politics, because of: 1) sex outside marriage is OK, 2) few kids grow up with their bio-father, and 3) politics is increasingly focused on identity, especially sex & race.
https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2020/Klingsexualrevolution.html
.
For me, the key battle in the culture war is promiscuous sex. Which most people mostly favor when it is “responsible”, like safe sex. But because of emotions, especially with women being hurt, I now claim “responsible promiscuity” is not possible.
(I’ve changed my mind on this! After being a successful Alpha Male womanizer, like my father, I’ve chosen to be a faithful husband.)
Abortion, being the result of an unwanted pregnancy, is mostly the result of desired sexual pleasure. If the connection between sexual desire, pleasure, and the possibility of pregnancy is not explicit in any analysis, such analysis is wimpy.
Sex is great, and should be great. In marriage.
Kids need to be formed, changed even, to support good marriages — so they can have more and better sex, with their spouses.
This is happening to many college grads. But not for the less educated. We need more honesty about this, and about sex, and sexual pleasure. Also as part of more abortion discussions.
So the less educated (non-college that is) are less moral than the enlightened college-educated (indoctrinated) peers? That’s a hoot.
A better argument is that it is very difficult to educate young people to be responsible and moral when contending with cultural norms and biological impulses. That had always been a difficult task for parents and society. A college degree doesn’t make anyone responsible or moral.
om, I very much doubt that Tom Grey’s point is that the non-college-educated are less moral than the college-educated. I’m pretty sure what he’s saying is that college graduates tend to be more likely to recognize that as a practical matter, and playing the odds, children become more successful adults when born into and raised within a stable two-parent family in which the parents are legally bound to stay together (so that it’s much harder for a bad fight to result in a single parent, and also so that economic benefit is retained within the family if a parent dies). Nothing to do with morals. Everything to do with success.
The term, which is unfortunately rather loaded and moralistic itself, is “virtuous cycle.”
“Abortion is the most divisive issue in American politics.” Mike K
Those in favor of abortion want to have sex without consequence.
To support that POV, they’ve invented the false syllogism that a fetus is just part of a woman’s body and from that, attach a true syllogism; only the woman can say what she will do with her own body.
However, her body does NOT include the life growing in her body. A pregnant woman is the caretaker of the SEPARATE life with which the woman has been entrusted.
To think otherwise is to justify murder. As, it presumes to know when a fetus becomes a person.
om on March 5, 2020 at 12:35 pm said:
It is ironic that Chief Justice Roberts who was so careful during the impeachment to avoid all questions regarding Eric Ciaramella gets the Supreme Court abused by Schumer and the democrats so soon afterwards. The democrats demand a lackey and lap dog in the Supreme Court.
* * *
Om is correct, and I will be blunt about that.
Some Republicans would probably be happy to get the same deal, but know they won’t, so conservatives will have to settle for justices who at least know what the Constitution says and apply it properly.
PS AesopSpouse’s Law School class on Constitutional Law never once actually had the students read the Constitution itself; all they studied was case law & theory. And this was at a very conservative university, so I suspect all left-leaning lawyers have the same blind spot.
Jamie:
Tom Grey may be saying that but with what basis or data?
Credentialism writ large.
One could predict that the “crisis” of college student debt will make stable family life and successful child rearing very difficult for college graduates, to say nothing of other “moral” choices.
Barry Meislin on March 5, 2020 at 1:48 pm said:
Dem jokers wild!
Here’s some Schumer humor at its best:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/sen-hawley-to-censure-schumer-after-intimidation-of-supreme-court-justices_3261501.html
(Timing still needs a wee bit of work, though.)
File under: Why are those nasty, pouncy Republicans always taking us out of context??
* * *
Headline from that link:
Schumer Apologizes for Supreme Court Comment: ‘They [his words] Didn’t Come out the Way I Intended’
Well, actually, he only apologized for the form of his comments, not the sentiment behind them. Temporizing to bring in the President and Senate was an afterthought, because he discovered that even his own side said he had been too blunt.
Laurence Tribe isn’t the only Democrat that Schumer lost.
These commentators waffle a little bit, but are pretty clear that what Schumer said is what most people heard.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/03/05/cnns-avlon-no-question-schumers-comments-crossed-the-line-sounded-like-a-threat/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/05/cnns-jeffrey-toobin-schumer-remarks-inappropriate-it-did-sound-like-a-physical-threat/
Basically, his apology is really: “I’m sorry I got caught saying what I meant; I should have been more like the other weasels in my party.”
Rufus T. Firefly on March 5, 2020 at 2:37 pm said:
Portuguese novelist Sarah Hoyt recently wrote on her blog, “And if there is one law of nature we know of, it is that if you’re at war with reality, you eventually lose.”
* * *
Very true.
But, as in all wars, there are a lot of casualties on both sides before the end.
“Sanders is the SAME PARTY as Lenin was at the start…” – Artfldgr
Coincidentally, I read a post on that point this morning.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/no_lenin_no_trotsky_no_bernie.html
*Anybody know it that is true?
I disbelieve that Bernie Sanders has “theories” of revolution answerable to the name. I disbelieve that Bernie Sanders “thinks” in any serious sense about anything remotely theoretical, since if he did do such thinking he could articulate this thinking, along with the deep doubts he himself would necessarily run into as he worked his way along. Ever heard him express doubt about his systems? About his plans? This he has not done. I doubt he could do. He doesn’t think. He spouts. He spouts garbage, albeit calculated emotional garbage fit to gull the rubes.
AesopFan,
Trotsky “could not countenance Stalin’s move toward totalitarianism.”*
I cannot answer definitively but it seems highly likely, as Trotsky was a true believer and true believers cannot support Stalinists. True believers will excuse any repression in service of their ideology but not repression in service of power for its own sake.
Thanks GB – but how do you distinguish seeking the power to repress in service of an ideology, from seeking power for its own sake – which inevitably requires repression?
That looks like word-twisting, but I don’t know what would make the distinction visible from the outside.
Of course, if the power-seeker says as much himself (or herself) that would be adequate proof, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any authoritarian, of any ideology, who asked for power per se, unconnected to “power to do some specific thing” needed for some glorious end purpose.
At least, not publicly.
Now, Trotsky may have been a close enough confidante of Stalin to hear the words said explicitly, but most of us don’t have that advantage.
At any rate, repression in service of an ideology is pretty well guaranteed to degenerate into repression in service of the powers that be for their own sake; it just happened really fast in Bolshevik Russia.
It’s happening in America right now, and has probably been on a roll for some decades within our Administrative State and the close but not identical Deep State. We’re only just now seeing the curtains pulled back.
Aesopfan,
Regardless of the motivation, repression is repression.
That said, repression in pursuit of an ideological, societal or moral goal is not person centered but principle driven. To what degree the ‘principle’ is logically and rationally valid is a separate issue.
Whereas, repression in pursuit of power for it’s own sake is inherently immoral, as it implicitly denies the right of other individuals to self-determination. It denies the fundamental principle that my rights stop where yours begin and vice versa.
Andrew McCarthy puts everything bluntly in perspective.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/schumer-the-supreme-court-and-the-mob/
George Parry, quoted in PowerLine, following an interesting case story:
https://spectator.org/chuck-schumer-wise-guy/
Now, we know Schumer won’t be indicted (even though his remarks were NOT made on the floor of the Senate), but didn’t we just go through three years investigating some alleged obstruction of justice that never occurred?
Another official statement of censure, although probably without effect.
But, I learned there are still some lawyers with a conscience.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/back-in-the-saddle-6.php
Geoffrey Britain:
You write “Those in favor of abortion want to have sex without consequence.”
That blanket pronouncement is incorrect. It is certainly true of some people who are in favor of abortion, and if you had stated it in that qualified way I wouldn’t disagree. But there are plenty of other people with other reasons. The following isn’t meant to be an inclusive list, but here are three groups of people who don’t meet your description:
(1) There are people who personally would never, never have an abortion, and wanting to have sex without consequences is not something that motivates them at all. But they don’t think abortion is equal to murder, and have a libertarian attitude towards others who think it’s not murder and who would be okay with it.
(2) There are even people who never have sex – are not interested in sex at all for themselves – but who are in favor of making abortion legal, for reasons similar to those stated in point (1).
(3) There are people who favor abortion being legal who feel that way because they believe that even if it is illegal, abortions will continue. They conclude that people will get them anyway, from illegal and poorly trained people, under bad conditions, and the death toll will be even higher because not only will the babies be killed but many mothers will die as well.
Adding to neo’s list, there are also pregnancies that result from birth-control failures, and from rape. For these reasons, I do think it’s appropriate as a matter of policy for abortion to be legal, at least in the first trimester.
The fetus IS a part of the mother’s body, early on — it can’t survive on its own. AND it is a potential human life. Both are true; this is the problem, the two facts are difficult to reconcile.
I like having a choice of fifty different breakfast cereals and I would not be happy if someone said “no, you get one!” This sums up how I view Abortion. In my opinion it was an awful decision to force one choice on the people. Strike down Roe v. Wade and let the States decide. With Federalism you have a choice of 50 States that best align with your ideals and beliefs. If the State-wide consensus of voters does not align with yours then find a more suitable place to live that makes you happy to know your neighbors. Why is this so difficult? Sometimes I think that government’s preferred function is to agitate the hell out of us.
Adding to neo’s list, there are also pregnancies that result from birth-control failures, and from rape. For these reasons, I do think it’s appropriate as a matter of policy for abortion to be legal, at least in the first trimester.
The number of pregnancies which result from forcible rape approaches nil. That aside, a child’s life isn’t properly a function of your convenience.
Brian Morgan on March 6, 2020 at 8:35 am said:
I like having a choice …Why is this so difficult? Sometimes I think that government’s preferred function is to agitate the hell out of us.
* * *
For certain groups of people, that is a feature, not a bug.
Doc Zero is whipping up some of that whirlwind that Schumer unleashed — because the Supremes have not yet made a decision.
Regardless of what that decision is, however, Schumer can claim a “win” of sorts.
(1) If they strike down Louisiana’s (IMO reasonable) law, then Schumer will brag (overtly or implicitly – now that he’s been wrist-slapped for saying out loud what the rest of the Democrat leaders believe), that he is a power-holder worthy of all deification.
(2) If they uphold LA, either on the merits or a technicality (e.g., lack of standing of the plaintiffs, which is a very real consideration), then he will defame them even more as partisan hacks.
That the judgement might be based on actual statutes and the Constitution is, of course, too absurd to consider.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1235584442242129920.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1235636889039908866.html
Obama got very little pushback from the media, but there was some; that was back in the early days, though, before he had been completely apostheosized.
https://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/28/toobin.obama.alito/index.html
om, evidence of which assertion – that college grads marry and have children within marriage at higher rates than non-college-grads, or that children in homes in which parents are married statistically have better outcomes? There are data for both, but I’ll have to look them up.
So here’s a thought: as this discussion has ranged through socialism and communism and abortion and judicial overreach, I wondered for the first time if the Democrat attachment to abortion isn’t actually about abortion per se at all. What if, all along, it was really about creating a Politburo disguised as the Supreme Court, and abortion just happened to be the issue that arose at the proper time? A perfect storm of sorts – the sexual revolution and the growing but not yet ubiquitous presence of reliable contraception leading to many more unwanted pregnancies – a subject the Constitution doesn’t address; a Supreme Court makeup that just might be sympathetic to the plight of unhappily pregnant women; the Leftward slide of the universities creating a growing socialist zeitgeist… So the forces of the Left make a push to entice the Court to legislate by fiat far more broadly than ever before – by creating a full-fledged “Constitutional right” out of a penumbra. It could have been some other issue – maybe gun control, if there had been a terrible mass shooting at just the “right” time – but they went with abortion because more of the game pieces were in place.
They keep trying it with abortion and other issues, but what if the point all along was simply to undermine the entire form of American government? Althouse has a piece today from the Atlantic that actually says out loud that maybe a really old president is better than a younger one – because a really old president would put more and more decisions into the hands of others. Seriously. Take a look. Somebody really wants American government to be run from behind the scenes.
Oh. P.S. re my long comment above. It would explain why people who probably have little personal interest in abortion defend the Court-determined “right” to it so passionately: because as long as that “right” stands, the propriety of legislating from the bench also stands (and can presumably be extended).
Am I just a doofus not to have thought of this before now?
Jamie,
I like your explanation better, but, unfortunately I think they just want to be able to kill babies.
Brian Morgan,
Most everything the Left shrieks about is already legal under our Constitution. Want Communism? Start a Commune. Many have. Many exist in the U.S. today. Bernie was kicked out of one.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thelibertarianrepublic.com/lazy-bernie-was-once-kicked-out-of-hippie-commune/amp/
The smart on the Left know their ideas can only work if there is no choice.