The most important aspect of Obergefell may be how it establishes judges’ rights to find new rights

The New Neo Posted on by

From an article by Howard Slugh in the National Review:

In Obergefell, Justice Kennedy made it clear to lower courts that, after he eliminated [the precedent of] Glucksberg, the only remaining limit on new judge-made rights is a judge’s imagination. He noted that “when new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim for liberty must be addressed.” In other words, he believes that since the Founders “did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions,” they gave courts unlimited power to “protect . . . the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.” The “we” in that sentence refers to judges. It is impossible to know what sort of unenumerated rights newly freed judges may impose. Present-day European constitutions contain rights to adequate housing, a healthy environment, the enjoyment of nature and culture, a fair wage, limited working hours, and “cultural and social self-fulfillment.” Now that Justice Kennedy has opened the floodgates, there is no concrete legal reason to rule out the possibility that judges may find these rights hidden in our Constitution as well.

My guess is that many things that were once thought to require amendments to the Constitution now can dispense with them. Rights can be found whenever needed. You might think Roe v. Wade already accomplished that by finding an implied constitutional right to privacy where none had existed before, but you would be wrong. Roe may have found a right to privacy, but (unless I’m forgetting something; haven’t read it in a long time) it didn’t establish a broader right for judges to find new rights when they felt like it. But according to Slugh, that’s pretty much what Obergefell does:

Liberals have spent decades trying to pass an Equal Rights Amendment, but now a judge can hand them victory on a silver platter. Allowing D.C. to have voting representatives in Congress is a liberal dream, and now a judge can make it happen with the stroke of a pen. Felons nationwide can have their voting rights restored tomorrow. The possibilities are endless, and questions that may have formerly been decided through the democratic process are now more likely to be decided by unelected judges.

…Justice Kennedy did not even engage in the fiction of claiming that this case was the high-water mark of substantive due process; he openly invited judges to create new fundamental rights, and there is no reason to think they will be anything other than happy to oblige. If judges are granted unchecked power, at least some of them will eventually exercise it.

Power. We already have an executive branch that overlooks Congress and makes sweeping changes through executive fiat and agencies. But at least the executive is still elected—so far, anyway—although intent on assuring a permanent Democratic majority by executive orders that expand illegal immigration combined with judicial rulings that overrule stricter voter ID laws. Now, with a judiciary that is becoming more and more of an unelected legislature that stretches the Constitution as it sees fit, and legislators who focus mainly on where their next contributions are coming from, and who fight and dither and don’t seem to see any way they can limit the other branches’ runaway power, the republic is in a heap of trouble.

It used to be that there were enough patriots in both parties to have recognized the dangers of that sort of thing. No more.

Greece votes a resounding “no” to bailout terms

The New Neo Posted on by

Greece just said “no” to the bailout, in a landslide.

That’s a victory for the socialist Greek government, which had urged a “no” vote. But is it a Pyrrhic victory?

They seem to think this will strengthen their hand vis a vis the EU. But why? How badly does the EU need the membership of Greece? And if Greece exits the EU, will it be able to pull itself out of the tailspin without the EU’s help?

Mr Varoufakis is due to meet senior Greek bankers later on Sunday. State Minister Nikos Pappas, a close ally of Mr Tsipras, said it was “absolutely necessary” to restore liquidity to the banks now the referendum was over.

However, Germany’s Deputy Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said renewed negotiations with Greece were “difficult to imagine”. Mr Tsipras and his government were taking the country down a path of “bitter abandonment and hopelessness”, he told the Tagesspiegel daily.

Others sounded more conciliatory.

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni tweeted: “Now it is right to start trying for an agreement again. But there is no escape from the Greek labyrinth with a Europe that’s weak and isn’t growing.”

Belgium’s finance minister said the door remained open to restart talks with Greece “literally, within hours”.

Eurozone finance ministers could again discuss measures “that can put the Greek economy back on track and give the Greeks a perspective for the future,” he told the VRT network.

This is also part of a larger argument over the basic question of whether austerity helps an economy in the position of Greece, or whether it hurts. That argument’s been going on for a long, long time.

For the Fourth: On liberty, the great dividing line

The New Neo Posted on by

The Fourth isn’t just about barbeque, although I defer to no one in my regard for barbecue.

It’s about liberty. As the years go by, I appreciate that fact more and more, and sense that our liberty is more and more threatened from within as well as without—and by “within” I mean not just those among us who would destroy it for others, but something in the human heart and mind that means not everyone cares very much about it until they have lost it.

In fact, there’s something in many human hearts and minds that leads some people not to care about liberty even after they’ve lost it, unless they’re the ones in the Gulag.

For whatever reason, I’ve always been very sensitive to liberty, very touchy about it. For example, even when I was quite young, I would pay extra for a health insurance policy that gave me total freedom to choose my doctor. This may seem like a small thing, and at the time I didn’t connect it with any abstract principle such as “liberty.” But I had a horror of being boxed in by a government or a business or an agency telling what I could or could not do and where I could and could not go.

That’s not to say that I was some trailblazing, independent, courageous spirit, cutting an adventurous swath through the world. I lived a pretty ordinary life, I thought. I had a husband and a child. And even later, when I went through my political change, I had no idea where it would lead, either socially (estrangement from quite a few people, mostly mild but sometimes severe) or in terms of what I do with a great deal of my time (reading about politics/history, and writing this blog). One doesn’t always have any idea where it will lead when you take a step, and then another step, and then another, and pretty soon you’re somewhere you never, never ever, thought you’d be.

When I was young I also used to assume that a lot of people, the majority of people, felt the same way I did. Not just about liberty, but about a lot of things. For example, I thought just about everyone loved poetry—what’s not to like? I was in my thirties before I became aware that love of poetry was a relatively rare thing. Another thing I assumed, when managed care started taking over the health insurance world, was that more people would hate it and complain bitterly about it—and, if they could do it, would pay extra to get away from it. But I was surprised when so many people I knew didn’t seem all that offended by it, and even those who could have paid more in order to have choice often decided against it. They couldn’t be bothered, and were happy to save the money.

Then, when I was going through my slow political change between the fall of 2001 (post-9/11) and 2003, I was living a rather isolated life in a place when I hardly knew anyone, newly separated from a husband I’d been with for 30 years. I was also recovering from a very painful arm injury and surgery. So the change experience was a solitary one, and I didn’t start mentioning it to people until after it was pretty much complete, some time in 2003.

I had somehow assumed that other people had been going through something similar to my political journey, although perhaps milder. This now seems to me a rather humorous thought, not to mention profoundly naive (you might even call it stupid), but that’s the way it was for me. I was truly shocked to be on the receiving end of a significant amount of hostility from a lot of people when I mentioned my positions on various issues of the day, and this involved friends and acquaintances I’d known for decades and with whom I’d never even discussed politics before or had a single disagreement of any substance.

Talk about an eye-opener.

Now I have a different way of looking at all of this. I have come to believe that, although there are many elements that go into the reasons people differ on these issues, the most essential difference is the comparative importance people give to liberty.

Since this is the Fourth of July, a holiday on which we celebrate the birth of our nation that was (as Lincoln said) “conceived in liberty,” I though I’d re-publish a slightly-edited version of an essay on liberty that I first wrote in January of 2014 (I also suggest you read the exchange I had today with commenter “Ymarsakar” that began here, about liberals and liberty).

Here’s the post from 2014:

Commenter “DNW” has a question:

How in the world could these [liberal and leftist] others not value liberty and voluntary association as the very premisses that made human life worth living? But they obviously don’t…

We now have a situation wherein the classic justifying predicate of this polity and our civil association ”“ the preservation and enhancement of personal liberty ”“ has been officially abandoned by one major party and a large portion of the electorate, in favor of a fascist scheme of state enforced social solidarity and life-energy redistribution.

I can’t speak for all liberals, “progressives,” or leftists. Nor do they even speak for each other, because there’s a great deal of variety among them in how far they want to go to stifle liberty, and how much they value liberty.

In my own family of origin, for example, there was quite a variety of points of view on that score, especially if you included distant relatives. My own father and mother were garden-variety liberals (“liberals” as defined back then, which was not as leftist as now). But the very-extended family included leftists various and sundry, including those who were Sovietphiles and even a few later on who were Maoists.

Talk about fun! Family gatherings involving this larger group (which occurred quite infrequently) usually featured—after a few hours of conviviality—a degeneration into shouting matches over politics. I wish now I had paid more attention to the details of the content. But even as a child I heard enough to be both vaguely entertained by these arguments and repelled by them. The latter emotion won out, in part because of the arguments’ repetitive nature (nobody ever convinced anyone of anything) and in part because what the leftist branch was saying seemed so dogmatic, unreasonable, and manifestly wrong to me.

Those of you who lump together leftists and liberals may be surprised to hear that the arguments between the two wings of my family were so bitter (there were one or two conservatives, too, who had married in). But the liberals and the leftists were at loggerheads, the liberals believing in liberty, capitalism, and that the USSR was a totalitarian slagheap of a police state up to no good in the world, and the leftists believing that the true liberty lay in defeating capitalism, and that the Soviets were the greatest thing since sliced bread.

That was in the 50s and 60s, of course, and a little bit in the 70s as well. The mainstream of the Democratic Party, which my parents then represented, has moved to the left over the ensuing years. Some of the liberals I know have moved to the left with it, but some have not. And in the last couple of years, as the assaults on liberty have cascaded, I have noticed that the liberals I know seem to divide naturally into two camps: those who love liberty and to whom it is important, and those who do not and to whom it is not.

I don’t know the relative size of the two groups, because I don’t seek out political discussions with my friends and family; I don’t want get-togethers to degenerate into the useless, repetitive, unproductive arguments I witnessed in my youth, which they easily could, with me now as the sole conservative. But I know that those two groups exist, and I think that what differentiates them are (a) the person’s need to control others and/or society; and (b) the degree that the person thinks he/she can do so effectively and get the desired results.

Among most of my friends their motives are “good”—that is, they want people to be happier, healthier, and in general just better. Some leftists I know have the same motivation (I would add that most of the people who think they are doing good are also motivated by the need to feel that they are good people for wanting that). But many leftists—we’re talking about quite a few of the leaders of the movement, and certainly people such as Stalin—have a different motivation: they are motivated almost purely by the desire for power and control.

There is an unholy alliance between the two groups. The first is the much-larger pack of would-be do-gooders who believe that liberalism is the way to go about it, whose minds are formed by a combination of their families growing up, present-day peers, the MSM, eduction, politicians, literature, the entertainment business, and in some cases their “progressive” churches and synagogues. The second is the smaller but extremely influential group of leftist activists, some proudly out as unrepentant “progressives,” and some just quietly going about their business, some motivated by the desire for power/control plus the idea that they’re doing “good,” and the rest just wanting the power/control part.

Back when Mayor Bloomberg of New York was heavily engaged in banning Big Gulps, I had some discussions with a couple of liberal friends about it. Some were offended by what Bloomberg had done, although others were in favor. That was one of the strongest demonstrations I’ve seen of what I have come to consider a very important and somewhat invisible dividing line between those liberals who love and value liberty and those who do not. You might call them the non-statists (or perhaps the less-statists) and the statists. Don’t forget, too, that there are statists on the right, too, although in my experience there are far far fewer.

But it was the Sarah Conly book that really crystallized things for me. Remember Conly, author of Against Autonomy? I can think of no better demonstration of the statist impulse plus the supposedly do-goody one combining to create a vile synergy. And who better to explain it all but Ms. Conly herself:

I argue that autonomy, or the freedom to act in accordance with your own decisions, is overrated””that the common high evaluation of the importance of autonomy is based on a belief that we are much more rational than we actually are. We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that we are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we need the help of others””and in particular, of government regulation””to keep us from going wrong.

If you want to know how a person can justify such tyranny to themselves, that’s how. How they can be so stupid as to believe it a good idea (assuming that Conly does believe it rather than merely mouthing it in order to get a lot of publicity and maybe even power one day) is another, more mysterious question. It’s a question I have yet to answer to my satisfaction, actually, but let’s just say that I’m beginning to think the desire for liberty versus the desire to control others might just be something innate.

The sad thing is that even those liberals who love liberty are for the most part voting for people dedicated to ending it.

statueliberty

[NOTE: It occurs to me that a lot of liberals I know would say to me, “Hhm—if you say you love liberty so much, why are you so bent of out shape at the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage? Don’t you think same-sex marriage represents the expansion of liberty?”

Glad you asked that question, folks, because this is my answer: no, it doesn’t, although it may appear to.

I’m fine with gay people being able to get married. The problem is the process by which this has come about, which was to stretch the Constitution and find a right there that does not exist, as well as to undermine the principle of federalism on which our country is based. If the very same end had been accomplished by either a state-by-state vote (legislative and/or referendum) or a constitutional amendment, that would have been fine with me.

I also recognize that same-sex marriage might end up having unforeseen negative consequences on the institution of marriage. This sort of thing is a valid fear with any large and sudden societal change (although I happen to think same-sex marriage would not have that particular effect). Nevertheless, if it had been accomplished in a constitutional manner I personally would support it. However, the method by which it was actually done opens up a Pandora’s box of tyrannical possibilities, a way for the courts to find all sorts of rights where none exist and to bypass the people and the legislatures. Unbridled power in the hands of judges (particularly those appointed for life) does not strike a blow for liberty, it sounds a very ominous and dangerous note. Unbridled power in the hands of one branch of government is what our Founders very rightly warned us against and tried their best to protect us from.

Lastly (and very importantly in terms of liberty), Obergefell will almost certainly result in the persecution and/or prosecution of religious people who object to providing services for same-sex marriage ceremonies if it runs counter to their religion. This would not have been nearly as true in the case of state-by-state legalization, because many states provided an opt-out clause of some sort in their legislation. Now, with Obergefell stating that same-sex marriage is a right embodied in the Constitution, a more powerful conflict is set up between the right to exercise one’s religion and the right to gay marriage. Those who say that of course it will be resolved in favor of freedom of religion are sadly mistaken, I believe. It may not happen right away that religious freedom (or the right of religious people to that particular livelihood) is taken away in regard to being involved in same-sex marriage ceremonies, but I predict it will happen in time. That would be very much a loss of liberty.

See also this.]

For the Fourth: he’s a Yankee Doodle Dandy

The New Neo Posted on by

For the Fourth of July, courtesy commenter “mezzrow”:

I saw that film on TV maybe 30 times when I was a child. Loved it, and in particular loved the idea that James Cagney—whom I already knew as a tough old gangster—could dance. His dancing fascinated me because it was so non-balletic and idiosyncratic—the strutting, graceful/ungraceful, artful/artless uniqueness of his movement. In particular I recall the wall-climbing part at the end, which delighted me and still does.

Cagney wasn’t just an actor and hoofer, although he certainly was both. He was also a political conservative and changer. Excerpts from his Wiki page:

He was sickly as a young child””so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized. He later attributed his sickness to the poverty his family had to endure…The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918, and attended Columbia College of Columbia University where he intended to major in art…

Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, “It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him.”

He started tap dancing as a boy (a skill that eventually contributed to his Academy Award) and was nicknamed “Cellar-Door Cagney” after his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors. He was a good street fighter, defending his older brother Harry, a medical student, when necessary. He engaged in amateur boxing, and was a runner-up for the New York State lightweight title. His coaches encouraged him to turn professional, but his mother would not allow it…

In his autobiography, Cagney said that as a young man, he had no political views, since he was more concerned with where the next meal was coming from. However the emerging labor movement of the twenties and thirties soon forced him to take sides…e supported political activist and labor leader Thomas Mooney’s defense fund, but was repelled by the behavior of some of Mooney’s supporters at a rally. Around the same time, he gave money for a Spanish Republican Army ambulance during the Spanish Civil War, which he put down to being “a soft touch.”…He also became involved in a “liberal group…with a leftist slant,” along with Ronald Reagan. However, when he and Reagan saw the direction the group was heading in, they resigned on the same night…

Cagney was accused of being a communist sympathizer in 1934, and again in 1940. The accusation in 1934 stemmed from a letter police found from a local Communist official that alleged that Cagney would bring other Hollywood stars to meetings. Cagney denied this, and Lincoln Steffens, husband of the letter’s writer, backed up this denial, asserting that the accusation stemmed solely from Cagney’s donation to striking cotton workers in the San Joaquin Valley. William Cagney claimed this donation was the root of the charges in 1940. Cagney was cleared…

After [WWII], Cagney’s politics started to change. He had worked on Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaigns…However, by the time of the 1948 election, he had become disillusioned with Harry S. Truman, and voted for Thomas E. Dewey, his first non-Democratic vote. By 1980, Cagney was contributing financially to the Republican Party, supporting his friend Ronald Reagan’s bid for the presidency…As he got older, he became more and more conservative, referring to himself in his autobiography as “arch-conservative.” He regarded his move away from liberal politics as “…a totally natural reaction once I began to see undisciplined elements in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system… Those functionless creatures, the hippies … just didn’t appear out of a vacuum.”

Cagney: hoofer, political changer. An original all the way.

Happy Fourth to you all!

Salt water taffy

The New Neo Posted on by

To get your mind off the death of the republic (for a moment, anyway) and into some Fourth of July Americana fun, visit the Goldenrod in York Beach, Maine.

Do you like to watch taffy being made? It sure beats watching sausage.

This is what you can see if you walk by the window of the Goldenrod some time between Memorial Day and Labor Day:

My very favorite part is here. It has a hypnotic effect:

And if you go inside, you can eat the stuff. It’s really, really good, too. The best. If you suck on it for just a little while first to soften it a bit, you won’t even pull out your fillings or crowns when you begin the satisfying process of chomping on it.

Happy Fourth!

Now, here’s a comment…

The New Neo Posted on by

…on the Iran negotiations. I found it in the comments section here.

It amused me, in a bleak sort of way:

We have nothing to offer them. They have nothing to offer us. I do not believe a thing they say, they do not believe a thing we say…. The last time I got into bed with someone and had all of those differences between us… She was HOT!!!!

Khomeini [sic: Khamenei] isn’t. Why are we there?

Obergefell was a close decision, replete with warnings

The New Neo Posted on by

Peggy Noonan observes:

Not fully acknowledged in the past days of celebration on one side, and profound reservation on the other, is that the court in Obergefell v. Hodges was split 5-4 on same-sex marriage, and that the dissenting opinions were truly remarkable. They were fiery and in some cases colorful, but they also showed a court divided on the essentials of the Constitution. Most strikingly, some of them included ominous warnings.

“The truth is that today’s decision rests on nothing more than the majority’s own conviction that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry because they want to,” the chief justice argues. “The Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?”

That grandiosity endangers the Court’s very legitimacy, which rests on public respect that “flows from the perception””and the reality””that we exercise humility and restraint in deciding cases according to the Constitution and the law.”

…And the decision raises serious questions about religious liberty. Every state that has adopted same-sex marriage democratically has, “out of respect for sincere religious conviction,” included accommodations for religious practice. There are none in this decision.

Will Obergefell end up increasing animus against gay marriage rather than decreasing it? After all, opinion was already changing, and quite quickly at that. Gay marriage was becoming the law of the land, state by state. But a significant number of people who support gay marriage itself—or at least have no objection to it, if a state’s citizens want to legalize it—are against the overreach embodied in Obergefell, both for what it declares about federalism and for the way the decision stretches and distorts the Constitution.

Mark Steyn has some related things to say:

…[T]he US Supreme Court decision was a twofer for the left. As I said the other day, even if one disagrees, one can respect the process in Dublin (gay marriage by referendum) or London (gay marriage legislated by the people’s representatives in parliament). But the American left preferred to go the Supreme Court route – because, if you’re hardcore about these things, to divine a right to gay marriage in an 18th century parchment or to insist that “established by the State” refers not primarily to states but to the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a totalitarian act that destroys both law and language by rendering them meaningless: what’s not to like?…[T]he justices’ total capitulation to the zeitgeist is all but complete. Modifying Wonderland’s Queen, the Supreme Court of Wonderland seems to work on the principle of “Verdict first – reasoning afterwards, if at all.”

He’s right, but there’s even more.

It is no accident this was not done through the state courts or by referendum, state by state. The common wisdom is that supporters of same-sex marriage didn’t want to wait for such a slow process, because although public opinion was changing in their favor it was not changing as universally or as quickly as they wanted. No doubt that was true.

But there were several other, more basic reasons to do it the SCOTUS way. The first is that if it had been done merely in those first two ways, law or referendum, state by state, it would continue to be subject to repeal in those states or to a new referendum outlawing it in those states. Too easy to accomplish a reversal, if people changed their minds after the law was passed and they decided they didn’t like it for some reason.

The second is that people could opt out of servicing same-sex marriages (the florist/baker crowd), because the states usually were passing provisions to protect the rights of the religious to refuse to participate. The proper analogy is not to refusing to serve a black person in your business. Gay people are served by those very same bakers and florists all the time. The proper analogy is to not serving a black person (or any person, actually) who wanted a cake for some sort of ceremony that violated that person’s religious beliefs. That’s not discriminating against the black person because of race, but it’s instead a very specific refusal to participate in a certain activity.

But the SCOTUS decision changes all of that (at least for Christians; I continue to think there will be no lawsuits against Muslims). It establishes a right to same-sex marriage marriage and to either impose participation on others or make them give up their livelihood if they refuse. This is very different from the passage of legislation allowing same-sex marriage. It’s a much better way to accuse people of bigotry and to punish them if they don’t get with the program.

Laws passed on a state-by-state basis can be repealed by that state. Even federal laws can be repealed by Congress (or, if you’re President Obama, by failing to have the DOJ enforce the law). But with a SCOTUS decision such as Obergefell the only way to overturn it is by a later SCOTUS ruling overruling it. I suppose there could instead be a constitutional amendment undoing it (not that that would ever happen; it’s already too popular for that), but would such an amendment be itself unconstitutional? This is not an idle question, either, although it might sound that way. Here’s a discussion of the issue (see also this).

I repeat, it is no accident whatsoever that same-sex marriage activists wanted this case before SCOTUS, and not just because they were impatient. They wanted to cement the institution of same-sex marriage in a way that would be nearly impossible to undo.

George Takei is an expert on what makes a person a real black versus a fake one

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the latest example of the tedious, ignorant, offensive and yet often-effective mindset of the left. Actor George Takei, a gay man who recently married his longtime partner, and who played Sulu on the original Star Trek, has said some very ugly things about Justice Clarence Thomas.

First, here are the words of Thomas in his Obergefell dissent, of which Takei was so very critical:

Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon whicthis Nation was built.

The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.

Pretty standard stuff, one would think, and especially appropriate for the Fourth of July, Independence Day. But the concept of God-given rights and therefore basic human dignity, so integral to this country, has fallen by the wayside. I wonder whether Takei even knows the reference, because he doesn’t appear to. I also wonder whether he knows much about Thomas’ own history as a young black man growing up in the Jim Crow South.

Nevertheless, Takei felt the need to say this about Thomas:

TAKEI: He is a clown in black face sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there. And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn’t he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or ”“ My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their 30s [he is referring here to the WWII Japanese American internment camps]. His business, my father’s business, our home, our freedom and we’re supposed to call that dignified? Marched out of our homes at gun point. I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.

There is so much food for thought in there I hardly know where to start. Most people have focused on the phrase “clown in black face,” but that’s really just a small part of it.

I’m discussing this issue not because of George Takei himself (the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, really), but because what he says is emblematic of the approach of the left to argument and to the presence of black conservatives, who are considered a special affront worthy of particular contempt. This is certainly not the first time Clarence Thomas has endured insults of a specifically racist nature.

Here are some of the elements that Takei’s attack illustrate:
(1) A misunderstanding of our country’s history and most fundamental principles, including those of the Declaration of Independence…
(2) that is either through ignorance or through purposeful misrepresentation…
(3) expressed in a manner that pits one oppression against another, saying in effect that “my oppression is greater than yours”…
(4) and concluding that the other person is not a “real” exemplar of his very own race or ethnic origin, because he/she does not march in lockstep with the politics deemed suitable for that race.

Less important, but still of interest, is the fact that Takei thinks Clarence Thomas should learn about slavery (as Sulu seems to have done) through the movies, and then he’d really know about it in a more authentic way. I don’t think Takei is alone in his study of history via movies, either, or his recommendation that Thomas could learn from them.

Thomas, that is, whose actual (i.e. real life) history is as follows:

Clarence Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, a small, predominantly black community near Savannah founded by freedmen after the American Civil War. He was the second of three children born to M.C. Thomas, a farm worker, and Leola Williams, a domestic worker. They were descendants of American slaves, and the family spoke Gullah as a first language. Thomas’ earliest-known ancestors were slaves named Sandy and Peggy who were born around the end of the 18th century and owned by wealthy Liberty County, Georgia planter Josiah Wilson. M.C. left his family when Thomas was two years old. Thomas’ mother worked hard but was sometimes paid only pennies per day. She had difficulty putting food on the table and was forced to rely on charity. After a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother Myers were taken to live with his mother’s parents in Savannah, Georgia. Thomas was seven when the family moved in with his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, and Anderson’s wife, Christine (née Hargrove), in Savannah.

Living with his grandparents, Thomas enjoyed amenities such as indoor plumbing and regular meals for the first time in his life. His grandfather Myers Anderson had little formal education, but had built a thriving fuel oil business that also sold ice. Thomas calls his grandfather “the greatest man I have ever known.” When Thomas was 10, Anderson started taking the family to help at a farm every day from sunrise to sunset. His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance; he would counsel Thomas to “never let the sun catch you in bed.” Thomas’ grandfather also impressed upon his grandsons the importance of getting a good education.

Thomas was the only black person at his high school in Savannah, where he was an honor student. He was raised Roman Catholic. He considered entering the priesthood at the age of 16, and became the first black student to attend St. John Vianney’s Minor Seminary (Savannah) on the Isle of Hope. He also briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Missouri. No one in Thomas’s family had attended college. Thomas has said that during his first year in seminary, he was one of only “three or four” blacks attending the school. In a number of interviews, Thomas stated that he left the seminary in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He had overheard another student say after the shooting, “Good, I hope the son of a bitch died.” He did not think the church did enough to combat racism.

At a nun’s suggestion, Thomas attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. While there, Thomas helped found the Black Student Union. Once he walked out after an incident in which black students were punished while white students went undisciplined for committing the same violation, and some of the priests negotiated with the protesting black students to re-enter the school.

Having spoken the Gullah language as a child, Thomas realized in college that he still sounded unpolished despite having been drilled in grammar at school, and he chose to major in English literature “to conquer the language”.

That’s the man Takei is lecturing about oppression, slavery, and indignity. But hey, because Thomas is a conservative—and because he didn’t think a right to gay marriage is enshrined in the Constitution—it’s open season on him and he’s not a real black man, just a clown in black face. Just as Sarah Palin wasn’t a real woman. And George Takei is just the one to inform him about his blackness.

Why did Orwell remain a socialist?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Recently I came across an old post of mine on Orwell and decided to repeat it in edited form, because I think it’s still interesting and timely. So here it is.]

Commenter “Nick” wrote this about Orwell and Animal Farm:

Orwell was a socialist. His problem with the pigs was that they became no different from the neighboring farmers; his problem with Soviet Marxism was that it acted just like capitalism

Orwell self-identified as a socialist, and “Nick” makes a thought-provoking point, but I disagree with it. Animal Farm isn’t about Orwell’s own complicated and contradictory political stance. It’s a parable that was meant to illustrate some of the evils inherent in Communism. Yes, economic exploitation by those in power towards the workers (all in the name of a false “equality”) was part of it. But the focus was on totalitarianism, lack of liberty, and statist control – problems he located in the left, not in capitalism.

That said, it is also true that Orwell was very much against income inequality. In fact, that’s the main reason he identified as a socialist. His socialism was a strange beast, however, and he himself recognized the inherent contradictions and difficulties of adherence to it:

As [Orwell] describes so well in “Capitalism and Communism: Two Paths to Slavery”: “Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect.”

Orwell was a brilliant man, and he struggled to reconcile his wish for a certain type of world with his knowledge that such a world could probably never come to be as he wished it. Much of his writing was devoted to the horrors of failed attempts to achieve that world.

Animal Farm is a critique of Stalinism/Communism, and although capitalism as an exploitative system plays a role at the beginning of the book, by the end the astute reader sees Communism as at least as bad or even worse. Orwell was also aware of the strong possibility that liberty and socialism of any sort (not just Communist Stalinism) could not be reconciled, as the above quotes from him indicate. It is my opinion that Orwell came very close to understanding that his vision of a planned economy plus freedom could not come to pass, that the contradiction was basic, and that socialism would always sow the seeds of its own destruction. I just think he couldn’t fully face and embrace that knowledge because to do so would have meant renouncing a lifelong dream. So he clung to some notion of a kinder gentler socialism without the totalitarianism, while at the same time he wrote tirelessly about the evils of Communism.

More:

Socialists have also raised some interesting questions about what Orwell seems to be saying about Lenin and the rise of Stalinism. In fact, Orwell has suggested elsewhere that Trotsky and Lenin are partly responsible for the rise of totalitarianism in Russia and that Bolshevism itself contained elements of authoritarianism. Molyneux, the British socialist, has written a compelling article with a very close reading of the plot and characters of Animal Farm, and concludes that Orwell equates Lenin with Stalin (morphed into the single Napoleon character). Molyneux argues that Orwell gives no way to understand the reasons for the revolution’s failure except human nature (as opposed to insufficient material conditions). All this leaves the book with the reactionary message at the heart of it – that all revolutions fail.

…Even in his best political writing, and his sharp exposés of aspects of capitalism, Orwell was never sure whether a real alternative was possible. Whatever Orwell’s intentions, his most famous books undoubtedly reflect these frustrations and despair. Writing as an isolated intellectual removed from day-to-day struggle, (with the notable exception of his participation in the Spanish Civil War), Orwell never regained the hope for workers’ power he experienced while in Spain.

And that’s coming from a pro-socialist, writing in a socialist periodical.

Daniel Greenfield writes the definitive essay on the left

The New Neo Posted on by

The left? They’re about power. Everything else is just a pretense.

Please read it.

Oh, and by the way, the left wants you to give up in weariness and despair.

A similar idea to Greenfield’s, but expressed in a much milder way, is offered by Jonah Goldberg.

And by “the left” we mean the left—as in “activist left; hard left.” The left often pretends to be something it’s not—liberals, “progressives” (the former is somewhat different, the latter merely a euphemism). But the left is the left, and you know it when you see it.

Liberals are not the left, as I’ve written on this blog before, although they are allied with the left and used by the left to gain power. Greenfield indicates as much early in the essay when he writes, “Liberals have a long history of being the left’s useful idiots.” In my experience, some liberals can awaken to the facts of the left and how they’ve been duped by it, if they can be persuaded to pay attention and not shut their ears and shout you down. And every now and then a leftist turns (i.e. David Horowitz, some of the older neocons), and although it’s rarer, when one of them turns they tend to become very vocal and effective in talking about it. That’s because they were activists to begin with, and because they are such experts on the left and know all the tricks of the trade.

[NOTE: This other article by Greenfield (Sultan Knish)—which I confess I haven’t read but only skimmed—looks interesting too.]

The candidacy and punishment of Donald Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

You can’t say Trump isn’t getting press. That’s his thing, in addition to making money: attention-getting.

Why is he #2 on the Republican candidate list? Because a lot of people like his big, brash mouth, and because there are so many other candidates competing. I don’t think Trump has a chance of actually winning the nomination, but he will draw from the “I’m sick of the Republican Party” crew and get a certain not-so-small percentage of Republicans to favor him.

Which brings us to the fallout from his immigration remarks. Let’s look at what he actually said:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

“And some I assume are good people,” he added.

But it’s not just Mexico that’s dumping all of it’s problems in the U.S., Trump continued. “It’s coming from all over South and Latin America and it’s coming probably, probably, from the Middle East. We don’t know.”

Was Trump’s main problem hyperbole, the failure to say it the other way around, as in: “Most of the people coming here are good people, but many are bringing their problems with them—drugs, crime, rape”? Would that have gotten any attention at all?

I don’t know. But Trump is defending his rape remarks as true, and there certainly is some evidence to back him up (see this, this, this from HuffPo, and this from Amnesty International).

I guess it’s okay to say when they’re the ones saying it. From Amnesty:

Kidnapping for ransom isn’t the only risk. Health professionals report that as many as six in ten migrant women and girls are raped on the journey. And activists repeatedly raise concerns that abducted women and girls are vulnerable to trafficking.

From HuffPo:

But while many of these girls are fleeing their homes because of fears of being sexually assaulted, according to the UNHCR, they are still meeting that same fate on their journey to freedom.

Rape can be perpetrated by anyone along the way, including guides, fellow migrants, bandits or government officials, according to Fusion. Sometimes sex is used as a form of payment, when women and girls don’t have money to pay bribes.

The assaults are so common that many women and girls take contraceptives beforehand as preventative measures.

So it’s not only coyotes doing the raping; fellow-migrants are involved as well.

The media and liberals are hyper-concerned with campus rapes whose high numbers are largely a myth. But they seem to show little concern for these women—as long as its Trump bringing it up.

As for drugs, there’s this, from a 2006 House Committee on Homeland Security report:

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports that the Mexican drug syndicates operating today along our Nation’s Southwest border are far more sophisticated and dangerous than any of the other organized criminal groups in America’s law enforcement history. Indeed, these powerful drug cartels, and the human smuggling networks and gangs they leverage, have immense control over the routes into the United States and continue to pose formidable challenges to our efforts to secure the Southwest border. ”¦ The cartels operate along the border with military grade weapons, technology and intelligence and their own respective paramilitary enforcers. ”¦ This new breed of cartel is not only more violent, powerful and well financed, it is also deeply engaged in intelligence collection on both sides of the border.

You can read more general statistics on illegal immigrants and crime here. And, as Ann Coulter’s recent book indicates, the problem is hardly limited to illegal immigrants; many legal immigrants are a problem, too, because the type of screening process that used to be in place no longer is.

Coulter points out that we have “a media determined to cover up immigrants’ crimes.” The reaction to Donald Trump is an indication of that, but it’s not just the media. It’s businesses who are boycotting him, because anyone who says the sorts of things Trump has said—which, although hyperbolic, are based on a core of truth, a truth that cannot be told—must be shunned. American now no longer cares what’s actually happening to the country, as long as we talk about it in a politically correct manner.

The narrative—it’s everything. And you wonder why politicians get so mealy-mouthed?

The Grand Inquisitor redux

The New Neo Posted on by

Several times before I’ve posted excerpts from Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” part of the book The Brothers Karamazov. Unfortunately, the passages seem to always bear repeating, now more than ever.

So here it is again, a slightly longer quote. The Grand Inquisitor is here addressing Jesus, who has come back to earth. Alhough the Inquisitor is a man of the Church, he is not in favor of what he believes Jesus offers to humankind, which is free will. Instead, the Inquisitor proposes to enslave people, and he tells Jesus how he will go about doing it.

I’ll probably be referring back to this in the near-future. I’ve divided it into paragraphs that are not there in the original, the better to clarify what’s being said:

Command that these stones be made bread–and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone– was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee…

Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee–a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel…

…It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?…In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them–so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!

The Brothers Karamazov first appeared in 1880, and Dostoevsky died just a few months later. That sounds like a long time ago, but it’s really not that long in the scheme of things (for example, three of my four grandparents were born before then).

I first encountered “The Grand Inquisitor” in the 60s, when we read it in high school. I didn’t fully understand it at the time (not that I fully understand it even now), but it gripped me with a memorable power, and I understood it well enough to be frightened by it, to get the gist of it, and to consider it important.

A lot of years have passed since then, and it only seems more important.