http://www.robgagnon.net/homosexMooreERLCMarriageDeclaration.htm
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Same-Sex Double Standards
Richard Posner, a judge and legal scholar, has written an article for Slate on the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decision. There are a lot of problems with the article. I suggest that people read John Roberts and Samuel Alito's dissents rather than relying on Posner's misleading descriptions of their views. But notice the following contrast in Posner's comments:
Resisting tyranny
i) I think some Christian Americans suffer from too much defeatism in light of the Obama era. But Christian Americans still have tremendous political resources at our disposal. We've barely begun to fight back. We've barely begun to mobilize our legal and political assets. Christians in America greatly outnumber of the power elite. Defeatism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.
There's too much talk about the church going into "exile." Or "God has removed his hand of blessing from America."
That's presumptuous. We don't know what the future holds. This is not a time to be either optimistic or pessimistic. We don't know how events will turn out. We just need to do what we can every day–day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.
Whether or not God has removed his hand of blessing from America is hardly something we're in a position to say. Maybe his hand of blessing was never on America. Or, more likely, maybe his hand of blessing was always selective. God blesses individuals–not indiscriminate collectives.
Having said that, let's consider how Christians can or should respond to a worse-case scenario. Depending on the situation, there are different models of resistance to tyranny. Degrees of resistance to tyranny. Let's consider a few.
ii) For a long time there was a standoff between Jews and Romans. The Jews were too weak to be politically dominant, but too strong to be easily subdued. The Romans had to put up with the Jews. Accommodate the Jews. So Jews enjoyed a measure of semi-autonomy in the Roman Empire.
They were too belligerent to subjugate. The effort to do so would be too costly in terms of Roman manpower. So long as Jews didn't revolt against the overlords, Roman officials tolerated Jewish identity and the exercise of their religion.
We have a similar example after the dust settled on the Reformation. Initially, European monarchs tried to impose religious uniformity on their subjects, in the belief that religious diversity was too politically unstable. However, the very effort to suppress religious diversity destabilized their nations. It provoked civil war. Destroyed national economies.
As a result, some European monarchs relented. Accommodated different religious groups. Instituted civil tolerance of religious diversity.
iii) In Nazi Germany, some Christians openly dissented. They typically died in concentration camps. Classic martyrdom. Heroic virtue.
iv) During WWII, you had Christians who sheltered Jews. Cori ten Boom's family is the most famous case, but hardly the only one.
Rather than open dissent, this was quiet, low-profile resistance. It didn't publicly confront the evil regime. Rather, it defied the regime by silent, private actions to the contrary.
And it required the complicity of neighbors. The neighbors were aware of what the ten Boom family was doing. But they didn't rat them out. Even if the neighbors weren't sheltering Jews, they cooperated with the ten Boom family by keeping a secret.
v) Compulsory membership in the Nazi party or Hitler Youth was paradoxical. The problem with compulsory membership is that it dilutes ideological commitment. People belong, not because they believe, but because they have no realistic choice. (And of course, many volunteered simply for the social benefits.)
Due to compulsory membership, you had "Christian Nazis." There were two kinds of "Christian Nazis":
a) Zealous Nazis who were nominal Christians
b) Zealous Christians who were nominal Nazis
There were undoubtedly some devout Christians who were technically Nazis. Who worked for the Nazi regime. But in effect they functioned as double agents.
They were secretly opposed to Nazi ideology and Nazi policies. And there were a multitude of modest, unobtrusive ways they could counter the regime. Just by practicing Christian virtues like honestly and kindness. Or by letting Jews slip through the sieve. For instance:
As one of the OSS’s most experienced operatives, this first SEAL planned and executed a parachute mission deep into the Third Reich in the fall of 1944. After Taylor and his team were captured far behind German lines in Austria, he found himself with other high-level prisoners in Gestapo headquarters in Vienna.
During Taylor’s arrest, the officers twisted his arm backward until the cartilage and tendons in the elbow joint were “torn loose.” It took five weeks for him to be able to move his arm enough to button his pants. Despite the pain, Taylor and his fellow prisoners brought a ray of humanity and Christmas spirit into their spartan cells. They obtained a small wreath and candles from a guard who was a former police officer and secretly opposed the Nazis.
www.nationalreview.com/article/395352/christmas-americas-first-seal-gestapo-prison-patrick-k-odonnell
If you have enough people inside the system who oppose the system, that's a very insidious. They can weaken the system from within. Indeed, the "enemy within" can damage the system ways an external adversaries cannot.
vi) A final example is how the Chinese underground church has managed, not only to survive, but thrive despite existing in a police state, despite suffering official persecution. God can cause roses to bloom in the desert.
Resisting tyranny takes many creative forms, both large and small.
Resisting tyranny takes many creative forms, both large and small.
SCOTUS and Pontifex
A number of critics have rightly objected to the way in which the Supreme Court arbitrarily interprets the Constitution. There is, however, a striking parallel between the Supreme Court and the Roman Magisterium. Ironically, some Catholic apologists even draw that parallel (e.g. Jonathan Prejean).
There are Catholic apologists who say an infallible book demands an infallible interpreter. Put another way, they make it a question of who's the "final interpretive authority."
And that's exactly how the Supreme Court operates. Mind you, the Constitution doesn't say the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution means. But that's how American jurisprudence has developed.
And we see the results. On that view, the Constitution ultimately means whatever the Supreme Court says it means. The Constitution has no fixed meaning. That's how justices can conjure up a Constitutional right to abortion or a Constitutional right to homosexual marriage out of thin air.
By contrast, conservative legal scholars approach the text of the Constitution in much the same way as conservative Bible scholars. The meaning of the Constitution is determined by what the words meant at the time it was written or amended–as well as taking the historical context into account. Original intent. Legislative intent. The Federalist papers. The minutes of the Constitutional convention. And so forth.
Likewise, although the Fourth Amendment couldn't envision modern surveillance technologies, it lays down an enduring principle.
The Supreme Court has the same mindset as the Roman Magisterium. And we see the catastrophic results.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
If at first you don't succeed, cheat and cheat again!
i) Liberals win by cheating. Cheating is an effective way of winning when you can't win by honest means. If at first you don't succeed, cheat and cheat again. Just keep cheating until you win.
They circumvent our Constitutional system of gov't by getting some judges to abuse their power.
The fact that you can win by cheating isn't novel or surprising. Crooks have used that formula since time immemorial.
ii) To some extent, this definitely advances their cause. They got something out of it.
iii) However, it's also a sign of weakness. Even though some states were trending in their direction, liberals knew that wouldn't become a national policy if left to voters, if left to the discretion of the states. They knew you'd basically end up with a red state/blue state stalemate on SSM. The end-result would be a divided policy.
That's why they needed to do an end-run around the democratic process. That was the only way to impose a nation-wide policy.
So that's a backdoor admission that their position lacks the popular support they need. Even though they had some popular momentum, they were bound to hit a ceiling.
They have everything going for them except the votes. In a democratic republic, that only takes you so far.
iv) When, moreover, they resort to coercion rather than persuasion, that provokes resistance. They gain something in the process, but they lose something in the process. People don't like to be pushed around.
Blanket forgiveness
At Dylann Roof's arraignment hearing, representatives of the murder victims said they forgave him. That was widely commended in various outlets, including some Reformed sites. That, however, raises the question of whether unconditional forgiveness is theologically warranted.
Thus far I've held off publicly commented on the issue. I thought it best to put some space between the event and commentary. However, since Obama eulogized (and politicized) the funeral of Clementa Pinckney–presumably with the consent of his relatives–it's no longer a private affair.
I'm not laying down a general rule. Ideally, it would often be preferable to wait a while before commenting on some controversy. Unfortunately, the other side doesn't give us that luxury. Right after the event, the wrong side rushes in to superimpose its interpretive narrative on the event. If you wait for a cooling off period before you push back, it's too late. By then the narrative is etched in stone. By then, moreover, the public is bored with that controversy. Attention has shifted to the next outrage de jour.
It's admirable that some of the family members are willing to forgive the murderous assailant. That's personally virtuous.
But whether that makes it a theological model for Christians generally is a different question. Good intentions don't ipso facto make something right or true.
I'm going to evaluate what some commenters said, both at TCG, and Triablogue. Critiquing a commenter, who offers his own opinion of the issue, isn't the same as critizing the families.
As a rule, I wouldn't directly correct the bereaved unless I think they have misconceptions which will harm the grieving process.
Kennedy's Marriage Decision Can Easily Be Overcome
But the American people don't want to do it. Keep in mind that the corruption of the American people is a bigger problem than the corruption of the Supreme Court. In five out of the last six presidential elections, voters have chosen presidents who would deliberately select liberal justices for the Court. (In the 2000 election, the will of the voters was inconsistent with the electoral college result, so the voters didn't get what they wanted, thankfully.) Those justices support the sort of judicial activism that gave us yesterday's ruling on same-sex marriage. Likewise, the American people are the ones who encouraged the Court to think they could get away with what they did by giving same-sex marriage so much support in the polls and in other contexts. They also encouraged the Court to think it could get away with doing what it did by reacting so apathetically, and sometimes even approvingly, to previous abuses by the Court. And so on.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Watching lions at a kill
There's the oft-quoted line about how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Among other things, that makes power a test of character. Many people can't be trusted with power. Give them power, and they can't resist the temptation to abuse their authority.
Among other things, that makes power a test of character. Many people can't be trusted with power. Give them power, and they can't resist the temptation to abuse their authority.
The SCOTUS ruling on sodomite marriage raises several kinds of issues:
i) Under our Constitutional system of gov't, judges lack the authority to make social policy. That subverts representative democracy. That subverts the consent of the governed. To the extent that it's even the job of the state to make social policy, that's supposed to be a bottom-up exercise, not a top-down exercise. Citizens expressing their will through their elected representatives. It's far from perfect, but the alternative is a totalitarian regime.
This decision represents an abuse of authority. A usurpation of authority. A judicial coup d'etat. Even if you think homosexuals ought to be free to marry, the decision is illegitimate.
ii) Justice Kennedy rationalizes this action on the grounds that “While the Constitution contemplates that democracy is the appropriate process for change, individuals who are harmed need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right.”
But, of course, to say the court can and should bypass the democratic process inasmuch as homosexual marriage is a "fundamental right" is a viciously circular argument when the court first presumes to define homosexual marriage as a "fundamental right," then appeals to its own definition to authorize its subsequent action. Unless the court has the authority to define homosexual marriage as a fundamental right in the first place, it can't turn around and cite its stimulative definition to authorize itself to find a fundamental right of homosexual marriage in the Constitution. The reasoning is farcical. It's like a man who claims to be the sheriff because he deputized himself.
iii) It's simply a naked power grab that subverts popular sovereignty. It's the duty of the executive and legislative branches, which are sworn to uphold the Constitution, to disregard this ruling.
iv) Unless you think marriage is an arbitrary social construct, judges can't define marriage out of thin air. Marriage must have a basis in human design. A basis in the natural order. To the extent that judges define marriage, that must mirror human nature.
If, on the other hand, you think marriage is an arbitrary social construct, then there's no limit to what can be legally or judicially defined as marriage. So the SCOTUS ruling either proves too much or too little.
So Kennedy's argument generates a dilemma: if marriage is grounded in nature, then homosexual marriage is wrong.
If, however, marriage is just a social construct, then anything goes.
v) Another issue is the proper scope of gov't. As Justice Brandeis noted, back in the 19C, there's "the right to be let alone."
All other things being equal, it's not the duty of gov't to impose itself on the public. It should only do so if there's a sufficient countervailing reason. We have far too many laws as it is. A thicket of laws that makes everyone a criminal. No one is safe.
The more laws you have, the more that empowers the state. The more that threatens the populace.
vi) Having fabricated a Constitutional right to homosexual marriage which has no trace in the text of the Constitution, this will come into conflict with actual, explicit Constitutional rights, like freedom of speech, religion, and association.
vii) Judicial fiat is an expression of secular desperation. The secular elite thinks this life is all there is. That reduces conflict resolution to whoever has the most power. Getting power by any means. Using power by any means.
If there is no afterlife, if there is no retribution for perpetrators who elude justice in this life, if there is no hope of restoration for lost opportunities in this life, then it becomes a mad scrabble to cut in line, to get the most you can cram into this life at the expense of others who get in your way. Run them over. You can't afford to have anyone slow you down, for from the time you were born you are running out of time.
The clock is ticking, so you better be ruthless. Win at any cost, because you can't afford to lose. You won't get a second chance. You can't make up for lost time.
It's just like watching lions at a kill. The biggest, strongest lions get first dibs. Male lions in the prime of life. Smaller, weaker, immature, or aging lions fight over scraps. Whatever is left over after the dominant lions take the best of everything for themselves.
That's the guiding philosophy behind abortion, infantile, and euthanasia. Don't be a burden! If you get in my way, I will kill you!
They don't care about the future consequences of their actions, for in the long run we're all dead. They don't care about destroying the future, because they have no future beyond their own lifespan. Let the future be damned! Let the younger generation be damned!
For the average secularist, it's now or never. That's why the high-minded arguments of the dissenting justices fall on deaf ears. Even though they win the argument on the merits, they lose the debate, since the trump card is secularism and physicalism. If there is no heaven and hell, all that matters is the here and now. This generation. As Richard Dawkins aptly said, "We are the lucky ones. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds."
This is why atheism isn't merely mistaken, but dangerously mistaken. Atheism reduces to the law of the jungle.
viii) Secularists claim that religious reasons have no place in law and public policy. But that commits the genetic fallacy. The only relevant question is not whether a reason is religious, but whether it is true.
Let's Correct The Supreme Court's Mistake On Marriage
Let's get to work on undoing the Supreme Court's mistake. Despite today's Supreme Court ruling, let's remember what hasn't changed. We, including the government, still have good reason to distinguish between opposite-sex and same-sex relationships and, therefore, not place them together under the classification of marriage:
- Opposite-sex relationships still promote the unity of the genders in a way that same-sex relationships don't. Since the genders are so different, and their living together in harmony is so important, we have good reason to acknowledge a distinction between a relationship that's so effective in uniting the genders and a relationship that isn't.
- Opposite-sex relationships still have a potential that same-sex relationships don't have to produce biological offspring. Even if an opposite-sex couple is undecided about whether to have children, has decided not to have any, or is infertile, the potential for having children remains. We occasionally hear of a woman in her sixties or seventies having a child, though that's rare. Given how important biological offspring are to a society (e.g., the problems we're seeing in parts of the world with low birth rates), the potential for offspring is important even if a couple doesn't currently expect to have any children. And drawing the line at gender differences (distinguishing between opposite-sex and same-sex couples) would be a more efficient way to handle this issue than doing something like running fertility tests on every couple or trying to figure out an age limit for marriage.
- Opposite-sex relationships provide a significantly different environment in which to raise children. I deny that the differences between men and women are only anatomical, but, even if they were, that distinction alone would give us sufficient reason to distinguish between opposite-sex and same-sex parenting. It's more effective to teach children how to live with their own anatomy and how to live with somebody of the other gender in the setting of opposite-sex parenting. And if you believe that gender differences go beyond anatomy, as you should, this distinction between opposite-sex and same-sex parenting becomes even more significant.
- We have good religious grounds for distinguishing between opposite-sex and same-sex relationships. See our material in the archives here on the evidence for Christianity, for example. That evidence gives individuals, families, churches, etc. good reason to think that same-sex marriage is unethical. Even at a governmental level, religious considerations should be taken into account. Our system of government is founded on the religious notion that we're endowed by our Creator with rights. We print "In God We Trust" on our currency, open sessions of government with prayer, etc. To turn around and suggest that we can't have any religious motives for doing what we do at a state level would be irrational and inconsistent. Even where people don't explicitly articulate a religious motive, they often have one. Even political liberals often oppose racism, support helping the poor, oppose the death penalty, etc. on a religious basis. Voters frequently vote with religious motives, and the idea that legislators don't do the same is implausible. Religious motivation has been part of our political system from the start. The more secular modern definitions of separation of church and state are just that: modern definitions that are competing with other definitions, including ones that are older and more reasonable. If you want an argument that Christians should oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage on religious grounds, see Robert Gagnon's material, for example.
- Opposite-sex relationships still promote the unity of the genders in a way that same-sex relationships don't. Since the genders are so different, and their living together in harmony is so important, we have good reason to acknowledge a distinction between a relationship that's so effective in uniting the genders and a relationship that isn't.
- Opposite-sex relationships still have a potential that same-sex relationships don't have to produce biological offspring. Even if an opposite-sex couple is undecided about whether to have children, has decided not to have any, or is infertile, the potential for having children remains. We occasionally hear of a woman in her sixties or seventies having a child, though that's rare. Given how important biological offspring are to a society (e.g., the problems we're seeing in parts of the world with low birth rates), the potential for offspring is important even if a couple doesn't currently expect to have any children. And drawing the line at gender differences (distinguishing between opposite-sex and same-sex couples) would be a more efficient way to handle this issue than doing something like running fertility tests on every couple or trying to figure out an age limit for marriage.
- Opposite-sex relationships provide a significantly different environment in which to raise children. I deny that the differences between men and women are only anatomical, but, even if they were, that distinction alone would give us sufficient reason to distinguish between opposite-sex and same-sex parenting. It's more effective to teach children how to live with their own anatomy and how to live with somebody of the other gender in the setting of opposite-sex parenting. And if you believe that gender differences go beyond anatomy, as you should, this distinction between opposite-sex and same-sex parenting becomes even more significant.
- We have good religious grounds for distinguishing between opposite-sex and same-sex relationships. See our material in the archives here on the evidence for Christianity, for example. That evidence gives individuals, families, churches, etc. good reason to think that same-sex marriage is unethical. Even at a governmental level, religious considerations should be taken into account. Our system of government is founded on the religious notion that we're endowed by our Creator with rights. We print "In God We Trust" on our currency, open sessions of government with prayer, etc. To turn around and suggest that we can't have any religious motives for doing what we do at a state level would be irrational and inconsistent. Even where people don't explicitly articulate a religious motive, they often have one. Even political liberals often oppose racism, support helping the poor, oppose the death penalty, etc. on a religious basis. Voters frequently vote with religious motives, and the idea that legislators don't do the same is implausible. Religious motivation has been part of our political system from the start. The more secular modern definitions of separation of church and state are just that: modern definitions that are competing with other definitions, including ones that are older and more reasonable. If you want an argument that Christians should oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage on religious grounds, see Robert Gagnon's material, for example.
A system of rubber checks and thumbs on the balance
The Anti-Constitutional Consequences of King v. Burwell
By George Will — June 25, 2015
The most durable damage from Thursday’s decision is not the perpetuation of the ACA, which can be undone by what created it — legislative action. The paramount injury is the court’s embrace of a duty to ratify and even facilitate lawless discretion exercised by administrative agencies and the executive branch generally.
While purporting to not apply Chevron, Roberts expands it to empower all of the executive branch to ignore or rewrite congressional language that is not at all ambiguous but is inconvenient for the smooth operation of something Congress created. Exercising judicial discretion in the name of deference, Roberts enlarges executive discretion. He does so by validating what the IRS did when it ignored the ACA’s text in order to disburse billions of dollars of subsidies through federal exchanges not established by the states.
Thursday’s decision demonstrates how easily, indeed inevitably, judicial deference becomes judicial dereliction, with anticonstitutional consequences. We are, says William R. Maurer of the Institute for Justice, becoming “a country in which all the branches of government work in tandem to achieve policy outcomes, instead of checking one another to protect individual rights. Besides violating the separation of powers, this approach raises serious issues about whether litigants before the courts are receiving the process that is due to them under the Constitution.”
The Roberts Doctrine facilitates what has been for a century progressivism’s central objective, the overthrow of the Constitution’s architecture. The separation of powers impedes progressivism by preventing government from wielding uninhibited power. Such power would result if its branches behaved as partners in harness rather than as wary, balancing rivals maintaining constitutional equipoise.
Roberts says “we must respect the role of the legislature” but “a fair reading of legislation demands a fair understanding of the legislative plan.” However, he goes beyond “understanding” the plan; he adopts a legislator’s role in order to rescue the legislature’s plan from the consequences of the legislature’s dubious decisions. By blurring, to the point of erasure, constitutional boundaries, he damages all institutions, not least his court.
Abetting deception
I ran across I comment on the Obamacare ruling with I will use as a foil:
A lot of the criticism I'm seeing of this decision would cut against many apologetical arguments for the consistency of scripture, undermining the principle of "scripture interprets scripture" and such. It's as if it's impossible for something to look like it means something on the surface but really mean something else, where you can tell it by looking elsewhere in the document to see what the overall intent was. That point can be observed even in original public meaning, as long as the principle of charity is in operation to guide how we interpret the public meaning. We don't have to turn to intent derived from looking at external documents to get such a thing.
It's a separate question, of course, whether their arguments for interpreting things this way are correct, but much of the rancor I'm seeing from conservatives against the Roberts opinion would seem to me to undercut some of the better apologetical arguments defending scripture from the charge of contradiction (ones that are eminently reasonable when you take a whole book into account but seem unlikely if you only look at one verse, say).
For several reasons I disagree with his comparison:
i) Inerrantist Bible scholars pursue harmonistic strategies under the presupposition that the Bible can't contain substantive contradictions. But that's disanalogous to an uninspired piece of legislation.
ii) Some Bible scholars who aren't committed to inerrancy, or who bracket inerrancy for methodological reasons, still pursue harmonistic strategies because they think a good historian doesn't automatically assume that apparent contradictions in his source material are actual contradictions. He should first explore whether there are reasonable harmonizations.
However, even on that weaker principle, the alleged parallel breaks down. Obamacare is a huge, complex bill (2700 pages). A consensus document. Lots of compromises. Lots of horsetrading to get the necessary votes for passage. Probably no Democrat who voted for the bill even read it in toto. Under those circumstances, it is to be expected that the bill will contain actual contradictions.
iii) In addition, bills like this contain many loose ends because they don't detail policies; rather, they authorize an agency of the executive branch to use these laws as general guidelines to formulate specific regulations. It's up to the secretary of HHS and her team to tie up all the loose ends. Under those circumstances, there's no reason to think the bill will be free of inconsistencies.
iv) Even more to the point, on at least four occasions, Jonathan Gruber, who basically ghostwrote the disputed provisions, publicly admitted that the wording of the provisions was intentionally deceptive. The wording deliberately concealed the true intentions of the lawmakers. Had the lawmakers can been candid about their real aims, they would have been unable to secure enough votes for passage. The proposed bill would be too unpopular with the electorate.
But a deliberately devious formulation scarcely merits charitable reading. It's not an epistemic virtue to play the fool for a deceiver. It's not an epistemic virtue to let someone pull the wool over your eyes. It would be gullible to give a known deceiver the benefit of the doubt.
Roberts calls it "inartful drafting." To the contrary, it was very artful drafting. It was willful dissimulation.
v) In addition, the court has no duty to do the dirty work for Congress. The court has no obligation to honor the mendacity of the lawmakers who were acting in bad faith by rewriting the law to make it say what it doesn't say because lawmakers duplicitously wrote something different than what they really meant the provisions to achieve.
All things being equal, I think the court ought to take legislative intent into consideration. But not if the text of the law is an exercise in studied prevarication. It is not the duty of the court to collude with lawmakers in committing legislative fraud.
Several hours later, the same person I quoted made some observations similar to mine–although I take a harder line. He went on to say:
The ambiguity argument was a different one. The claim there was that the text could be read either way but that they can choose to interpret it in the way that leads to the best consequences if it's genuinely ambiguous. They chose not to go that way.
What they instead said is that, in context in terms of what the rest of the law says, the best interpretation of this one particular line is that it doesn't mean what the surface meaning would lead you to expect if taken by itself.
That's an error in interpreting the rest of the act, i.e. the particular reasoning in the opinion, not an argument against the type of reasoning being done here, which is what many conservatives are unwisely giving without thinking of how terrible it would be to apply that kind of criticism across the board.
The other problem I have is that it's not clear the act is even consistent. Roberts did take them to task for how badly it's written, how the closed-door sessions, multiple authors, and limited ability for members to read it before voting makes it a bad law even apart from what it requires. I'm not sure he appreciates how bad, thought, because there's a plausible argument that it's not ambiguous between the two readings but is just plain inconsistent because it outright asserts both conflicting readings.
In such conditions, judges have been known to make a call to remove a contradiction, usually relying on some kind of revealed intent, but I don't think that works here, because you have Gruber and the other architects saying one thing and the others who were totally unaware of what he act did who added other stuff that conflicted with it, and there just isn't one original intent. That's much more plausible to me than the one-meaning Roberts view, the ambiguity view that they rejected, or the one-meaning but other-interpretation view of the dissent.
A heart of flesh
The human heart is amazingly complex. Even this otherwise exquisitely designed model of the heart doesn't fully capture what's known about the heart. It's certainly still worth watching though. (Along similar lines, some might be interested in Dr. Howard Glicksman's continuing series on the human body over at EN&V. I presume his series will be turned into a book someday.)
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare!
Some readers might find the title of my post confusing. Didn't the Supreme Court uphold Obamacare rather than strike it down?
Only if you operate with a wooden, binary view of lexical semantics according to which words have objective meanings. But twice now, Chump Justice John Roberts has taught us that legal language has no objective meaning.
Roberts and his allies on the bench have taught us that "tax" and "penalty" are synonyms. Who knew? "Established by the state" really means "not established by the state," or "established by the Federal government."
Therefore, I apply to the majority opinion the same semantic relativism which the majority opinion applies to statutory law.
Since, according to the hermeneutical principles of Chump Justice John Roberts, antonyms are synonyms, since the meaning of one word can be arbitrarily reassigned to another word, if I were a chief executive (i.e. president, governor, mayor), I'd commend the Supreme Court for striking down Obamacare, and proceed to dismantle it.
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