Alito's reasoning was actually quite sound IMO. But the reasoning in Roe was widely recognized by many legal scholars to be weak and flawed. Good riddance to it. Watching the news has been surreal. They played video clips of many different pro-abortion women stating what they thought, and I had never before heard so many flawed, emotion-driven, nonsensical responses in such a short time. One would have thought the MSM would take care to show some women who could cogently present a sensible, reasoned answer... but, nope. It was all ridiculous stuff like, "They're trying to murder women!" and "They've taken away our health care!" Groups of abortion lovers gathered at various places around the country to protest the fact that federal judicial law no longer guards their ability to kill unborn human beings. There's even a group of women (calling themselves Jane something-or-other) threatening violent insurrection over this ruling. (And I don't see the Justice Department rushing to make arrests, go figure.) IMO any thinking, caring, loving Christian should be opposed to legal, on-demand abortions. Because even if they happen to believe that the unborn child is at some gestational point (a point which we cannot pinpoint for certain) not yet a "person" in God's eyes, they can't be sure of this fact (let alone be sure of the exact time when "personhood" begins). Therefore, love and compassion should compel the Christian to "err on the side of caution"; a Christian should (at the least) say, "I am not God, and I cannot say for certain that this unborn child is not regarded by God as an individual person, therefore I am bound to advocate for the protection and preservation of the unborn child in case my assumptions to the contrary have been wrong." Yet there is always the possibility of forgiveness for those "who know not what they do." Such as for Saul, who held the cloaks and gave approval while his fellows stoned Stephen.
More specifically, Justice Gorsuch is Episcopalian (though he was raised Catholic). There is nothing distinctively Anglican in either his policy preferences or his voting record. The other 5 Justices who voted to overturn Roe are all Catholic. The ideology they collectively represent is a strange mix of Catholic social teaching, libertarianism, and “state sovereignty”. It is hardly representative of what the majority of Americans want their country to be, and there is every reason to expect these efforts to backfire at some point. Prior generations of the Court have understood that they were on a short leash, and usually behaved accordingly. The brazenly unconservative way the Court is currently behaving is very strange.
This nation is "a strange mix" of many different viewpoints. There is little commonality between Catholic social teaching, libertarianism, and "state sovereignty" thought. Therefore, we have a decision reached through the consensus of disparate ideas. It's the American way, and very much representative of our nation. Funny.... the liberal MSM is describing the Court in many ways right now, but "unconservative" is not one of them!
Strange mix? This is traditional quotidian Christian jurisprudence. We have centuries of records from all of Christendom: Lutheran, Roman, Anglican, of judges ruling and judging in precisely this way. Which titanic Anglican jurists would you like to compare our SCOTUS justices against — - Edward Coke? -William Blackstone? -James Wilson (not just a US founding father, but the founder of the American jurisprudence as such). Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito are practically a spitting images of all those great men. We are so privileged to be alive to see a titanic legal mind at work, to protect justice and let truth triumph, in an age of wickedness. Tell me you don’t know the history of Anglican jurisprudence without telling me you don’t know the history of Anglican jurisprudence. As I wrote previously, where do you think that judicial review, stare decisis, habeas corpus all came from? Literally no one in the world has ever had those principles. Heck, no one even in European history, had developed any of these principles. These are precious and rare legal principles, seen only once in world history, developed only and by the Anglican context. America has an Anglican constitution, the Anglican legal system, and this was a victory of Anglican juridical principles.
Their religion matters less than their academic backgrounds: they're all Ivy Leaguers (except for Barrett, the newest member). Roberts: Harvard Thomas: Yale Breyer: Harvard Alito: Yale Sotomayor: Yale Kagan: Harvard Gorsuch: Harvard Kavanaugh: Yale Barrett: Notre Dame (!) I think we should have a moratorium on Harvard and Yale grads for at least 20 years at the Supreme Court level. They're more inbred than the crowned heads of Europe. There should be a rule that at least half of the Court should be comprised of graduates of non-Ivy law schools.
I agree. The ideology is partly a by-product of their respective networks (though some of them do appear to be true believers). There are plenty of other good law schools in this country. There’s no good reason why 8 out of 9 Justices should come from Ivy League programs. More importantly, a court does not play the outsized role of a de facto second legislature, that our Supreme Court has for a very long time, in a country that has healthy and responsive institutions for registering popular consent and dissent. Common law rights are good and necessary, but if a particular rights regime is important, it needs to be backed up at some point by statute, if it is to remain secure. The Court should not be fulfilling the role of ‘rights-guarantor’ in the absence of meaningful legislation from Congress.
There's a joke in Virginia that involves my alma mater, Regent University. It goes something like you go to Regent after you got your rejection letter from William & Mary. Every crappy family law attorney has a Regent diploma. Those who can't get into a firm go to work for Pat Robertson's ACLJ. It's not really a bad school but there is a stereotype.
That’s because the media didn’t have Burke in mind when they criticized the decision, but I did and do. “Conservative” in the Burkean sense is an overall approach to society, that respects the established order, and is very suspicious of rapid change, especially if it claims to be motivated by “higher principles”. Conservatism to Burke was an attitude and a sentiment, rather than an ideology or a set of imperatives. There is nothing conservative in the Burkean sense about upending a 50 year binding precedent in one stroke, especially given what the consequences will be. It is that sense of “unconservative” that I was referring to. It is remarkable to me that so many self-described “conservatives” in this country seem to have little to no familiarity with Burke and just as little regard for the conservative vision he represented and fought for.
I grew up in America and can judge for myself the level of insularity over there. Try watching a Jimmy Kimmel show where they go out into the streets and ask simple questions about geography, or even tell lies about current events - and people believe them because they pretend to know what is happening but don't. The number of people who don't even know how to identify countries on a map, including their own! It's shocking. Kimmel's show recently hit the streets to ask about Roe v Wade, but they pretended it was a prize fight and asked about the fighters. People took sides for 'their fighter' and said the match was really good watching on TV. They were serious. Most countries know about the US but the US is really very ill informed about other countries (and a lot about their own as well). Few know what the UK/Australia etc parliamentary system is or the French hybrid system or even who the world leaders are - apart from America's 'enemies' like Russia or North Korea or China. The gen pop of America are simply not interested in anything outside of their own 'greatest country in the world' and they are fed misinformation about that. You sound well informed but I stand by my comment that most Americans are very ill informed about anything beyond their own borders. I grew up loving America but having lived in many other countries over the course of my life, I can see that it isn't necessarily the greatest, simply the richest and most powerful. Rome was that way once too, but it fell, and I despair for the USA because I can see it heading down a very sad path if it doesn't wake up and start acting like an adult again. the first step to fixing the problem is in recognising that there is a problem. Burying one's head in the sand and pretending that things are other than they are is a sure path to failure. And because of its power and wealth, what happens to America affects the rest of the world as well. Wake up America and get back on track - for all of us. .
This Australian does feel horror at the prospect of taking away more rights (from the country that claims to be all about individual rights) but I would hardly be shocked by anything that America does now. After watching in real horror when Trump was elected President, I didn't think that the USA could do anything more stupid than that. So no, shock isn't really a thing now. Our abortion laws, like our same-sex marriage laws, are just fine, thank you very much. What we could work on here is our marijuana laws. It's ridiculous that alcohol is legal and pot isn't. I don't drink or take drugs that aren't prescribed, but even medicinal cannabis is difficult to get here. My sister needed it for fibromyalgia, and she had to jump through hoops before they would prescribe the CBD oil. After all that, it didn't work for her, so she stopped taking it. She could have found out a lot sooner though and been able to move on to another treatment if it were easier to get. But Australians just take their time about making laws, so eventually I am sure it will happen. I would just really like to see some laws in the US that affect men - like forcing them to have vasectomies if they are unmarried and want sex. Or make Viagra illegal, LOL Or forcing them to marry a woman before they were allowed to have sex, or make them raise the unwanted child after the woman has delivered it etc etc. Controlling the rights of a human's own body should be the same for men and women. Lots of men telling women what to do with their own bodies. Society can't take care of the unwanted children that exist now, so America wants to flood their country with even more unwanted children who will be raised in a foster system that can't cope. What's the plan? And so now you make same sex marriage illegal and take away all adopted children of gay couples and put them back into the system? What's the plan, seriously? It all staggers the mind.
I think you're right. This should stand as an indictment of our current education system with its top-down (NEA) control. Our public schools are churning out know-nothing graduates.
And yet, when it comes time to decide whether to abort, what right does the father have? Laws that affect men should cut both ways, right? They'd have to give the father the right to say, "No, woman, you can't abort my baby." We actually are headed toward a significant population decline in the US, because people aren't having enough children. Our Social Security ponzi scheme is crashing along with the ability to maintain infrastructure, fund health care, etc. World population may peak around 2050 and then decline, some experts say. If children are unwanted, it's due to selfishness. But that selfishness is backfiring on humanity. Meanwhile, there are many couples who would like to adopt but have long wait times or who never get a child. Adoption is better than abortion, right?
Not quite. There's an important one he's left off the chopping block, which is odd given it's the same logic for the gay marriage decision - Loving v. Virginia. That being the case that determined it was unlawful to prohibit interrace marriages. But, of course, understanding why he left that one off his list of targets becomes obvious when you appreciate Justice Thomas is a black man in an interracial marriage. One can't help coming off a bit sour when the only issue he doesn't have a problem with is the one that personally affects him.
Without defending our educational system -- it is even worse than most people realize -- I assert that people everywhere are getting dumber. I blame the internet for some of this -- as cell phones and the internet have proliferated (especially in places like Africa and Asia) the collapse of problem-solving ability and memory among populations is really astonishing. Many (maybe most) people have outsourced their cognitive abilities to the internet. Don't know a fact? Google it. Just take whatever you're given as correct and move on. History? Who needs it. Geography? Who cares. It's all online now anyway -- location doesn't matter any more! Math? Puh-leeze. I've got a calculator right on my phone! Some of the global IQ drop is also a simple reversion-to-mean process; we may not have a lot of Stephen Hawkings running around, but we don't have all that many complete dullards either. The IQ bell curve is getting taller and fatter, in other words. It's one of the paradoxes of the modern world -- even though IQ has probably gone up on average, we have fewer really smart people. And this has bad implications going forward, because we live in a highly technology-driven world that average-IQ people simply cannot maintain. Reading comprehension is also falling as we become more video-oriented -- and this is not just a phenomenon in the western nations, but is happening all over the world. Many languages are dying out because there is no one left to speak them; the Internet speaks about eight languages fluently (English, Chinese, Hindi, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic) so people learn the languages the internet speaks. English has become the global language due to its dominance on the internet, and various pidgin forms of it already are displacing local languages in places like Africa. Americans may be dumb, but we're not alone. The whole world is getting dumber. The good news is, the trend will reverse. As the global population shrinks, the tails of the IQ bell-curve will start to get fatter.
Incorrect. There is a crucial element missing in all those who mention Loving as somehow a gotcha against honorable Justice Thomas, as if he didn’t have the courage to extend his (presumably) faulty logic to the Loving and rule against interracial marriage. The key difference is this: for Justice Thomas the key problem in most recent legislation is a legal doctrine called “substantive due process”. It is a new legal principle, meaning it has no traditional validity at all; but rogue justices over the 60s, 70s, and now with Obergefell in 2015, exploited this doctrine to introduce grave distortions into the law. It is “substantive due process” that Thomas argues is a corruptive new influence on the law; striking down Roe v Wade is one of the first moves to undo the laws which have been corrupted by it. But the Loving ruling was not concluded by substantive due process, or progressive secularist “logic”. It was concluded by a straightforward and honest reading of the existing laws, namely the “equal protection under the law” clause. Some explanations: https://twitter.com/narfnampil/status/1540634450857496579 https://twitter.com/pinktweets/status/1540654646657785857 https://twitter.com/illusory_tenant/status/1540485088760193024 It’s fine if you aren’t aware of US legal nuances in Australia, but just be aware of how your slanted media diet is distorting your ability to accurately perceive the facts on the ground.
So much truth here. Go through a drive-thru at a restaurant; the kid accidentally punches the wrong number in the register and is totally lost as to how much change to give. I can do it in my head and tell him, "You owe me $1.83." He says, "How did you do that!" while he gives me the money. There was some place I applied to right after I got out of the Navy, a shooting range in Texas, that gave a math and English test to all applicants. I've applied a couple other places that gave the math test too. Geography. Can anyone read a map anymore? I went to truck driving school several years ago and half of the class could not. We had an exercise to do to find a way from Virginia to Pennsylvania without using a certain highway because it has several low clearances. Many of the students couldn't figure out the way past Richmond, much less into Pennsylvania. Reading comprehension. I have a reading level that the Navy had no measurement for. I took a test when I got to class 'A' school to gauge if I might need a tutor and scored a 13.8 out of 12. The instructors couldn't believe it. They were at a loss as to what to do with me and finally told me to record my score as 12. My older daughter is showing the same aptitude. She can read English and Spanish and is way above her grade level. The comprehension part is different than the reading part though. That is really tanking. Having to send the same message 2 to 3 times, slightly reworded to try to penetrate through the ignorance is extremely frustrating. It took my daughter's first grade teacher most of the year to learn to spell her name correctly! And she has a master's degree!
@ZachT I can appreciate that you're "a bit sour" but your claim of hypocrisy is really unfair. The reason Loving was not included by Thomas as a case worth reconsidering is because the court's decision in Loving did not turn on the principle of substantive due process, which, as I've pointed out previously, is what Thomas takes issue with. Thomas is not taking aim at contraception or gay marriage. He is taking aim at judicial activism, which has been a running theme of his tenure on the court. He is not saying these things are bad or should be banned. He is merely pointing out something that anyone that with a 3rd grade reading level can plainly read for themselves: that they are not rights ever mentioned in the constitution. Whether they should be in the document is outside the scope of his or any justice's purview, since their inclusion should be the result of the legislative process, not judicial fiat.