An originalist believes that the Constitution is a set of rules to be followed literally. That is, by conscious design of the Founders, the equivalent to the unprovable axioms by which mathematics and physics build theorems. "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." says a very lot in a few words. Everyone, maybe excepting a few sociopaths, has an internal set of unprovable basic principles.
This is worth reading:
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It compares two enlightments, the Scottish/American vs the French. The first was based on a fixed set of unprovable moral assumptions. The second was based on the pure "power of reason" with a deliberate contempt for moral absolutes. The Scotch/American enlightenment gave us the Constitution and the USA as a nation. The French one created revolution, regicide, the Terror, guillotines, and as a reaction the Emperor Napoleon and consequent fun.
The difference (my theory) is that a tribe is driven by the tendency of people to believe what they think other people in their tribe believe, the exact opposite of the silly "Cult of Reason". Conway's Game of Life gone mad. The French revolution was a giant ramshackle raft without anchors, so drifted wildly and broke apart. The US was anchored by "self-evident" principles, basically a set of axioms documented into law by the Constitution.
The American Left, and the leftist judiciary, has contempt for axioms and for the literal (not the "living") Constitution, so constitute a tribe without anchors, a raft that drifts erratically and breaks apart with no wind or waves but of its own fads.
Similar drift was seen in Nazi Germany and the USSR and the PRC, and many millions died.
Check out her bio. Some people are just astronomically smarter than us mortals. And she has 5 natural kids and two adopted Haitians, which will get her some Black votes.
The Left likes passionate people but doesn't like smart people. They care about what people say but not so much about what they do.
Lately judges are ruling according to what they feel is right, not doing their job of interpreting the Constitution and the subsequent laws. That's serious drift.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
Science teaches us to doubt.
Claude Bernard
On the forums I read, I've never seen even moderate conservatives so riled by the antics of Antifa et al. If Trump's Constitution-upholding pick for the SC gets de-railed, expect the shooting to start; Civil War II. (not joking).
ilosophy has been likened to that of her mentor and former boss, Antonin Sc alia." That does not sound good at all. The originalists are mentally distu rbed people, and there are at least as many originalist theories as there a re originalists.
I wonder why John Larkin thinks that. It's probably because James Arthur to ld him something of the sort. The "conscious design" of the founding tax ev aders was pure moderate enlightenment political philosophy, which can be pa raphrased as "the way things are isn't too bad". There's nothing in it that is remotely comparable with basic axioms of mathematics, and physics doesn 't go in for axioms at all. James Arthur does like to claim otherwise.
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It probably isn't.
Jonathon Israel's "The Democratic Enlightenment" ISBN 978-019954820-0 does a very thorough job of looking at the philosophical basis of political thou ght at the time, and the moderate enlightenment comes out of it as a moveme nt to evade the poiitical consequences of thinking about the subject in any depth, which was what the radical enlightenment did. Most of the - numerou s - defects of the US constitution comes down to a moderate enlightenment r eluctance to subject the rich and powerful to an effective rule of law.
It wasn't the radical enlightenment that turned the French revolution into a bloody disaster, but invasions from all the adjacent states. The French n eeded Napoleon's military skills rather more than they needed an equitable government.
Every democratic government since then has been designed and operated on ra dical enlightenment principles - including the UK system. The best of them (and there are quite a few examples of good ones) work rather better than t he US system
It fought off the armies of all the adjacent states, and Napoleon ended up occupying a lot of them. Sadly this gave Napoleon more political power than he should have had. As "ramshackle rafts", go post-revolution France was a n extremely effective military power, but fighting all those wars messed up its politics no end.
ms documented into law by the Constitution.
Principles that were "self-evident" to a bunch of slave-holding land-owners . Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine had had a lot to contribute when it ca me to motivating people to fight the British, but they played no part in dr afting the 1786 constitution, and Franklin had serious reservations about i t, though he did use his prestige to help get it accepted by the various st ates.
Benjamin Franklin did own slaves at one point and freed them. Thomas Jeffe rson had several children with one of his slaves - Sally Hemings.
As if the US constitution is based on anything but the fads of the founding tax evaders.
All three were tyrannies, controlled by the fads of the people in control.
Genuinely democratic regimes don't seem to behave in this way. Trump does s eem to want to convert the US into his personal fief, but happily he's no N apoleon.
eals judge in 2017, so they're likely to do it again in October 2020.
John Larkin thinks that Trump is a good president, and climate change denia l propaganda is to be believed. Quite a few people are astronomically smart er than he is, and he's not really up to rank ordering them.
"In September 2017, The New York Times reported that Barrett was a member o f a small, tightly knit Charismatic Christian group called People of Praise ; its members swear a lifelong "covenant" (loyalty oath) to each other and are assigned a personal advisor, a "head" for men or "leader" for women, wh o gives direction on important personal decisions. In the past, female pers onal advisors were called ?handmaidens.?[70] As a judicial nominee in 2017, Barrett's affiliation with People of Praise did not come u p during the confirmation process, however her religious faith was notably questioned by some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee."
This might not go down too well with the Senate. The handmaiden tale could raise some hackles
Or so John Larkin seems to think. He's not all that smart.
There have been numerous court decisions involving the 4th Amendment where the justification for the ruling is little more than "It would be dangerous for police if it were to be otherwise" hence why a police officer can order you out of your car at any time for more or less any reason and you must obey or you're a criminal for not doing so.
Not anything the Constitution actually says.
The 4th Amendment hardly exists anymore it's been drifting away for
Look at the longterm graphs. CO2 was 6000 PPM in the ages of huge life expansion and evolution. We have lately been on a downslope that was starving plants. How would you like your main food source to be 300 PPM nutrients?
Part of the green revolution, and the many-fold increase in agricultural production in the last century, is from the extra CO2 we have added to the atmosphere.
The extra CO2 makes forests grow more, especially young, flammable scrub. There is probably a soft-setpoint effect from extra growth and natural selection that puts a soft clamp on the atmospheric CO2 level.
Nuclear makes sense but is unpopular for irrational reasons. Coal is dirty. Natural gas is an excellent fuel.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
Science teaches us to doubt.
Claude Bernard
ilosophy has been likened to that of her mentor and former boss, Antonin Sc alia." That does not sound good at all. The originalists are mentally distu rbed people, and there are at least as many originalist theories as there a re originalists.
Well at least it's a step up from the massage therapist in your previous po st, but only by a little. Claremont Institute and Hillsdale college? Seriou sly.
Dunno about that "enlightenment" jazz, or if there ever was such a thing, b ut the lowdown is most Scottish during the war of independence were despica ble Tories, so much so, they were forced to flee the U.S. when the English withdrew.
France won the American war of independence. That is not conjecture, it is an indisputable fact to people who know the actual history. France in the p erson of Rochambeau created the myth of George Washington being the driving force behind the colonial victory. This is because he understood a young n ation needs national heroes. Rochambeau threatened Cornwallis with a spare
-no-quarter slaughter if he didn't surrender directly to Washington, someth ing Cornwallis initially refused to do.
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chambeau
You do understand the constitution is a design specification, not a stateme nt of principles? It is a specification of just exactly how the federal gov ernment is organized and what the various responsibilities were/are. That' s it, no more and no less. People read way too much into it. All this other stuff about inferring statements of principles from this document, as cons ervative think tanks are wont to do, is horse manure., don't believe it.
eals judge in 2017, so they're likely to do it again in October 2020.
gthy dissent in favor of gun-ownership rights for felons.[51] Barrett state d that while the government has a legitimate interest in denying gun posses sion to felons convicted of violent crimes, there is no evidence that denyi ng guns to nonviolent felons promotes this interest, and that denying such rights is a violation of the Second Amendment.
th Cir. 2019),[48] the court found in favor of a male student found guilty of sexual assault by Purdue University, which resulted in a one-year suspen sion, loss of his Navy ROTC scholarship, and expulsion from the ROTC affect ing his ability to pursue his chosen career in the U.S. Navy. Doe alleged t he school's Advisory Committee on Equity discriminated against him.
ad lackey Obama appointee in eastern Washington district court, Bastian, wh o just granted a preliminary injunction against changes DeJoy made at the U SPS. No sane person could take his ruling seriously, never have seen such a childish charade from the federal judiciary before.
This case was a relatively minor procedural ruling, it did not involve any kind of interpretation of law, nothing to do with the constitution, and cer tainly nothing to set legal precedent. It's just a circuit court process, n ot even a trial. The judge is supposed to guess how a ruling would turn out in an actual suit before the court and issue or deny the preliminary injun ction accordingly. He's out to lunch if he thinks a trial judge is going to agree that Trump's tweets are material evidence of a conspiracy to delay t he mail. The Democrats are getting ridiculously desperate as the election d raws near, never have seen them behave this way.
The President and members of Congress and judges swear to uphold the Constitution and the subsequent laws of the land. Judges nullify laws on the basis that they are unconstitutional.
That's what the Constituion is: the ultimate law of the country.
It pins the system down, prevents drift. It can be amended but, by design, it's difficult.
ement of principles? It is a specification of just exactly how the federal government is organized and what the various responsibilities were/are. Tha t's it, no more and no less. People read way too much into it. All this oth er stuff about inferring statements of principles from this document, as co nservative think tanks are wont to do, is horse manure., don't believe it.
It's pity that it wasn't drafted particularly carefully. It's a much bigger pity that it wasn't drafted by people who had a clearer grasp of the princ iples they claimed to be articulating. The radical enlightenment was radic al in articulating it's ideas clearly and consistently. The moderate enligh tenment was all about fudging the principles so they didn't lead to situati ons where the people who were in power at the time lost that power.
The US constitution currently pins down the country in a situation where th e top 1% of the income distribution has enough power to ensure that any exp ansion in the US economy benefits them, rather than the residual 99%. This has been true since Reagan came to power, but it has taken some forty years for the economy to expand enough to make this blatant and attention-gettin g. It needs to be fixed - going over to proportional representation, which leads to multiparty coalition governments would probably do it, but James Arthur (and lots of other right-wing nut cases) would probably try to organ ise an armed insurrection to stop it happening.
It's worse. He thinks that he can design electronics, when all he seems to be able mange is to evolve circuits by frequent tweaking.
Being a narcissist is a little difficult when you haven't got much to be narcissist about. Donald Trump has the same problem. They do have to clutch at straws.
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