In a piece defending Kavanaugh, Schrab Ahman writes:
But actually this hope is a dead letter. It is as false as the idea that "we" are in favor of facts and reason and "they" are just acting out their feelings.
In fact all of us, from "we" to "they" see the world through our feelings, or rather, our values. And that gets to be a problem as soon as we get to government, because the natural thing to do is to write the law to give expression to our values, or to be more specific, our religion.
Here in the United States we have decreed a separation between church and state. But of course everyone still presses their religious view and tries to get the government to confirm their values with force. I quoted Robert Heinlein a few days ago.
And of course the whole circus around Supreme Court nominations reflects the huge investment that our liberal friends have made in the power to legislate their creed into law, and the frightening prospect that what the Supreme gives the Supreme Court can take away. Living Constitutions, baby.
Even if the conservative "originalist" movement should succeed in returning the Court to a traditional notion of legal review, the problem is still there. People want their values to reign not just in their household, not just in their neighborhood, but everywhere.
Back in the day, liberals felt themselves to be a minority, culturally, and they used to complain bitterly about the religious right "legislating morality." Well, now we have #WeBelieve yardsigns all over my liberal Seattle neighborhood, expressing liberal values and implicitly demanding their instantiation in legislation. For instance, the slogan "No human is illegal" is a moral statement that demands unlimited immigration. In other words, liberals want to legislate morality.
The whole liberal agenda, from gay marriage to climate change, is really a sect of secular religion attempting to "legislate its creed into law." And, of course the sect is busy "seiz[ing] the minds of the young" in the schools and in the culture.
The fact is that we can never go back to the "gentle conservatism" of Romney, Bush and McCain. Because everyone wants their moral universe, at the very least, to be respected by the political power, and preferably, endorsed by the political power. And that includes conservatives and deplorables.
The Founders of this country attempted, by the separation of powers of government, and what I call the Greater Separation of Powers between the political, the economic and the moral/cultural sectors, to restrain the enthusiasm of everyone to legislate their creed into law. But at the same time as they were writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights the French Revolution broke out and inaugurated the totalitarian impulse to combine all sectors of society into the political. We know that this is a bad idea, because it brought us the murderous Soviet Union, Communist China, not to mention Hitler's Reich and Mussolini's Fascism: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
You would think that everyone would have got the message about the evil of combining all powers, cultural, political, and economic, into the government. But people still want to enact our own vision of Heaven here on Earth. Of course we do, because we are the good guys.
So conservatives and other similarly inclined folk need to combine into a new, muscular cultural movement and push back against the left's secular religion with our own secular religion that pushes pretty firmly for our moral agenda, and rallies a coalition of Americans to the polls to elect politicians that agree to stand up for us and protect us. There is no alternative.
I wish I could say that the way out of this impasse is for the right to double down on the gentle conservatism represented by Romney, the Bush dynasty, and the late John McCain. Perhaps that is the right course in the long term. But for now, it is imperative for the health of American democracy to resist the liberal ruthlessness that is on display in the halls of the Senate.And then we can get back to normal government, defending the law and helping Americans live their lives productively.
But actually this hope is a dead letter. It is as false as the idea that "we" are in favor of facts and reason and "they" are just acting out their feelings.
In fact all of us, from "we" to "they" see the world through our feelings, or rather, our values. And that gets to be a problem as soon as we get to government, because the natural thing to do is to write the law to give expression to our values, or to be more specific, our religion.
Here in the United States we have decreed a separation between church and state. But of course everyone still presses their religious view and tries to get the government to confirm their values with force. I quoted Robert Heinlein a few days ago.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it up by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, and driving underground all heretics.Right now, it is a truism that our lefty friends have acquired the power to "legislate its creed into law" thanks to the notion of the "living Constitution" and liberal justices that believe in enacting liberal values into law using the court.
And of course the whole circus around Supreme Court nominations reflects the huge investment that our liberal friends have made in the power to legislate their creed into law, and the frightening prospect that what the Supreme gives the Supreme Court can take away. Living Constitutions, baby.
Even if the conservative "originalist" movement should succeed in returning the Court to a traditional notion of legal review, the problem is still there. People want their values to reign not just in their household, not just in their neighborhood, but everywhere.
Back in the day, liberals felt themselves to be a minority, culturally, and they used to complain bitterly about the religious right "legislating morality." Well, now we have #WeBelieve yardsigns all over my liberal Seattle neighborhood, expressing liberal values and implicitly demanding their instantiation in legislation. For instance, the slogan "No human is illegal" is a moral statement that demands unlimited immigration. In other words, liberals want to legislate morality.
The whole liberal agenda, from gay marriage to climate change, is really a sect of secular religion attempting to "legislate its creed into law." And, of course the sect is busy "seiz[ing] the minds of the young" in the schools and in the culture.
The fact is that we can never go back to the "gentle conservatism" of Romney, Bush and McCain. Because everyone wants their moral universe, at the very least, to be respected by the political power, and preferably, endorsed by the political power. And that includes conservatives and deplorables.
The Founders of this country attempted, by the separation of powers of government, and what I call the Greater Separation of Powers between the political, the economic and the moral/cultural sectors, to restrain the enthusiasm of everyone to legislate their creed into law. But at the same time as they were writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights the French Revolution broke out and inaugurated the totalitarian impulse to combine all sectors of society into the political. We know that this is a bad idea, because it brought us the murderous Soviet Union, Communist China, not to mention Hitler's Reich and Mussolini's Fascism: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
You would think that everyone would have got the message about the evil of combining all powers, cultural, political, and economic, into the government. But people still want to enact our own vision of Heaven here on Earth. Of course we do, because we are the good guys.
So conservatives and other similarly inclined folk need to combine into a new, muscular cultural movement and push back against the left's secular religion with our own secular religion that pushes pretty firmly for our moral agenda, and rallies a coalition of Americans to the polls to elect politicians that agree to stand up for us and protect us. There is no alternative.
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