The Constitution as “living document”
Under the article linked in the previous post, wherein a moronic state college professor calls for rescinding the 2nd Amendment — that is, the repeal of what is a natural right by those the framers and founders were determined to make sure could not take that right away — sits a comment that I addressed there but that I’ll address here as well, given this site’s commitment to language and intent.
Writes the commente, who is taking issue with the quip that we should maybe do away with the First Amendment, too (and who strangely seems to share the author’s last name),
[...] The first amendment hasn’t caused anywhere near as many deaths as the second amendment. As Dr. Oberg said in the article, the constitution is a living document, which can and should be changed when the situation calls for such change. I believe Thirty-Thousand Plus gun deaths is a pretty sufficient reason to move for change.
To which I replied,
The Constitution is not a “living document,” Adam. Texts don’t “live.” They are a collection of intended (if we’re talking about language) signs imbued with meaning by those who produced them. They are a communicative means to an end — namely, fixing meaning or distributing it over time and distance, using code and convention to aid in the interpretation [required in a second order system of reference] . In the case of our Constitution, corporate intent plays out in the process of ratification. To make the claim that the document is living is to make the claim that it is unstable and that therefore law is open to the whim of temporary majorities who pretend to extract from the document meaning that it never had. It is the rejection of the text of the Framers and the ratifiers and the embrace of a fraud, whereby just because THEY can create new texts from the fixed text by way of their own intentions, proponents of the “living Constitution” try to convince you that they are allowing the Constitution to grow and breathe. They aren’t. They are granting themselves power and privileging their own intent using methods that are linguistically incoherent. If you wish to change the Constitution, go ahead and try to repeal the 2nd Amendment. But don’t pretend it doesn’t mean what it means, or that there doesn’t exist an abundance of evidence to suggest exactly the intent behind the 2nd Amendment, which exists to protect a natural right FROM the government.
One of the reasons I left academy is that it has been overrun by leftist thinking. And that makes it a bastion of anti-intellectualism and dogma, not a place to think or consider — lest what you end up believing and considering matches the hivemind’s approved conclusions.
Imbeciles like this professor, passing off sophistry as argument, are a dime a dozen — and commenters like Adam, sadly, are assured that they are subtle, sophisticated, rigorous thinkers just so long as they parrot the approved narrative rather than thinking through problems for themselves, and agree to view the shallow and the tenuous as deep and solid.
Like nearly all the left takes hold of, the academy — in many ways — has degenerated into a sham and a scam. And its priests are either perverse or mere puppets, dancing along on strings they are too un-self-aware to feel tugging them to and fro.
Combating absolute moral authority
Reader Phil from Hawaii emails the following in answer to those anti-Second Amendment activists and / or grieving parents being used by those same activists. Powerful stuff that he’s kindly allowed me to repost here:
I hear the voices of all murdered children. It is a joyful noise: they laugh and sing; safe at the footstool of the Lord.
I hear the voices of all parents of murdered children. They wail, they rage; lost in an abyss of grief. And no amount of teddy bears, no hugs, no laws can heal them. They are forever broken.
I hear myself. I rage, I weep: for all parents of murdered children; for my wife; for me. My 27 year old stepson, Michael Edward Young and, my 8 year old first grandchild, Joshua Allen Young were murdered in 1995 in Tempe, AZ. Abiding pain says it could have been just yesterday.
And I hear the drone of politicians. They weep in public, claiming others murdered children as their own. These children are not theirs, they are ours, are mine. For them to claim otherwise is pandering at its worst; is vile; is despicable. To then prey on the vulnerabilities of such overwrought parents in effort to metastasize a political agenda is even worse. To say they feel my pain is incomprehensible: my pain is my pain only. It isn’t even my wife’s pain; she has her own to bear.
Guns did not murder my boys. Crack-heads with guns obtained illegally under existing law murdered my boys. No new laws will change this fact. Making criminals of law abiding citizens will not change this fact; will not prevent future occurrences of such crimes by criminals; will only encourage more such crimes.
Sometimes, the price of freedom is most steep. But personal tragedy, no matter how excruciatingly painful and enduring, is never justification to trash our Constitution. We are a nation ruled by law as delineated in our Constitution. To abrogate our Constitution for one is to abrogate our Constitution for all; is to render us as a nation ruled by law - into one ruled by whim of tyrannical men and women. The Second Amendment does not give us the right to keep and bear arms; this is an inalienable right. The Second Amendment merely proscribes governments from trampling this inalienable right.
Even though the price of freedom sometimes is most steep – always – the cost of its alternative is steeper. So I do not decry the Second Amendment; do not seek edicts to mangle its intent. Even if I wanted to infringe it - to do so in the name of Mike and Josh – would dishonor them.
Yes, I am forever broken; yet unbowed. I choose liberty over tyranny. I choose to honor my murdered children. And, I implore you to do the same. Vote no on criminalizing honest citizens. Vote no on giving free reign to existing criminals.
Liberty isn’t cheap, but it is consistently under assault from the cheap emotionalism that demands we surrender it for promises of government-provided security.
There’s a reason the 2nd Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. The only “rethinking” (which always means, in the end, abolition) we need do about it is that the numerous controls placed on it over the years have given both criminals and government agents.
(thanks to Blake for the link to the fascist academic in the pussy suit)
“Mark Levin hammers ‘neo-statists’ Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and Karl Rove on immigration”
Seems he’s warming to (or rather, he’s more willing to bluntly express) the “losing more slowly,” “ruling class vs. the rest of us” tropes made so popular here on the fringes, where the unhelpful psychopathic smear merchants — out to question the integrity of honorable men whose realism was the brave stance in the face of GOP losses, as compared with easy reactionary anti-Obama, possibly racist positions taken by uncouth True Believers and Purists — have been “nudged” ever since they spoke out in the wake of Obama’s first victory.
Funny how so many of them — and I’m not including Levin, who has been here with us all along, but is only recently making noises about the death of the GOP — have gradually come around, isn’t it? From Good Man bromides to lately uncovering all the base and despicable actions of which leftists are not only capable, but willing? And yet we early adopters — Purists and filthy True Believers — remain on the fringes, a painful reminder to them, I suppose, of their own poorly-considered earlier positioning with respect to the Marxist cabal in power.
Pragmatism!
Audio below the fold.
Jeb Bush: the government is a solution provider. Embrace it!
And if the GOP wishes to remain viable, they’ll learn that and put the screws to all the limited government types who scare off the dependents, who we’ll never sell on liberty and self-sufficiency, those being but worn-out tropes of an American mythos that, like Reaganism, we need to put behind us.
Because forward!
– Is my rough paraphrase of the epitaph for the Republican Party that pandering hacks like Jeb Bush and the rest of the establicans are on a daily basis writing and then working to polish up so that it’s good and ready to be chiseled into the tombstone.
ICYMI: “NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls”
That’s right, the content of calls. Without the specific and targeted warrant we all assumed under FISA was required to obtain said content.
Meaning that either the President knew about the NSA’s ability to cull the content of calls without a warrant and condoned it, then lied to the American people in the most brazen way imaginable; or else he didn’t know, is overseeing yet another corrupt agency violating the constitutional protections of a free people, and should be asked specifically which is the case: were you lying, Mr President? Or were you so uninterested in the specifics of the scandal (receiving plenty of GOP cover) and so unconcerned about the fallout that, save for a few perfunctory reassurances that had no basis in fact, you were content to try to bullshit your way through this, not knowing for sure just what the NSA was up to?
But then, such questions require a mainstream press whose job it is to investigate and report the news. And what we have instead is largely a house organ of big government progressivism, trained to protect its favored candidates and skewer those who might do those favored candidates — or the movement’s favored causes (in this case, as with most progressive cases, the ends being more centralized control over the individual) — any kind of damage.
That is, propagandists and narrative gatekeepers for the cause of leftist Utopianism.
So I guess it’s left up to people like me to ask: which is it, Mr President? Were you yet again showing your contempt for the American people by lying through your teeth and assuming we’d take your phony reassurances as gospel? Or are you just totally incompetent and so disconnected from the daily realities of your office that you had no idea that your bullshitting could be so readily debunked?
(thanks to bh)
Establishment GOP to support farm bill that provides subsidies for wealthy “farmers” and does nothing to help struggling farmers
In other words, more GOP support for crony capitalism, corporatism, vote-buying, and spending well beyond our means — and screw those Americans who aren’t part of some special interest lobbying effort.
Q: What’s the easiest way to tell a Republican establishment congressperson apart from a Democrat congressperson?
A: Shut up, Hobbit, and get your unhelpful ass in line. Because Todd Akin. Jeb Bush / Chris Christie 2016: if you didn’t like Mitt Romney, wait’ll you see OUR record for bipartisan compromise!
“Sen. Boxer: Take Money To Build Border Fence And Spend It On Immigrant Healthcare”
Or, if you like more apt headlines, “Sen Boxer: Slackjawed American xenophobes, nativists, and racists should stop worrying about keeping noble undocumented pre-Americans from entering the country illegally and start worrying about how they might work longer and harder to pay for the health care of these heroic border jumpers once they’ve expertly avoided our fascist border patrol agents and made it safely into the shadows from which we then must free them, though in the mean time they agree to cast illegal votes for Democrats in exchange for government-enforced wealth redistribution plans that harm slackjawed American xenophobes, nativists, and racists, while enriching and empowering the best among us, the virtuous Other, who does the jobs slackjawed American xenophobes, nativists, and racists refuse to do.”
Happy Father’s Day! [Darleen Click]
To all the Dads, Granddads, Greats, Uncles, and big brothers who step into the unique and critical role of Father …
Thank you.
You get a lot of lip-service from people who really just want you to shut-up and go away and let The State take care of business. Your only role, of course, is to create wealth to support them.
But every tear you dry, every backyard game of catch and teaching to ride a two-wheeler bike, to rough-housing before bed to leading Grace at the dinner table … you are essential to making a family a family.
Bravo.
Now here’s a small clip I extracted from the years of family movies my maternal grandpa took on his trusty Bell & Howell 8mm Magic Eye movie camera. My parents converted them to VHS in 1994 (where they acquired the funky music), my sister copied them to DVD in 2010. I grabbed two minutes from 1961 here, maternal grandparents, parents, me (brunette kid with missing teeth hamming it up) and my younger sister.
Oh the heteronormality!!
1961 from Darleen Click on Vimeo.
All your children are belong to us [Darleen Click]
The triumphal yet shrill bleating from the Left over the FDA’s approval of Plan-B one-step for over-the-counter purchase with no age restriction is as depressing as it is linguistically and morally incoherent. A fine example of such predictable piffle is Cathleen London’s piece Plan B for all girls — science finally trumps politics and emotion
This decision allows science to trump politics and emotion.Plan B One step is a single dose of levonorgestrel, a hormone used in oral contraceptive pills (OCPs), that when taken within 3 days of unprotected sexual activity is effective in reducing the chance of pregnancy.
It works in a similar matter to oral contraceptives that are taken daily (though less effective than regular use of OCPs).
It is NOT an abortifacient. (sic)
London takes the materialistic view of humanity .. “science” as the substitute for ethics, principles and morality. Even as science, itself, is only a process in understanding how the world works and has nothing to say about why or whether something is good or evil, London posits that because Plan-B works, any ethical or moral implications by allowing fifth graders unfettered access to it is unworthy of discussion.
And London gets there by lying about Plan-B not being an abortifacient. It works how she describes as preventing ovulation, but that is only one way in which it works —
If a woman takes Plan B after she already has ovulated for the month, the hormones in the emergency contraception pills will make a fertilized egg unable to attach to the wall of her uterus. Without this action, the resulting embryo, if it exists, will be expelled during menstruation without the woman ever knowing.
Ironically, just as we’ve seen during testimony in the Gosnell trial or from abortionist LeRoy Carhart’s description of an unborn baby as “meat in a crock pot”, London feels it necessary to lie about the science of what is taking place in order to convince the Patriarchal masses that science triumphs!
And just in case you Victorian blue-noses, who question the right of little girls who still play with Barbies or My Little Ponies to having sex behind the swings in the playground, London calls out what you are really engaged in
If a young girl is sexually active, whether by choice or not, she should not be denied reproductive rights. She should be allowed to make timely reproductive decisions about her own body within the dictates of her religious and moral codes.To deny young adolescents access to medically necessary and proven care is essentially reproductive slavery.
On a related note, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius makes clear that The State will not tolerate your refusal to hand over your infants and toddlers.
Children who don’t get a pre-kindergarten education, ideally from birth to age 5, might fall behind and “may as well drop out” by third grade, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday at an event to garner support for President Barack Obama’s $75-billion proposal to increase pre-school enrollment across the country. [...]“We’ve got to make sure that kids by the time they hit kindergarten aren’t so far behind that they don’t ever catch up, and by the third grade they may as well drop out because they’re never going to catch up,” Sebelius said. “That’s the snapshot that we have today.”
President Obama put out a “comprehensive plan” in his State of the Union speech, she said, “a birth-through-5 [plan], recognizing that you can’t just start with 4-year-olds, but they’re very important, you have to really look at infants and toddlers, you have to do early interventions so parents can be the best and first teacher. You have to have a way that whatever place a parent chooses for their child in an out-of-home placement has high quality.”
Life of Julia, indeed.
“HEY, KIDS! Try the Schumer-Rubio Immigration Maze Game!”
It’s all the rage!
Incidentally, it’s come to my attention that in pro-”comprehensive immigration reform” ads, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Democrats pandering to the unions and a host of RINOs shilling for corporatists, are all billing themselves as “conservatives” these days.
Which I suspect really screws up the political continuum, placing leftist cronyism and totalitarianism on the right, leaving the left entirely free of all but anarcho communists, and driving constitutionalism, classical liberalism, and libertarianism to some hitherto unexplored area of the spectrum where presumably unbelievers in Constitutional fetishism determined to beat back plans for secession are lined up and put to death by canons built to fire balled up Bible passages soaked in crude oil and then baked in the same ovens used to dispose of women who demand shoes and driving privileges.
Brave New Worlds! Behold!
