I’ve been warning about this for years: the surrender of meaning to committed and politicized interpretive communities — which can only come about once we as a society have legitimated an incoherent idea about how language functions — will lead inevitably to a kind of coordinated mob effort to play at victim in order to turn anything they find unpalatable into potential objects of “hate” that “threaten” them, with that
language / intentionalism
January 13, 2013
“A conspiracy so immense”: ideological commitment and the timidity of pragmatic politics
“What will it take for the mainstream media to cover the progressive movement?” Washington Free Beacon: Let’s pretend that in the spring of 2012 Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, John Engler of the Business Roundtable, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association began to organize an assembly of right-leaning groups. Let’s pretend that in the months since there had been not one
January 10, 2013
The curse of right-wing textualism
Revealed, yet again — and yet again by a “conservative” lawyer. Starting to see a trend? [H]ere’s what we’re talking about. 31 U.S.C. § 5112(k): The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time. […] Is the platinum coin legal? Several folks
October 18, 2012
Immersion criticism, intentionalism, and textualism
This is the first time I’ve heard the term immersion criticism, but as a descriptor of the interpretive methodology it’s trying to capture, it’s perfectly apt. Essentially, immersion criticism is nothing more, really, than intensive close reading of a text — but it represents a kind of nearly obsessive intentionalism that I think might be interesting to those who’ve read me on the subject over the years. And that’s because
October 16, 2012
“Justice Stevens: Second Amendment is ‘no obstacle’ to banning automatic weapons”
…and that’s because to “liberal” Justices who practice a form of Living Constitutional textualism whereby the intent of the founders and framers can be ignored and the application of signifiers can legitimately be rewritten — that is, turned into new signs entirely, fundamentally altering the text and creating an entirely new text, one written by the interpreter — to meet new contexts or social goals, aren’t constrained by anything other
October 14, 2012
“Stealth Jihad: New York Review of Books calls for criminalizing of criticism of Islam”
Atlas Shrugs — who the respectable right has learned to run from — argues persuasively against the stances being adopted more and more by the self-appointed sophisticates on the left who, at heart, follow an ideological path that as I’ve pointed out on innumerable occasions leads inevitably to authoritarianism and tyranny. And its to that point that I’ll speak here, commenting briefly on an excerpt from Malise Ruthven’s “Can Islam
October 5, 2012
On intentionalism and “boys”
Kevin Baker, Harper’s: [Obama]didn’t show a spark of anger, even when Romney slyly found a way to call him a boy, comparing Obama’s statements to the sorts of childish lies his ‘five boys’ used to tell. How the right’s hard-core racists must have howled at that! Mitt, at long last, has secured his base. Well, what can I say? We allow such arguments because we allow (incorrectly and from a
September 26, 2012
My “mental health” problems, revealed!
Note: Inside baseball. Read at your own peril. **** Some folks on Twitter yesterday expressed concern/confusion/dismay over my repeated and pointed attempts to contact both Michelle Malkin and Allah Pundit — with limited success. Actually, it went further that just my Twitter entreaties, which I was using as a performative to make the point crystal clear: I have been marginalized and blacklisted in some sort of way, and I want
September 24, 2012
The rape of intent: “Austin Man Hangs Empty Chair From Tree Symbolizing President Obama”
The proof of your racism is the fact that we see it. You can deny it — as “investigative journalists” we’ll fight for your right to burn a flag or shit on a police car or burn Bushhitler puppetes in effigy, after all — but once you hang a folding chair from a tree, regardless of whether or not you used twine or a lynching rope complete with noose, well,