Let me preface this by saying that, as with the 9-0 ruling on the Recess and Appointments Clauses, I’m not sure this is quite the victory we wish it would be, mostly because the Court didn’t really address the core first amendment principle of freedom of association. But when you know going in you’ll have 4 votes against and you don’t know if Anthony Kennedy ate bad clams or John Roberts is feeling like he needs a pet on the head from the WaPo, you take what you can get.’
I do know this, though. Sandra Fluke is irate. And that’s a win no matter what the context.
However, there is one I’d like to discuss in more detail, because it foreshadows what’s already being systemically instituted by the left as a bit of legal reasoning, even though it is not and is clearly and defiantly at odds with the very idea of individual sovereignty. Fittingly, it was offered up by Harry Reid, who argued “It’s time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women” — the obvious suggestion being that there is a separate “logic” (vertical or horizontal, I can never remember which) that comes with your plumbing, and one can’t presume to rule on the other, unless of course we had 5 female justices ruling on things that affect men and women both, in which case that would of course be fine. Because of the because.
This idea that individual men cannot interpret or apply law that affects a particular (and non-uniform) identity group — after all, it seems to me that the 5 men spoke for an awful lot of conservative / constitutionalist women with this decision, although I suppose those kinds of women are the real kind, suffering as they do from false consciousness and their embeddedness in a patriarchal paradigm that is rigged to thwart their liberties — is the kind of thing that Said pushed in his Orientalism: the only authentic voice for a particular group comes from those who adopt the official group narrative and will it into ascension. All others are forbidden to comment on the “truths” that then belong to the group narrative — or if they do so, they do so with no standing, and therefore illegitimately.
Precisely the kind of thing that leads to Sharia law being instituted, or ridiculous special dispensation for some aggrieved identity bloc or other under the false and poisonous assertion that the ascendent group narrative is representative of the entirety of the group, reducing individuals putatively within the group who disagree to apostates, heretics, Uncle Toms, “anti-feminists,” and so on.
This is the kind of thinking the comes with the acceptance of consensus meaning and a will to power, the very linguistic substructure I’ve been writing about for years that we need to root out of our epistemology by its twisted, tangled, vegetation killing tendrils.
It is “thinking” like this, after all, that leads to ludicrous and (to me) clearly unconstitutional policies like district set-asides for black politicians, or a quota system for representation — one that resembles a crayon box on the outside but, where it matters, represents a crushing uniformity of opinion, with each group representative both cognizant of and supportive toward the political weight of controlling an identity bloc and dictating its public interests.
Which is just a long way of saying it’s about time Harry Reid stopped deciding who should be speaking for women — particularly, given his argument, when he’s a man making the suggestion. The patriarchal oppressor and penis waver.
But then, trying to reason with Harry Reid is like trying to teach a rutabaga to play the flute: It can be done, but not without turning the rutabaga into something sentient and capable of thought first.
You are giving Harry Reid way too much credit in comparing him to a rutabaga.
PLEASE – don’t mention Harry Reid and penis waving without a Groupon for Mind Bleach…
My visual imagination is unfortunately vivid – my only hope is to imagine him waving a rutabaga, instead.
“And what real thing do you want to be when you grow up little miss?”
“I want to be my identity group.”
I am an identity group of one. Offend me at your peril.
It gets tricky when identity groups are by definition ” arbitrary ‘social constructions’ . . . “, the buggers.
*** The trouble is that the two do not work in concert. If “woman” is defined by society, by social construction, then women are dependent on society and not independent. They are defined not by their voices but by their voices’ being heard, not by their accomplishments but by being recognized for their accomplishments, not by their own intent but by their environment, hostile or friendly. One may see then what has happened to feminism. In answer to the eternal complaint of women that men do not listen to them, feminism had the ambition for the first time in the history of man to compel him to listen. The unintended result is that women are defined by their listeners, by their desire to imitate men, not by themselves. The feminist desire for independence is defeated by the feminist principle of social construction that was designed and adopted to achieve it. ***
I’m still wondering if Harry Reid is guilty of the many, many accusations of pederasty leveled against him.
READER POLL!
The other option is to relabel a sentient being capable of thought a rutabaga, but then that kind of defeats the purpose of teaching a rutabaga to play a flute.
“Offend me at your peril.”
No, I’d rather do it over by your place.
Rush was reading from Ruth “Buzzy” Ginsberg’s dissent, wherein she said something about how the Court “ventured into a minefield with this ruling.” And I said, “No, you mewling hint; the Federal government ventured into a minefield when it decided that it had purview of the compensation that a business gives its employees.”
Objection! Counsel for Hobby Lobby.
feminism had the ambition for the first time in the history of man to compel him to listen.
<feminist>But because men hold All The Power, the only way women could achieve power parity is to make him listen.</feminist>
The only time they’re telling the truth is when they’re talking about accruing power to themselves while depriving it of their enemies. All else is propaganda.
Ruth “Buzzy” Ginsberg’s
Rush needs to stop insulting the marvelous Ruth Buzzi. She favorited one of my Tweets.
Do,
There’s glory for you.
Di, dammit! Stupid autocorrect!
Obama finds another job he’s infinitely better at than any of those who do it.
….. that’s something that we’ll get to.
– You’ll be lucky if you make it to the end of your reign Waffles.
The Constitutional Lawyer That S[h]its In The Oval Office (TM) couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel if he thinks that there’s anything in the Constitution that has bearing on the question of whether any group of women of any size has a “right” to free contraceptives. Dipstick.
From the linked item Geoff quoted above:
I think that the most Orwellian of Orwellian phrases that clutter up political discourse these days is the one that refers to contreception as health care. Only slightly less Orwellian is preventative health care, as if pregnancy, like the flu, was a disease to be prevented.
That bit about freedom on the other hand, is also Orwellian. Freedom, in the sense these would be overlords use it, is the freedom from responsibility, the freedom to be a ward, a kept creature of the state rather than a free man or woman. It’s the freedom the Party of IngSoc, the freedom to be a slave.
Freedom is slavery.
The real problem is, these abortifacients were mandated by godless leftists to be distributed for “free”. There is no such thing as “free”; someone else is burdened both the physical cost (not much, actually, compared to the legal bills and the adverse negative publicity Hobby Lobby will suffer) and the spiritual cost (much more hurtful to an individual, or to a family who follows a narrow path and still run a corporation). The Godless Left deemed these deadly drugs should be handed out “free”, and being godless, none of ’em can begin to comprehend the spiritual costs and mental anguish associated with distributing them. Good news indeed that Hobby Lobby stood up to these animals, and that there’s 5 good men left at SCOTUS.
Four good men and a fifth blown on a favorable wind in the right direction.
Good news indeed that Hobby Lobby stood up to these animals, and that there’s 5 good men left at SCOTUS.
What causes me to despair even worse than normal is that there were four of the nine who started out from the position that the government can force privately owned companies to violate the religious precepts of their owners, as though people give up their Constitutional rights when seeking to earn a living. Lucky for us that the coin that Kennedy flipped came up “heads” today, because that is never a given…
Meanwhile the “Constitutional Lawyer” (chortle) currently kicking his feet up on the Resolute desk is looking for ways to punish those five and cause another Constitutional crisis.
I’m pretty sure he’s too busy watching the world cup up in the residence to have time to kick up his feet on the Resolute desk for anything right now.
He only watches soccer because it’s what people like him do.
…and because soccer is soooooo not-American.
Only ‘6’?
Why, that’s my number, don’t ja know.