Scalia, he dead, dead, dead.
The damage that this man was allowed to do and did to the Republic cannot be over estimated. He was dead-set on extirpating and destroying the very idea of "progress" as a function of governance a legitimate interest of government. Turning back the clock wasn't enough. He wanted to smash the clock itself.
The man was a monster, truly one of the most uncompromising and unblessed the Court has ever hosted -- and there have been many of his ilk over the centuries. Scalia took uncompromisingly destructive ideology and legal theories much further, however, in his overwhelming need and desire to end this experiment in constitutional self government once and for all.
He was not a constitutionalist. He was a theocratic monarchist. He played with the deeply flawed constitution under which we are supposedly governed, mocking it, mocking its provisions and rendering his decisions in the most harmful manner he could come up with.
Some legal scholars lionized him for it. They called him brilliant. No one of high rank on the bench had approached the questions of law the way he did.
A case can be made that by speaking, writing and ruling the way he did, he highlighted the many and often gross flaws in the constitution and left the door open for revision and amendment, but the man basically did not believe in the merit of constitutional self-government in the first place. So ultimately, any attempt to correct the flaw he so maliciously exploited would have been futile in his mind because the premise of the undertaking was in fundamental error at the outset. There was no way to "correct" it.
He's dead now, and there is a sense of foreboding and as well as relief. He can no longer directly influence the Court -- over which he appears to have had an outsized influence for decades, most appallingly in the case of the Court's lawless interference in Bush v Gore. The struggle to replace him is already turning into a constitutional crisis, however, one that may not be resolved short of coup.
I don't mourn Scalia's passing but I'm not looking forward to the next few months without his malevolent presence on the Court, either.
It's remarkable how his death suddenly and miraculously altered his record in the minds of everyone, "the left" included. The guy was a creep and forever demolished the idea of a non-politicized Supreme Court. Dangerous as Cheney, but in a different branch of government.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt Cheney's activities will also likewise be rewritten and his passing mourned in excess by the retarded media and politicians as well. (Which doesn't make me look forward to his demise any the less, however. He's one person I really hope I outlive and I'll tolerate the bullshit just to have him gone from this mortal sphere.)
Only the good die young; too sad, too true.
Oh, and while you know how much I dislike Oblahblah, I have to say whoever wrote the tweet that the Republicans apparently believe that a black president should only get 3/5 of his term really nailed it in a scathing way.
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