Thoughts on policy, history, faith, baseball when I get around to it, waterfowl, and life in general by a junior attorney who'd much rather have Jonah Goldberg's job. Or possibly Darin Erstad's.

 
Reading Justice Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, decided today, brought back memories of the time when, in a constitutional law class, I gagged over what Scalia deliciously calls the "sweet mystery of life" passage in Planned Parenthood v. Casey -- the one that reads, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." (The Court then went on to hold that the decision to define one's own concept of existence to deny the separate existence of a human fetus, and express that definition by destroying it, was a fundamental constitutional right.)

Bullfeathers. First, my own present view of the abortion issue is that it ought to be legal (though it is not required to be so under the Constitution) for all purposes early in pregnancy, but the more developed the fetus, the more serious must be the reason for abortion. If 'twere done, in other words, 'twas best 'twere done quickly. Once you start having to break bones, cause pain, and extinguish rudimentary human consciousness (i.e. after a few weeks of pregnancy), you ought to have a damned good reason for it.

Flakiness -- as in when a person is in denial over the pregnancy and waits forever to do something about it -- doesn't cut it. We don't excuse flakiness in other contexts. Negligence law routinely bankrupts people, not on the basis of any malice on their part, but because they failed to fulfill duties expected of them. Why should a woman who panics and leaves the scene of a fatal car accident (hardly less stressful a situation than an unplanned pregnancy) be thrown in jail, while flakiness in the abortion context has to be coddled? (This, of course, doesn't apply to later-term abortions because of health dangers that don't immediately appear.)

Anyway, I digress. The point is that even if the right to define existence is at the heart of liberty, it does not follow that any particular action can be justified by the recognition of that right. I may have the right to define existence, as Descartes did, as a function of thought -- "I think, therefore I am" -- and then conclude that the less a person thinks, the less his existence needs to be recognized. And then I might conclude that a person who leads a "lesser" existence, in terms of the extent of his consciousness, or thought -- infants, Alzheimer's patients, Pacifica Radio listeners -- may be disregarded, or dispensed with, more readily than people with more advanced consciousness and therefore (according to this definition of "existence") more advanced existence.

I would be completely within my rights to think this way (and completely wrong). But that doesn't translate into my right to act based on this thinking. I can't track down a poster on DemocraticUnderground.com and whack him for his kidneys because since he doesn't cogito as well, he doesn't sum as much. (Yes, that's incorrect, but if I used the correct Latin mood, even if I knew it, nobody would catch the reference except for a couple of NRO guys.)

When I first read Casey, it added yet another sun-bleached brick to the towering ziggurat of my conviction (cool 'phor, huh?) that with the exception of a couple of justices who actually analyze the law and try to apply its meanings (and are routinely despised for it), the average Supreme Court justice is a politician, not a judge. They start with the end in mind. Their opinions are not analysis of the law, but nothing more than plaster to coat the studs and chicken wire of their predetermined decisions. {/metaphor generator}
posted by Thomas at 12:15 PM

 
Having recently surveyed a selection of hard-left web sites and publications, and having also discussed politics with some generally pleasant liberal acquaintances of mine, I've come to the conclusion that the combination of President Bush's close election, with the constitutional flukes in Florida, and his adminstration's response to September 11 have pushed left-liberals completely over the edge. They are actually enraged in their hostility for Bush and everything he stands for, to the point that they accept and perpetuate patent falsehoods about administration policy without a moment's thought of engaging the critical-thinking faculties on which they tend to (generally unjustifiably) pride themselves.

The "Bush lied about WMD" refrain, for example. Granted, when they've been wrong about virtually everything about the war in Iraq, it's hard to fault human beings for clinging to the one straw they think they still have. But while perceptive conservatives concluded early on that President Clinton was, with respect to his personal character, a pig, we tended not to be quite so vehement about calling him a liar in the particular circumstance of l'affaire Lewinsky until we actually saw his ... er, evidence on her blue dress. For one thing, when you accuse someone of lying and you turn out to be wrong, you look not only petty but stupid, as Bill Simon found out when he thought he had ironclad proof Gray Davis lied about accepting contributions in the governor's office. (He hadn't.)

Not only that, but conspiracy thinking is running rampant on the left. And that's what strikes me as being the real evidence of real danger: The left is approximating the anti-government far right of the early nineties. There are already hard leftist "direct action" groups that commit violence against property. The way the left is moving, it may be only a matter of time before there arises a left-wing Timothy McVeigh.*

*Not that Timothy McVeigh was entirely free from leftist ideology himself. Along with his anti-government hatred, he also had a beef with powerful corporations and was apparently somewhat into "animal rights," both of which things are generally associated with the left. Interestingly enough, a certain German who resembled Charlie Chaplin also combined his generally far-right ideology with these far-left ideologies. posted by Thomas at 5:13 PM

 
From Mark Steyn:

If I understand correctly, the British, having won the war, are now demanding a recount. Across the length and breadth of the realm, the people are as one: now that the war's out of the way we can go back to bitching and whining that Blair hasn't made the case for it.

This is all very odd. In Kirkuk the other day, they found another mass grave, this time with the bodies of 200 children who had been buried alive. Yawn. Doesn't count. Wake me if they find a toxic warhead among the teeny skulls. The naysayers were wrong on so much - millions of refugees, Vietnam quagmire, Stalingrad, etc - you can't blame them for clinging to the one little straw that hasn't shrivelled up and slipped between their fingers: Come on, Tony, where's the WMD?

posted by Thomas at 10:18 AM

 
So far, my loyal readership appears to consist of myself and my little sister. (Who's a brilliant and accomplished artist, and not really little, but acknowledging she's in her twenties means I'm in my thirties, and I'm not entirely reconciled to that fact just yet. Especially since I'm not in the Senate yet, or a published author, or anything else that I was supposed to have done by now.) posted by Thomas at 3:53 PM

 
Starting a new job tomorrow, which pays the princely sum of $5,000 more than my last one. At least I can mention some larger clients on my resume now. I feel like I've moved from AA to triple-A. Slowly climbing the ladder, I guess. At this rate, I'll be working at O'Melveny in approximately 75 years.

I'm repeating my mantra: Blog entries should be small and frequent. So far, everything I've posted here has been long and infrequent. (Except "infrequent" can mean "frequent," too, can't it? Kind of like "flammable" and "inflammable." Who invented this language, anyway?) posted by Thomas at 3:47 PM