The inestimable Joe Bob Briggs over at Taki's Magazine offered a resounding cri de coeur wishing heartily that supreme court judges were drawn more widely than from the Ivy League. He also wishes the partisan nature of the court could somehow be minimized. I sympathize, I really do. The trouble is that even if judges of towering Olympian integrity actually exist, they would nevertheless be slashed by a thousand cuts of partisan ferocity during the confirmation process.
That's just how it works now, and attempts to roll back partisanship in the process are, I'm afraid, doomed to failure. For the major parties to attempt this would be seen as unilateral disarmament in the boiling culture war of the present moment, and rightly so. Predictably I view Democrats as being far more venal and vicious in their integrity free blistering panic to prevent a largely conservative court than Republicans would conversely be, but they are not immune to the tendency either.
That said, I'm entirely confident that it simply does not matter who the jurist in question is if he was nominated by Trump, even if the nominee was a transgender card carrying member of the Socialist Worker's Party and wore a pussy hat to the hearings. By the same token if Obama had nominated, say, Ben Shapiro, Republicans would likely take a dim view of the move. They wouldn't have Borked him into oblivion like Democrats would, but they wouldn't have been thrilled simply because Obama nominated him. Democrats might have been aghast, but would have publicly joined the NRA before they dared stymie the will of Saint Obama of Kenwood.
In any case we are well and truly stuck with rampant partisanship in the nominating process. We can bemoan it all we like, but we can't simply cash out and go home in high dudgeon because the game will continue without us. The stakes are much too high for us to decline to play. What does worry me is that after this particular confirmation auto-da-fé it may be hard to find anyone worth more than a pitcher of warm spit to volunteer for the savagely corrosive and disheartening process.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Day...Oh...
Well here it is again. 9/11 is supposed to be our rear view now, but it sneaks up on you. You're going along more or less just fine then you realize it's that day, and once more a sickening pall descends on your soul. There should be a statute of limitations on feeling this way, but for many of us that limit is not on the horizon. Perhaps if I lived another fifty years the anguish might be diluted to a level similar to, for instance, indirect memories of Pearl Harbor for my generation, but probably not.
That memorial anguish is still strong in those who were alive at the time, but that direct memory of the fear, anger, disgust, and rage engendered by Pearl Harbor is rapidly passing into the mist along with the so-called Greatest Generation. Will those of us who consider the appalling events of 9/11 to be the signature event of our lives carry the feelings of that day to our graves? For myself most assuredly.
Yet for many it will not. A lack of disgust and fear characterizes the non-feelings of, at a rough guess, nearly half the country. You may guess which half I mean. This can only be described as denial, a word that has unfortunately been devalued nearly into uselessness, but nevertheless it is a denial of what 9/11 meant. And what it still means is the realization that hatred of western civilization continues unabated to this day.
Many of the deniers contend that the events subsequent to 9/11 have caused all the trouble in the middle-east, but they conveniently forget that 9/11 was the apex of civilizational hatred, not its beginning. If the last seventeen years had never happened they would still hate us. Before 9/11 they hated us not because of what we had done, but because of what we are, and they still do. Memory deniers realize this and have spent the last seventeen years attempting to rearrange our civilization more to the liking of bad actors of the radical Islamist persuasion. It's not working, because it can't work.
The western world will never be able to sufficiently abase itself to please Islamist militancy. I could qualify that statement but I refuse to do so. Make no mistake, many in our governing classes have given this abasement their best shot, but it will never work until western civilization retreats from its consensual republican roots so much that even the most committed radical leftist western civ. hater would quail before the prospect of living in such a degenerate polity. In other words, never.
So feel the pain of 9/11 as ye will, and endeavor to keep gimlet eyes in the watchtowers. There is a lot riding on our civilization confidence. In other words, everything.
That memorial anguish is still strong in those who were alive at the time, but that direct memory of the fear, anger, disgust, and rage engendered by Pearl Harbor is rapidly passing into the mist along with the so-called Greatest Generation. Will those of us who consider the appalling events of 9/11 to be the signature event of our lives carry the feelings of that day to our graves? For myself most assuredly.
Yet for many it will not. A lack of disgust and fear characterizes the non-feelings of, at a rough guess, nearly half the country. You may guess which half I mean. This can only be described as denial, a word that has unfortunately been devalued nearly into uselessness, but nevertheless it is a denial of what 9/11 meant. And what it still means is the realization that hatred of western civilization continues unabated to this day.
Many of the deniers contend that the events subsequent to 9/11 have caused all the trouble in the middle-east, but they conveniently forget that 9/11 was the apex of civilizational hatred, not its beginning. If the last seventeen years had never happened they would still hate us. Before 9/11 they hated us not because of what we had done, but because of what we are, and they still do. Memory deniers realize this and have spent the last seventeen years attempting to rearrange our civilization more to the liking of bad actors of the radical Islamist persuasion. It's not working, because it can't work.
The western world will never be able to sufficiently abase itself to please Islamist militancy. I could qualify that statement but I refuse to do so. Make no mistake, many in our governing classes have given this abasement their best shot, but it will never work until western civilization retreats from its consensual republican roots so much that even the most committed radical leftist western civ. hater would quail before the prospect of living in such a degenerate polity. In other words, never.
So feel the pain of 9/11 as ye will, and endeavor to keep gimlet eyes in the watchtowers. There is a lot riding on our civilization confidence. In other words, everything.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Senate Scotus Hocus Potus
Supreme Court justice nominee approval hearings have become an utter farce. There are no minds to be changed, no deals to be made, and the answers to any questions asked by the Democrats are completely irrelevant to the pre-ordained proceedings. It is one hundred percent pure and pointless political theater. The whole affair has sunk so low that the Democrats are importing screeching protesters intended to disrupt the proceedings.
These days if a nominee has not plainly evidenced political leanings well to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Democrats automatically rise in full-throated opposition and will attempt to smear the nominee by any and all means possible. This baleful situation precedes the Democrats' rampaging Trump Derangement Syndrome, but the putrid intensity of their Trump hatred does serve to amplify their keening high dudgeon.
In truth I suspect that, even if Trump had nominated someone that makes Ginsburg look like Oliver Wendel Holmes, they would be mercilessly savaged simply because they were Trump's choice. That Judge Kavanaugh is a mildly conservative constitutionalist is completely beyond the pale, and thus must be opposed with every fiber of the Democrats' being, regardless of his qualifications and strong approval by the ABA. Very sad, but hardly unexpected. As Uncle Walter might have said forty years ago, "That's the way it is. September fifth, 2018.
These days if a nominee has not plainly evidenced political leanings well to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Democrats automatically rise in full-throated opposition and will attempt to smear the nominee by any and all means possible. This baleful situation precedes the Democrats' rampaging Trump Derangement Syndrome, but the putrid intensity of their Trump hatred does serve to amplify their keening high dudgeon.
In truth I suspect that, even if Trump had nominated someone that makes Ginsburg look like Oliver Wendel Holmes, they would be mercilessly savaged simply because they were Trump's choice. That Judge Kavanaugh is a mildly conservative constitutionalist is completely beyond the pale, and thus must be opposed with every fiber of the Democrats' being, regardless of his qualifications and strong approval by the ABA. Very sad, but hardly unexpected. As Uncle Walter might have said forty years ago, "That's the way it is. September fifth, 2018.
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