Say Anything Blog

Ugh...you’re right.

I was lead astray by the first quote here (which I read somewhere else last night).

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Anyway, I honestly don’t see Roe getting overturned any time soon. Roberts simply does not change the SCOTUS dynamics enough for anyone to say that any meaningful change is coming.

People that say that seem to think that the Supreme Court can just hand down a decision willy-nilly.

For any part of Roe to be overturned, the case would have to be accepted and heard by the Court. Cases that directly challenge the Roe decision don’t get there all that often.

From what I have read, Roberts has said that Roe is now the established law of the land, and won’t be overturned.

It almost seems to me that this is the guy Bush has had in mind for a while, and expected to be nominating him to fill Rehnquist’s seat.

Ha!  I win!

Congratulations!

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

From what I have read, Roberts has said that Roe is now the established law of the land, and won’t be overturned.

I believe that quote was taken from when he was an appellete court judge.  And in that capacity, he Roe IS the law of the land because the SC, his superior, had said so.  The truth is no one is sure one way or the other if he’s willing to vote to overturn it.  Based on the company he keeps, his religious views, and the type of candidate Bush was looking for, he’s anti-Roe, but we don’t know for sure…

MI: Ha! I win!

I’m confused.  There are door prizes here?

From what I’ve read about him, he’s a damn good judge, and not an ideologue.  Specifically, look to the case where he upheld the arrest of a 12 year old girl for eating a french fry (violating a law banning food on the metro).  While he upheld the arrest, he made known that he wasn’t personally pleased with the way they handled her.

“The District court described the policies that led to her arrest as ‘foolish,’ and indeed the policies were changed after those responsible endured the sort of publicity reserved for adults who make young girls cry,” [Roberts] wrote.

”The question before us, however, is not whether these policies were a bad idea, but whether they violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Like the District court, we conclude that they did not, and accordingly we affirm.”

Two months after the arrest, and following a torrent of bad publicity, the transit agency revised its policy and said that children under 18 who committed minor offenses would instead be enrolled in a program run in cooperation with school authorities and other city officials.

That tells me that he’s willing to place personal opinions and gut feeling aside and just make rulings based on the law.  Just like he should. I don’t know which way he might hypothetically go on Roe vs. Wade, but I’m convinced that he would arrive at that decision based on the law, not his personal convictions.  I don’t begrudge a judge for their rulings, so long as their ruling is soundly based in the law.  If someone can convince me that a right to abortion exists in the constitution, by all means, I’d support that decision.  The majority opinions in Roe vs. Wade fail to sway me.  It was a bad ruling.  But that’s not to say that I wouldn’t be convinced by someone else’s legal argument for it.

If someone can convince me that a right to abortion exists in the constitution, by all means, I’d support that decision.

Precisely…

But not everything is spelled out in the constitution, and on purpose. That’s why we have justices who interpret it.

Justicices to interpret what IS there, not to decided if something extra SHOULD be there… The Constitution lays out our basic guaranteed rights and if something is not there that we want there, there is a spelled out process for amending the Constitutuion…

Yeah, you can’t interpret something that isn’t there.  If it said in the constitution that the government has no business regulating matters relating to personal health, I can see how someone might interpret that to give the right to an abortion.

You can’t ignore parts of the constitution or create imaginary parts of it on a whim.  If you can rule based on what is already in there, fine.  If not, then it isn’t a constitutional matter.

Even if Roe vs. Wade were reversed, abortion would still be legal in many states.  If this isn’t good enough for you, make a constitutional ammendment!

I do have a good argument - but I have first a facile rhetorical question/bumper-sticker that serves as a lead in to the argument:

Where does the Constitution guarantee the right to life?

Go look it up. Graphictruth: I’ll wait over here.

At the time, such a guarantee was patently absurd; death was common, infant mortality ran about, what, 40 or 50 percent? Death in childbirth was common enough to be a social constant. One cannot assure a “right” to life in the face of the disagreement of Providence and Nature. Nor is it really any more true today. We have simply altered the odds somewhat, for those that can afford it.

I dryly observe that right you have to buy is not a liberty but a luxury. To honor that concept beyond this particular breach would require some form of universally-accessable health care at a very high standard, much like that of every OTHER civilized nation that counts itself a member of the First World.

The Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are all things that can only be guaranteed to the extent that we agree to not interfere with the lives and choices of other persons.

One cannot shoot Death in the face, but one can put a bullet up the nose of a nosy neighbor, and the constitution speaks of such right as can be defended in such a manner. The rights enumerated unenumerated under Amendment X are the rights of individuals which may be asserted and successfully defended by individual choice - even when the result of such choice is death.

“Give me Liberty, or give me Death.” Patrick Henry, of course. Death, as a foreseeable consequence of constitutionally-protected action
was not at all outside the scope of our Founder’s actions. Consider also the Affair of Honor between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, the offended party, had the honor of the first shot, and reportedly chose to discharge his weapon into the air. Burr chose otherwise, and thought Hamilton a fool for having acted as he did.

The most fundimental right our consitution gives us is the right to say “no.” There is the imlicit recognition that people can, and indeed will choose to resist “persuasion” with force. There is no exception made for foolish choices, no distinction made between popular and unpopular outcomes - nor does it free you from the logical consequences of any choice you make.

The Constitution does not defend your right to make personal decisions nearly everyone agrees with and will gladly help you with. There’s no need go guarentee what any tyrant would happily enforce; a general predictable conformity that most people are happy enough to tolerate is the hallmark of many fairly successful benevolant dictatorships. Franco’s Spain, the France of DeGaulle and indeed, Castro’s Cuba are all examples of rulers who managed to please enough of the people, often enough to die of old age.

For that matter, those who disagreed with our founders as to the necessity for revolution were themselves proven correct - it was indeed possible to work within the system for positive, incremental change. The Commonwealth nations that have not actually established their own Constitutions have indeed evolved into soverign states that seem to me much like the States our founders had in mind, with a very tenious and almost theoretical link to the Queen and Parlement.

Still, our founders may be forgiven for wanting to see that happy day in person - nor can the example of the United States be dismissed as unimportant in that evolution.

Our founders did not see the role of government as being a guarantor of comfort, of privilege or of safety, and I’m afraid there’s nothing to indicate they considered embreos, foetuses, or even children “under the age of reason” to be exceptions to a rule that they applied to themselves.

What it does guarantee is your right to act in your own individual interest regardless of what other individuals or groups may think, and forbids the government from imposing broad penalties upon folks for acting as they will, save when those actions have consequences that affect others, and only then in very narrow and strictly tailored circumstances.

Now, my full argument involves a great deal more than the above, but it boils down to a simple question of jurisdiction. Those that must face the consequences of a choice must in justice be permitted to choose what consequences they can best accept. Should the state interfere in this matter, then it becomes incumbent on the state to accept all consequential costs and responsibilities that would otherwise be those of the individual to discharge.

This is not to say that it’s outside of the realm of the state to provide a range of options that a large majority of people are willing enough to provide for, in hopes that will influence choices in favor of an outcome most would prefer.

But, alas, far too many folks see The State as having the role of punishing folks for “immorality” than rewarding them for acting in ways that makes an ethical life obviously best.

The problem with the abortion debate, and the reason that it is intractable, is that the “pro life” forces are actually presuming the right to interfere with the lives of other individuals on the basis of a claimed, over-riding right they cannot actually take responsibility for, even were they were willing to do so.

Reasonable people, when given the option of supporting polices that make abortion “Legal, safe and rare” where “rare” would be an easily achievable rate of half the number of current abortions, go for the achievable.

For myself, I believe that inasmuch as we have the medical ability to make childbirth as safe an option as an abortion, and the financial wherewithal to support any child not aborted, I feel it a moral imperative to offer those as options to people who have quite reasonable concerns.

I would certainly never, ever force a rape victim to bear a pregnancy to term, much less a victim of incest. But, I do observe that embryo transplants are quite possible. If the goal is to preserve the life of the foetus - why not just offer state-supported embryonic storage and transplant as an alternative to abortion?

After all, a child that a woman cannot support NOW may well be one she’d go to the ends of the earth to have in her thirties.

Moreover, a broad sampling of preserved genetic materials is damn good insurance against a number of entirely-too-foreseeable outcomes.

But this debate is clearly not about choices, or providing alternatives. It’s about imposing a consequence - pregnancy - on people who have sex outside of approved contexts and making the pregnancy itself as dangerous as possible, and then, of course, providing as little support for raising the child as possible, even when that would make perfect sense in terms of net social benefit and lowest cost to society in terms of direct spending.

The problem with this position - and many similar positions - is that no matter how desirable it would be to have everyone behave as you would have them behave, manifestly they do not.

There is another fallacious assumption involved in many assaults upon the civil liberties of individuals by currently empowered groups - and that is the right to exert power with impunity.

If I have the power to do so, and a position of athority, the reason seems to go, anyone without the same power and the authority to go with it has “no right” to complain, much less resist. Indeed, I’ve heard this argument from LGF-level folk repeated almost literally - an argument almost identical to the equally clueless (but thankfully rare) totalitarian Communists. It is the identical presumption; those that have the gold and or guns get to make the rules.

But it is a fallacious assumption. At best, people will only avoid the rules, and the results will be AT BEST, something like Mao’s China or the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

The only way to guarentee even the apperance of widespread “good behavior” is some form or another of oppression, and our Founders were students of history and had experienced the whims of the petty, opportunistic tyrants that London saw fit to dispatch to the Colonies; quite possibly in hopes that they would meet a glorious and heroic end at the hands of “savages.”

From the center of Empire, empire is often seen as a necessary and advantagious evil. But on the fringes, it’s seen for what it is. Both evil, and exploitative, existing for the benifit of people both far away and with concerns that are at best irrelevant to the ambitions and desires of those “governed” by it.

Hence, our Founder’s emphasis on the rights of individual and local self-determination.

Our founders - and perhaps as much as a third of the population together with them - chose to say “no.” A third of the population, angry enough to take up arms, or support those who did.

Contrast this with George Bush’s popularity ratings today, and count yourself blessed that so far, the First Amendment suffices for the needs of the Resistance. In essence, he’s managed to alienate two thirds of the population in order to insufficiently please ONE third who wish to impose their will on those who wish to say “no.”

On the other hand, we could just shrug, and mind our own business, while acting to demonstrate how well our own moral choices and lifestyle preferences work in practice.

That is precisely what Jesus advised, by the way. Good head on his shoulders, that fellow. It’s wise to pay attention to what He had to say - and he had a lot to say about oppressive busybodies such as Romans and Pharasees.

Minding one’s own business, while always standing ready to offer a neighbor a hand is an excellent way for both individuals and nations to behave.

In other words, we should be careful to treat each other as gentlemen and gentlewomen, keeping in mind that the halmark of gentles is the capacity to defend their honor and dignity, and the willingness to accept any consequence save dishonor.

And of course, to carry a little surprise or two for those who prove by their sudden aggressions that they do not deserve the fellowship of gentle persons.

Our cousins, the British, saw the role of the ungentle and unwashed as a fungible commodity, to settle the Americas, and later on, Austrialia.

Having sprung in part from the loins of such folk, and enduring the travails 200 odd years of that had brought them, our Founders saw a far less disruptive role for such presumptious parasites, regardless of their apparent social standing.

Fertilizer.