Posted
by David Ryan
March 2, 2005 at 9:34 p.m.
"Governments are instituted among Men"
I'm a little confused.Here's from The Declaration of Independence:"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."And here's Antonin Scalia on Wednesday:"[The Ten Commandments are] a symbol that government authority comes from God, and that's appropriate."What is Scalia drawing on to make the very Byzantine monarchist claim that "government authority comes from God"?The Declaration of Independence's plain meaning could not be more clear, nor more in direct opposition to Scalia's claim."Governments are instituted among Men," our founding document states, "deriving their just powers" not from God, as Scalia now proclaims, but rather "from the consent of the governed."(It should be noted that I'm with Lincoln on the place of the Declaration of Independence in the American story: The Declaration is the near-miraculous first breath of the American spirit, the true beginning of our self-rule, vivified initially by the Articles of Confederation, and then more profoundly and stably by the Constitution.)And since, being good Americans and thus students of civics, we all know the word "God" appears precisely zero times in the Constitution, where, I ask, in American civil and political theory, and judicial theory and history, grounded in that same God-silent Constitution, does Scalia find his disturbing, anti-Declaration of Independence claim that "government authority comes from God"?
and 4 others
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murderama (Rob Gillaspie) says…
Stop scaring me, David! Please! Everything is going to be okay, and I refuse to believe otherwise!
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says…
Busy day today, huh?
The DecInd says:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
So I think you're right, even though I usually agree with Scalia.
The rights that humans have come from God by the nature and fact of creation, and men themselves establish government to protect those rights. But government derives its just powers (spelled out in the various constitutions and charters of government) from the consent of the individuals who live under it, by them ceding to government the right of self-defense of their liberty, life and property. That is the essence of republican (small "r") government.
As Bastiat wrote: "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
Law (and government) is nothing more than the collective right of self-defense. But its "just power" comes from men, because they hold the rights it is supposed to protect. If men had no rights, there would be nothing for government to do but mold them by force into whatever form those with the guns desire.
That was so last century...
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
I am not the first to observe that this Court will not go down in history as a collection of titanic legal minds. The ever-more-absurd confirmation process ensures that SCOTUS justices are professional mediocrities; this particular collection of mediocrities has already compiled a record of embarrassing (and now, dangerous) opinions that will require the better part of a generation to undo, assuming some future independent judiciary is given an opp'ty to undo them.
Scalia has long been unstable; his comical statement about government coming "from God" is merely the latest demonstration of the sad path taken by what was once thought to be a stellar legal mind. One of the few amusing features of this SCOTUS term has been Scalia's ham-handed lobbying for the Chief Justice's chair; the hitherto unclubbable and antisocial judge has been working the Washington cocktail party circuit and speaking openly of his desire to ascend. A promotion is not out of the question, and would go a long way toward the Administration's goal of entirely emasculating the Court; Scalia's colleagues find him uncollegial and he has demonstrated no capacity for the administrative leadership that is the Chief Justice's principal responsibility.
In any event this term of the Court is unfolding in precise accordance w/ the wishes of the White House. A win for the government in this idiotic Commandments case will be a useful and meaningless bone for the religious right; a defeat is of no consequence whatsoever. So long as we're talking about "God" and inscriptions and all the rest of this juvenile crap, we aren't talking about the coup, and that's the object of the exercise.
Once this Court gave Cheney a free pass on the energy swindle--the most brazen power-grab by the executive branch since Lincoln suspended habeas corpus--they fulfulled their principal function. Whatever happens from this point forward is windowdressing, and that goes double for this preposterous teapot tempest over the Commandments.
It's a pity God didn't see fit to include a Commandment that would actually be of use in the present circumstances: Thou shalt not be a gutless moron unfit for self-government.
davidryan (David Ryan) says…
And I didn't even mention that Scalia seems to believe that executing minors is an American virtue -- like freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, equality before the law.
They've got their American Exceptionalism injected backwards.
It's not our rule of law, our Constitution, nor our republican (small "r") history that's the mark of the exceptionality of the American experiment.
Rather, for Scalia and his political patrons, our barbarous execution of minors somehow makes America positively exceptional.
What bothers me most, and what's most dangerous to America, is precisely this belief that authoritiy comes from God.
Because if your authority comes from God, you have no need of a Constitution. In fact, the Constitution is then an un-Godly brake on your God-granted, absolute power.
If you pray every day, and presume that God put you in power -- as our current President and many of his supporters publicly believe, and as a long bloody history of dictatorial Kings also believed -- then any checks and balances on your exercise of power are un-Godly.
Everything you do -- from violating Constitutional precepts, to seizing human beings and holding them in detention, uncharged, for years, to torturing those same people, to executing minors, to conducting dragnets to ferret out abortion law breakers -- is sanctioned by God, regardless of whether what you do violates laws or the principles of freedom from excessive government interference that America was founded on.
There's nothing a single secularist in the Jefferson/Madison tradition like myself can do about that. What recourse do I have, to redress grievances, if the presumed authority of the State comes from the Creator of the Universe?
If that's your set of beliefs as well -- that George Bush was chosen by God to ascend to an American power, and that he exercises the awful power of the presidency at God's pleasure -- then you can't simultaneously maintain that you are in fact a supporter and defender of the American Constitution. Rather, you're the willing, abject subject of an absolute ruler unbound and unchecked by any law.
Which is precisely the circumstances that motivated America's founding generation to institute the most secular and constrained democratic republic the world had ever seen.
American exceptionalism has nothing to do with executing minors. It has nothing to do with authority being granted by God.
It has everything to do with the proposition that our government is based on the God-silent Constitution, not authority from God.
lazz (anonymous) says…
What honestly annoys the beJESUS out of me is somewhat valid argument Scallia & Co. can and do make regarding the invocations of God elsewhere in Goverment: Prayers before each session of Congress, paintins and sculptures all over our governmental buildings (Including inside the SCOTUS chambers), "In God We Trust" on our currency ... so why, they argue, if this is OK, why is it so horrible that a smaller fish in the governmental foodchain posts the Ten C's.
If the "if" is valid, so is their argument.
So it's about time we took that argument away: it is NOT acceptable to stamp all our currency with "In God We Trust." We must NOT begin our legislative assemblies to appeals to "God." (As David notes, see the DoI -- mortals gotta do the work here ...) ... if a piece of religious-themed art in public space should be preserved for his artistic merits, great, save it; but remove those that can be removed, and declare a moratorium on anything else.
Look people, until we get upset about all of it, then none of it will change.
And frankly, I'm goddamn sick of our elected and appointed public representatives turning to an authority higher than my vote.
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
"Which is precisely the circumstances that motivated America's founding generation to institute the most secular and constrained democratic republic the world had ever seen."
This is a debatable assertion, DR. The French constitution is actually, as opposed to notionally, secular. Whatever the Founders intended in this country in the way of "restraint" has ceased to exist as a matter of plain fact since the coup.
Moreover, while the grossly ignorant American political nation is "debating" this foolish bit of business about the Commandments, the President has already completed his end run around constitutional separation between church and state. The White House's long-standing proposal to set aside the whole body of civil rights legislation so as to permit it to provide federal funds to discriminatory "faith-based organizations"--read, "cults"--has finally been approved by the House. These cults will now receive taxpayer money regardless of whatever barbaric beliefs and practices they espouse, and you can expect that a bright boy in the KKK will soon have his nose in the trough:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl...
Imbeciles on the religious right will cheer this as a victory. In this, as in so much else, they're quite wrong. What has been established here is not the supremacy of the insignificant "Christian" organizations who will be the immediate beneficiaries of this revolution--what has been established is the supremacy of the White House in drawing upon and allocating funds from the Treasury. Rove will fund the cults until it no longer suits him to do so; the important landmark is the President's assertion that had Congress insisted on maintaining the rule of law (an unlikely eventuality these days), he simply would've authorized the funding by executive order.
What's most interesting about the religious right is that appears to contain not a single soul w/ the slightest knowledge of the history of government. Far more than they know, they are indeed lambs being prepared for the Great Shearing.
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says…
"And I didn't even mention that Scalia seems to believe that executing minors is an American virtue"
Ah, finally a note of disagreement.
Scalia said in his dissent, "Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50 percent of death penalty States can constitute a national consensus. Our previous cases have required overwhelming opposition to a challenged practice, generally over a long period of time."
The majority of the court argued in overturning its prior ruling that a "national consensus" had developed which found that such executions were now "cruel and unusual punishment". Scalia is asking how such a consensus could develop when in more than half the states, the law, passed by the people's representatives, allow such a practice.
In this case, Scalia is correct. What has changed is not the national consensus, but the court consensus. Whether one likes capital punishment or not (and I assume you don't), there's no doubt that it is allowed under the constitution ("no one shall be deprived of life...without due process")
Picking some age, like 16 or 18 or 21 for anything, whether voting or drinking or execution, is by its very nature arbitrary. Best that the representatives, those who answer to the people, make those decisions, rather than the life-tenured judges who answer to no one.
lazz (anonymous) says…
On his better days, I think Scalia can be a brilliant, original thinker. On his lesser days, he's a half-wit bully.
I support, generally, his trust in original intent of the founders and his fear of the Court taking liberties in its decisions that should not be allowed.
But he too often uses that as an excuse for avoiding the tough decisions or whining about his losses.
The Constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment" yet does not say what cruel and unusual punishment is. We have a Supreme Court, not half-wit state legislators, to decide for the country as a whole when punishment has become cruel and unusual, clearly by evolving standards of decency.
This one was properly in the Court's court, as it were, and Justice Scalia needs to find more frequent opportunities of longer duration to shut the F up.
davidryan (David Ryan) says…
That "cruel and unusual" admonition becomes more important the fewer societies engage in particular practices.
The definition of "unusual" is something that is, obviously, "not usual or common or ordinary."
If the United States is only one of 2 countries that execute minors, then that practice, by any definition, is "unusual."
davidryan (David Ryan) says…
But let's not lose the forest, here, folks.
The simple fact remains that a Supreme Court Justice believes in a very un-American way that government authority is granted by God, in direct contradiction to the Declaration of Independence and by extension the Constitution.
To the Bush supporters among us: What are you going to do to bring this government back onto American constitutional grounds?
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
We have taken a sharp turn here, but I'll play, because the matter of the death penalty is a better illustration of the state of American government since the coup than is this trivial business about the Commandments.
Newsflash: State legislatures no longer determine who is and who is not eligible for execution. Life-tenured judges no longer determine who is and who is not eligible for execution. Or if either institution is permitted to make such determinations, it is only after the President has the first bite of the apple. Merely by declaring a proscribed individual a "terrorist" or a "national security threat," the executive branch can now summarily confine and execute that individual in camera.
There are tortuous (pardon the pun) "arguments" floating around justifying this practice, but they ceased to signify once the President seized this power and began to exercise it. The executive will retain this power until it is forcibly rescinded. Don't hold yr breath. In the meantime, all this Supreme Court garbage is just that.
It's good for the White House, though. When yr intent on burning down a building and generating as many casualties as possible, it's a tremendous advantage to have the occupants go to their deaths arguing about the color of the curtains.
Snoop (anonymous) says…
I sincerely hope that those gleeful enough to run for public office foster your same propensity to continue to attack people of faith.
Ever since values came up in the last cycle this just drives you nuts huh. Those values unfortunately for you were not nebulous, hard to define warm fuzzies about the environment or feeding the poor, but convictions that run deep and hold meaning for the families in America today rich and poor. This has freaked out the left and now you are in overdrive.
Yes the overwhelming observation: God and organized faith are too much in the mind of the average American for the leftist-progressive-radical utopia that they see to ever be enacted. "Crush, kill, destroy the God People!!"
I suppose you love the anti-God states that inhabit Western Europe and Canada. These areas have effectively become the most "God absent" places on Earth and the progressives in America like you I suppose look up to them as "enlightened." These societies have seen corresponding drops in commitment to personal faith in God with a rise in leftist-progressive-radical ideologies, government dependency and an inability to judge good from evil in foreign affairs.
I'm not particularly religious but I think that even a little God holds America back from falling down the same corrosive cesspool.
But I totally understand why the elitists among us want to see every sign of the one who was "born on Christmas day" wiped from public view.
Well fellas several states has official mottos, some even showing godly reflection. Those states with God in their motto include Arizona, whose motto is the Latin phrase "Ditat Deus," which means "God enriches." Colorado also uses a Latin phrase "Nil Sine Numine" which means "Nothing without the deity." Florida claims, "In God We Trust." Ohio's motto quotes Luke 2, saying, "With God, All Things Are Possible." South Dakota claims that "Under God the People Rule."
What were these moron thinking?
I guess if I have someone on Da Blogs tell me to "Go to HELL" would that be a contradiction? Or just a friendly gesture? Why not start a campaign to cross out God references on our money?
Or someone need to slap Big Dub in the back of the head the next time he points up to the sky after making a basket, heck all of those idiot athletes.
Why don't you guys go spray "God" on the stop signs around town? I saw some "Bush" spray painted on some, just take it a step further while you at it.
I sound like a religious freak::.. cool. That's my God attaboy for the week.
Mr_A (Bryan Anderson) says…
So Scalia says, "[The Ten Commandments are] a symbol that government authority comes from God, and that's appropriate."
Sorry to state the obvious, but a large number of groups also believe that their authority comes from God, these include Al Quaida, Hamaas and the Taliban. Excuse me if I'm a little skeptical of those claiming God's mandate.
It is comforting, however, that we arent executing children and the mentally handicapped anymore, although "Who would Jesus execute?" would look really good on a bumper sticker.
davidryan (David Ryan) says…
Snoop, poor Snoop. You show me, through logic and evidence, not subjective screed, something of interest and importance, and I'll pay attention. Otherwise it's just meaningless blather.
The question was, Snoop, "What are you going to do to bring this government back onto American constitutional grounds?"
If you have no answer, you have no answer.
Snoop (anonymous) says…
I've told you this before Dog, you truly don't care about "discussing" or determining answers or logic. You spin your wheels trying to convince SOME that Christians and right leaning are illogical, mindless Jesus freaks and zealots and are determined to take over the government and hijack your lives which is pure lunacy and cloud it with this crap about "What are you going to do to bring this government back onto American constitutional grounds?"
Just tell us D real plain and simple, you want God out of the gubment, schools, legislature, hospitals, parks, unversities, our money, our lives. You guys just can't say screw God and his hommies, you have to pretend to be making some eloquent, intellectual, literary thesis. And you acuse me of meaningless blather. Dude just read your past blog rants.
It's the Constitution, Stupid
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
Personally, I've always been quite impressed by Kerry's record in the Senate (i bet you could not write this with a straight face) of a) being the first to discover the Iran-Contra scandal and b) discovering the corruption and funding of terrorist activities taking place via BCCI, even to the point of enraging fellow Democrats by implicating uber-Democrat Clark Clifford.
Call me a rule of law man, but I respect his tenacity in helping to ensure, in the case of a) above, that the executive branch is constrained by the Constitution, our only true national treasure and the reason the United States is the best country in the world. We are to be a nation of laws, not of presidential personalities and perogatives.
Posted on October 25 at 11:08 a.m.
The numbers are clear: Bush supporters are simply factually incorrect in their beliefs.
(i love it, translated they are "dumbasses.")
i know that sucks to have to find out: but it is unethical and immoral, I submit, to base one's decisions, especially about a presidential election, on information which is factually incorrect. (now bush people are unethical and immoral on top of being stupid)
First we have to stop Mr. Bush from digging us deeper. Then, clearly seeing the facts, we can start to solve problems.
Posted on October 25 at 11:08 a.m.
The numbers are clear: Bush supporters are simply factually incorrect in their beliefs.
I know that sucks to have to find out: but it is unethical and immoral, I submit, to base one's decisions, especially about a presidential election, on information which is factually incorrect.
First we have to stop Mr. Bush from digging us deeper. Then, clearly seeing the facts, we can start to solve problems.
Thank You for your wisdom D, I await more knowledge its a slow day at work.
jd (anonymous) says…
"endowed by their Creator" am I missing something here or is "Creator" just another word for God? If God gave these unalienable rights to us then I don't think Scalia is that far off the mark.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Displaying something with a religious theme or origin hardly amounts to government passing a law establishing a state religion.
toreador (Michael Austin) says…
Seems to cover Geppetto too, does it not? If I happened to be Pinocchio that is.
The problem with displaying is one must not be construed as imposing or favoring one religion over others. Because by definition it would be then by default establishing or limiting the exercise of others. It is all in perception. What is being hammered out in these little skirmishes is whether or not that perception makes it so. We have over time passed and put religous themes into the state, which may have been contrary to what the originators of the Constitution wanted. No matter what happens, we are still all free to practice what religion we choose to, but some people seem to think it is the end of the world.... Wow, Canada is anti-god? Who would have thought... Poutine eaters and Heathens!