andyfox
07-05-2005, 11:03 PM
. . . is the title of an article written by Robert Bork in today's Wall Street Journal.
Bork believes we are on the Road to Perdition, with education, sexual mores, morality, and the judiciary all in the grip of an alien modernist and secular culture. [His new book will be entitled "A Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault on American Values."]
Interestingly, the WSJ editorial next to Judge Bork's article talks about Senator Kennedy's "end-of-days rhetoric." By this, I assume they mean Senator Kennedy's warnings about the dire consequences of what he sees as a too conservative appointment to the court to replace retiring Justice O'Connor.
But it is Bork who engages in end-of-days rhetoric. He has already authored "Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline." In today's article, he quotes Federalist #2, wherein John Jay said, "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manenrs and customs. . . ." Bork does not recognize that this was hogwash when it was written, part of the authors' (Jay, Madison and Hamilton) sell-job for the Constitution. From this, Bork imagines a "large body of common moral assumptions" that, according to him, the recent Supreme Court has been eroding.
Among the court's crimes, according to Bork: it has "weakened the authority . . . of churches "[he says nothing about synagogues or institutions of other religions]; it has "denigrated marriage and family"; it has "destroyed taboos about vile langue in public"; it has "protected as free speech the basest pornography"; it has "weakened political paties"; it has "whittled down capital punishment, on the path, apparently, to abolishing it entirely"; it has "mounted a campaign to normalize homosexuality, culminating soon, it seems obvious, in a right to homosexual mariage"; it has "permitted racial and gender discrimination at the expense of white males."
Bork sees "moral anarchy" in this "left-liberal liberationist spirit of our times." Our legacy of a common morality has been done in by the court because it has "departed from the original understanding of the principles of the Constituion."
Well the man has one of the great minds of 1789. He fails to realize that the world of a "common moral legacy" that he missed was the world that kept blacks in slavery, women as property, and homosexuals beyond the pale of polite society. [His worry about the woe that has befallen "white males" and his particular venom against the justices that are seeking to "normalize homosexuality" and keep the good citizenry from outlawying sodomy gives away the game.] His idea that there is one original understanding of the principles of the Constitution is flawed. He bemoans that that the Court has become a political institution instead of a legal institution without understanding that the Constitution itself was a political document, pieced together out of compromise precisely because the "one united people" that "Providence" had given to "this one connected country" never existed. [Bork himself recognized this in an earlier life: to wit, from a 1968 opinion he wrote: "It is naive to suppose that the Court's present difficulties could be cured by appointing Justices determined to give the Constitution its true meaning, to work at 'finding the law' instead of reforming society. The possibility implied by these comforting phrases does not exist.... History can be of considerable help, but it tells us much too little about the specific intentions of the men who framed, adopted and ratified the great clauses. The record is incomplete, the men involved often had vague or even conflicting intentions, and no one foresaw, or could have foreseen, the disputes that changing social conditions and outlooks would bring before the Court."] He longs for a Utopia of his own making, in which gays are subjugated, white males unchallenged on top of the social and economic ladder, pornography, as he defines it, outlawed, bad words, as he defines them, punished, and religious culture, but just his "Anglo-Protestant culture," ruling the day.
That's not an America I recognize. If the next Supreme Court nominee has these views, I would welcome another "borking." One suspects, though, based on plenty of evidence, that the Democrats will wimp out. They're very good at complaining, very bad at actually doing something.
Bork believes we are on the Road to Perdition, with education, sexual mores, morality, and the judiciary all in the grip of an alien modernist and secular culture. [His new book will be entitled "A Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault on American Values."]
Interestingly, the WSJ editorial next to Judge Bork's article talks about Senator Kennedy's "end-of-days rhetoric." By this, I assume they mean Senator Kennedy's warnings about the dire consequences of what he sees as a too conservative appointment to the court to replace retiring Justice O'Connor.
But it is Bork who engages in end-of-days rhetoric. He has already authored "Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline." In today's article, he quotes Federalist #2, wherein John Jay said, "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manenrs and customs. . . ." Bork does not recognize that this was hogwash when it was written, part of the authors' (Jay, Madison and Hamilton) sell-job for the Constitution. From this, Bork imagines a "large body of common moral assumptions" that, according to him, the recent Supreme Court has been eroding.
Among the court's crimes, according to Bork: it has "weakened the authority . . . of churches "[he says nothing about synagogues or institutions of other religions]; it has "denigrated marriage and family"; it has "destroyed taboos about vile langue in public"; it has "protected as free speech the basest pornography"; it has "weakened political paties"; it has "whittled down capital punishment, on the path, apparently, to abolishing it entirely"; it has "mounted a campaign to normalize homosexuality, culminating soon, it seems obvious, in a right to homosexual mariage"; it has "permitted racial and gender discrimination at the expense of white males."
Bork sees "moral anarchy" in this "left-liberal liberationist spirit of our times." Our legacy of a common morality has been done in by the court because it has "departed from the original understanding of the principles of the Constituion."
Well the man has one of the great minds of 1789. He fails to realize that the world of a "common moral legacy" that he missed was the world that kept blacks in slavery, women as property, and homosexuals beyond the pale of polite society. [His worry about the woe that has befallen "white males" and his particular venom against the justices that are seeking to "normalize homosexuality" and keep the good citizenry from outlawying sodomy gives away the game.] His idea that there is one original understanding of the principles of the Constitution is flawed. He bemoans that that the Court has become a political institution instead of a legal institution without understanding that the Constitution itself was a political document, pieced together out of compromise precisely because the "one united people" that "Providence" had given to "this one connected country" never existed. [Bork himself recognized this in an earlier life: to wit, from a 1968 opinion he wrote: "It is naive to suppose that the Court's present difficulties could be cured by appointing Justices determined to give the Constitution its true meaning, to work at 'finding the law' instead of reforming society. The possibility implied by these comforting phrases does not exist.... History can be of considerable help, but it tells us much too little about the specific intentions of the men who framed, adopted and ratified the great clauses. The record is incomplete, the men involved often had vague or even conflicting intentions, and no one foresaw, or could have foreseen, the disputes that changing social conditions and outlooks would bring before the Court."] He longs for a Utopia of his own making, in which gays are subjugated, white males unchallenged on top of the social and economic ladder, pornography, as he defines it, outlawed, bad words, as he defines them, punished, and religious culture, but just his "Anglo-Protestant culture," ruling the day.
That's not an America I recognize. If the next Supreme Court nominee has these views, I would welcome another "borking." One suspects, though, based on plenty of evidence, that the Democrats will wimp out. They're very good at complaining, very bad at actually doing something.