The Post-Modern Supreme Court Wages War Against Family
soundof...@hoshmail.com
Nietzsche's Children: The Post-Modern Supreme Court
by James G. Bruen, Jr.
When I was a child, I would turn around quickly, trying to see a
void. I wanted literally to see "nothing," to observe the void that
existed behind me. I was trying to prove that the objects that were
behind me didn't exist whenever I couldn't see them. No matter how
quickly I turned, I couldn't do it. The objects always got there too
fast.
Employing a method of doubt that holds that any judgment about
the external world is suspect, Rene Descartes nevertheless held that he
must exist. He could not "be nothing so long as I think I am
something," so he famously concluded Je pense, donc je suis; Cogito
ergo sum; I think, therefore I am. That's nice, but Descartes' approach
falls apart proving anything else exists too unless one discards his
rigorous method of doubt. To put it a little differently, he couldn't
prove that the objects in back of him existed and weren't merely in or
from his mind. Indeed, he couldn't prove that objects that were right
in front of his eyes actually existed either.
So, I have some difficulty deciding whether I was a foolish child
or instead whether I was an incipient world-class philosopher. Now that
I am adult, no one has suggested I have become a world-class
philosopher.
Scepticism is the philosophical attitude that maintains we can
seek but not find sure knowledge of how things really are. Seek and ye
shall find? No. Seek, but you cannot find.
Postmodernism describes a way of thinking that has become
pervasive in the West. According to post-modernism: We create our own
reality; there is no truth.
The difference between scepticism and post-modernism may be this:
scepticism concedes there may be an objective reality but doubts we can
find it while post modernism says there is no objective reality but we
each can create our own reality.
Scepticism says the objects might be behind me when I'm not
looking; post-modernism says they're there if I want them to be.
There is a wonderful story about G. K. Chesterton receiving some
visitors who were philosophy majors. At least my memory told me the
story was about Chesterton. And the story should have been about him,
but when I went to find it, I found my memory was faulty: the story did
involve Chesterton, but it was not about him.
Here's the anecdote, as related by Christopher Derrick in Escape
from Scepticism: Liberal Education as if Truth Mattered (Sherwood
Sugden & Co. 1977):
"Last summer, two young American friends came to my home,
which is near London, and we discussed all manner of things. Both were
pleasant and bright, and both were philosophy majors from liberal arts
colleges of repute. The conversation developed along such lines that I
eventually plucked up my courage and uttered the Chestertonian dogma
'Pigs is pigs'; and to this, both my friends responded with a storm of
contradiction and even of anger. No, I was quite wrong: the mind cannot
know anything outside itself, and it certainly mustn't classify its
experiences in any essentialist language of objective pighood.
"And so on. But soon it was time for them to go, and they
started worrying about the time of their train. I pointed out, mildly,
that since there was no real and knowable world within which their
train could have any objective 'out there' existence, their anxiety was
misplaced. This irritated them a little: philosophy (I was given to
understand) was one thing, but the practical business of daily life was
another.
"... [W]hen pressed, they admitted that for them and their
instructors too, philosophy amounted to little more than a word-game,
making no real claim to yield 'truth'."
Life, though, is not a word-game. There is little to be gained
from denying the existence of realities outside the individual. Indeed,
it is impossible to live a sane life unless one accepts those
realities. The ultimate deracination is a believed philosophy that is
untethered from reality: if you deny reality, you are insane. If you
are not rooted in reality, you are adrift. Put another way, if you
believe there are no realties outside of your mind or that you create
your own reality, then put your head down and run into what appears to
be a solid wall. You will discover whether the wall is a reality
outside of your mind.
The United States Supreme Court may harbor the most dangerous
post-modernists in the United States. Now, I don't mean the Justices
disregard train schedules or run head long into walls. If they did,
they'd probably only be a danger to themselves. Instead, they have
enshrined post-modernism in the American Constitution, using it to
strike at the family, thereby undercutting the basic unit of society
and a foundation of Western Civilization.
The United States prides itself on having a government "of laws"
not "of men." In simple terms, by this Americans mean that they are
not governed by and at the arbitrary whim of a sovereign but by clearly
enunciated laws applicable to all and applied fairly. That's the
theory. In the American system, the Supreme Court supposedly is not the
law-maker or the law-giver, but instead the interpreter of the
Constitution (which was adopted in the late Eighteenth Century, and
which has been amended numerous times thereafter pursuant to a process
delineated in that Constitution) and laws enacted by Congress and
signed into law by the President or, if he vetoes legislation, enacted
over his veto.
Especially when addressing matters that involve the family,
though, the Supreme Court has severed itself from its proper role and
from its "root" document, i.e., the Constitution, to become a law unto
itself, by pretending the Constitution can mean whatever it wants it to
mean. It is transforming America into a land which has a government "of
men," not "of law," while denying that it is doing so.
The Supreme Court's assault on the family dates to 1965 when it
created a right to privacy that included the right of married couples
to use contraceptives. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479. In 1972,
it ruled that unmarried people also had a constitutional right that
prevented states from prohibiting distribution of contraceptives to
them. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438.
So much for the sanctity of marriage and the marital act. The
Constitution included the right to copulate without consequence! Of
course, the Constitution is an imperfect contraceptive: children might
result despite the purported constitutional right to contracept. So, in
1973, the Supreme Court discovered that the right to privacy also
included a woman's (dare I say mother's?) right to abort her preborn
child. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113.
That right, it later ruled, trumped any interest the father had
in preserving the life of his child, regardless of whether he was
married to the child's mother, using the peculiar logic that any rights
the father had were not inherent in his status as father but must be
delegated to him by the government. "Clearly, since the State cannot
regulate or proscribe abortion during the first stage, when the
physician and his patient make that decision, the State cannot delegate
authority to any particular person, even the spouse, to prevent
abortion during that same period." Planned Parenthood of Central
Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 69 (1976). It's as if the father is
a subsidiary unit of the government, like a town, that has no powers of
its own but can only exercise powers delegated to it by the state.
The American Constitution, of course, contains no reference to a
right to privacy, a right to contraceptives, or a right to abort a
child. But, in the name of privacy and individual rights, the Supreme
Court has struck at the family by separating the couple during the
marital act, allowing a mother to kill her child, and preventing a
father from saving his child from that mother.
These Supreme Court decisions were, to borrow Justice White's
phrase in his dissent from the abortion decision, an exercise of "raw
judicial power." The Justices had the power to do as they wanted, so
they did. Does anyone else hear echoes of Nietzsche? The Court's
appeals to logic and the Constitution were merely a means by which its
collective "will" asserted its power.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992) included
one of the most ludicrous statements I have read in a Supreme Court
decision. There, the Court explained its contraception and abortion
decisions by saying "these matters, involving the most intimate and
personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to
personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by
the Fourteenth Amendment." Then came the howler. "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."
When I first read the opinion, I laughed, embarrassed for the
Justices who must have let a law clerk's sloppy thought and writing
slip into their opinion.
But it was no laughing matter: The Supreme Court was explaining
that a right to contraceptives and abortion sprung from "the right to
define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and
of the mystery of human life."
And it was no mistake. Mocked even by fellow Justices on that
Court, most notably Justice Scalia, who says the "famed
sweet-mystery-of-life passage" may be "the passage that ate the rule of
law," the Court trotted out the passage again in 2003 in Lawrence v.
Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 574, to rationalize constitutional protection for
anal sodomy between men. Having ruptured the bonds between mother and
child, father and mother, and father and child, what does the Supreme
Court substitute therefor? Anal sodomy!
The sweet mystery of life passage, of course, embodies
post-modernist thought: We create our own reality; there is no truth.
Do the Justices believe this claptrap? Maybe, but I doubt it.
Justice Souter, who was in the majority in both Casey and Lawrence, was
mugged in Washington, D.C., in April, 2004. He didn't create his own
reality, instead reality intruded. He didn't define away his assailants
or his injury. Instead, he went to a hospital.
What, then, to make of the sweet mystery of life passage? Like
the students who visited Christopher Derrick, the Supreme Court
Justices are involved in intellectual game-playing that they must
ignore when real life intrudes. But why? Why the intellectual
gobbledygook? Why the word-game?
In Casey, the Court said its "legitimacy [is] a product of
substance and perception" that "depends on making legally principled
decisions under circumstances in which their principled character is
sufficiently plausible to be accepted by the Nation." The Court thus
suggested that theoretically it could make a decision that was so
outrageous that the "Nation" would reject it which could lead to
"violence." In other words, they don't want to get out ahead of the
American people too far, otherwise they might lose their power to do as
they want. Thus, it is hard to envision the Justices discovering that
liberty protects a right to rape. But it is not impossible: would a
right to rape be any more abhorrent than the right to kill a child?
This, then, is the purpose of the gobbledygook: it feigns a
principled character for the Court's decisions, fanning a perception
that the substance of the decisions is sufficiently plausible to allow
acceptance by the public even when wrong.
The "principled character" of the decisions upholding the
constitutional rights to abortion and sodomy is hardly self-evident or
even plausible. Instead, the decisions reek with condescension: we, the
Court seems to say, are sufficiently bright that we can churn out
opinions that can justify almost anything without causing rebellion or
injuring our ability to do as we please; we are the elite, the knowing,
the wise, the powerful, but, recognizing that the "Nation" includes
others who are not as enlightened or intelligent, we must guide and
control them while protecting ourselves against violence and a loss of
power by writing opinions that engender a "perception" that our actions
are "sufficiently principled."
Seen in this light, the sweet mystery of life passage is a fig
leaf. The Court ingrains post-modernism into the Constitution to hide
and make more palatable its Nietzschean imposition of its will on the
less powerful. Indeed, Nietzsche himself viewed appeals to reason and
truth, indeed language and philosophizing, as but a means - physical
force is another - by which one will can assert its power over another.
As Justice Scalia pointed out in dissent in Casey, the Court is acting
from a "Nietzschean vision" in which "unelected, life tenured judges
lead[] a Volk." 505 U.S. at 996. The transition from post-modernism to
Nietzsche is unsurprising, indeed inevitable. If I create reality, then
there is no reality outside myself. You do not exist except in my mind;
therefore I can do with you as I wish. I can even kill you, as happens
in abortion. My will controls as I have power over you. Nietzsche, of
course, went mad, as, perhaps, have some of the Supreme Court Justices.
THE ONLY CONSTRAINT
The only constraint on the Justices of the Supreme Court seems to
be the ability of each Justice to get the other Justices to join in an
opinion. If and when five out of nine Justices agree on an opinion,
then that is what the law is, at least at that moment. Nevertheless,
the Supreme Court has invoked this sweet mystery of life language
infrequently. Indeed, the sodomy and abortion opinions are the only
ones in which the Court invoked it, although Justice O'Connor has
suggested it might also preclude states from barring assisted suicide.
Glucksberg v. Quill, 521 U.S. 702, 745 (1997) (concurring).
Does this infrequency mean there is little to fear? On the
contrary. It demonstrates starkly that the Supreme Court views its
mission as one of engaging in social engineering to remake society in
its own image. The Court has invoked this language explicitly only when
undermining the most fundamental underpinnings of Western civilization:
human dignity and the sanctity of marriage, human sexuality, and the
family. It is only explicit when striking at the very roots of
civilization. And then it is at its most dangerous. For when the
individual has no family, he is cut off from his roots; he stands naked
and alone, vulnerable to the whim and will of government or whoever has
power. He has, like the father in Danforth, no inherent or natural
rights or authorities, only those that the government or the powerful
choose to give him or to recognize.
In this, the Supreme Court of the United States is following in
the well-trod path of modern social engineers, who, recognizing that
each person is rooted in his own family and that families are the root
of each society, must force deracination in order to remake man and
society in their own image. They must prevent the family from
nourishing, educating, and raising the child. They must prevent the
family from nurturing and protecting its members. They must preclude
the family's ability to insulate its members from their will and their
social engineering. They must, in a nutshell, weaken and then destroy
the family. So modern attempts to remake culture strike at the family,
the basic unit of society, to break it and cut off the individual from
his roots. Thus, Rousseau delivered his children to the orphanage. In
their quest to establish a master race, the Nazis engineered breeding
farms. The Soviet communists and the hippies insisted upon raising
children communally rather than in their families. And the Chinese
communists have a one child policy, sometimes enforced even by
compulsory abortion in which the child is aborted despite the mother's
objection.
The Supreme Court of the United States packages its deracination
under the guise of freedom, privacy, and individual rights, which today
are more attractive and seductive than the now-discredited approaches
of the Nazis and Soviets, but that is merely a tribute to America's
infatuation with advertising and salesmanship. And, by and large, the
Supreme Court is succeeding. It has lost no power despite the
outrageousness of its attack on the family. No Justice has been
impeached, and the Congress has not restricted its jurisdiction.
Indeed, so sacrosanct are these decisions in America as the law of the
land that many in Congress will try to thwart the nomination to the
judiciary of anyone opposed to the abortion decisions. Thus the double
standard under which the stridently pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg
glided onto the Supreme Court, while Samuel Alito's accurate
observation in 1985 that "the Constitution does not protect a right to
an abortion" guarantees frenzied opposition to his nomination to that
same Court. And, yes, there has been some violence in opposition to
abortion as a result of the Supreme Court's rulings, but it has been
squelched so effectively that most of those opposed to abortion
separate themselves from it and seem quite docile, working politely and
impotently within the system as millions are killed.
Meanwhile, other courts are emboldened, invoking the Supreme
Court's example to impose their own will, secure in the knowledge that
while the public may gripe, that is all that will likely occur. This
occurred most notably in Massachusetts in Goodridge v. Department of
Public Health, 440 Mass. 309, 331 (2003), where the Supreme Judicial
Court of that state invoked and relied on Lawrence but went further,
saying "The Massachusetts Constitution is, if anything, more protective
of individual liberty and equality than the Federal Constitution; it
may demand broader protection for fundamental rights; and it is less
tolerant of government intrusion into the protected spheres of private
life." And thus the Supreme Judicial Court mocked marriage and further
undercut the family by imposing homosexual marriage as a newly
discovered constitutional right in Massachusetts.
This, then, is the philosophy that currently underlies the
American judiciary: My will be done. And that will, tragically, is to
uproot the individual and the family.
The question of the moment, of course, is whether the seating of
Chief Justice John Roberts and the probable confirmation of Judge Alito
portend the Supreme Court's abandonment of its present approach. Will
they, as does Justice Scalia, recognize and disavow the Nietzschean
vision that has driven the Court recently? The public record suggests
reason to hope they will. But hopes have been dashed before. The
question can only be answered over time as the Court issues its
opinions.
James G. Bruen, Jr. is an attorney.
Mark K. Bilbo
<1147221640.6...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
> The American Constitution, of course, contains no reference to a
> right to privacy,
How Soviet.
Our Constitution explicitly states that the enumeration of rights does
*NOT* abridge rights reserved by the states and the people. That is,
rights exist when we, the people, say they do. Not because the government
"gives" them to us.
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"As hip as it is for outsiders to blame New Orleans
for everything bad that happened during and after
Hurricane Katrina, the truth is that the people
who lived here were much more prepared for a big
storm than the federal government that promised
us flood protection." [Jarvis DeBerry]
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V180525DC
"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com
Douglas Berry
posting the following on 9 May 2006 17:40:40 -0700 iin alt.atheism?
> The American Constitution, of course, contains no reference to a
>right to privacy, a right to contraceptives, or a right to abort a
>child. But, in the name of privacy and individual rights, the Supreme
>Court has struck at the family by separating the couple during the
>marital act, allowing a mother to kill her child, and preventing a
>father from saving his child from that mother.
Amendment IX
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Amendment X
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states
respectively, or to the people."
In other words, this arguement is bolloks. The people are assumed to
have the right. The state needs to demonstrate a compelling reason
why a right should be denied.
--
Douglas E. Berry Do the OBVIOUS thing to send e-mail
Atheist #2147, Atheist Vet #5
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as
when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pense'es, #894.
Miriam Cohen
> Previously, on alt.atheism, soundoftrumpet in episode
> <1147221640.6...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
>
>
>> The American Constitution, of course, contains no reference to a
>>right to privacy,
>
>
> How Soviet.
>
> Our Constitution explicitly states that the enumeration of rights does
> *NOT* abridge rights reserved by the states and the people. That is,
> rights exist when we, the people, say they do. Not because the government
> "gives" them to us.
True enough, but doesn't this amendment cover privacy?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
wbarwell
> What's so funny about peace, love and soundof...@hoshmail.com
> posting the following on 9 May 2006 17:40:40 -0700 iin alt.atheism?
>
>> The American Constitution, of course, contains no reference to a
>>right to privacy, a right to contraceptives, or a right to abort a
>>child. But, in the name of privacy and individual rights, the Supreme
>>Court has struck at the family by separating the couple during the
>>marital act, allowing a mother to kill her child, and preventing a
>>father from saving his child from that mother.
>
> Amendment IX
>
> "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
> construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
>
> Amendment X
>
> "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
> nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states
> respectively, or to the people."
>
> In other words, this arguement is bolloks. The people are assumed to
> have the right. The state needs to demonstrate a compelling reason
> why a right should be denied.
Unfortunately in the days, compelling reason usually means simply
Emperor Moron Bush desires it.
--
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics
doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
- Pericles
Cheerful Charlie
Mark K. Bilbo
<CYd8g.46443$iU2.37617@fed1read01>...
> Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
>> Previously, on alt.atheism, soundoftrumpet in episode
>> <1147221640.6...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
>>
>>
>>> The American Constitution, of course, contains no reference to a
>>>right to privacy,
>>
>>
>> How Soviet.
>>
>> Our Constitution explicitly states that the enumeration of rights does
>> *NOT* abridge rights reserved by the states and the people. That is,
>> rights exist when we, the people, say they do. Not because the
>> government "gives" them to us.
>
> True enough, but doesn't this amendment cover privacy?
No it was aimed at, as the text comments, "searches and seizures." As in
the government can't just search your house or shake you down because they
feel like going on a "fishing expedition" to see if they can dig up
something to charge you with.
When it comes to a general privacy right, we're talking beyond just
searches and seizures. Abortion, for example, isn't a government "search"
nor a "seizure." There's no cop, um, poking around in... places?
Though in El Salvador, there are--get this--"forensic vagina inspectors"
who investigate charges of abortion (which is totally criminalized there
with no exceptions, not even to save the mother's life).
But anyway.
I contend that we, the people (to coin a phrase eh?), believe we have the
right to go about our private affairs without the government poking its
nose in. We all have that expectation to one degree or another. Hence, a
right to privacy *does exist. Because we say so.
And the 9th Amendment states:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Saying "it's not in the Constitution" is wholly backwards and dishonest.
What is *actually true is that any *power not granted explicitly to the
USG is *denied them.
This issue is more a question of where is the Constitutional authority
granted by the people to enable the government to intrude in the first
place? I don't see anything in the Constitution that grants them the power
to regulate abortion. And since the Civil War, we have enforced federal
restrictions and protections of rights on the states.
Roe v. Wade is right. Unless the public amends the US Constitution to
grant to Congress and/or the states the power to regulate abortion, they
have no business meddling.
These so-called "strict constructionists" are anything but what they claim
to be.
james g. keegan jr.
Attila2 <proc...@here.now> wrote:
> On 9 May 2006 17:40:40 -0700, soundof...@hoshmail.com in
> alt.abortion with message-id
> <1147221640.6...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
> More off topic religious propagandizing.
you continue to demonstrate your ignorance of usenet newsgroups,
scumball, and your disrespect for readers' ability to decide for
themselves what is and is not appropriate.
do you feel like a hypocrite criticizing others for doing what you
do? even osprey has legitimately commented on your hypocrisy.
your hypocrisy aside, what you might want to do to make yourself feel
like an even bigger asshole is take a random sample of posts you've
whined about and then search google for the number of posts with this
topic, demonstrating that readers know what is of interest to them
far better than you do.
Josh Miles
> http://www.culturewars.com/2006/NietzscheChildren.htm
>
>
> Nietzsche's Children: The Post-Modern Supreme Court
>
> by James G. Bruen, Jr.
>
>
>
> When I was a child, I would turn around quickly, trying to see a
> void. I wanted literally to see "nothing," to observe the void that
> existed behind me. I was trying to prove that the objects that were
> behind me didn't exist whenever I couldn't see them. No matter how
> quickly I turned, I couldn't do it. The objects always got there too
> fast.
He must have ridden the short bus to school.
2449 Dead
There's definitely a void behind his eyes....
--
"The FDA says there's no -- zilch, zero, nada -- shred of medicinal value to the evil weed marijuana. This is going to be a setback to the long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking crowd."
-- Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, April 21, 2006, one week before he officially became a drug felon himself.
Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
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Michael Price
you
"the people" said so. The right to privacy is based on the right of
self-ownership. The government cannot just tell you what to do or make
you do things you don't want to, unless you are violating other
people's
rights. Therefore they can't tell you not to use contraceptives,
reveal what
you do not want to reveal etc. i.e. you have a right to privacy.
Mark K. Bilbo
<1147927668.4...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
Well no. The founders operated on the concept of inherent, "inalienable"
rights. If rights are inherent and cannot be forfeited nor transferred,
the majority cannot vote them away.
In fact, the idea the majority--via the government--can vote away rights
is where the current crop of reich wingers are taking us with all these
comments of "it's not in the Constitution."
> The right to privacy is based on the right of
> self-ownership. The government cannot just tell you what to do or make
> you do things you don't want to, unless you are violating other people's
> rights. Therefore they can't tell you not to use contraceptives, reveal
> what
> you do not want to reveal etc. i.e. you have a right to privacy.
Sorry but I find the property model to be deficient. Such as in the case
of this fabricated nonsense of "intellectual property" which is, in
reality, a monopoly power grab.
The Fool
soundof...@hoshmail.com wrote:
> http://www.culturewars.com/2006/NietzscheChildren.htm
>
>
> Nietzsche's Children: The Post-Modern Supreme Court
(Yes, I know that all of these people except Habermas are dead...)
Chief Justice Derrida read the opinion. Assured that no one understood
a word he said, he was satsified. Associate Justice Foucault
deconstructed the opinion that no one understood, and this allowed some
to understand it. Meanwhile, in a strong dissent, Justice Habermas
urged the use of clear, ideal speech and decried the post-modern tilt
of the current court. Associate Justice Roland Barthes beat him up.