My only regret about STACLU is not discovering them sooner; their usefulness as blog fodder is virtually unmatched. Only the Worldnutdaily comes close, and for most of the same reasons. They’ve got two delightfully wacky posts up right now. The first, from jonjayray, may have shattered the world record for most absurd violation of Godwin’s law. Not only does he compare an innocuous phrase from a politician to nazi propganda, but to communist propaganda too. At the same time. It all started when he read this article from AP about a new liberal catchphrase. He quotes the following passage from it:
“Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America – then repeated the phrase 29 times. The term is “common good,” and it’s catching on as a way to describe liberal values and reach religious voters who rejected Democrats in the 2004 election. Led by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think-tank, party activists hope the phrase will do for them what “compassionate conservative” did for the Republicans. “It’s a core value that we think organizes the entire political agenda for progressives,” said John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.”
Now, if you want to argue that this is a silly and trite catchphrase that could mean virtually anything and therefore means practically nothing, I’ll happily back you up. Like virtually all political catchphrases, it’s a vacuous, amorphous concept that makes for good rhetoric but shoddy thinking. But jonjayray can’t say that because it would apply just as well to all the empty catchphrases from the right that he uses as a substitute for actual thinking. So instead, he seizes on the word “common” and finds translations of nazi and communist concepts that included that word and – voila! – Mr. Godwin, call your office:
What would Hitler have to say about that? We don’t need to guess. The term can be translated into German as “Gemeinnutz” and that lovable German-speaking rogue used the term a lot — as encapsulating what HE stood for: “Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz!” was one of his great slogans (“Common use before personal use!”, literally).
And who preceded Hitler in such ideas? Friedrich Engels (Karl Marx’s co-author) at one stage ran a publication called Gemeinnuetziges Wochenblatt (“Common-use Weekly”). The Democrats sure make it clear where they fit into history.
Boy, they sure do. They used a word that could mean the same thing as a word in German that was used in an entirely different phrase. Obviously, then, the Democrats are Nazi Communists. To rational people, of course, “common use” bears virtually no relationship to “common good”; he might as well have compared it to “common law” and accused them of being British barristers. This, ladies and gentlemen, actually passes for thinking in the STACLU crowd. And if that doesn’t make you laugh, then nothing will.
The second post is from Jay, and he’s praising Scalia and quoting him from the debate with Nadine Strossen. But the quote he takes is so blatantly and obviously hypocritical for Scalia that it’s astonishing that Jay can’t spot the problem with it. Here’s the quote:
I’m in the business of enforcing democracy. What democracy means is that on controversial issues; even stuff like homosexual rights, abortion, whatever; we debate with each other and persuade each other and vote on it. Either our representatives or through a Constitutional amendment in the states, we decide the question. Now there are some exceptions to that in any liberal democracy, and in ours most of those exceptions are contained in the bill of rights. But that bill of rights was adopted by the majority which is why it is proper in a democracy to have a bill of rights, because the majority adopted it. Now when they adopted it what did they take out of that general principle? What did they take out of that general rule of democracy? That we allow open speech, we persuade each other and we vote. What did they take out of it? They never took out these issues…abortion, homosexual conduct. Nobody ever thought that they had been included in the rights contained in the bill of rights which is why abortion and homosexual sodomy were criminal for 200 years. Now whether thats a good idea or bad is not what I’m talking about. Thats not my job to say that. It is my job to say whether the bill of rights has taken it out of the realm of democratic debate. Just because you feel strongly about it…it isn’t neccessarily in the bill of rights.
Jay responds, “I think Scalia is right on the issue. These should be state issues decided by the people, not pushed on them through the courts.” But has it escaped him how utterly hypocritical Scalia is being? If he is in the business of enforcing democracy and ensuring that, where the Constitution does not explicitly provide for a given right or authority, it must be decided democratically, then how in the world does he explain the ruling in Raich or in Gonzales v Oregon?
The people of California, by popular referendum, passed the medical marijuana initiative, the most democratic means possible of adopting a policy. Yet when that policy was challenged, Scalia was on the side not of enforcing democracy, but of stifling it. And on what constitutional basis? None whatsoever. There is no provision in the Constitution that justifies that exercise of Federal authority. The government claimed to have the authority under the interstate commerce clause, but here it involved a product that was neither transported between states nor bought or sold as commerce.
And Scalia, allegedly an originalist, completely ignored the original meaning of the commerce clause. Why was he not “enforcing democracy” on that “controversial issue”? Because he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. When these same arguments lead to an outcome he disapproves of, then he completely jettisons his often expressed mode of interpretation and does exactly what he accuses his political opponents of doing.
He did the exact same thing in Gonzales v Oregon. Let’s apply his argument above: it’s a controversial issue, debated and voted on not once but twice and passed by popular referendum, and the Constitution is absolutely silent on the issue. Clearly, then, Scalia should be on the side of “enforcing democracy”, right? Nope. He filed a dissent to overturn that law based upon…well, nothing. The Constitution doesn’t mention the issue at all and the issue falls under the category of traditional police powers that were always reserved to the states.
Talk about an anti-democratic decision, he didn’t even vote to uphold one democratically passed law over another; he voted to uphold a single unelected man’s interpretation of a single phrase in a law passed decades ago over the policy voted on by popular referendum. Which means that all of this is nonsense. He only “enforces democracy” when he likes the outcome that leads to. When he doesn’t like what it leads to, to hell with democracy and up with the power of unelected Federal officials to overturn their will based solely on his own interpretation.