Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For Novermber 18, 2020

 Nov 10

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost America’s tolerant pluralism is under attack from the Left. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

From the beginning, America has been significantly based on white supremacy. Though there there are other parts to America's foundation, white supremacy has no small part in that foundation. From white supremacy there was slavery and then Jim Crow. And what the events in the past few years have pointed out is that we still have systemic racism in this nation. And people have been oppressed for other reasons than race.

So after seeing the significant role that racism in America has played in our history, how can we delude ourselves into saying that we have always had a tolerant pluralism? One only needs to review American history to see that our lack of tolerance didn't end with racism. Take the 20th century alone. Events like the Scopes trial, Wilson's Sedition Acts of 1918, McCarthyism, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the longtime legal persecution of homosexuals point to quite a bit of intolerance. And none of that includes America's current white supremacy groups who are supporting the Trump Presidency.

In fact, the article above, in calling for or claiming that we are already in a war against those who have been trying to remind us of our past and current sins is a call to intolerance. That is not to say that there isn't intolerance shown by some who are pointing out those sins. But the above is taking the 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' approach to the movements mention in the above article suggesting, if not implying, that they have nothing of value to say, they have no valid complaints.

All that the above article shows is, for some, intolerance can only be spotted when it is in others. But what is more important than that point is the call for war against fellow Americans because they see things differently. And conservatives say that Obama was divisive.


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Nov 15

To R. Scott Clark and SCOTUS Justice Alito and his speech to the Federalist Society about the SCOTUS and judicial issues. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Whether Alito's speech was remarkable depends on whether one can only see one's own perspective. For when Alito talks about rights, he fails to distinguish rights from privileges. For Freedom - equality = privilege. And that is what a given right is when not all equally have that right.

All one has to do to understand this is to look at why Alito and some others opposed the Obergefell decision. They feared that allowing same-sex marriage would infringe on the rights of Christians. But wouldn't the flip side of that coin be the infringement on the LGBT community if  Obergefell did not recognize the Constitutionality of same-sex marriage? And that is a perspective we don't hear from Alito.

And how are the rights of Christians being infringed on with Obergefell? Is it that Christian business people would have to offer those in the LGBT community the same set of services that they offer to heterosexuals and heterosexual couples. In other words, Christian business people would have to treat those in the LGBT community as equals? And isn't that what Christians who opposed to same-sex marriage wanted to prevent because they want society to marginalize, in varying degrees, the LGBT community?

Certainly some of the other court cases were much tougher calls than Obergefell. But I don't think that Alito presented them from as full a perspective as he could have. After all, the court decisions regarding the Sisters of the Poor and the pharmacy chain in the state of Washington become precedents for other decisions and possibly guides for legislation where situations did not share all of the specifics with either one of those two cases.

In addition, Alito's comments about regulations made by regulatory agencies is also short-sighted. For scientific facts are not discovered by democratic decisions, but by disciplined study. And though our scientists are not infallible, they do provide invaluable information that implement general approaches and guidelines that were democratically decided on.

Finally, we must really think through originalism and textualism. After all, the founding fathers were white supremacists with many of them owning slaves. Is that the perspective from which we want to interpret The Constitution with its Amendments? Do we want to pretend that the founding fathers were to our system of government what the Apostles were to the New Testament? Or do we want to consider that some of the implications of what is in The Constitution were never realized by them?