Category Archives: Philosophy

If A Man Murdered Thousands In The Name Of Christ

…would we give him a Christian burial? While I’m not a Christian, I would think that Christians would object.

I don’t think it helps the so-called “moderate Muslims” to “follow Islamic traditions” with respect to this monster. He should have been fed to the hogs.

[Update mid afternoon]

I’m listening to Glenn Beck, and he’s channeling me. He says he’s already spoken to Muslim friends who are appalled that this happened.

Also, I’ll have a piece up at Pajamas Media on this subject later today.

Big Government

What we’re talking about:

In a century, Big Government transformed an essential and minimalized service, the Federal Highway Administration, into the Department of Where the F*** Do You Think You’re Going, and the above fog machine is just the genetics of one department. I noted earlier that the GAO had “found” massive amounts of redundancy; it was a poor word. The GAO simply took the time to report on the disgust. Any rational man could look at the following, which is nothing more than a collection of current federal agencies, and understand the waste is of a scale difficult to comprehend and inspiring of our worst tendencies to rage.

It’s frightening, really.

Having It Both Ways

I think that the administration’s position on DOMA is craven (so what else is new…?).

If they really believe that the law is unconstitutional (a position with which I don’t necessarily disagree), it’s nonsensical, and in fact a violation of the president’s oath of office to uphold the Constitution (which is the highest law in the land), to enforce it. I thought that George Bush should have been impeached not for signing McCain-Feingold, but for doing so while explicitly stating that he believed it to be unconstitutional. This was a blatant violation of his oath of office, though he obviously didn’t realize it. In both cases — this and the Obama DOMA position — it is trivializing the oath for the sake of pandering. In Bush’s case it was to the so-called “moderates” (i.e., mindless, or at least principleless) and in the current president’s case, to his base. It is not up to the other two branches to defer their judgment of constitutionality on untested law to the Supreme Court — they must follow it once such a judgment is rendered, but unless and until it is, they are obligated by their oath of office to follow their own. If the president really believes that DOMA is not only unconstitutional, but that there are really no reasonable arguments on the other side, then he is bound to not enforce it, and to get such a ruling as soon as possible (an eventuality that would be hastened by his inaction in enforcement).

And as is often the case, this is another example of the difficulty of many, even those who should know better, to distinguish between the concept of “constitutional” and “law I agree with.” Roe v. Wade was a judicial travesty, regardless of one’s views on abortion, and we should demand consistency from the administration regardless of our views on gay marriage. The president is bound by his oath to enforce, and even defend, bad laws, but not unconstitutional ones.

Which brings us back to Elena Kagan’s confusion on this issue, and why she was a frightening appointment to SCOTUS. She has it exactly backwards. It would actually be good law to force people to purchase and eat their vegetables, at least in terms of the public health, but it would be a law both totalitarian and tyrannical. And unconstitutional.

More thoughts from Jonah Goldberg (here and here), Shannen Coffen (here and here), and David Bernstein.

[Update a few minutes later]

More at Cato.