Justices discover common ground
Published December 29, 2014
Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, December 26, 2014.
Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan are sitting in a duck blind in Mississippi. Scalia turns to Kagan and says.…
It sounds like a pretty good start to an absurd joke with no basis in reality. The only trouble is that it happened.
That’s right, Scalia, the originalist’s orginalist appointed by Ronald Reagan can sometimes be found duck hunting in Mississippi with Kagan, a liberal Obama appointee. If it’s not hard enough to picture a female former Harvard Law School dean in a Mississippi Delta duck blind — once a bastion of masculine liberation from female oversight — then you’ve got to remember that she’s a Democratic appointee with a gun.
The story goes that Scalia, a hunter and gun enthusiast, introduced Kagan to his passion and she took to it like, well, a duck to water. But it wasn’t enough for him just to extend an olive branch, or perhaps a Remington autoloader, to Kagan. He actually enjoys hunting with her.
Scalia has long been known for his flamboyant presence on the bench and opinions and dissents that liberals find abrasive to say the least. But apparently, liberal justices find him a delight once the robes come off. Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were well known to enjoy each other’s company over dinner. And now he’s taken Kagan under his wingshooter’s wing.
It’s not that the two aren’t passionate about their beliefs. Kagan says she hates to lose but loves needling the opposition with prickly dissents. And Scalia is the most consistent and ideologically pure conservative on the court.
It’s just that neither of them thinks that has to make them enemies.
“If you can’t disagree on the law without taking it personally, you need to find another day job,” Scalia quipped recently when the two appeared at a University of Mississippi School of Law forum. “You shouldn’t be an appellate judge.”
It’s not just appellate judges who need to take their political ideologies a little less personally. The hostilities start with dismissing ideological opposites as intellectually deficient and continue on to treat opposites with open contempt. We complain about members of Congress not being able to reach across the aisle to each other, but liberals and conservatives in the general population aren’t much, if any, better.
Each side wants to blame the other for the lack of civility. Conservatives blame liberal snark while liberals point to conservative bombast. Regardless of which camp you fall in, if you’ve ever dismissed the opposition as not worth listening to because of their inferior intellect or insufficient moral center, you’re probably part of the problem.
Scalia and Kagan choose to commune in a duck blind. But it could just as easily be at a vegan lunch counter, in a smoky sports bar, on a golf course or over a chess board. Whatever the two justices have got, we could use a little more of it.
This editorial first appeared in the Tuscaloosa News, a Halifax Media Group newspaper.
December 29, 2014 at 11:34 am
Norm Kelly says:
I'll consider myself part of the problem then. I refuse to listen when the community organizer occupier speaks. He says nothing useful. He disregards law when it suits him. He espouses his socialist policies, with total disregard to how they actually affect people. He forces his socialist schemes upon the masses, caring not at all about how bad it is for the majority, how bad it is for the economy, or that he plays favorites with those he exempts from his unilateral decisions. I do not dislike the man because of the man. I am not a racist. I am a libertarian. He is a socialist. We have nothing in common when it comes to policy. I believe in freedom and the power of the individual, as per the U S Constitution. He believes in central planner control, and the power of an all-powerful central government which negates individual freedom. In complete contradiction of the U S Constitution, which he swore to uphold.
When libs speak of compromise, reaching across the aisle, they ALWAYS insist that the conservatives/Republicans are the ones who must do the reaching. When libs control congress, libs claim the Republicans are standing in the way of 'progress'. (when they actually mean 'progressivism'.) When Republicans control congress, libs insist that their voices must be heard, but worse they insist that their policies be enacted anyway. When libs lose an election, it has nothing to do with their policies or schemes. When libs win an election, it's automatically considered a mandate on their policies/schemes. And their allies in the media are happy to carry this claim. When Republicans win, libs refer to the electorate as stupid. Kinda like the occupier does when referring to white people, specifically white cops! When Republicans win an election, libs and their media allies refuse to call it a mandate, refuse to recognize that voters want a change in direction, and claim that the election proves voters want elected officials to get along and start compromising. Libs are so good at compromising that the rules in the Senate were changed by the ever senile Harry to eliminate dissent. Instead of a super-majority required to pass certain things, the socialists and senile members of the demon party that controlled the Senate (past tense!) changed the rules so that a simple majority could pass things. Sounds like compromise to me.
How do we know libs lost the most recent election cycle in a BIG WAY? All the talk of compromise, the claims of voter desire to get along, the other talk about how Republicans are so hateful toward their opponents. But notice that all this drivel spews forth from lib mouths. Those that lost. Those who are eternally confused. Those who's policies were rejected by a MAJORITY OF VOTERS!
To quote your savior, elections have consequences. You lost. We won. Our turn to govern. Sit down and be quiet now. How does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot? Don't like it do you? Too bad. Elections do have consequences. Your policies were REJECTED. Now, be good little libs, and sit down and be quiet. If it's good for the goose, it's certainly good for the gander. Learn to start compromising! It'll be good for your growth! And perhaps if you start actually listening to the electorate, you can win elections again also. But if you insist that socialism is the way to the future, our side can pray to our God that you stay in a minority. And your minority position grows and grows, so you are a larger minority (or is that smaller minority?). Why is it that libs refuse to allow conservative policies to even be tried before they reject them? Is it fear that success from conservatism will prove your schemes failures? Since conservative policies would succeed where socialism fails, it would certainly prove libs wrong, and they refuse to let the eyes of a majority be opened to the truth. Just read your average N&D editorial and you'll see attempts to keep the masses in line and ignorant.
