“Writing at First Things, Joe Carter objects to Ron Paul’s federalist position on abortion, which leads him into a more extensive attack on federalism itself. Unfortunately, he uses the Schiavo controversy from six years ago to do this.”
So begins Daniel Larison’s latest blog, with which I completely agree. I’ve only read a few things by Joe Carter, so far as I can recall, and I have a generally favorable feeling toward First Things, where Carter wrote his misguided piece. But boy, did he blow this one.
In fact, I’ve long had reservations about the unintended consequences of a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, strongly opposed to abortion though I am. I’m all in favor of the Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade. But I’ve long harbored doubts about whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended to define human personhood (or whatever the approach might be), and the current crop of mouth-foaming “conservative” barbarians in Congress doesn’t reassure me that they’d do a workmanlike job at it if they tried.
But back to Carter’s column, which seems to argue “I want the conservative outcome, and federalism doesn’t always give me that, so to hell with federalism when it doesn’t.”
I can’t help but think in such circumstances of a dramatic scene in the book “A Man for All Seasons,” quoted by a more circumspect First Things author 10 years ago:
Consider the following famous exchange from Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, in which Thomas More’s son–in–law encourages him to use his authority to punish a man guilty of real evil that is nonetheless not forbidden by law.
Alice: While you talk, he’s gone!
More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
I don’t know whether federalism will always give the “conservative” outcome in Joe Carter’s sense, but I think it’s the constitutional pattern, and I miss it.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 