- Amendment 14, Section 5.
- Gallows humor.
- The Conquest of Nature.
1
I was surprised that 3 of 5 GOP hopefuls present in South Carolina yesterday, questioned by Robert P. George, said yes, they’d be glad to provoke a constitutional crisis by supporting legislation restricting abortion under Amendment 14, Sections 1 and 5 of the U.S. Constitution (in defiance of Roe v. Wade and its misbegotten progeny and without a preceding court reversal or Human Life Amendment):
Section 1. … No State shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
…
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The Volokh Conspiracy blog notes some of the problems with that, but I’m sure Robert P. George could plausibly (which is not the same as “conclusively;” I’m just saying his position isn’t indefensible) answer them all.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that George’s expertise is jurisprudence, which is pretty academic, whereas the problem I see with this idea, theoretical merit aside, is that the pro-life cause would lose that Constitutional crisis/question in public opinion, which would set back the pro-life cause terribly.
One of the formative stories of my political imagination is Winston Churchill’s agonizing World War II decision to sacrifice Coventry to a Nazi air attack he knew was coming because the Allies had found the decoder for the Enigma code and was now reading Nazi plans in clear text. To defend Coventry would tip off Hitler, cause him to change the Code, and make D-Day a far more perilous undertaking.
We must know when to not force an issue, however important the issue is, when it’s not yet ripe.
In my judgment, Mitt Romney’s conventional answer — the line Republicans have been feeding increasingly frustrated pro-life voters for nearly 40 years not —remains the prudent answer: appointing judges who would return abortion regulation to the states.
We’re on the brink not of a Supreme Court reversal, but of tipping majority opinion to the realization that the Court-imposed abortion regime is radical, not the opposition. Acting on the George proposal would reverse that instantly.
Overall, it was a good day for Romney.
I’ve joined those who complain of the press ignoring Ron Paul, so I won’t do that. He also declined Prof. George’s invitation, but with a rationale that leaves Section 5 of the 14th amendment meaningless. “It doesn’t repeal the 9th and 10th amendments” was his mantra.
Well, as a matter of fact, Congressman, it does limit the 10th (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”) a bit, by delegating to Congress some powers it lacked before. That’s one of the reasons the Civil War, and “the Civil War Amendment,” are such a big deal that the late Joseph Sobran says it inaugurated the Second American Republic (while the New Deal inaugurated the Third).
2
You Know It’s a Bad Economy When . . .
1. Your bank returns your check marked as “insufficient funds” and you have to call them and ask if they meant you or them.
2. The most highly paid job is now jury service.
3. People in Beverly Hills fire their nannies and are learning their children’s names.
4. McDonalds is selling the quarter-ouncer.
5. Obama met with small businesses — GE, Chrysler, Citigroup, and GM—to discuss the stimulus package.
6. Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars are now trading at higher prices than GM’s stock.
7. You got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
8. Your “reality check” bounced.
9. The stock market indexes have been renamed: the Dow is now the “Down-Jones” and the S&P is the “Substandard & Very Poor.”
10. Webster’s is keeping its dictionary length constant by adding words that are commonly used, such as Twitter, tweet, and Facebook, and dropping those no longer needed, such as retirement, pensions, and Social Security.
(Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown by David Wiedemer, Robert A. Wiedemer, Cindy S. Spitzer)
3
We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may “conquer” them. We are always conquering Nature, because “Nature” is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered. The price of conquest is to treat a thing as mere Nature. Every conquest over Nature increases her domain. The stars do not become Nature till we can weigh and measure them: the soul does not become Nature till we can psychoanalyse her. The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature.
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis.
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Bon appetit!
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 