Thursday, February 9, 2017

Upholding The Dead law

EVERY WORD of the United States constitution is sacred, inviolable, and immutable, including, presumably, the part wherein black people are deemed to be three fifths of a human being apiece. This according to conservatives, who have a distinct penchant for elevating imperfect documents to the status of perfection. Both prohibition and the repeal of prohibition are to be interpreted in exactly the same way that the founders did. James Madison never stated which alcoholic amendment he preferred, but was known to have enjoyed the occasional glass of Madeira. We must never harbor the thought of interpreting the founding document in a way which is relevant to our modern circumstances; we are forever framed by the framers, inheritors of a dead document, or, as justice Scalia - who considered evolutionary biology to be nothing more than a wild guess - preferred, an "enduring" one. Thus the second amendment guarantees every currently living American citizen the right to bear a muzzle loading musket, but says nothing about AK47s or BB guns. What other choice or intent could they have had? How could they have known about modern firearms? Originalism carries the day, and the inevitable appointment of Mr. Gorsuch to the high court reaffirms our devotion to the original document, and its original intent. Precisely how did we arrive at the point wherein we are able to add an originalist to the nation's highest bench? Why, by interpreting the constitution exactly the way we wanted to, and ignoring the original intent of the founders. The founders wrote, in the sacred text, that the president shall nominate a person to assume a position on the supreme Court in the event of a vacancy, and the Senate shall give advice and consent, after a full hearing, according to due process, and shall vote to either confirm or deny the nominee. It does not say that this shall take place unless the president of the United States is in the last year of his second term, or is a non conservative, or an African-American. Those who insist that only the original intent of the constitution is acceptable for purposes of interpreting the organic law, are, we find, surprisingly more flexible and capable of inventing their own constitutional interpretations than we had thought, capable themselves of reinventing the sacred document, but only when doing so in the name of upholding the sacred and original intent of the founders.

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