Here's the news about the professor, David Epstein, who is accused of having a sexual relationship with his 24-year-old daughter. Now, let's read
Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (the case that found a substantive due process right to engage in sodomy). Justice Scalia quotes the majority opinion (and adds italics):
“[W]e think that our laws and traditions in the past half century are of most relevance here. These references show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.”
Scalia then writes (and I'm adding the boldface):
Apart from the fact that such an “emerging awareness” does not establish a “fundamental right,” the statement is factually false. States continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes by adults “in matters pertaining to sex”: prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity, and child pornography. Sodomy laws, too, have been enforced “in the past half century,” in which there have been 134 reported cases involving prosecutions for consensual, adult, homosexual sodomy..... In relying, for evidence of an “emerging recognition,” upon the American Law Institute’s 1955 recommendation not to criminalize “‘consensual sexual relations conducted in private,’ ” the Court ignores the fact that this recommendation was “a point of resistance in most of the states that considered adopting the Model Penal Code.”....
The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are “immoral and unacceptable”... the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual” ... The Court embraces instead Justice Stevens’ declaration in his Bowers dissent, that “the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice.” This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.
Of course, the Court did assert that in
Lawrence, so according to Justice Scalia, under the existing precedent, consensual adult incest cannot survive rational-basis review.
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 218 of 218BigGov, there were no Progressives in 1860.
But lets start in say 1865, the year The Nation magazine was established by funny enough, abolitionists. So lets chat a bit about these folks, after all The Nations "progressive" credo is fairly well established, yes?
The magazine was founded by EL Godkin and Frederick Law Olmstead, though Mr. Olmstead was never involved in the day to day of the magazine. Mr. Godkin was the editor for many years, the literary Editor was Wendell Phillips Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison, one of the earliest and most outspoken abolitionists of his time.
In 1900 Mr. Godkin had something published in The Nation, though he was no longer the Editor as Henry Villard had bought the magazine in 1881, something that I have to post in pieces but which I am sure you and those who have argued with you may find of interest.
More on Mr. Villard and his offspring as we get along here.
From Mr. Godkin, 1900 as the Progressive movement was really gaining stream.
As the nineteenth century draws to its close it is impossible not to contrast the political ideals now dominant with those of the preceding era. It was the rights of man which engaged the attention of the political thinkers of the eighteenth century. The world had suffered so much misery from the results of dynastic ambitions and jealousies, the masses of mankind were everywhere so burdened by the exactions of the superior classes, as to bring about a universal revulsion against the principle of authority. Government, it was plainly seen, had become the vehicle of oppression; and the methods by which it could be subordinated to the needs of individual development, and could be made to foster liberty rather than to suppress it, were the favorite study of the most enlightened philosophers. In opposition to the theory of divine right, whether of kings or demagogues, the doctrine of natural rights was set up. Humanity was exalted above human institutions, man was held superior to the State, and universal brotherhood supplanted the ideals of national power and glory. These eighteenth-century ideas were the soil in which modern Liberalism flourished. Under their influence the demand for Constitutional Government arose. Rulers were to be the servants of the people, and were to be restrained and held in check by bills of rights and fundamental laws which defined the liberties proved by experience to be most important and vulnerable. Hence arose the demands for Constitutional reform in all the countries of Europe; abortive and unsuccessful in certain respects, but frightening despots into a semblance of regard for human liberty, and into practical concessions which at least curbed despotic authority. Republics were established and Constitutions were ordained. The revolutions of 1848 proved the power of the spirit of Liberalism, and where despotism reasserted itself, it did so with fear and trembling.
To the principles and precepts of Liberalism the prodigious material progress of the age was largely due. Freed from the vexatious meddling of governments, men devoted themselves to their natural task, the bettering of their condition, with the wonderful results which surround us. But it now seems that its material comfort has blinded the eyes of the present generation to the cause which made it possible. In the politics of the world, Liberalism is a declining, almost a defunct force. The condition of the Liberal party in England is indeed parlous. There is actually talk of a organizing a Liberal-Imperialist party; a combination of repugnant tendencies and theories as impossible as that of fire and water. On the other hand, there is a faction of so-called Liberals who so little understand their traditions as to make common cause with the Socialists. Only a remnant, old men for the most part, still uphold the Liberal doctrine, and when they are gone, it will have no champions.
Why is it illegal for one adult to contract with another adult to work for them for less than minimm wage?
Because libertarians are only a small fraction of the voting public.
Are there limits on what adults can consent to?
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.
They're adults. It's no one else's business.
Ok, so in 1900 we had the rising of William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, as well as the Spanish-American war, a war that Mr. Godkin saw as nationalism run amok.
As noted Henry Villard by this point owned The Nation, having purchased it in 1881. A German immigrant Villard had married the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, so the magazine had stayed pretty close to the family ties it had, particulary that of abolition. Villard also owned the New York Evening Post, as well as being a railroad baron, one of those folks that latter day "liberals" would term robber barons, he was in fact the architect of the first hostile takeover in Wall Street History. Mr. Villard, by the way kept Mr. Godkin as Editor for the New York Evening Post, previous to owning a paper he wrote for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, a paper, by the way that also had Karl Marx as it's European correspondent.
The union of Mr. Villard and Francis Garrison Villard produced son Oswald Garrison Villard, who then ran both The Nation and The New York Evening Post, the elder Villard passed away in 1900.
Oswald Villard supported Women's suffrage, trade union law reform, and equal rights for African-Americans.
Oswald Garrison was a founder, along with his mother, of the NAACP. He was also a founder of the ACLU, as well as the Anti-Imperialist League that demanded all territories won in the Spanish American war be returned.
In 1912 he supported progressive Woodrow Wilson for President, until Wilson mandated segregating Washington DC, lest whites become contaminated by blacks. It may also be noted that progressive Woodrow Wilson's administration jailed several suffragists, women who later suffered greatly, including have tubes forced down their throats in order to be force fed when they went on a hunger strike to try to get the vote.
Under Wilson it became illegal to speak German after the man who duped the American people that he would stay out of WWI instead marched in a couple months later. Villards Nation was mildly censored for protesting that Americans were being sent to Russia in support of the Whites, against the Bolsheviks, not because Villard Supported the Bolsheviks, but because he was a committed pacifist. An issue that criticized Labor leader Samuel Gompers was completely censored.
Progressive Wilson also had a very well established spy network, and people went to jail for being critical of the government in private conversation as well for simply speaking German.
What true conservatives know and understand that progressives do not, is that the state unloosed will trample the natural rights that EL Godkin so eloquently wrote about in 1900, already forseeing what was to happen when progressives wedded themselves to socialism. It was after all Wilson who equated his form of democracy as compatible with socialism.
Those who saw a moral imperative to stop slavery were conservatives, not progressives. The problem is that progressives do not know their own history, and far too few conservatives do either.
Oswald Villard is today termed as Old Right, because he was an early member of America First committee, which later became equated as a Nazi front by Communists. The group disbanded days after Pearl Harbor. Villard was also not a supporter of FDR, which automatically makes his credentials suspect of course.
It is clear that Biggov is historically ignorant, and apparently too damn lazy to use google or a library.
The Progressives in the early years were Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt at least didn't hate black people which Wilson did in abundance. The progressives did not do a damn thing for slavery, they did however bring us Jim Crow, not to mention the word Miscegenation. But thats another story and another supposedly liberal magazine founder.
Progressives also brought you THE STATE. Conservatives like EL Godkin knew it, and mourned what we were losing.
In time, left wing politics became confused as liberalism, while true liberalism and the idea of natural rights have been on life support ever since.
Find a library, I understand you can learn a lot there.
Estate tax, can be evaded in two ways: By marriage, or by corporation. Either is a sexless union which benefits the lawyers more than the principles.
See why the Obamanation wants to bring back and increase the estate tax?
Man, what a shit fling- some good stuff though!
Really, this all started with Roe v. Wade. If my body is "mine" to do with what I want, and this flows from my "right to privacy," then how does prostitution, consensual incest, polygamy, drug use, etc, NOT become a constitutional right?
Whenever I ask people on the Left about this, they always reply "Well... no judge would ever agree to that!" In other word, no judge will hold logically consistent views when it comes to the Right to Privacy. (It's interesting how nuanced that right is-- allows abortion and homosexual sodomy, but forbids prostitution and drug use-- yet it is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution! I guess that's why judges get the big bucks....
"Not only is there a constitutional right to sodomy and incest but also polygamy and bestiality.
"It'll all covered by 'in order to form a more perfect union' and the magical and incredibly expansive 'right to privacy'."
Don't forget to add a right to "miscegenation." Likewise, if it's the "right to privacy" which is to blame, the idea that married couples have a right to use contraception is what is to blame for this.
Is it now clear that the whole business of right to privacy was really just about sex?
Is it now clear that the whole business of right to privacy was really just about sex?
If there isn't a right to privacy during sex, does that mean it should be legal to be a "peeping tom"?
Why is it illegal for one adult to contract with another adult to work for them for less than minimm wage?
The opinion of the court says "matters pertaining to sex." Presumably prostitution, even below minimum wage, would be protected.
The link in the post has Epstein's photo, and the photo of his wife is here:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/06/sharynOHalloran.html
And there's a nice Valentines Day article in about Eptein and his wife in the Columbia Spectator from 2008:
http://www.eye.columbiaspectator.com/2008/02/14/married-profs-bring-love-work
Jane Goodall observed incest taboos in chimpanzees. "Mothers do not allow their sons to copulate with them, sisters do not copulate with their brothers and females do not copulate with older males in their familial group. Though none of these chimpanzees are biologically related, they have grown up in this family group and show no sexual behavior toward one another." Lawyers and judges are going to get us in big trouble.
Whatever happens happens for the possible good.
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