What I'd remembered was a lot of repetitious get-out-the-vote talk that anyone could say. What I wanted to know was why Elon Musk in particular supports Trump. Of course, I remember the grown-man-jumping-around-like-a-child business and the "dark MAGA" hat. But why is he for Trump? That might have some special persuasive power.
So I rewatched. Here's video of his appearance and a rough transcript. I've edited the transcript to fit it to the audio and to cut it down to the parts that might answer my question.
First:
[T]he true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire....
So, one answer is that Musk was impressed by the way Trump behaved during and immediately after the assassination attempt.
Next:
The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms... they want to take away your right to vote effectively.... California... just just passed a law banning voter ID....
The opinion is written by the Chief Justice, joined by everyone except Thomas, who dissents. There are also concurring opinions by Sotomayor (joined by Kagan) and by Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson. That's a lot to sort through.
"Justice Neil M. Gorsuch... asked a series of questions sketching out a minimalist ruling upholding the law, suggesting that the case before the court was an easy one.
'We actually have a finding of a credible threat,' he said... ... Justices Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — made similar comments.... "
"The Trans Radical Activist Network announced on its website that the march scheduled for the US capital on Saturday would no longer be going ahead following a 'flood of raw hatred directed toward the trans community.' The group said the threats had emerged following a shooting at a Christian primary school in Tennessee. The killer, who shot dead three children and three adults, identified as transgender, police in Nashville said."
"Twitter removed tweets referencing the 'Transgender Day of Vengeance' and said: 'We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. "Vengeance" does not imply peaceful protest.' Announcing the march had been cancelled, the Trans Radical Activist Network said: 'Individuals who had nothing to [do] with that heinous act have been subjected to highly serious threats and blamed only because of their gender identity. This is one of the steps in genocide, and we will continue our efforts to protect trans lives.'"
Are you surprised to see Twitter censoring based on the word "vengeance"? The Times offers this image as something that was seen on social media promoting the event:
This is from a Guardian interview with Paul Auster, the novelist, who has a new, nonfiction book called "Bloodbath Nation."
In the book you say the second amendment, framing the individual’s right to bear arms, was largely ignored until just a few decades ago, when it began to be seen as a fundamental text about what it means to be an American. Why did this happen?
Because of the 1960s – the assassinations and the chaos. People were frightened. And also because of the Black Panthers, who were obviously not white conservatives, but they were the group who originally set forth the argument that gun ownership is a right and that it’s for self-defence. It is hugely ironic: the Panthers were wiped out but their ideas stuck and were adopted by the white right wing. Now, for many, the second amendment has an almost religious component to it. The right to own a gun is seen as a kind of holy grail.
Why shouldn't individual rights have "an almost religious component"? That's the way it looks in the Declaration of Independence.
"... all of the historical precedents for heavy restrictions on concealed-carry laws as outliers. The Court says that it is going to look to history, but dismisses early English common law as too old. The Court says that it is going to look to history, but dismisses any laws that were adopted after the mid-eighteen-hundreds as too young. The Court says that it is looking to history, but also says that shall-issue permitting is constitutional, even though shall-issue permitting is a twentieth-century invention. So the Court says that it is doing history and tradition analysis, but conveniently ignores any history it doesn’t like."
The state law at the heart of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show “proper cause” for the license. New York courts interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property. Instead, applicants must demonstrate a special need for self-defense – for example, a pattern of physical threats. Several other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, impose similar restrictions, as do many cities.
ADDED: The majority opinion is written by Justice Thomas, and he is joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. From the Thomas opinion:
"... and that the Constitution leaves the government with 'a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.' Heller merely established the constitutional baseline that the government may not disarm citizens in their homes. The opinion expressly recognized 'presumptively lawful' regulations such as 'laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,' as well as bans on carrying weapons in 'sensitive places,' like schools, and it noted with approval the 'historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons."' Heller also recognized the immense public interest in 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.'... Heller [does not] prohibit giving law enforcement officers more effective tools and greater resources to disarm people who have proved themselves to be violent or mentally ill, as long as due process is observed.... Most of the obstacles to gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal; it’s laws that never get enacted, rather than ones that are struck down, because of an unduly expansive reading of Heller.... As the nation enters yet another agonizing conversation about gun regulation in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy, all sides should focus on the value judgments and empirical assumptions at the heart of the policy debate, and they should take moral ownership of their positions."
Also: "[P]olice leaders struggled to answer questions about the horrific hour it took to halt a gunman who opened fire on students and teachers inside Robb Elementary School. No school police officer confronted the gunman before he went into the school, a state police spokesman said...."
ADDED: If the police don't arrive and save us from violence, how can this event support the argument for restricting guns? This is the very situation that makes the most responsible people want to own guns. It reminds me of the summer of 2020, when there were riots, and the police stood down.
Insofar as the Framers focused at all on the tiny fraction of the population living in large cities, they would have been aware that these city dwellers were subject to firearm restrictions that their rural counterparts were not. They are unlikely then to have thought of a right to keep loaded handguns in homes to confront intruders in urban settings as central. And the subsequent development of modern urban police departments, by diminishing the need to keep loaded guns nearby in case of intruders, would have moved any such right even further away from the heart of the amendment’s more basic protective ends.
In his big speech last night, Biden proposed legislation to "close the boyfriend loophole to keep guns out of the hands of abusers." I'd never noticed the phrase before, and I can't understand it from the context. He was talking about amending the Violence Against Women Act, and he added:
The court order said this is an abuser, you can’t own a gun. It’s to close that loophole that exists. You know it is estimated that 50 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month in America, 50 a month. Let’s pass it and save some lives.
But what is the loophole? This doesn't read like a written script. I had to look up the term "boyfriend loophole." It has its own Wikipedia page.
The term boyfriend loophole refers to a gap in American gun legislation that allows access to guns by physically abusive ex-boyfriends and stalkers with previous convictions. While individuals who have been convicted of, or are under a restraining order for domestic violence are prohibited from owning a firearm, the prohibition only applies if the victim was the perpetrator's spouse, cohabitant, or had a child with the victim. The boyfriend loophole has had a direct effect on people who experience domestic abuse or stalking by former or current intimate partners.
FROM THE EMAIL: Owen writes:
I guess one lesson is that whenever you see “loophole” you know that it’s the rhetorical warm-up move to justify some big new demand. (Previous similar usage: “gun show loophole,” “bump stock loophole,” “private transfer loophole.”) Emotionally “loophole” is catnip because who wants a hole in their cabin wall? Even if it was deliberately made to allow you to defend yourself from attackers?
Good point. And you made me think about the original meaning of "loophole" for the first time!
"The Supreme Court has turned down countless Second Amendment appeals since it established an individual right to keep guns in the home for self-defense in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Since then, lower courts have generally sustained gun control laws. But they are divided on the fundamental and open question posed by the new case: whether states can stop law-abiding citizens from carrying guns outside their homes for self-defense unless they can satisfy the authorities that they have a good reason for doing so....
The new case is a challenge to a New York law that requires people seeking a license to carry a gun outside their homes to show a 'proper cause.'"
There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.
Moving my son into UW Madison today. This is the only book in his welcome bag. The attempt at indoctrination begins. Who paid for this anti 2nd Amendment book?Tax dollars? Tuition? A social justice organization? pic.twitter.com/rluUII52VQ
Said Donald Trump — calling on the last questioner at yesterday's press briefing — addressing a man identified as "Speaker 11" in the transcript.
The man with the white hair that was beautiful or not beautiful depending on how much Trump liked his question want to know about Trump's "LIBERATE VIRGINIA" tweet that connected the protest of the lockdown to the Second Amendment. ("LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!")
Doesn't that "potentially pose a concern" about "civil unrest"?
Notice that the man did not say Doesn't that foment armed rebellion? — and that makes the head of white hair look beautiful. Indeed, Trump called the question "an easy one" — so we may infer that Trump "like[d] his hair."
Trump's answer to the question:
We’re entitled to a Second Amendment and [the Governor of Virginia is] trying to take... that Second Amendment right away. To me that’s liberty. When I say "Liberate Virginia," I would say "Liberate Virginia" when that kind of thing happens and where does it all stop? So I think it’s a very good analogy.... [Y]ou have them working and signing documents trying to take your Second Amendment away essentially. So I do think it’s an appropriate time to bring it up.
What's the analogy? I think it's in using the idea of a state "under siege" and in need of "liberation" to describe a state that is limiting Second Amendment rights. The right to keep and bear arms is a "liberty" — he's saying — so if the state is cutting back on that liberty and you want to fight against that, you can say — in colorful language — that it's a fight to "liberate" the state.
ADDED: This morning, I heard a snippet of MSNBC on the car radio. A Michigan Congressman, Dan Kildee, was asked about the protests against the stringent restrictions. What would he would say to the people who feel that they are deprived of liberty?
I don't have the verbatim quote, but Kildee had an earnest way of presenting safety as liberty. He was not talking about gun rights, specifically, but he was using the same rhetoric that I've heard in the defense of gun control regulations. Restrictions on liberty are justified by characterizing one person's liberty as an impingement on the liberty of others. Just as gun control is presented as a protection of the people's right to be free of gun violence, Kildee presented the stay-at-home orders as a protection of the people's right to be free from the virus.
The rhetoric of liberty is available to everyone and is presumed to be what Americans want to hear. Wanting to be safe is repackaged as a love of the freedom to be found in safety.
Yesterday, Trump's tweeted "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!," "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" an "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!"
And the Governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, said, "The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies even while his own administration says the virus is real and is deadly, and that we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted.”
At yesterday's Task Force press briefing — transcript — Trump was asked how tweeting "encouraging liberation" — "fomenting domestic rebellion" — "squares with the sober and methodical guidance that you issued yesterday." Good question!
Donald Trump: Well, I think we do have a sobering guidance, but I think some things are too tough. And if you look at some of the states you just mentioned, it’s too tough. Not only relative to this, but what they’ve done in Virginia with respect to the Second Amendment is just a horrible thing. They did a horrible thing, the governor, and he’s a governor under a cloud to start off with. So, when you see what he said about the Second Amendment, when you see what other states have done. No, I think I feel very comfortable. Go ahead.
That seems to say that some Governors have overdone the repressiveness of the shutdown and relieving the excesses of shutting down is different from the reopening process. For example, in Michigan, there was an arbitrariness to what you could and couldn't buy in stores that were open (e.g., liquor and lottery tickets but not plant seeds and paint). Governors can amend their shutdown orders — Wisconsin's Governor just extended our shutdown but changed some rules (you can play golf now) — without entering into the phases of reopening described by the Task Force.
Trump gets a second question and — though he's a bit inarticulate — I'm pretty sure my interpretation of what he's asserting is correct:
Speaker 8: Thank you, Mr. President. Just to be clear, when you talk about these states, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, do you think that they should lift their stay at home orders or can you talk—
Donald Trump: No, but I think elements of what they’ve done are too much. It’s just too much. You know the elements because I’ve already said, but certainly a Second Amendment and Second Amendment having to do with the state of Virginia. What they’ve done in Virginia is just incredible. Okay, please.
Of course, there's plenty of reason to see a subtext. He's still campaigning for reelection, and he's talking to his people. He can't do his rallies anymore — not for a while anyway — and these protests are Trump rallies of a sort. Trumpsters coming out in force and cheering for freedom and gun rights.
In fact, Trump talked about his longing for old-style rallies. He was asked at yesterday's briefing about a statement from his campaign that said there would be more rallies before the election, and he said, he hoped to do rallies. They're "great for the country" and "an important part of politics actually."
There’s nothing like it. So I certainly hope we can have rallies. We’ll find out. I don’t like the rallies where we’re sitting like you’re sitting. I mean, you’ve got many reporters outside trying to get into this room, and I come in, I’m looking at this room, and I see all this. It loses a lot of flavor. It loses to me, a lot of flavor....
The police said that four people, including three men and one woman, had been taken into custody....
A 17-minute video posted to social media appears to show part of the attack. The clip, ... may have been taken from a helmet camera worn by a gunman.... “There wasn’t even time to aim, there was so many targets,” he says at one point...
Before the shooting, someone appearing to be the gunman posted links to a white-nationalist manifesto on Twitter and 8chan, an online forum known for extremist right-wing discussions. The 8chan post included a link to what appeared to be the gunman’s Facebook page, where he said he would also broadcast live video of the attack.....
In his manifesto, he identified himself as a 28-year-old man born in Australia and listed his white nationalist heroes. Writing that he had purposely used guns to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms, he also declared himself a fascist. “For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist,” he wrote.
ADDED: Why would a right-wing fascist want to "to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms"? I understand that the man is (he says) Australian and may not understand American ideology and politics and there may be something wrong with trying to make sense of the thinking of a mass murderer, but it seems to me that discord over the Second Amendment boosts the cause of limiting the right to bear arms. When Americans are not under stress, our resting state is to accept widespread gun possession.
IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:
Someone posted the video he took of his own shootings on a thread in Twitter. I didn't want to see it. It just started playing.
The gunman, who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant from Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, named [Candace Owens] as his biggest influence in his 74-page manifesto [posted on Twitter]. [He] said that Owens helped 'push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness' - but claimed some of the 'extreme actions' she calls for are 'too much, even for my tastes'.
Owens is getting attacked for reacting to that tweet with a laughing emoji. She also reacted in words (including "LOL"):
'I’ve never created any content espousing my views on the 2nd Amendment or Islam. The Left pretending I inspired a mosque massacre in...New Zealand because I believe black America can do it without government hand outs is the reachiest reach of all reaches!! LOL!' she said.
She continued to tweet over the next several hours that she refused to be blamed for the massacre. When followers pointed out the impropriety of her response, she was indignant.
'Laughter is not the response one would expect after these murders,' one follower said.
Owens shot back: 'No. But a bunch of racist white liberals flooding my mentions is almost exactly what one would expect. You guys will never de-platform me.'
It's a mistake to use laughter as opposed to straight outrage.
MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
I actually read his screed. He's not a right winger. He's an eco-fascist. He's not a fan of capitalism or conservatives or Marxists. He wants the United States to have a civil war and thinks that will come about by provoking people to fight over the Second Amendment.
1. I'm watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination today, now that they've moved beyond the introductory orations, and I'll make some notes here, using a numbered list, updated throughout the day. I'm using a DVR, so I'm behind real time, and the updates will come as I get to things in my recording, but just as the people in the gallery are — under Senator Grassley's rule — free to shout out whatever they want at any time, you can talk about what you like in the comments. I mean, you can talk about anything in the hearings. The people in Grassley's domain might be yelling about anything. I can't make out the words. I've tried. Was someone shouting "Death is death"? I don't know!
2. Grassley, the Committee chair, seems to have made a decision — in consultation with whom, I don't know — to allow the protests to interrupt the Senators and the nominee willy nilly. Grassley is not terribly articulate, but he mumbled something about "free speech" and the ability of 300 million Americans to make our own judgment. I interpreted this to mean that he (presumably in consultation with others) has decided that the disruption hurts the anti-Kavanaugh side. Kavanaugh either actively agrees or understands the game, and he's showing patience and fortitude and an ability to maintain focus as he gets right back, in the same calm voice, to whatever point he was in the middle of making. The protesters probably think they represent society's victims, but they sound like nothing but noise, and they're making the serene and diligent Kavanaugh seem like the victim of crude disrespect.
3. Kavanaugh has a little booklet-sized copy of the Constitution, and he's got the effective stage business of holding it up when he says "Constitution." We can see how small it is. It does not partake of the prolixity of a legal code, we constitutional scholars know very well. So he demonstrates his dedication to the document, but also — for those who can see it — demonstrates that everything he contends is in there can't possibly be there except as a high level abstraction, leaving the specific details for most things to be discovered elsewhere. Attesting to his dedication to precedent, Kavanaugh held up the Constitution and said it's rooted in Article III, where the words are "judicial power." The judge still must figure out what the judicial power is, and Kavanaugh was soon enough off onto what's in Federalist 78, but why Federal 78 and not something else? He has his favorite sources, and those sources require interpretation too. Once you find the judges are required to follow precedent, you still have to figure out how far. Kavanaugh keeps bringing up Brown v. Board of Education, but not in the context of precedent, and Brown v. Board of Education went against precedent. This is all first-week-of-Conlaw1 stuff, and of course, Kavanaugh knows it. He's got to simplify to talk to the Senators and to the American people, and it's sophisticated not to get too sophisticated.
4. Kavanaugh says that in all of the roles he undertakes, he looks at how the people who have gone before him have done their work. As a judge he is following the case law, and now, as he sits before this committee, he's following what he calls the "nominee precedent." He's read the old transcripts of hearings, and he's using the precedent, notably the precedent of the very influential Ruth Bader Ginsburg performance of the nominee role. What does it mean to "follow" those who have gone before? Obviously, he follows them in the literal sense of chronology. But he's not bound to do the same. Presumably, he'll use what works well and avoid what he can see with hindsight does not. Maybe someone will ask him if his adherence to judicial precedent is analogous. In "nominee precedent," you're following Ginsburg and not Bork. Aren't you picking and choosing, based on what's pragmatic? There's no authority that binds. Bork's Senate performance is like Plessy v. Ferguson. It's bad. You're using your human judgment and power to see that it's bad, and that's how you follow it.
5. One reason Kavanaugh, like Ginsburg, won't talk about how he will decide cases is that he puts great value on judicial independence. He wants litigants coming before him to feel that he has an open mind, and that the one with the better legal argument wins. If he'd talked about the subject to the Judiciary Committee, he'd feel morally bound to the Senators, and then he wouldn't be a proper judge, but a "delegate of the Judiciary Committee." Saying that, he was implicitly telling the Senators that they are violating the Constitution if they try to nail him down about anything.
6. This only gets me to the end of Grassley's questioning (and he reserved some of his time). You see why I can't really live-blog this thing or even delay-blog it completely. There's too much. Not sure how much of this I can do. Feel free to encourage me.
7. Dianne Feinstein endeavored to be gracious, but her patience wore thin as K consumed her time with his spelled-out explanations of specific cases and the rigors of judicial methodology. I was about to compliment her on refraining from interrupting when she interrupted him. She'd say, "Sorry to interrupt, but..." Once he kept speaking a little and then said, "Sorry to interrupt" — that is, apologizing for interrupting her interruption. K expressed empathy with DF's concerns. He was super-nice to her, and as things progressed, what I read in her face was pain — pain over wanting him to feel pain. But he's so heavily swaddled in judicial values that he's safe from everything. As a judge, he does what he must do as a judge, even when it pains him. He's pre-pained, inoculated to pain, and there's no way to further pain him. The children who die in school shootings... the women who would die from illegal abortions... these causes for empathy receive his empathy, but they do not change what he must do. His cold, dry judicial virtue is supreme and sublime, and he must, as ever, humbly submit. Feinstein was reduced to scoffing that K had learned (from Senators?) to "filibuster."
8. Orrin Hatch. Maybe I should skip the Republicans. It's not as though they're giving me a breather.
9. Patrick Leahy. The gravelly-voiced Senator — who I'm surprised to see is only 78 — laid an elaborate trap that hyper-focused on some typo-ridden email that a fellow named Miranda had stolen from him. The idea seemed to be that Kavanaugh knew about this terrible theft (which I think may have upset Leahy not so much because it was "stolen" as because it was so embarrassingly badly written). It was was only a draft as anyone could see, so anyone would know it was stolen, stolen... Or something like that. Miranda was a mole, a mole, I tell you!! I think this is video of Leahy...
Kavanaugh kept his cool, but he needed to see the email under discussion, so we had a minute of watching Kavanaugh read. Then Kavanaugh asked Leahy to tell him where to look to see what he was talking about, and Leahy, facing the requirement that he too read on camera, and quite apparently not up to the task, said he'd move on to some other question. So much for the trap. Leahy proceeded to some other document-heavy trap that didn't work, and he tried to blame Grassley for keeping something confidential and — with the 85-year-old Feinstein sitting between them — the 84-year-old Grassley went ballistic on Leahy. Zero progress was made against Kavanaugh, and I think Kavanaugh had to suppress laughter. Here at Meadhouse, we frequently paused and laughed and were all Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic...
10. From my handwritten notes, quoting Dick Durbin: "The things I did were unimaginable." He was referring to his work in a slaughterhouse, after getting Kavanaugh to say that the "dirtiest job" Kavanaugh ever had was construction work (or maybe mowing lawns). I wonder what exactly Dick Durbin did in the slaughterhouse, but it was a set-up to excoriate Kavanaugh for going out of his way to decide a case against some workers in a slaughterhouse. It reminded me of the Gorsuch hearings, the way the Democratic Senators got pretty far along toward proving Gorsuch didn't care if a man froze to death. GOP nominees lack empathy. They don't know the suffering in the real world. That's the theme.
11. Senator Whitehouse had some good material, but he was too disorganized and self-indulgent to make it work. A hardworking, on-task, on-the-ball Senator might have built the argument deftly, but Whitehouse was not the man for the job. The idea was something about the role of the Federalist Society in getting judges (including Kavanaugh) nominated, the participation of right-wing groups in bringing cases and filing amicus briefs, and the success of corporations in winning 5-4 Supreme Court cases (where the 5 Justices in the majority were appointed by Republican Presidents). Whitehouse kept reminiscing about his own cases — back in the day when he was a lawyer — and musing generally about various suspicions that have crossed his mind and it's just not good if people think the Court is political. Of course, Kavanaugh coasted through all of this, repeating the standard message that he's dedicated to judicial independence and deciding cases according to the law.
12. Not long after that I got tired. The channel I was watching (Fox News) turned away to cover President Trump and someone from Kuwait — a great country with a lot of great people many of whom Trump has known for a long time. It was refreshing to hear Trump talk after all that Senatorial smeech. The reporters were yelling questions at Trump, and Trump was rattling out answers. Woodward's book is "fiction." Canada will come to a trade agreement. Three million innocent people are surrounded in Syria and Trump is watching, so the Syrian military had better be careful. After that it was hard to settle in to Mike Lee walking Kavanaugh through the Quirin case. It has rained all day, and it was getting dark. What a crazy slog! It's absurd to expect the nominee to be up for this grilling for 8 hours with scarcely a rest. But it was kind of hard on me too. And it's almost 7 o'clock. The "Team of 9" we're thinking of here is not the Supreme Court, but the Milwaukee Brewers. It's the 3rd game of the series with the Chicago Cubs, and we've won the first 2. What an amusing game last night, no? I love when runs are scored in all sorts of weird ways. What was it — 8 runs in a row scored on plays that were not hits?
13. So that's it for me on the Kavanaugh hearings today.
14. It was the emir of Kuwait. Here's video:
15. Here's the video of the Kavanaugh hearing today, including the part that is still happening as I write this (at 7:17 PM Central Time). How brutal! I do wish I'd jumped ahead to see the more junior Senators. I'm especially interested in the 3 who might be running for President (Klobuchar, Booker, and Harris). I'll probably get to these tomorrow.
"... 'What a holy race (o sanctas gentes) to have such divinities springing up in their gardens.'* Sir Walter Raleigh, in an anti-Catholic mood, compared such worship of food to the sacrament of Holy Communion, where Christians munch on their god. John Donne, George Herbert, and Robert Herrick all followed Raleigh’s lead, joking, as Herbert wrote, of anyone 'who makes a root his god.' Thus, [the scholar Tom] Tashiro notes, 'the lowly onion was touched with divinity and thereby entered into the works of a few great poets.' When Rome seemed less of a threat, onions seemed less ripe for poetry. 'Only with the passing of time,' Tashiro concludes, 'in the nineteenth century, on the Continent, would the onion again receive the attention of great writers—of the Scandinavians and of the Russians—for whom it became a symbol of the self and would have moral virtues.' Tashiro is presumably alluding to Grushenka’s parable in The Brothers Karamazov: a guardian angel gives a wicked woman in hell one last chance at salvation. Did she ever do one good deed? Yes, she once gave an onion to a beggar. The angel appeals to God who says, fine, take that onion and yank her out of the lake of fire with it. Other sinners hold onto her feet, hoping for a free ride, but she kicks them off. 'I’m the one who’s getting pulled out, not you,' she says. 'It’s my onion.' At that very moment, the onion breaks. For some reason, I think of this parable whenever I drive by the Colt Armory, on Interstate 91 in Hartford, with its incongruous onion dome, bright blue and studded with gold stars.** It’s my Second Amendment, I imagine someone saying."
From "Renoir’s Onions" by Christopher Benfey (in The New York Review of Onions).
Here are Renoir's Onions, in case you're wondering how Benfey got from Egypt to The Brothers Karamazov to the Second Amendment:
These are crazy times, but a man once took that much time to paint 6 onions, and now we have Trump... and no hell.
________________
* Juvenal wrote, "Who knows not... what monsters demented Egypt worships? One district adores the crocodile, another venerates the Ibis that gorges itself with snakes. In the place where magic chords are sounded by the truncated Memnon, and ancient hundred-gated Thebes lies in ruins, men worship the glittering golden image of the long-tailed ape. In one part cats are worshipped, in another a river fish, in another whole townships venerate a dog; none adore Diana, but it is an impious outrage to crunch leeks and onions with the teeth. What a holy race to have such divinities springing up in their gardens! No animal that grows wool may appear upon the dinner-table; it is forbidden there to slay the young of the goat; but it is lawful to feed on the flesh of man!"
** Here's an image of that dome (cc Onasill ~ Bill Badzo):
THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED! As much as Democrats would like to see this happen, and despite the words yesterday of former Supreme Court Justice Stevens, NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!
Justice Stevens says that the student demonstrations last Saturday are "a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms."
But the students should ask for more — send more clear signs — and "demand a repeal of the Second Amendment." Usually, advocates of gun control tend to give assurances that they're not out to repeal the Second Amendment. A forthright demand for a repeal of the Second Amendment would wreck those assurances and elevate the pro-gun side, which could credibly intensify its rhetoric with reality-based anxiety that they are coming to take away your constitutional rights. If they can take away your Second Amendment rights — if the Bill of Rights is on the chopping block — they may come for your freedom of religion next, they can take away your freedom of speech, you right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures — whatever they like, whatever they think stands in their way.
The op-ed quickly shifts to a repetition of the argument made by the losing side in the 2008 Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Heller and set out in Justice Stevens's dissenting opinion. Stevens could have written an op-ed simply saying that Heller is bad and should be overruled. Then he wouldn't be directly threatening our constitutional rights, just informing us that we're mistaken about the existence of one of them. Indeed, we would be "overturning that decision" with a constitutional amendment:
[Heller] has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power.
Rights as propaganda. Look around. How often do we use "rights" as propaganda? That question used to dominate discussions within legal academia. You can get up to speed on what I lived through in the 1980s by reading "legal theory: critical theory/Critical Perspectives on Rights... The Critique of Rights." I'll just list the 5 propositions discussed at that link, which goes to a Harvard website:
1. The discourse of rights is less useful in securing progressive social change than liberal theorists and politicians assume.
2. Legal rights are in fact indeterminate and incoherent.
3. The use of rights discourse stunts human imagination and mystifies people about how law really works.
4. At least as prevailing in American law, the discourse of rights reflects and produces a kind of isolated individualism that hinders social solidarity and genuine human connection.
5. Rights discourse can actually impede progressive movement for genuine democracy and justice.
Back to Justice Stevens:
Overturning [Heller] via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.
I had to go back to the NYT webpage to recheck the language even though I knew I copied and pasted it. I was shocked at "get rid of the Second Amendment." Get rid of. Not "repeal." Get rid of. Not get rid of Heller, but get rid of the Second Amendment.
And it would be simple!? That's just a weird thing to say. It's not simple at all to amend the Constitution. Not only do you need 2/3 supermajority in both Houses of Congress, you are defeated if one house in the legislature of 13 states says no. This is why I was so damned sure in 2004 that George Bush's anti-gay-marriage amendment would never become part of the Constitution.
It would not be simple to get rid of the Second Amendment through the amendment process. It would be virtually impossible.
And the idea that you'd excise a right from the Constitution to "weaken" a lobbying group that "stymie[s] legislative debate" is repellant. Notice the motive of restricting speech. A group speaks too powerfully; we need to change the Constitution.
Stevens concludes:
That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform.
We should remove rights from the Constitution because it would be dramatic and because it would move marchers closer to their objective??
What's new is that his proposal to get rid of the Second Amendment is tied to the student protests: Let's seize upon their youthful enthusiasm, let's weaponize their passion, and use it to get somewhere we've always wanted to go.
I like kids as much as the next guy, but I'm not on the follow-the-kids bandwagon, especially when it comes to the value of respecting the American tradition of constitutional rights.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Encourage Althouse by making a donation:
Make a 1-time donation or set up a monthly donation of any amount you choose:
পোস্টগুলি
