Thursday, August 28, 2003

I'm sitting in an office waiting for someone, so...
more from Volokh, here and here.

Making arguments in favor of originalism is like arguing for strict adherence to Catholic doctrine. It's all Moses and Aaron (Oy!) I still love Scalia's: "The Constitution as I interpret it is dead." Once you admit interpreting 'it' -whatever 'it' is- you've let the cat of indeterminacy out of the bag, and you begin sliding down the slippery slope to anarchy and chaos. Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh my!
You can not have communication without miscommunication, kiddo, so just have faith and shut up, or make arguments and suffer the consequences of risk. But since we're talking about law in a democracy, we have to debate it: by logic alone, you're screwed.

Yes, there are those who argue against the rule of law as such, and yes, they are idiots. But the rest of us have to steer a course between "The Scylla of authoritarianism and the Charybdis of know-nothingism and barbarity." So what else is new?

I can only repeat the line from my last post. Instead of prescribing methodologies, why don't you idiots try studying the history of communication and interpretation. If you had spent some time doing that we'd be over this sort of collegeboy debate by now.

"Given that a democracy is and must be flexible and indeterminate in nature, how flexible, or inflexible, should we be -AS A DEMOCRACY- in a time of crisis?"
That's a question for adults, as democracy is a government of adults. Unfortunately there aren't very many adults around.

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