The New Grrrl Order

Equal rights? Yes. Equal compensation? Of course. Equal justice? Absolutely. Equal intolerance? Not really a good strategy. I applaud women standing up for themselves. #MeToo was long overdue. But will the anger rally the righteous to victory, or recharge the reactionaries?

The urge to punish anyone who supports Trump and his henchmen in Congress is a double edged sword. As Bill Mahar pointed out last Friday night, women need to be heard, but they don’t necessarily need to be automatically believed. We are still a nation of laws, not men, and “not men” does include women, believe it or not.

Judging by the numbers in the 2016 election, a large number of white women didn’t get the memo that they were voting against their best interests. It brings home the reality that women are subject to the same human nature as we males. They won’t vote like they’re told any more than we will.

If the goal of this revolution is to disrupt the status quo, the best way to do it is through the ballot. Women already have the Democratic party behind them. What they need are the undecided independents. When they see Brett Kavenaugh as their husband, brother or son, they are not going to vote blue. When they see Republicans and their families being run out of restaurants and threatened with violence, they likely see anarchy, and anarchy doesn’t fit with most people’s idea of civil society.

Anarchy means tanks on your street, and you already have problems finding a parking space. Anarchy means shortages of everything, unless you have a well stocked bomb shelter. Anarchy means no TV or internet. Good God! You might as well be blind and deaf!

We haven’t gone there yet, and we aren’t even close to the kind of shit storm the nation endured in the sixties. If you were born after 1970, you’ll have to take my word for it, or maybe read some history. Americans weren’t too keen on “the revolution.”

It was the anarchy of burning cities and the riots in Chicago that elected Richard Nixon in 1968. It was the anarchy of student protesters burning their school at Kent State that even outweighed four of them being gunned down that reelected him in 1972.

Martin Luther King had a better idea, even if it was less satisfying in the moment. Put down the big stick and use reason against the unreasonable. Projecting hate will only encourage more hate, and reasonable people are afraid of hate and the violence that is sure to follow. Don’t become the thing you are trying to destroy.

 

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4 Responses to The New Grrrl Order

  1. Michael Anderson says:

    What we are really talking about is Originalism vs. the Living Constitution. Orginalists put forth a lot of high-minded ideals but they are largely impracticable in the 21st century.

    Take for example the conflict between Article 1 and the 14th Amendment, vis-a-vis one person one vote. What if the role of advise and consent for SCOTUS appointments was with the House instead of the Senate?

    “The U.S. Supreme Court has stated the rationale for [one person one vote] as follows — Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system.”

    https://thirty-thousand.org/pages/1P1V.htm

    Yet Originalists like George Rebane, and various local wannabe constitutional “scholars”, advocate for repealing the 17th Amendment which would remove the direct vote for US Senators. In California with over 40 million people we are represented by 2 senators while citizens in the 20 least-populated states have 40 senators.

    The rest of the First World is laughing at us. Our foundational documents are not only not aging well, they are in tatters. We will either fix the problem or our country will break up into separate countries in an EU type of arrangement, which BTW is completely antithetical to George Rebane’s ridiculous “Great Divide” wet dream.

    Let’s at least take some baby steps. First, amend the constitution again, as in the 12th Amendment, to either eliminate the Electoral College or cause the votes to be proportional. Second, amend Article 3 so that SCOTUS appointments only last 18 years. These are very reasonable ideas, but they make the Originalist’s heads explode because, well, their heads are easily exploded due to a fossilized lack of elasticity. As in dinosaurs.

  2. Chris Peterson says:

    I believe that Originalism vs. Living Constitution is a false narrative; rather than in opposition, they are inextricably fused together. Folks like the late Justice Scalia somehow made Originalism an argument against the very form of change that the Constitution guarantees. Many of Scalia’s arguments before the court dodge in and out of originalism, as his opinion dictates.
    Take, for instance, his argument in Heller in support of banning certain weapons he holds as being outside of the protection of the Second Amendment. On the one hand, he advocates that the DC law against handguns in the home goes too far in abridging the right to bear arms, notwithstanding the mention of supporting a militia, and then argues that certain weapons, which would be necessary to ensure the valid contribution to a citizen militia, would be considered ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ in everyday life.
    Originalism, in the way in which it has come to be used, is merely a cover for one’s personal opinion. In reality, originalism is exactly what makes our written law of the land a living document, in that every word of the Federalist Papers is an explanation on how we are able to change the document as the times’ demand, which has been done 27 times, already. The meticulously set out how, why, who, and where such changes are to be made. It’s as Originalist as it gets.
    So, I do not concede to Rebane, Scalia, or you my friend, that my believing that the Constitution is a living document means that I am not an Originalist. I very much am.

    • Steven Frisch says:

      Um, I don’t think Michael characterized ‘you’ as an originalist Chris, he characterized the essential debate as one between originalism as the term is used today and living constitution.

      However, I agree with you, I believe the original intent was for the document to be changed as the time demanded, and that is clearly stated in a dozen ways in the Federalist Papers. The use of judicial review to help define the meaning of laws and statutes clearly means that the intent is going to change over time, and I think that is an unspoken but clear intent of the original constitution. I chuckle with Orwellian irony every time I hear someone refer to the ‘Federalist Society.’

      • Chris Peterson says:

        I hope Michael appreciates what a great friend he has in you; someone who comes to his defense, even in the absence of any accusation. (My apologies if I gave you the impression that I took his comments personally.)
        My main point was that being an originalist and seeing the Constitution as a living document is one and the same thing, according to my reading of the Federalist Papers. Michael’s proposing the opposite as a narrative wasn’t taken as saying I, personally, was either one, but merely that he believed they, in today’s vernacular, opposed each other. Originalist is like the term ‘entitlement’, which is exactly what it is, but the right has morphed the word to mean a ‘freebie’. I simply refuse to give in to such ignorant blather.

        I’m thinking we’re pretty much all on the same page here, as far as the founders’ intent.

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