Well, then: who can we leave it to?
One could easily argue for a fundamental right to vote, a right which it has proved necessary to protect in law. Scalia seems to be proclaiming the right of a state to suppress voting. He is correct about one thing: that is precisely the kind of arbitrary wielding of state power the Voting Rights Act was passed (and repeatedly renewed) to prevent.
We have a word in our language for a person who would substitute his or her own judgment for that of a legislature in enacting laws for our nation. And that word isn't "justice."
Could he be *GASP* an activist judge? You know, like the ones the teabaggers are so afraid of?
ReplyDeleteellroon, Scalia is a radical, and like any radical, he feels confidently justified in using any means whatsoever to advance his causes. As the Goldwater campaign said when I was 16 years old, "In your heart, you know he's right," to which Democrats, including me, appended "... far right," or rephrased it "in your guts, you know he's nuts." Goldwater was nothing compared to Scalia: Scalia is indeed certifiably nuts; no judge should have an agenda to the degree he has. But we're stuck with him.
DeleteOnce upon a time Italians in the US experienced prejudice... wonder what happened to them?...
ReplyDeleteellroon, Leonard H. Robbins (a poet largely unknown to me) said, "How a minority, reaching majority, seizing authority, hates a minority!" As long as Scalia has rights, he doesn't care much whether anyone else does.
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