Tea at Trianon: Making Liberal Heads Explode

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Making Liberal Heads Explode

From PJ Media:

Last week I mentioned to my colleagues in a private chat that I’ve been waiting for President Trump to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court like a kid waits for Christmas.

In a year like this, one has to really savor the enjoyable moments. There was much savoring to be done this past Saturday and — even though I know the Democrats are going to be extremely awful going forward — I know that there is going to be a lot to enjoy in the next couple of weeks.

I watched every leftist on Twitter melt down for an hour or so during and after the nomination the other day. It was another “hold my beer” moment. Every time I think that they can’t possibly get any worse, they go out of their way to prove me wrong.

One of the first lines of attack on Barrett was to say that she is a bad mother for being an accomplished professional.

My, how far feminism has come.

It got worse from there. The next bit of bottom-feeding was to go after the judge’s kids, because the liberals are nothing but class:
I noticed that a particularly nasty line of attack was developing against ACB Friday night on Twitter. A Democrat staffer and activist posted a thread pondering if the adoption process for her two Haitian-born children was legit. The person even implied that maybe the children were snatched up and taken out of Haiti by “ultra-religious Americans”.
As I have had to say all too many times in the last year: these people are filth. (Read more.)

From The National Review:

Will it help Trump win in 2020? I’m no prognosticator, but politics has to be about more than always situating the party for the next win. Occasionally you’re going to have to fulfill promises. These justices fulfill the wishes of the vast majority of the Right, sans a handful of Trump-obsessed former conservatives.

Nor should it be forgotten that, if Barrett is confirmed, Mitch McConnell will have become one the most effective and consequential conservative politicians — nay, politicians, period — in American history. Call him a hypocrite if you like, but the risk of denying Obama another Constitution-corroding justice in 2016, widely seen as politically self-destructive by Washington commentators, was worth it. His constitutionally kosher position turned into three justices, who, one hopes, will abide by their stated originalist and Scalia-like disposition. Their rulings will long outlast any fleeting partisan squabble.

Can Democrats stop her?

Three years ago, Barrett was confirmed by the Senate to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals 55 to 43 vote. The path of least resistance for those Democrats would be to argue that Coney is a jurist with some bad opinions, but competent and decent. The justification they can offer for voting against her is that Trump is a modern-day Nero and the process has been irreparably broken. Of course, why a modern-day Nero would nominate a decent and competent jurist who will likely inhibit the power of the executive branch is a big mystery. (Read more.)

From The City-Journal:

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Donald Trump has nominated to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a distinguished scholar whose judicial philosophy balances a commitment to originalism with a respect for precedent. Dire predictions circulate about the consequences of adding another conservative-leaning justice to the Court, but Barrett’s record suggests that she will do credit to the institution.

In many ways, Barrett’s resume is a testament to the trail blazed by Ginsburg. Like the late justice, Barrett graduated at the top of her law school class and served as a judicial clerk, first for federal appellate judge Laurence Silberman and then for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. After a stint in private practice, Barrett joined the faculty at Notre Dame Law School, where she was named “distinguished professor of the year” three times.

Barrett has earned lavish praise from colleagues across the ideological spectrum. In 2017, when Trump nominated Barrett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, her Notre Dame colleagues unanimously supported her in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The law professors wrote that they had a “wide range of political views” but were “united however in our judgment about Amy.” She was also endorsed in a letter signed by every former Supreme Court law clerk who clerked while Barrett worked for Justice Scalia. The former clerks’ letter described Barrett as a “woman of remarkable intellect and character,” as someone who “conducted herself with professionalism, grace, and integrity” and “was able to work collaboratively with her colleagues (even those with whom she disagreed) on challenging legal questions.” Barrett was ultimately confirmed to the Seventh Circuit with bipartisan support.

Now, however, with a Supreme Court seat in the balance, Barrett has become the subject of scathing—and misguided—criticism from the left. The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, for example, asserts that Barrett “would not hesitate to jettison decisions with which she disagrees,” a glaring mischaracterization of the nominee’s record on adherence to precedent, the principle known as stare decisis. Barrett has in fact defended the Supreme Court’s existing presumption in favor of stare decisis—a presumption that promotes stability while affording the justices’ flexibility to depart from precedent. (Read more.)

Also from The National Review:

Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett clerked, has observed that the law federal judges use to decide their cases is written law – the Constitution, statutes, regulations. In his book Reading Law, Scalia explains that the textualist “look[s] for meaning in the governing text, ascribe[s] to that text the meaning it has borne from its inception, and reject[s] judicial speculation about both the drafters’ extratextually derived purposes and the desirability of the fair reading’s anticipated consequences.”

Barrett has similarly written that the “bedrock principle of textualism, and the basis on which it has distinguished itself from other interpretative approaches, is its insistence that federal courts cannot contradict the plain language of a statute, whether in the service of legislative intention or in the exercise of a judicial power to render the law more just.” (Read more.)