Scalia...

Scalia says,

"And that, of course, deprives the constitution of its principle utility. The bill of rights is meant to protect you and me against - who do you think? - the majority. My most important function on the Supreme Court is to tell the majority to take a walk."

To which Ed says,

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this at odds with his often stated majoritarian views? During the oral argument in last week's Texas ten commandments case, he argued that the majority has a right to have government endorse its religious views at least to the extent of putting up monuments to them. He has famously said that if the the majority wants abortion to be legal, it should remain legal as long as it is done through the legislature rather than the judiciary.

Ed is missing something, something he seems to have a tendency to miss....text. Perhaps because it is not all thing, still not just nothing, yet still quite something. It seems that Naturalists do not really understand it, or have the eyes to see it. They try to say that much of it lacks "substance" and so on. The social Left tends to focus on Scalia and can only see Scalia and fail to see the principled nature of Scalia's position. Scalia is talking from within the context of his veneration of text. In that context it is his most important duty to tell the majority to "take a walk" if they are going against the text. That is the appropriate time to go against legislative majorities, not on a whim, feeling or a want as the social Left feeeels.

They cannot seem to see that it is the same textual principle that upholds both Scalia's anti-majority and pro-majority positions. They seem to feel, "Hey, he was anti-majority here. So that must mean that he personally hates the majority! But wait a minute, wasn't he pro-majority over there? And doesn't that mean he just loooves, loves the majority? He's contradicting himself!"

They have an odd view of Self. That is why they will try tell you what your feely feelings are instead of looking at textual facts, logic and evidence. You are hating....or you are tolerant and loving. Etc. Their typical argument when they get upset looks like the Jerry Springer show, "Don't be hatin'!" or "You just jealous!" That really has nothing to do with anything as a matter of principle. Although it seems to make them happy to believe such, or to at least let them avoid some cognitive dissonance. But there is a difference between mere perceptual feelings and conceptual principles that existentialists do not seem to be aware of. Existence without essence can be a deathly silence, just try thinking without words.

Ed goes on,

Here he appears to be saying that in any situation where the constitution does not explicitly state that the minority has a specific right, the majority may do as it pleases. Indeed, in this same article he was quoted as saying, "(T)hat's why we have a Bill of Rights. We set them forth in the Bill of Rights. But that is the limit of them, and I do not make up other ones." But this ignores the 9th amendment and the entire concept of unenumerated rights.

The Ninth Amendment states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Ed seems to be working from within the existentialist assumption of a liberal sort of faith. So if the Constitution says that rights by nature reside in the people he inverts that to something like, "Rights are granted by the Judiciary to the people through their gnostic occult interpretive abilities!"

Etc....it is not as if you can understand the text that they "interpret" in mystical ways. So you had best leave it to the social Left to make all your discriminations for you.

As they say,
"Like the character of an individual, the legitimacy of the Court must be earned over time. So, indeed, must be the character of a Nation of people who aspire to live according to the rule of law. Their belief in themselves as such a people is not readily separable from their understanding of the Court invested with the authority to decide their constitutional cases and speak before all others for their constitutional ideals."(112 S. Ct. 2816 (1992) (emphasis added) Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey)

The Ninth Amendment...what is retained by the people in the schemes of these modern gnostics with their supposed mystical interpretive abilities? The notion that any ideal or right is retained by the people does not make sense given the notions of textual degenerates who would make all your discriminations for you. The Court was meant to be limited by the very document that it now purports to control and define "....before all others..." yet these new politicians now that they must not work to distort text too much or too fast and in so doing have people become aware of their fundamental textual illegitimacy. Jefferson noted that the Constitution would become a "...thing of wax..." if the philosophy of the social Left is adhered to.

He was right and the social Left within the Judiciary has been making it up as it goes along for quite a while now. As it does so it leaves a morass of contradictory decisions and moral degeneracy in its wake. The moral degenerate is the textual degenerate.

Ed does not seem to have the eyes to see that, as the result of his adherence to Naturalism. But others have and note the results,
"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."
(Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Charles Jarvis (Sept. 28,1820) in 15 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson 276, 277(Andrew A. Lipscomb & Albert Ellery Bergh eds., 1904)

It is quite a contrast to what the modern Judiciary writes in its decisions.