« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

Tea Party: Cute, Cuddly…Racist Homophobes

According to the NYT, at least...

By: Dave Poff (haystack) (Diary)  |  March 17th, 2010 at 01:07 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Ordinarily I might have just passed on to the next headline, shaking my head in amazement at today’s edition of elitist patronization from this NYT drivel, but I was frozen in place when I got to the part about originalists being racists and bible-toting torture-loving Confederacy-worshipping rubes. Once the author bridged this description of “Originalism” to the “Tea Party” movement, the conclusion was easily enough reached. But, we’re told, don’t hold it against them; they’re young still, and haven’t gotten the memo yet about Originalism being for small minded racists:

It is, of course, hard to say anything definitive about the Tea Party movement, a loose confederation of groups with no central leadership. But if there is a central theme to its understanding of the Constitution, it is that the nation’s founders knew what they were doing and that their work must be protected. “I think it’s some loose, ill-informed version of originalism, but it’s plausible,” said Professor Kramer, the author of “The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review.”

“Originalism” has many flavors and levels of specificity, but in essence it says the constitutional text should be applied as it was understood at the time it was adopted.
[snip]
A new study from Professor Persily and two colleagues, Jamal Greene and Stephen Ansolabehere, explored the political and cultural values of those who identified themselves as originalists. Such people “appear more likely than non-originalists to be white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious,” the study found. “They are less likely to favor abortion rights, affirmative action and marriage rights for same-sex couples, and more likely to favor torture and military detention of terrorism suspects and the death penalty. They are more likely to express morally traditionalist, hierarchical and libertarian cultural values.”

What impresses me here is how well the NYT has taken the movement AND the Constitution down a notch of relevance in one fell swoop. The more people appear ready to stand up for our founding Fathers and the words they crafted that have held this country together for over 200 years, the more our dear misguided progessive and elitist friends must diminish the meaning and value of both…especially if they get in the way of an agenda that runs counter to either.

Tags: , ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • Tbone

    “Such people ?appear more likely than non-originalists to be white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious,? the study found. ?They are less likely to favor abortion rights, affirmative action and marriage rights for same-sex couples, and more likely to favor torture and military detention of terrorism suspects and the death penalty. They are more likely to express morally traditionalist, hierarchical and libertarian cultural values.?

    • shadowmane

      ?Such people ?appear more likely than non-originalists to be white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious,? the study found. ?They are less likely to favor abortion rights, affirmative action and marriage rights for same-sex couples, and more likely to favor torture and military detention of terrorism suspects and the death penalty. They are more likely to express morally traditionalist, hierarchical and libertarian cultural values.?

      • momofthecastle

        I am a female, with 3 years of college. Well, I guess I am “older, Southern (albeit a transplant), religious (as if that’s a negative!), and white.” With a black son.

        How did such uneducated people get to such positions in education?
        (I am speaking of Persily, Greene, and Ansolabehere)

        • Leopard1996

          Considering I am bi-racial, and feel that most things that have been done for a very long time by this government is completely unconstitutional.

          • JHancock

            Have 4 degrees-BS, MS, MBA, MD and 11 years of higher education–and I’m a TEA party fan! I am religious….but so is Al Gore (only he prays to Gaia not Jesus). I am also the adopted child of a teen pregnancy (so I’m against “abortion rights”-personal freedoms do not extend to dominion over the life of another human).

            As far as my race–I resent the term “white”–it has been used over the past 20 years to actively discriminate against anyone not of Black or Hispanic descent (for Med-school applications, even Asians are counted as “same as white”)

          • Leopard1996
  • LibertarianHawk

    Who wrote this…Andrew Sullivan?

    I obviously can’t speak for anybody else, but I don’t “favor torture.” I simply haven’t heard of anything we’ve done as a matter of policy that qualifies as torture.

    Everytime I see that term used, I think of Potter Stewart’s famous quip about what defines pornography: “I know it when I see it.” In other words, it’s an entirely subjective term.

    My general rule of thumb regarding torture is that anything that somebody of sound mind (or, at least, Chris Hitchens’ scotch-saturated mind) would voluntarily subject themselves to doesn’t qualify as torture.

    So, no, I don’t favor “torture”. I favor the use of the most effective techniques to gather intelligence, without crossing the line into torture.

    And reasonable people can differ about what does or doesn’t amount to torture.

    • MAVet

      Waterboarding is torture.

      • HappyBunny

        Too bad the blamstick isn’t filled with water.

      • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
      • dontremaine

        MAVet,
        Waterboarding is NOT torture. Torture is more like cutting pieces of your fingers off to extract information. Torture is taking your children and cutting off body parts in front of you to make you talk. Torture requires permanent physical damage that can not be fixed. Scaring someone is not torture. Torture is what the terrorists do when they burned to a crisp another human being and decorated the bridge with their body.
        Don

        • JHancock

          They are not legitimate enemy combatants so the Geneva convention does not apply to them. If torture can lead to information that will save American lives-I say bring out the battery cables! If it does not yield good information and is just needlessly cruel as McCain maintains-than do whatever will save American lives.

          Either way, the point is saving American lives by what ever means are most effective–we owe nothing to terrorists who are not actually enemy soldiers (this situation may be different for old Iraq regime militants as they belong to a country that was actively at war with the US).

  • Leopard1996

    To point out to the NYT how much the Democrat/Liberal “compassion” has done more to destory minority standing in this country than help it. All affirmative action truly did was call into question any achivement that a black person makes if they don’t tow the rest of the liberal party line.

  • whitman

    As much as I disagree with the sentiment, I have to say the writing was breathtakingly clever. The writer never addresses how the Constitution should be interpreted from a theoretical perspective, but merely implies that originalism must be incorrect because it is supported primarily by certain ethnic and social groups. This racist and classist argument is buttressed by reference to certain left-wing policy preferences to demonstrate that originalism can?t possibly be good if it arrives at those conclusions. This is classic eisegesis and shows the bankruptcy of the Left?s ideology.

    • momofthecastle

      n/t

    • MF

      What a concise, intellectual and truly brilliant analysis and rebuttal. Wow! Whitman, that comment was breathtaking! :-)

  • fpete13527

    The NY SLIMES Fish Wrap supports far more sophisticated views of government than the lowly majority of Americans who support the original U.S. Constitution.

    No… the SLIMES supports government doctrine from much higher quality folks like Marx and Mao Zedong. The SLIMES knows that these folks have taken much better care of their people than the U.S. Constitution. Those governments also had far better opinion of their fellow man. And….the NY SLIMES learned all about this from very prominent professors who were absolutley non-bias and of the highest quality and integrity. Many of their same professors wer dual-hatted and got HIGH awards for accurate climate research.

    The NY SLIMES also feels that they would do much better under MArxist/Maoist types of government doctrines. Hopefully they will pursue their life long ambition to live in places that supports their true type of government. Those places will absolutely welcome them…far more than the lowly American people.

    NY SLIMES subscriptions are doing so well, maybe they could begin their move soon?

  • Next93

    I have a question for my more ‘sophistcated’ bretheren (literally – my brother is a Mass. liberal and his arrogane on political matters is breathtaking):

    If the constitution doesn’t really mean what it was thougth to mean at the time it was signed, how can it be legally binding? At what point do the individual states (or the individual individuals) have the right to say ‘this isn’t what I signed on for’ and seceede?

    • MAVet

      The constitution was written in a certain time, place, political circumstance and culture. All these things change. How can you expect it to keep up with changes the original writers could never have envisioned?

      • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

        free men cannot solve if they have the will to solve them?

        What issues are best solved by government, new or old?

      • Achance

        for a mind-numbed lefty? Trolls are trolls.

        And yes, you can deal with new issues within the text of the Constitution rather than relying on the unicorn farts and pixie dust the Left likes to rely on.

      • glorybee

        independent of a point in

        • glorybee

          (hit button too soon, sorry)

      • streiff

        unlike a lot of state constitutions, the US Constitution addresses very few issues. The issues they failed to “envision” have generally been addressed by amendments, though one can argue whether or not they failed to forsee things, like the friction caused by slavery, or whether they deliberately kicked the can down the road for the sake of getting agreement.

        From a conservative viewpoint, the problems with the Constitution arise when emanations and penumbras are found to create new rights… or abrogate long existing ones.

        Just to clarify, which parts of the Constitution do you think don’t cover new issues?

        • huskerchuck

          While I’m not a Constitutional lawyer (was never exactly sure how you went about getting in that specific field, though I’d have loved to have done it), I am an attorney who has done some studying on various provisions of the Constitution and its applicability. I’m also a land use attorney, that has represented both private and governmental clients (I have held a position also as a deputy county attorney in Nebraska working on the civil side).

          The Constitution holds genious in its approach BECAUSE it enumerates a few basic specific rights, and doesn’t go into elaborate detail on things it doesn’t need to. It lays out the framework that we are to govern by. The ‘issues of the day’, in essence, don’t matter in the Constitution. What it doesn’t talk about can be governed by the people. But rights that aren’t in there SHOULDN’T be inserted in there by judicial fiat. If this country feels that strongly about it, we have the capability to AMEND the Constitution. There is NOTHING that says passage of time weakens those rights or builds upon them. They simply are. To try and do anything else, to try and warp it to someone’s personal vision, well, a lot of words could be used about it, but it comes around to this… the criminal nature of such would be in taking something so simple, so great in its simplicity, and corrupting it with your ‘greying’, your ‘updating’, etc. It would be a travesty, plain and simple.

          If you want to change it, AMEND it. Otherwise, it doesn’t change.

          • Money

            This is brilliant in its simplicity. The Constitution does nothing more than outline who has the authority to do what. What the people do with that authority can change with the times, within the restrictions of their enumerated authority.

            Those people that say the Constitution doesn’t change appropriately with the times are the same people who say that the Bible contradicts itself. And they haven’t bothered to read either.

          • aesthete

            Behold the behemoths that are the UN-directed Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraqi constitutions, nevermind most of Europe’s constitutional and “basic law” schemata.

      • rightwingmom52

        there should be no debate about gun control for how could the founding fathers have envisioned a country where law-abiding citizens are restricted from bearing arms and defending their homes while criminals run rampant? Typical response from a lib, however, since you fail to give any instance wherein the Constitution no longer works.

      • Next93

        If the original intent doesn’t matter, who gets to decide what the new intent is? The SCOTUS? I didn’t vote for them, my state didn’t vote for them, just becauss the party that happened to be in power at the time liked them doesn’t empower them to re-write the basic compact of government.

        What’s the purpose of even HAVING a constitution if it can be reinterpreted to suit the whims of the party currently in power, or when an oligarchy of nine unelected judges can wring out unwritten rights and powers to acheive social outcomes?

        • Flagstaff

          we could easily end up with the President becoming the equivalent of a King. If he has a Supreme Court that agrees with him, he can do what he wants, Constitutional or not.

          He could decide that elections are optional, for example.

          Not so far-fetched, given that the Administration chose to side with the anti-Constitutionalists in Honduras against its Supreme Court and legislature and Vice President.

          If the Constitution doesn’t mean what its words say, what does it mean? As with any contract, its words must continue to mean what they originally meant. Which, I suppose, is the source of the word originalist, which Scalia prefers.

          We had a preview of this world in Kelo.

      • dontremaine

        MAVet,
        The constitution was written by people that were free and did not want an oppressive overbearing government telling them how to live their lives. This was at done by a group of very enlightened individuals that did have the experience of how bad it was to live under tyranny in Europe. They also had the experience of living under the “rule of law”. These experiences gave them the insight of a government that favored this ideal; “the rights of the individual outweigh the rights of the many”. That is the difference between the rule of law and the rule of the mob. Morality, truth, loyalty, and freedom are standards that will stand any test over time. They never become outdated; these are the standards that are captured in our constitution. If you think these values are bad go somewhere else; don’t try to break the greatest government in the history of mankind. We need to go back to the standard of the constitution. There are many bad laws in this country that do not meet the constitution standards. All of these bad laws are part of the progressive party.’s attempt at eliminating freedom and ushering in a new world where the government is the answer to everything. This will require that we all submit to them. God is as much a part of our country as freedom, and it is wrong to eliminate God from government. The first amendment is the freedom to choose your religion, not freedom from religion. The laws protect each person decision. When the governmnet rules that prayer in public is unlawful; it is establishing an atheist religion, which is unconstitutional. I should not be silenced from saying what is on my mind. I do not have to submit to the progressive view of political correctness. Hate crimes laws should be removed from the books. A crime is a crime; it is ignorant to make it worse based on a technicality; because all crimes are based on hate or disrespect. The left is always wrong.
        Don

      • NoDoze

        I trust that you are merely uninformed in the matters about which you comment and ask questions, rather than being a propagandist for Leftist ideas. Starting from that assumption, there are two major reasons that the Constitution is relevant today.

        1, The principles of human nature, government, and the rights and responsibilities of each of us never changes. Much older documents than our Constitution, which teach and uphold these principles are still just as true as when they were first written — regardless of the differences in culture and language in which they were written. We need a solid education in reading comprehension, and logical thinking to understand such documents, but our ignorance does not make them invalid.

        2. The Constitution provides for its own updating through the process of amendment. When a reasonable and intelligent majority of the population see a need to “update” the Constitution,
        we follow the constitutionally process to do it. We do not leave the Constitution behind and make up laws that seem to work for us. That is the road to anarchy and nihilism.

        • NoDoze

          n/t

      • antigman

        directly with changes. But there are mechanisms in place to deal with those issues: states rights, votes, the petition and amendment processes,.. . The Originalists only want people to go with the process, rather than ignore it. If certain changes are a good idea, Affirmative Action for example, then make the case and change the Constitution. Explain to me how racism practiced by the government is somehow a good thing, since that’s exactly what AA is; government sponsored racism. The NY Time (Newspaper of Fiction) supports this ABuse of power because they’re better educated than the “bitter clingers”, who don’t have the intillect to get it.

    • JHancock

      Most progressive liberals far less versed in politics and more narrowly educated that conservatives I know. In the health care field most of my liberal friends have only ever been in academia. The few conservatives I know have backgrounds in business, finance, computer science, or have worked in the private sector–in essence they have seen enough of the world outside of the heavily government-subsidized beltway-to know the road Left does not lead to prosperity.

      For example, I was watching Jeopardy with a Liberal friend the other night. One of the categories was the Constitution, another was American History. My friend answered 3 correctly–I was 10 for 10. The Left hasn’t been educated in many respects. Few know anything about economics, international trade theory, or philosophy–and when they do, often they have studied only one of these disciplines and focused only on newer more progressive research in their degree. Yet they pretend to be smart enough to know it all and maintain that we are ignorant rednecks!! Well…OK….I am a redneck, but with 4 degrees (& I read the Journal too!)–I’m hardly ignorant.

  • archer52

    Here’s the problem with lefties and elitists, they wouldn’t survive three days without the farmers, truckers, machinists, engineers, linemen, police and others that run this nation and allow them the free time to blather like drunken bar flies. I posted such a fantasy, wishing the living dead would visit. The lefties would poo-poo and tisk-tisk and say nothing bad could happen to them because they are special. But in reality, without us, they would not last the week.

    http://truthandcommonsense.com/2010/02/20/zombies-and-liberals-democrats-why-i-wish-the-living-dead-would-pay-a-visit/

    from the post-

    “Bear with me here. My young son is a long time fan of zombies. Zombie movies, folklore, comic books and novels. He loves the living dead. He?s not a fan of fast moving zombies or zombies with a brain (Both I agree violate the first law of zombies- their strength is in their overwhelming persistence. Seriously, they?re dead. How can they reason or sprint. It kills the whole concept of being a zombie. What?s next zombie NASCAR and jet pilots? ). We always get a kick out of watching how the characters react to being confronted by the living dead. Some panic and fold right away. Others refuse to admit to the problem. Still others wait for help to arrive and get eaten long before that happens. The last group just picks up whatever is handy and starts killing zombies….”

    • rightwingmom52

      As far as the prohibition against hitting women, there’s no rule about girls hitting girls, so I’m happy to take out Rosie (since I guess she’s technically female) for you.

    • Next93

      Lets face it, the NYT folks think that we’re all brain-dead Rushbots, too busy clinging to our guns and bibles to actually think for ourselves. Our ministers, preachers, preists, or Kleagles tell us to go protest, and off we go.

      We’re just too bone-stupid to understand the kind of sophistries that they do; we can never understand, for example, that the only way we can ever be free is to allow the self-appointed intelligencia to control every aspect of our lives (which, of course, is exactly WHY we need the intelligencia to run our lives for us), or how democracy is too important to allow things like honest elections to get in the way.

      Of course, it never occurred to any of them to wonder why you meet a lot of people (like me) who were raised liberal but over time became conservative, but almost never meet someone who started out as a conservative but eventually became convinced that personal freedom and small government weren’t as important as “taking care of people”.

      And, of course, it would never occur to them to ask why none of the Great Ideas of the left ever actually, you know, WORKED; social security turned out to be a big Ponzi scheme, Medicare never made it to that level of respectability, Medicaid turned out to be a poverty trap, Great Society programs destroyed the black family in America and short-circuited all of the gains of the civil rights movement, and the list goes on and on.

      But, of course, none of that matters, because they’re smarter than you and me. And if you don’t beleive that, just wipe the chaw off your chin, put down the banjo, step down off the front porch, and just freakin’ ASK THEM!

      • Next93

      • soljerblue

        when I hear elites described as “sophisticates”. The word derives from Greek — sophist — which I understand to mean ‘wise fool’. I can think of few better descriptions for the genre.

  • momma

    …wait till they discover that among the Tea Party Patriots are (gasp) HOME-SCHOOLED ADULTS. Yes, their numbers are growing, and as they reach adulthood they not only graduate at the top of their college classes, they engage in conservative activism! Even start running for public office! Horrors!

  • skorrent1

    The claim that “originalists” either/both ” express morally traditionalist, … and libertarian cultural values.? Is hopelessly ignorant. Do they have no understanding of the tension between conservative traditionalists and libertarians regarding “cultural values”? Or was it merely a desire to tar all opposition to statists with the same brush?

    • JHancock

      -the best way to raise a Conservative child (ie-someone who does not become a morally bankrupt ultra leftie in college) is to homeschool at least through Jr. High.

  • David123

    like Plessy v Ferguson?

    • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
      • JHancock

        that the racism of the time was primarily advocated by Southern DEMOCRAT PROGRESSIVES, who attempted to advance “scientific” arguments about how segregation was a good thing–on the same note these PROGRESSIVES also founded Planned Parenthood years later to deal with the problem of a BLACK birth rate that was eclipsing the white birth rate–essentially maintaining the status quo.

        Sorry, but for the most part-the left (ie-non-originalists) have to own racial injustice, because it was their loose interpretation of the Constitution that allowed it for many years–just like their loose interpretation is now allowing reverse-discrimination.

  • Locked and Loaded

    “[M]ore than party identification, age, race, gender, religion, or even views
    on hot-button issues such as gun rights, immigration, same-sex marriage, or affirmative action, we can most readily predict originalist views from an individual?s level of formal education, her degree of moral traditionalism, or her views on Roe.”

    Translation: Originalists are hard-workers, they hold a traditional view of family and society, and they are against ending the life of a baby in the womb.

    Oh, one other thing: Even though the originalists are more likely to be male, the PC academic boneheads must use the feminine gender to describe them. Whatever, but that move right there does not engender credibility.

    You can download the whole thing from this abstract page.

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1567702

  • Flagstaff

    But if there is a central theme to its understanding of the Constitution, it is that the nation?s founders knew what they were doing and that their work must be protected.

    What a novel idea.

  • jaxgator

    I would gladly take warterboarding over more of Obama’s rambling, condescending, nattering drivel. Has anyone told him the campaigning is over? It’s time to act like a president!

  • johnt

    as they have amply demonstrated over the years. But I guess when you’re a dog you have to find your morality somewhere.
    I won’t forget the rage at Bush when of all people the mass sadist Saddam Hussien was hung. Bush they were furious with !

  • pathfinder81601

    5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”

    The antidote, I learned from RS, is to keep saying what you are saying and say it louder and more often. So there!

    • JHancock

      Paint Liberals to be effete ineffective sniveling nerds–like that college professor no-one likes. Rules for radicals can just as easily be used against the Left.

  • conservos

    who were emasculated, calling Obama the “n” word.

    More of the same.