An honest statement of the facts and a reasonable opinion on how the matter should be handled. But...
"Every time you're selecting a Supreme Court justice, you're conducting a mini-plebiscite on what the Constitution ought to mean," he said.
...a statement of the political realities which reveal that the Constitution is in fact a living document. Every time a political appointment is made the meaning of the document changes. Oliver Wendall Holmes recognized, and approved of, this more than 100 years ago. So did Chief Justice Marshall almost at the founding of the country.
At the root of this is the ultimate societal poison - moral relativism, i.e., There is no right and wrong - the powers that be decide what is right and what is wrong. This is a form of relativism.
The liberal relativists among us use the judiciary as their instrument of power to mold and shape the laws according to their twisted agenda. Ergo, it is no surprise that the Democrats so vehemently oppose any nomination to ANY court that is pro-life or pro-truth or a constitutionalist. It is quite plain that the godless liberals want to use the judiciary to illegally and tyrannically impose their will on the American people.
Moral relativism is not only evil, it's illogical and absolutely absurd, and it's easily refuted. Yes, 90% of Americans buy into this baloney because they are like gullible little sheep.
Either there will be a cultural and spiritual revolution in America, or America will end up on the trash heap of history in short order.
Bovine excrement. The document means the same thing it always has. That you don't like it has absolutely no bearing on its meaning.
Wish in one hand, crap in the other and see which one fills up first.
...a statement of the political realities which reveal that the Constitution is in fact a living document. Every time a political appointment is made the meaning of the document changes. Oliver Wendall Holmes recognized, and approved of, this more than 100 years ago. So did Chief Justice Marshall almost at the founding of the country.
I must say you are very far off the mark indeed. The words of the document do not change (except by amendment). That at least is undeniable. But when we start speaking of the change of the meaning of the Constitution we enter an intellectual battleground in which both intellect, the Constitution, an the original intent of the Founders have been sacrificed, holocaust (in the lit. Greek sense of whole burnt offering) on the altar of liberalism.
As I have posted above (#299 I think), interpretation of meaning can mean many things. There has always been varied interpretation of what the words of the document mean. Whatever Marshall may of meant by changing interpretations, he meant nothing like Holmes' "living document" theory, a subtle tactic to usurp the Constitution and substitute WILL for JUDGMENT in the words of Hamilton. I am afraid you bear the burden of proving that Marshall was of kindred spirit with Holmes for it is a wholly new argument to me, and one not espoused by any constitutional scholar I have read nor one gleaned from the Marshall's opinions which I have read.
To return to difference of opinion on meaning, or to state it better, different judgment on the meaning of laws and constitutional articles and amendments, their is variance and always has been. However, that variance is limited by the meaning of the words. The Warren Court made a mockery of interpretation and of the Constitution following the specious reasoning of one Oliver Wendal Holmes, a true pioneer for Justice Usurpation.
On this note, Scalia calls himself a constitutional textualists precisely because of all this confusion about meaning. His point is that whatever the original intent was, whatever conservative interpretation might be, whatever precedents may have been established, the words of the text have meaning in and of themselves. That meaning may be debated, but it cannot be whatever the judge wills them to be. Interpretation is restricted to the text, to the words on the page, and words have meaning ascertainable by all, and debate about meaning is very limited in scope .
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the argument that the Constitution is "living" is absolutely contradicted by what our Founders set out to establish. A Constitution is by its very nature "dead" in a sense at least. It is living only insofar as it is binding on the living. It is dead insofar as the words are written and cannot be changed, ever. Sure, you may make amendments, but that does not change what was previously written and even those amendments once written and ratified are also dead. The Constitution by its very nature is a restriction of the dead on the living. Yet it is a restriction that the living consents to though only so long as we still have respect for the wisdom and patriotism of our Fathers, and at least some understanding of that wisdom. It restricts in the case of our Federal Constitution, the taking away of liberties from the states and from the people, and grants certain authorities to that government and by means of certain checks attempts to preserve liberty for future generations. It is, in sum, a check on tyrrany of the majority and of the federal government and a protection of the people and the states against foreign invaders, political and economic, and internal division (in some degree only). It is a check on the "living" impulsive passions of the majority or would-be tyrants. It is a check on laws that would be passed by passing fancy or by impulse to the possible ruin of life, property and liberty. And this document, uneditable though amendable, is our greatest inheritance passed down from our Founders. Holmes laid ground work to destroy those protections, and Marshall was not Holmes. The meaning of meaning has come under strong attack and you have fallen asleep to siren's tune.
"...a statement of the political realities which reveal that the Constitution is in fact a living document. Every time a political appointment is made the meaning of the document changes. Oliver Wendall Holmes recognized, and approved of, this more than 100 years ago. So did Chief Justice Marshall almost at the founding of the country." [I have elsewhere addressed your stance on Marshall. To recapitulate, Marshall was not a proto-Holmes. Holmes=demon. :) ]
Comptron's point (#470) is very poignant and on mark. You must read the previous paragraph of the article to understand Scalia's point regarding this statement. The unfortunate fact that many have come to believe the judge's role is to rethink the Constitution has led to the political fury over judicial appointments. I would disagree with Scalia, however, that it is a miniplebiscite on the meaning of the Constitution, because it is the Senate only who approves the appointment of the president and so it is an indirect election, the determination of a few on who has authority to rewrite the Constitution. And the current debate more concerns whether the Constitution ought to be viewed as enduring OR changing and therefore, as Computron concludes and I think correctly, dead.
I do wish you to consider Computron's argument. It is important that you understand the implications of viewing the Constitution as a living as opposed to an enduring law. Law must be enduring, especially the Foundational law, for another reason. For if the law constantly changes, it will loose its authority. As I have said I am reading de Tocqueville again and it brings to mind an observation of his.
He noted that Jefferson thought that before any bill was passed (I presume in the state or federal legislatures) it ought to be required that a year go by between its introduction and the vote and that no amendments be allowed. His reasoning was threefold (at least). Firstly that would require more deliberation on the part of the lawmakers and give them time to consider the worthiness of changing the law at all. For hasty laws are very harmful to good lawmaking. In all matters (except where necessity demands immediate action) it is prudent not to act upon the first usually impulsive judgment. However, it is also very true that bad laws, created more often by poor deliberation than ill-will, diminish the authority of the rest of the laws. Secondly in many state legislators of Jefferson's day the terms were only for one year, which would result in one legislature introducing a bill and the next passing it, preventing too many changes in the law and providing for better lawmaking because proposed bills would require agreement and deliberation by more than one legislature. Thirdly and most importantly, the consequence: fewer laws would be passed and those less changeable. There seems agreement among most of the shrewd judges of political matters that it is far better to endure a bad law (so long as it does not undermine the very foundations and purpose of society) than to enforce a good law that few obey (pipe smoking - the little sort -- comes to mind; Aquinas cited prostitution as another) AND even worse is to be shifting from one law to its opposite. As I stated above, if the law is constantly changing, its authority is greatly diminished. It leads to moral ambivalence and ambivalence to law as well. Although the legal and the moral are not the same, they are closely linked and depend on one another. In democracy there is the tendency to think that the sole authority of the law rests in the majority. We often forget that many of the laws, especially in the Constitution are designed to protect the rights of individuals and states from the majority and the tendency of the majority to think that it is the sole authority of law and morality. But if the law changes frequently with every majority there are two evil consequences. One: we begin to think that the sole author of law is the majority; and two: that author is arbitrary because the law is constantly changing. The conclusion is obvious: the majority alone determines what is right and wrong AND it may be whatever the present majority say it is, or to put it simply might makes right. If what is legal becomes illegal and again legal in the span of a few years, then not only that particular law but all laws appear arbitrary merely. And so all morals also appear so. Consider the harm of the Intolerance movement and the Prohibition amendments. (A side note: Jefferson did provide for a means for quick passage of bills requiring immediate action, by permitting any proposed legislation to be immediately voted upon but only passed by a two thirds majority.)
But the above paragraph is a consideration of easily changeable laws and not the Constitution which provides for the Framework of the Federal Government, imposing limits on it and defining its jurisdiction and that of the States. If the Constitution is to change with every new justice, not only the authority of the Constitution is diminished, but the very legitimacy of our federal government is called into question. Moreover, the Constitution is both a democratic and undemocratic instutition. It protects rights of the state and the individual from the majority. To say that the meaning of those limits and rights are to be reinterpretated with the changing times and in accordance with the predominant morality of the day, is to give to the majority absolute power without limit. The Constitution in large part limits the majority from being tyrant over all. To say that the Constitution should be at the mercy of the whims of a miniplebiscite is to render impotent the Constitution as a limit on the power of the majority.
What makes our country enduring is not so much our Constitution: many nations, even the Soviet Union, had Constitutions delineating the limits of governments and the rights not to be infringed by that government. What has caused America to last so long while other Constitutional democracies have failed to take root is the respect for and acceptance of that Constitution. For most democracies of the twentieth century, the Constitutions created were mere words on paper, not understood and even less adhered to by either the governed or the governing bodies. Perhaps along with Great Britain, America was unique: the Constitution was generally accepted, a few particulars merely debated. It was a real Constitution in that it established not merely a theoretical structure but the real structure of government. The amazing fact of our Constitution is that it imposed limits on the majority and both the majority and all those in positions in government agreed to those limits. This is possible only if it is regarded in large part as unopen to interpretation or to interpretation with limits. The federal judiciary was instituted to safegard those limits especially from a temporary and passionate majority, NOT to rewrite the limits themselves. I recommend that you read chapters on the state and federal judiciaries (chapters 6 and 7 of volume one).