U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with a word from one of his dissents
During the past week of momentous U.S. Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality, the Affordable Care Act and the Fair Housing Act, the biggest loser may have been Republican Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Thankfully, Scalia represents an old conservative white male demographic whose notions are becoming extinct.
In particular, Scalia’s dissent in the gay marriage decision reads like a paean to a time gone by. Scalia writes:
When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman….
Scalia has tried to cement 19th Century conditions in today’s law, something that old conservative white men do all the time. Scalia neglects to mention that, in 1868, there was no television, no Internet, no gasoline-powered automobile, no space travel, and, perhaps most importantly, no Constitutional voting rights for blacks or women. It’s a restrictive reading indeed to believe that the drafters of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights thought that time would stop as of those writings. But stopping time centuries ago benefits those in power on that day.
When Scalia tries to be more modern, he doesn’t advance very far. Criticizing the Court majority’s use of “freedom” regarding marriage, Scalia writes:
… one would think freedom of intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.
The problem is that one would have to travel back in time more than 40 years, when the existence and mention of “hippies” was prevalent, to “ask the nearest hippie” anything.
Scalia is not alone among old conservative white men seeing their influence dwindle. This month, Donald Rumsfeld lost even more credibility when he did a revisionist history flip-flop on the Iraq War. And Rush Limbaugh continues to lose sponsors and stations who are turned off by his antiquated insults to women and minorities. The times, they are a changing.
If the old conservative white male represented by Antonin Scalia, Donald Rumsfeld and Rush Limbaugh is becoming extinct, who is taking his place? Arguably, the old liberal white male (not to mention plenty of progressive women). Think Joe Biden, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders and Al Gore, whose early dire warnings about climate change are now a priority for younger voters, as well as for President Obama and the Democratic Party. Think of their predecessors, Ted Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who used grit and tenacity to advance civil rights, education, anti-poverty programs and healthcare. And think of the person who may have started it all, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who muscled America toward becoming a more progressive, fair nation, and won World War II at the same time, all from a wheelchair.
The old conservative white male won’t go quietly. He will spend gobs of money trying to rig the system to stay in power. He will use all the levers of government, including Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the military and even the police, to stave off change. He will cause setbacks, literally. But the march of history is not in his favor. As one older conservative white male president used to say a decade ago, “we’re makin’ progress.”
Photo by Mike Licht, used under Creative Commons license. http://is.gd/ugA8AP
Home run!
Thank you!