Posted on 03/09/2010 12:30:10 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Long before his last name became a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary, Robert Bork had already enjoyed a distinguished career as a scholar and public servant. Now a distinguished fellow of the Hudson Institute and professor at Ave Maria School of Law, his latest book is a sprawling collection of the writings he has produced over more than four decades. Its publication offers us the opportunity to think about questions that citizens of a constitutional republic have a duty to think about. Who among us—of a certain age, at least—can forget our current vice president's role in derailing Bork's Supreme Court nomination? Or the late Teddy Kennedy's not quite measured claims that
Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and...
and indeed.
The Bork nomination was a watershed event, one of those "eureka!" political moments for so many people who came to know—in a visceral, publicly televised, in-your-face sort of way—that there is something truly rotten about the manner in which a lot of people view the Constitution, including the constitutionally appointed gatekeepers on the federal bench...
(Excerpt) Read more at claremont.org ...
Read later.
The Second Amendment states somewhat ambiguously: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The first part of the Amendment supports proponents of gun control by seeming to make the possession of firearms contingent upon being a member of a state-regulated militia. The next part is cited by opponents of gun control as a guarantee of the individual's right to possess such weapons, since he can always be called to militia service.
The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm. The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possible tyrannical national government.
Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose.
-- footnote Slouching Towards Gomorrah
Yes, Bork is a legal positivist - a clearly inferior position to natural rights theory, but one entirely in keeping with his personal atheism and rejection of an objective moral basis for right and wrong.
Bump.
Robert Bork is truly among the greatest conservative legal scholars this country has ever known. It is a travesty of justice that he is not currently sitting on the Supreme Court. Imagine all of the decisions that would’ve been different with Robert Bork on the Court instead of Anthony Kennedy.
SnakeDoc
The constitutional drifter, Anthony Kennedy rather than Bork, sits on Scotus. Had Bork been aboard, there is little chance that Roe v. Wade would have been reaffirmed, homosexual sodomy declared a “right,” habeas corpus for terrorists, or that there is a right to not feel uncomfortable when a student expresses belief in God.
Biden and the Pig Kennedy saw the threat that Bork represented to the Left and went to the mattresses to slime a good judge.
Ping
Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose.
Because of that disparity, it became clear to me long ago that, when push really comes to shove, freedom-loving folk cannot be reactive.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death! - Patrick Henry
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