"The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
There has essentially been a three justice swing since the Court last considered this issue, and it has been in our direction.
“There has essentially been a three justice swing since the Court last considered this issue, and it has been in our direction.”
Meaning, “in a pro-Constitution direction,” of course.
We ought, I think, be a fair bit more circumspect about framing things in us/them language when it’s The Constitution we’re boosting. When The Constitution wins we really would be short-sighted to frame it as “we win” when, in plain fact, ALL AMERICANS win when The Constitution wins. Talking about Justices and rulings in terms of us/them only serves to amplify the leftist conception of The Constitution as a flexible object; if it really is merely about our differing politics, the us/them of law and public policy, and not the static language of the document itself, don’t they have a point?
They are wrong about that, of course, but we do ourselves — we do The Constitution — no good service speaking of Nominees to The Court as “ours” or “theirs” when, in plain reality, we ought to focus on them being pro- or anti-constructionist, or pro- or anti-originalist. Likewise our assessment of the rulings of the Court aren’t “us winning” or “them winning” nearly so much as they are The Constitution winning or losing, which is vastly more important to the long-term health of The Republic.
So, the swing in the composition of the Supreme Court is most importantly in the direction of minds having a grasp of the meaning of The Constitution in context to the era of its authorship, a reverence for that, and the moral inclination to rule that The Constitution still means what it says. That we favor these sorts of rulings is nice, but that’s very much secondary to how such rulings amount to the vindication of The Constitution by our Nation’s highest Court.