Posted on 03/14/2002 5:50:19 AM PST by wwcc
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, during a luncheon in Buffalo on Wednesday, re-emphasized his view that women don't have a constitutional right to an abortion. His belief flies against the court's majority decision in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutionally protected right of privacy that covers abortion.
"My votes in abortion cases have nothing to do with my pro-life views," Scalia said after his speech at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. "They have to do with the text of the Constitution. And there is nothing, nothing in the Constitution that guarantees the right to an abortion."
At times flashing a prickly wit, Scalia also criticized the process for selecting new Supreme Court justices as being highly political today.
And he defended the court's 5-4 decision in the 2000 presidential election that stopped ballot counting in Florida and handed victory to George W. Bush.
The recurring theme throughout Scalia's 40-minute speech, and in answers to audience questions, was the importance of a strict, limited interpretation of the Constitution.
"It says what it says, and it ought not to be twisted," he said.
Scalia, who is the foremost conservative member of the Supreme Court, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. .
Scalia devoted the bulk of his speech to the clauses in the First Amendment that ensure government may not restrict people's religious practices, nor impose religion on anyone.
Judicial rulings on those clauses - and the entire Constitution - must be based on their text, the authors' original intent or historical practice, he said.
In quoting George Bernard Shaw - using a phrase later appropriated by Robert F. Kennedy - Scalia said those who believe in judicial reshaping of the Constitution "dream things that never were."
The appropriate way to deal with an issue that demands updating judicial precedent or the Constitution is by legislative action or, where appropriate, a constitutional amendment.
"We have an enduring Constitution, not a living one," Scalia said.
After his prepared remarks, Scalia took questions and delved into several hot-button issues.
He dismissed the idea that abortion is a constitutionally protected right, but he also said the Constitution doesn't explicitly prohibit abortions, either. He indicated the issue ultimately should be decided by a constitutional amendment.
The fight over abortion rights already is heating up, as pro-choice groups dig in for a battle whenever Bush gets to make a Supreme Court appointment.
Picking up that theme, Scalia blamed the the bitter political fights over court nominations on the belief that judges are free to rethink the Constitution.
"Every time you're selecting a Supreme Court justice, you're conducting a mini-plebiscite on what the Constitution ought to mean," he said.
Scalia defended the court's decision in the 2000 balloting debacle, saying it properly returned authority in the matter to the Florida Legislature.
Organizers said 930 tickets were sold for the event, sponsored by the Chabad House of Western New York and the University at Buffalo Law School.
God plays no part in my life. He doesn't talk to me. I don't talk to him. I don't seek his advice. I don't claim to know anything about him. And I distrust the claims of religions great and small to special knowledge.
Anyone who follows, even casually, explorations on the frontiers of science knows that every day the universe grows larger, smaller, and stranger. I don't even speculate on what that says about the nature and/or existance of God.
Returning to the morality of abortion. I don't want to live in a world full of unkempt, unhealthy, untutored, uncivilized, and unwanted bas***ds. My experience is that they are nothing but trouble as youngsters and even worse as adults. My concern is to prevent them from entering this world. Most of the time I am pretty humane but there are times when barbaric solutions seem just fine. Is that morality? I leave it to you.
So do I. It's a good thing to be skeptical about gnostic religious claims. If you will indulge me an aside, being the season that it is, one of the reasons I believe as I do is that the major validation of my belief is not some sort of religious claim of special knowledge, but an event in space/time history. It is the historical claim of eyewitnesses that a man walked out of his grave. I repeat: That claim is NOT a religious claim. Knowledge of that event is available to anyone who bothers to look at the historical evidence, which I think is sufficient to convince a reasonable person beyond doubt that it actually occured.
Anyone who follows, even casually, explorations on the frontiers of science knows that every day the universe grows larger, smaller, and stranger. I don't even speculate on what that says about the nature and/or existance of God.
I agree. But I would contend that your intuitive knowledge of morality (you cannot help but make moral judgments about things) are evidence that you already have knowledge of God. You already know Him through his moral law and through what he has made, although you may not acknowledge it as such.
Returning to the morality of abortion. I don't want to live in a world full of unkempt, unhealthy, untutored, uncivilized, and unwanted bas***ds.
Neither do I.
My experience is that they are nothing but trouble as youngsters and even worse as adults.
Yes, although it's impossible for us to predict who will turn out which way.
My concern is to prevent them from entering this world. Most of the time I am pretty humane but there are times when barbaric solutions seem just fine. Is that morality? I leave it to you.
Well, as I said before, if they are already in existence then they are already 'in the world'. The only thing I can say here is reiterate that if there is no God then there will be no difference between humane and barbaric in the first place. There will be no differnce between cutting up a baby and cutting one's fingernails. There will be no real morality. There will be only power and ultimate extinction, and there will be no logically consistent way to say that such a world or anything in it is evil, or that it ought not to be that way.
Cordially,
We still differ on abortion - on what it means when you say they are already in this world. I will have to reply to that after considerable thought - when I have time. But, for now, what is your position on contraception - defined as mechanical and chemical methods of preventing conception? If I understand you correctly this is not abortion, not the termination of a living human being.
Now we are all blind. And no one, aside from God, has complete knowledge of the truth. But because we do not understand the truth fully we are criticized as truth-mongers. I have never claimed to know the truth completely. I associate myself most closely with the Socratic-Platonic approach to truth: I know that I do not know, and yet that doesn't mean that I don't have a few very good opinions verging on truth. And I also have that light of reason, Faith: what God has revealed concerning matters important for men to know but as Aquinas puts it: we err for two reasons, sin and ignorance.
hmm......
They argued over what the Truth was. We argue over whether there is truth. Which argument is more advanced?
We try as much as possible to judge individuals on their actions - to take a legal approach. But there are certain conflicts which are so broad as to make that impossible. We then have a war between groups or societies - it becomes acceptable to kill innocent individuals in the service of a greater good - the survival of the group or society.
You view abortion through a legal lens. I think we are at war. It is my judgement that masses of ignorant, unwanted, unhealthy, etc. people are a greater threat to our society.
Think about it.
hmmm. . .
The arguments against moral relativism are in truth very difficult to make. And it is an old, very old argument. You can trace its origins back to the origins of philosophy.
I am hardly prepared to make such an argument, but I do stand by my assertion that a good dose of reality would wake many moral relativists up. You see no moral relatavist has ever defended Hitler's holocaust, at least openly. And a moral relativist cannot objectively say that Hitler was wrong. You see, it is my opinion that an understanding of moral truths requires more than a knowledge intellectual, abstracted from the physical. Morality is rooted in our mortality and in physical necessity. The intellect left purely to the abstract cannot discern it. At least that is my opinion without great argument.
And to reveal something about my own life, I left a PhD program precisely during the search for the grounds of morality. A professor of mine shook what I thought were the surest rational grounds for ethics. Having left academia, I realized that the intellect left completely to itself can tear itself away from the human condition.
I think you have me mixed up with someone else.
I argued against religious claims to know the moral truth absolutely. I never argued that there was no such truth.
My position is that the moral realm is not too much different than the physical - we are in a never-ending quest to understand it.
My position is that the moral realm is not too much different than the physical - we are in a never-ending quest to understand it."
I will begin by saying that I have only skimmed through the recent posts. They simply multiple faster than I have the time to read them closely.
That said, I do agree with the second statement that you make, and that I too am trying to understand what is right, what wrong and the foundations of morality. I also think that no really knows them. Nevertheless, that is not to say that there is not good and solid opinion about what is right and wrong.
Moreover, where we differ is regarding religious truths, divinely revealed. Most Christians of most sects agree on most of these truths. The more subtle ones are where the debate lies and over which many have chosen to die rather than recant. But to debate over and even die for the truth is not a horrible way to live.
Nevertheless, simply because these truths have been revealed does not mean that we understand them. True understanding is rare and difficult and requires not only discipline of mind, but also of heart.
If I understand you correctly, you are not saying that the truth is absolute. For if the truth not be absolute then it cannot be the truth. What you seem to be saying is that we cannot know the truth, even if it is divinely revealed.
Here is the difficulty I have with that statement. It would be one thing if you said we could not know moral truth without revelation: with that I fully agree. The point of revelation is to reveal what man did not know with certainty, what is not evident because of the failure of man's reason, ignorance, and the failure of man's will, sin. I also do not dispute that we do not know, in the sense of knowing undisputably even these truths fully because that would also require a intellect without ignorance and sin. I agree with you on the failure of our ability to know these things clearly and undisputably.
And yet I disagree that when it comes to acting on the basis of these revealed truths, however imperfectly we might understand them, that we cannot do so with some confidence. Although we do not have full knowledge of some moral precepts, others we can have a great degree of certainty about, and still more we can take at God's word. Sound and good opinion is not the same as full knowledge, and yet sound opinion with the guidance of revelation is attainable by most if not all.
You are right to think that the debate begins here. But unless we are more agreed on abortion itself, it may be fruitless to enter this debate.
Could you clarify for me what you are saying here? If I have understood you correctly, it is not that you think abortion isn't an evil, but rather that it is a necessary evil. If you could clarify your above statement, perhaps I could show you a mistake in your train of thought.
It seems to me that you entertain a utilitarian approach to the question of abortion. That the good of the many at times requires what is bad for the few.
Well, I am convinced enough of the conclusions I have remembered from previous study of Supreme Court decisions. I have decided instead to make a new study of our Founding, going back through books I haven't read in many years and others I have never read, beginning with de Tocqueville, whom I have never read cover to cover. His observations are very insightful. But, as insightful, I am for the first time beginning to see some of his assumptions and also perhaps his own intellectual heritage, which may perhaps lead me to certain errors he had made.
"If I understand you correctly, you are not saying that the truth is absolute"
That should read: "If I understand you correctly, you are not saying that the truth is not absolute."
Damn, you got me.
Just going back through your arguments, trying to find a common ground on which we can debate. You're going down, old man. I'm finding my way to your interior defense and it will crumble before the might of right reason, if it will be heard :)
Just let me know if I'm on the right track. And please do clarify that statement I had quoted above.
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