CANDY IS DANDY
And for deception quite handy.
Don A. Bright
Today’s Orwellian logic-chopping, which has replaced candor with politically correct ooze, has left us without the most necessary ingredient we need for the communication so integral to any civil discourse: Honesty.
It seems to me that our 60’s driven liberalism has made it so necessary to ignore facts that our entire communicative spectrum consists of truth evading obscurantism. Our national dialogue reminds me of two little girls having a play-like tea party making up meaning as they go. Politically correct tyranny has reduced our speech to nothing more than sugar coated flimflam. Sometimes a little digging can ferret out the real meaning without the sugar.
The dictionary defines the term “reductio ad absurdum” as “disproof of a proposition by showing the absurdity of its inevitable conclusion”. Allow me to indulge in a bit of it.
I was listening to C-Span a while back and caught part of the Senate hearings on the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U. S. Appeals Court. A liberal Democrat Senator (isn’t that redundant?) was pretending to be “reluctant” about voting in favor of Estrada because Estrada refused to answer all questions asked of him during his hearings. One particular point the Senator made was that Estrada refused to give his “view” of the Constitution. View?
Let’s do some of that “reductio” stuff here. What is meant by “view’? Do you “view” the Constitution as a real document? Is it your “view” that the Constitution should be followed; a) all the time; b) none of the time; c) some of the time; d) all of the above? Is it your “view” that the Constitution applies to some people but not others? In your “view” is the first amendment more important than the second?
So, reduced to its ultimate absurdity the questioning of the Senator was pure play-like. We all know that the liberals do not like the Constitution. Likewise, they don’t want to approve of any judge that likes the Constitution. By using the word “view” the Senator was candy coating his real question. What the Senator was upset about was that the nominee refused to say that in his “view” the Constitution means whatever the liberals say it means today, which is different than what they said it meant yesterday and will again, according to them, mean something different tomorrow.
Liberals always refer to the Constitution as a “living” document. Yes, the Constitution can be changed by lawful amendment process, but that is not what the liberals really mean by a “living” document. Reducing their candy-coating wording down to its inevitable absurdity is easy. They only want judges whose “view” is that they should be able to change the document from the bench. Constructionist judges like Miguel Estrada will not do this.
And that brings me to my most favorite liberal candy coated euphemism. They love the word penumbra. Now the dictionary defines penumbra as a “partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination”. And if there is any example of liberal legal logic and their “view” of the rule of law, this dedicated reliance on some shadowy nether land from which to practice their pettifogging pretty well sums it up.
In the Roe v Wade case, Judge Harry Blackmun, in an effort to create a right that is not in the Bill of Rights or any other part of the Constitution, found his hiding place in what he called the “penumbra” of the Constitution. (The "Penumbra Doctrine" was first used by Justice William O. Douglas's magic in which you can combine inalienable rights and come up with a new alienable one. He apparently believed that government can define rights -- a totally estranged view of the purpose of the document.) What does Judge Blackmun’s use of the word penumbra tell us about liberalism? When reduced to its absurdity it means that the law is all make-belief. If you disagree with the law make it up. Then tell everyone that you found it in some shadow they can’t see. Since the government cannot bestow any right on any citizen, the need for shadowy candy coating is obvious. (Incidentally, I wish one of you liberals out there would do me a favor and send me a copy of the penumbra and a list of all the rights it includes. Better yet, just give me short list of any rights it doesn’t include.)
The Roe decision is replete with candy coating. From it came the phrase “right for a woman to choose”. That can easily be reduced to its absurdity, which is that the Constitution contains words somewhere that proclaim the alienable right of a woman to prevent the inalienable rights of her baby. The liberals rely on further candy coating by the statement that a woman has the “right to control her own body”. Sounds good. Ever heard a woman, when her unborn child begins kicking her, make the statement that she is kicking herself? And the liberals’ ultimate use of semantic obliqueness comes in their refusal to call a baby a baby; instead they insist that we all refer to a baby as some Latin thing called a “fetus”. I guess they think we won’t know that a “fetus” is a baby.
So let me again remind you of how a little “reductio ad absurdum” can instruct us as to the real reason why the liberals oppose constructionist or law abiding judges. Constructionist judges have too much integrity than to operate on the basis of shadows or “views” when it comes to honoring our Constitution. They feel compelled by their sense of honor to rely on real law.
Liberals have shown by their disdain for our Constitution that they are unable to gather up the courage to recognize any compelling necessity brought on by law, fact or logic. As the old saying goes, no person is so blind as a person who refuses to see. For liberals to be confronted with the logical and inevitable results of their ideas is their worst nightmare.
In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell observed, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible”. In other words, if you can’t defend your agenda, get out the candy.