Clarence Thomas’s dissent is getting a lot of attention, all of it in the form of incredulous derision. (I hang with a rough crowd.)
The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the
Constitution, but with the principles upon which our
Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been
understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement
to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty.
Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a
“liberty” that the Framers would not have recognized, to
the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect.
Wut?
How is it to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect? Which liberty? Just liberty in general? I can’t see it. He must mean our liberty to take things away from people we consider oooky in some way.
Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of
Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests
instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion
of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts
the relationship between the individual and the state in
our Republic. I cannot agree with it.
Oh good grief, how childish. Cue Gary Cooper standing strong-jawed and knocking down a building, because Freedom.
On to page 93 and his already-notorious claims about human dignity.
Human dignity has long been understood in this country
to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration
of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they referred
to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image
of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which
this Nation was built.The corollary of that principle is that human dignity
cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not
lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity)
because the government allowed them to be enslaved.
Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity
because the government confined them. And those denied
governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity
because the government denies them those benefits. The
government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it
away.
Oh gawd. That’s such an appalling thing to say. He’s taking the thought that oppressed people use in order to hang on to their own inner sense of dignity under horrible conditions, and treating it as a true claim about reality. It’s not a true claim about reality – it’s a huge lie about reality. Of course slaves lost their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved, and that was one of the many outrages against them. Slavery stole their dignity from them.
Government can take dignity away so easily and so thoroughly. Imprisonment, torture, death, denial of rights – all are ways to take dignity away. It’s great if people can feel they still have their dignity inside despite that, but that does not take the onus off government.
George H W Bush has a lot to answer for.