The most damaging baggage nominee Roberts will have entering his confirmation hearings is the amicus brief he filed on behalf of Operation Rescue, a known domestic, terrorist organization, many of whose members have the stated goals of: breaking the law with violence (including blowing up abortion clinics), killing and intimidating doctors who perform abortions, and intimidating women and blocking their access to the clinics that provide safe abortions.
President Bush went young and conservative with Judge John G. Roberts Jr., nominating a man for the Supreme Court vacancy that might tilt the court to the right. With Republicans controlling the White House and the Senate, the President sought to reward his conservative supporters with a Supreme Court nominee positioned well to the right of center. The only question is how far to the right will he go?…
Article comments
26 - Dave Nalle
Some of those environmentalists would gladly call themselves terrorists. That's what they aspire to be.
But I'm with you on the nonsense. I also find it really tedious to see people on the left or the right just parroting things they picked up from talking points or from other blogs or from the newspaper without putting a minute's worth of original, creative thought into what they post.
Dave
27 - Bob A. Booey
Al, why be "reluctantly" pro-choice? Give into all your fears and hatred since you already wear them on your sleeve. You're fooling no one with this Libertarian thing -- just give it up.
A consistent libertarian in the mold of Mill would support using an activist reading of the Constitution to expand liberties wherever possible. A genuine libertarian doesn't just draw the line at the "Original intent" of what protections were relevant at the framing of the Constitution. I know utilitarian moral theory doesn't interest an Ayn Rand reader, but I don't think your hero Rand would be ambivalent at all about whether the government should prohibit abortion. Be consistent if you insist on being ridiculous.
That is all.
28 - Dave Nalle
I don't think Al is actually a Randite. Most Libertarians I know aren't Rand fans. Her philosophy tends to be much more supportive of authoritarian conservatism than of real Libertarianism.
Dave
29 - Bob A. Booey
Finally, we agree somewhat, Dave. I don't like this ... it humanizes your caricature, although I still don't care what you believe in :)
I definitely think Rand has some crypto-fascist elements to her work, especially her fiction. I think a lot of that is borrowed from her crude mis-interpretation of Nietzsche. Rand was someone with no academic training in philosophy or evidence of any reading knowledge of it who much preferred creating a cult-like following based on her own thought, complete with official lexicons defining her views on every aspect of political and social life and publications to define what Objectivists think of any one issue. The irony of a "philosophy of human freedom" that is so fundamentally unfree in its intellectual approach and attitude is apparently lost on sheep-like outcasts who want a form of immature, fake rebellion that rebels against nothing and advances nothing and no one through its ideology. The irony of propagandist titles like "For the New Intellectual" targeted toward people who don't read apparently doesn't register to people who think this sort of group-speak is "A = A."
Now to go up even another level of misguidedness, I don't think Al's reading comprehension of Rand's cheap, anti-intellectual pseudo-philosophy allows him to be Randian either. He's clearly even more authoritarian conservative than even she is.
That is all.