In the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble is told by the court that the law assumes his wife acts under his direction. Mr. Bumble responds with, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass – a idiot”. The ass in this case is the donkey, an animal known for its obstinance. Over time the expression has been used to point out that the letter of the law can not only contradict the spirit of the law, but the law itself can contradict common sense and objective reality.
The more important point here though is that the law is an effort to formalize the commonly held moral code, a set of rules that determine what members of a society ought to do and ought not to do. It is not the moral code itself, but an effort to write it down on paper so it is clear to everyone. Fundamental to most ethical systems is the assertion that ignorance of the law is no excuse. You need to know the rules, which is why they are written down so that you can know them.
Despite the law seeming to be an ass, there is a logic to the law. That logic, like all systems, starts from some foundational items. These are the things that everyone in the law assumed to be true. For example, the Bill of Rights is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government. These are not supposed to be up for debate. As far as the law is supposed to be concerned, these are settled truths that cannot be challenged or violated.
This gets to an important point. Every system of oughts, the list of things you ought to do and the things you ought not do, begins with a set of eternal truths that rest on a recognized authority. Christians are free to eat pork because they do not recognize the moral authority of the Muslims and Jews. The prohibition against eating pork rests on the moral authority of those two religions. It is not an objective truth, but a subjective one that works only when you accept it.
The law is a system of oughts and therefore assumes an authority and that authority is supposed to be the Constitution but also tradition as expressed through precedent or the accumulation of court decisions. The Constitution is the starting point for what we all agree is the system of oughts. Precedent is the accumulated decisions over time on the things that were not expressly covered in the Constitution. Combined this makes up the system of oughts that define the morality of our society.
That last bit is what is often missed. Once something is formally put on the list of things you ought not do, it quickly becomes part of the informal list of taboos. The reason for this is that we naturally assume that in a democratic society the law reflects not only the general will but general morality. If the law says it is not allowed, it must mean that it is outside of that which is morally acceptable. In other words, once the court makes it against the law, it quickly becomes immoral.
An obvious example of this in action is homosexual marriage. Up until a few years ago people understood that marriage was about creating children. Since nature dictates how this is done, marriage must be one man and one woman. Then one day some people decided that the laws of nature are up for debate. Two men, it was argued, could be married, despite the biological impossibility of it. This group remained a ridiculous minority until they were able to get the courts to side with them.
In the blink of an eye, the issue of homosexual marriage went from absurd poke in the eye of Mother Nature to settled moral principle. Conservatives who opposed the idea then suddenly defended it. Even social conservatives have dropped their public opposition to homosexual marriage. You can see the change in moral attitudes in the polling on the issue. This absurd mockery of the laws of nature became part of the accepted moral code with the stroke of a judge’s pen.
Another example is the Brown decision. Central to the jihad against white people in this age are the novel moral principles invented by the court. In fact, the court not only created two new moral claims, but made those the controlling principles, superseding even those items written in the Constitution itself. As a result, the constitutional order went from a system of limits on government power to a system of demands on the white population of the country.
The same process is happening with the Bostock decision. In this case a majority of the justices agreed that discriminating against men pretending to be women so they can beat up girls on the soccer field is a form of sexual discrimination and therefore violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule points out, this is a ridiculous claim on its face, but it also opens the door for adding yet another novel principle to the legal order.
As we have seen with other novelties from the court, it will not be long before this one sinks into the moral fabric of society. If you do not want your daughters pulverized by burly men in sundresses on the ball field, you will be shunned from polite society or maybe even suffer legal persecution. The fact that the Bostock decision was written by a so-called conservative judge, one anointed by the allegedly conservative Federalist Society and appointed by Trump is critical.
We used to worry about putting Catholics on the bench because it was assumed they would operate from Catholic morality, rather than the morality of high church Protestantism that informed the political order. It was assumed that judges were like all men, and they would operate from within a moral framework, formally expressed through organized religion until recent times. Catholics had Catholic morality, while Episcopalians had Anglican morality.
In other words, the text of the Constitution and the traditions and precedents that informed it were based on a moral framework that existed outside of it. The political system was founded by and for people who assumed a moral order based in high church Protestantism. It did not prohibit men dressed as women from beating up girls on the ball fields because no Christian people would ever conceive of such a thing, much less tolerate advocacy for it.
Once that morale framework was removed from the system, the Constitutional order was left without a moral foundation. It no longer had moral authority on which to rest the list of things members of society ought to do and ought not do. The political system was left to conjure one to replace it. The Brown decision and now Bostock rest on the moral authority of the new religion that has evolved since the middle of the last century, which promises salvation through universal liberation.
In the end, the law is a formalization of the moral code of a society. That moral code reflects the identity of the people who rule society. The foundation of which is either something outside of the human condition like the gods or the collective identity of the people who control society. Once the American ruling class abandoned Christianity as the moral foundation, it eventually settled on the collective identity of the ruling elite that emerged in the middle of the last century.
The trouble is, that ruling elite cannot settle on an exclusive identity as it is a hodgepodge of people from various tribes. Exclusivity therefore runs counter to their shared reality, so their new identity is the Open Society. It is a polite fiction but all ethical codes contain polite fictions. The new ruling elite is every bit as exclusive and discriminating as any ruling elite, it is just that they assume their calling is to usher in the Open Society, a world of free of discrimination and prejudice.
If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!
Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.
The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.
Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.
Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.
Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at
sa***@mi*********************.com
.
I think I understand why I always found lefty more interesting. She makes moral arguments, even if they turn out to be immoral (which I must’ve interpreted as crazy).
Righty was always boring, pedantic, un-compelling, a bean counter. The Mises people and Right-libertarians were a gateway drug because the NAP is a moral argument.
Guess I’m a moral thinker and never knew it lol. Lack of voices to listen to. If I had to guess, I’m far from alone. Maybe that’s what the redpill comes down to idk.
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” ― G.K. Chesterton
And thus is Z-man’s posting succinctly paraphrased in the main.
Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi It seems to me that law is following the morals of society which follows how it worships. Society kicked God out of all institutions. In the Church’s only parts of His law are taught these days (the squishy parts) while the hard parts are ignored as “we know better” know. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi Pope Pius X warned about Modernism. Modernism quickly defined as the synthesis of all errors. He first wrote Lamentabili Sane Exitu (with truly lamentable results) in 1907 to define the problems. It’s first paragraph can be penned in… Read more »
As long as we remain bound by laws we are slaves. This is the choice. Rape, torture, death and no rights are the lot of slaves and their misbegotten children. Mock the street thug, the N-gger but even in jail more free and more man than ye. Of course if your kids are still in school, you choose for them these fates. Kids must go to school no matter what seems the only Commandment, the reason to have children is to send them to school. There’s no hope in Law. Have a look at CA AB57, the Bill that takes… Read more »
It looks like Special Counsel Weiss is going to mount a total whitewash and minor charge for Hunter (probation only), in Operation Protect Bidens. Meanwhile Smith is preparing to charge Trump for fundraising to protest the 2020 election. Its hinted that he may charge also the donors. As Trump noted, they are not after him, he’s just in the way. That’s the “fix” that Authorities will use to fix their funding hole. Even the FT had an article highlighting the Fed Jackson Hole conference where it was noted that Governments cannot just spend ala MMT, they must pay down expensive… Read more »
I said on the day Trump first got raided: a hundred million of them or a hundred million of us. That was the moment it was decided.
I was being optimistic. It’s a billion minumum, with no likelihood of ever building civilization again, because we will not be the survivors.
What’s about to happen is unprecedented—as far as we know. If it’s happened before, who would tell us?
Is the law a codification of the norms of society or the norms of the elites who control society? Z goes back and forth here. I tend to think that in the past it was the former, but in the present, it’s the latter. Prior to top-down postmodern fascism, the elites and the masses shared a morality. That is no longer the case. Today, the elites impose their warped morality on the masses via propaganda and force majeur. Also, the notion that the elites seek to create an open society free of prejudice and discrimination is fatuous on its face.… Read more »
It is always a codification of the norms of the elites/rulers. By happy accident those norms may coincide with those of the ruled.
The 2nd Civil War has already occurred; its Ft. Sumpter was televising angry white faces yelling “Segragation now, segregation forever” on the Big 3 in 1962. The Klan went from 2 million members, from Michigan to Louisiana, down to 20,000 in less than a year. Since 1820, the Democrat Party has been the majority party. Democrat unions, corrupt as they were, were the populist counter to corporate power. Once brought to heel by the libertarian-Republican Reagan, the money powers and multinationals immediately began “downsizing”, then soon began offshoring. The Klan itself was the militant populist arm of the Democrat Party.… Read more »
Our laws are literally the best legal codes ever designed by man. They are not our problem. The people that administer the law are…and it starts right up in the Supreme Court and trickles down. Our moral authorities are now jewish perverts, black baboons and white grifters and shysters. All that can come of that is lunacy and comedy. The courts have been politically weaponized. As such we can no longer look at them through the lens of authority or morality. We can only look at them through the lens of politics now, and may God have mercy on our… Read more »
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.” – Lysander Spooner
Spot on. Or to quote Anton Chigurh as I do during these discussions off line, “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
That makes much more sense when applied to the Constitution than it does applied to Chighur.
I get what your saying, but the unfortunate reality is that many of the victims of these rulers did not ask for it. And most of the ones who deserve to live under the consequences of their edicts are sadly immune from such consequences.
Exactly. If we are talking about the aforementioned groups being consumed by their pets, absolutely. But the problem is, My kids will live in this world.
This Dissidents (and their kids) have a survival edge. We see what’s happening, we know who’s responsible and for the most part – what their motivations are. This gives us the ability to largely dodge the pitfalls of diversity and multiculturalism and prepare for the impending reckoning. It is up to us to safeguard our kids…and the vast majority of you chaps here will do just fine.
But Filthie confined his animadversion to the demographics that were central to the creation of Insane Clown World. As such, he is correct.
If they endure it they deserve it.
We have long ago left the “best legal codes ever designed by man.” No one understands the law because there are millions of pages of convoluted jargon. Worse, the law for a long long time is whatever a judge decides it is.
The real problem is our perverted moral code. We traded 2,500 hundred years of evolving cultural development for narcissism and a rejection of science. Transgenderism, the ubiquitous selfie, and black worship are three examples.
Our laws are literally the best legal codes ever designed by man.
Constitution idolatry.
The succor of normie con suckers.
But like all idols, it will fail you in the end.
Good post by the Z-man, but the origins of “law” in the United States go back much further than the Constitution of 1787. The United States, after all, achieved independence under the Articles of Confederation. And at the time of the adoption of the Constitution (and the Articles, for that matter) there was a long tradition of mostly English law going back to the Magna Carta of 1215, if not earlier. There was the English Bill of Rights of 1689, plus the traditions of England and the common law. All of that was the background in light of which the… Read more »
Yes, English Common Law was always the fundamental backbone of American law..Now, thanks to radical and sometimes ignorant judges and lawyers, we have developed a hodgepodge of law polluted by radical politicians advancing every socially destructive cause on the planet..It started with clever Jewish lawyers in the East, like Brandeis, and spread to California with the likes of radical Roger Traynor and crooked politician Earl Warren… But I don’t agree with Z-man that these decisions are being accepted as moral code by most people, at least outside big cities…People do accept that we’re being ruled by dangerous lunatics, and simply… Read more »
“In the end, the law is a formalization of the moral code of a society. That moral code reflects the identity of the people who rule society.” Nonsense. Law is the formalization of the moral code of those who rule. Slipping “society” into it like this is a way of begging the question and misunderstands what society means. If those who rule are part of society and their laws an expression of that society, then the law can be said to be a formalization of a moral code. Otherwise, as in the case of any occupied society like America, the… Read more »
Law is simply a codification of who/whom.
Law is the formalization of the moral code of those who rule.
Isn’t that pretty much what he said: “That moral code reflects the identity of the people who rule society.”
The problem with todays discussion involves a better understanding of law which in essence means necessity. All laws are relative, but those instituting them claim absoluteness. This has to be understood. No law is absolute, but if one has the power, they can demand their laws absolute under threat of punishment.
Supremacy Clause + Taxation Clause + Necessary and Proper Clause means the result is going to be like what we have. Historical source documents and letters among the framers indicates they knew and intended to create an imperial power . The Constitution requires debts to be paid. Revolutionary War soldiers were paid with IOUs. Investors bought them up for pennies from impoverished men, then received full pay off from US. No mention of US to receive repayment of loans. National bank schemers borrowed money from US start their Bank but didn’t have to repay. Bill or Rights was a tacked… Read more »
The Open Society is a euphamism and fig leaf. The goal is conquest and dispossession. The governments of European people borrowed too much money. They can’t pay it back. They don’t want to sacrifice and suffer to clear the debts and begin a new up cycle. The lenders don’t want to eat the losses. They don’t want a new cycle to begin because the lessons will be learned and they will be kept in their place with fresh memories. That can’t happen. They were born to rule and shine their light over all the nations. It says so in their… Read more »
No doubt, “Open Society”? “Open” for who?
A: Everyone!!
So then White people benefit from this?
A: Well, no.
This is why CivNats (of all generations not just Boomers) are in such a hissy fit these days. On YouTube, I keep getting an ad with Victor Hansen Davis complaining about the Woke mob. I’ve never clicked on the ad but it keeps showing up. (I guess that I fit some civnat algo even though I’m despise them.) To them, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence is the morality of the land, right there in black and white. They keep seeing it undermined and can’t understand why. It comes back to Z’s debate with Anton. Anton views the morality… Read more »
Has Anton traveled outside the US? Does he think that invoking “Natural Rights” in a place like Somalia would mean a damn thing?
Or maybe go to Singapore, Japan, China, the Middle East and declare his natural rights. See how far that gets him.
How is the concept that these are Western inventions so hard to understand?
I think the issue is you need an authority for all moral claims. The natural rights crowd wants to use nature as their moral authority, so they cannot accept any questioning of the universality of human nature. This could work if we accept that you can get an ought from an is, but that is illogical. Nature is silent on what we ought to do as humans which is why the natural right argument falls apart. Its moral authority is the history and traditions of Western people and therefore not a universal moral code.
The natural rights argument is a cope. To acknowledge there are no natural rights, which of course is the case, it to acknowledge that our conceptions of law and justice are fleeting and artificial, no matter how noble (lol) the reason for pushing the concept.
Yep, you need an authority for all moral claims. If you say.thay the moral authority is your people, a lot of other uncomfortable – at least to colorblind civnats – arise. Perhaps the biggest question is if morality is.derived from a people, how does a multiracial society work without imposing one people’s laws (morality) on the other peoples? Can it exist with competing moralities? That seems unlikely. Now, the way that you square that circle is simply to claim that there are no “peoples,” that we’re all the same outside of some superficial differences. Or that morality is derived from… Read more »
Anti-white racism should at least clarify this reality for Normiecons, but somehow it doesn’t. We may all bleed red, but some of us are expected to bleed a hell of a lot more. Again, why is that, exactly? People who have swallowed a lie hook, line and sinker shouldn’t complain about the frying pan.
Jack,
What’s even more interesting – and pathetic – about Normiecons is that they never ask who is the driving force behind the anti-white racism.
Steve Sailer writes post after post mocking the MSM for its lack of racial realism and its anti-white policies and propaganda, but he never asks who pays for these people in MSM or who protects these people?
Quandary for the CivNats, a weapon for the Left…
“This could work if we accept that you can get an ought from an is, but that is illogical. Nature is silent on what we ought to do as humans which is why the natural right argument falls apart.”
I always phrase it as “Fill one hand with your rights, shit in the other hand, and see which fills first.”
Outside of the appreciation of music, in one form or another, and the desire to be esteemed by one’s fellow man (thymotic pride), there is very little of consequence that is common to all peoples. Human nature is a threadbare tissue upon which to hang one’s political philosophy.
I’m more inclined to believe that the leftist spiral we are observing is simply the logical progression of accepting the morality of the Enlightenment. For Hansen and other CivNats to complain about what is happening in society is like a guy at a swingers’ club complaining that his wife cheats on him. *Of course* trannies beating up you daughters is happening: it is simply what happens when you declare the rejection of all bonds is the definition of a just society. You can’t go back to the Declaration or Constitution because those documents accept the same morality. Z’s been pounding… Read more »
“the reason conservatives lose is because the accept the morality of their enemies. Simple as.”
They aren’t enemies. Conservatives want to wade in, libs want to dive into the deep end. That’s the only real difference.
To whoever downvoted, I’d point out that Republicans today are more liberal than Democrats of 20 years ago.
They don’t conserve anything. They make a good show to negotiate the best price, but you can be sure they’re going to sell out. And don’t point that out, or they’ll sell at a discount to spite you.
“For example, the Bill of Rights is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government. These are not supposed to be up for debate.” These are so much up for debate that I am surprised we are not being required to quarter soldiers. For nearly 200 years, obscenity laws were valid. Then, activist judges threw that out the window. For nearly 200 years, the “right to counsel” meant the state couldn’t stop you from hiring a lawyer and having him advocate for you. Now it means the state advocates for prosecutor and defense in… Read more »
Racism is the new obscenity.
More generally, what’s subject to censorship is whatever isn’t current.
The new warning labels on TV shows, etc., berate the product for failure to have anticipated present political demands—and its consumer for rummaging through old stock. Suspect behavior, noted.
The “left” has made planned obsolescence its core moral principle. The marchers’ picket signs say BUY NOW. The banker smiles.
I mean, this rights stuff was never real. If you look back at US history there’s endless cases of reneging on rights supposedly hardcoded in the constitution. Even before our country was run by dirty renegers and reneger-lovers. The most famous example being that the States weren’t allowed to secede after all.
W. H. Auden offers the best definition of law I have ever come across. It is expressed as a poem: “Law Like Love” Law, say the gardeners, is the sun, Law is the one All gardeners obey Tomorrow, yesterday, today. Law is the wisdom of the old, The impotent grandfathers feebly scold; The grandchildren put out a treble tongue, Law is the senses of the young. Law, says the priest with a priestly look, Expounding to an unpriestly people, Law is the words in my priestly book Law is my pulpit and my steeple. Law, says the judge as he… Read more »
In order to herd the different tribes together to maintain raw power, the elite are giving special rights to some tribes over others. This can be papered over in an era of prosperity, but this country has not had an era of want since the 1930’s. We’ve had terrible recessions, but never empty kitchen cabinets. The last time this happened most Americans still had some connection to some Aunt who lived on a farm and canned her own beans. They also had ties to the old religion, with principles like “thou shalt not kill.” We have nothing close to that.… Read more »
Powell wasn’t ignored. He was destroyed, the usual fate of inconvenient truthtellers. And the Magic Kingdom now has a Subcon grifter as prime minister, which does get ignored.
Yes. After the Rivers-speech (which few people actually heard, but many heard about) Powell was one of the most popular men in England, he was a shoe-in for the Tory chairmanship and looking to become the next PM so he was clobbered by his own party.
Also, Powell was not some charismatic lightweight, he was one of the most respected MPs, both inside and outside Westminster and one of the finest specimens of Victorian era education and culture, and his speeches are in the textbooks by the dozens for their clarity, precision and rhetorical force.
Powell’s Mary Sue-level talents and accomplishments can easily be googled, but here a funny one: he was congenitally unable to drive a motor vehicle. He would take his hand off the steering wheel at any and all times to start rummaging for a book or something under the driver’s seat. “Army trucks are the damnest of instruments”, he lamented, “you only have to take your hands off the wheel for a few moments and they start roaming about as they please.” He once managed to crash his car eight times on a road trip from London to Glasgow. When Britain… Read more »
That must have been frightening to a people who had never experienced parking in an indoor garage in an area with lots of asians.
Sounds like a true genius. And I mean that literally. Such men are often totally incompetent with regards to common sense activities. Today’s geniuses–if any there be–probably can’t figure out how to send a text message.
The Tory Party, like the Republicans and whoever your Danish equivalent probably is, has been a fraud and controlled opposition a long, long time if not the entirety of its existence. It was very important to the British powers to be to clear a path for Heath to go along with the European denationalization project. Powell had to be taken out precisely because he had around 70 percent support. Heath’s assumed homosexuality likely was how he was controlled. While that would be a bonus now, it was the kiss of death then. Much of the cancer now metastasizing has been… Read more »
If only you knew how bad things are… There’s no equivalent to the Republicans in Denmark – and we have 8-12 parties in parliament at any given time. The Danish Conservative People’s Party (which is nothing like the Republicans) has been a joke for almost all of my lifetime and is tottering on extinction. Their chairman – Søren Pape – is a fat, physically awkward and borderline inarticulate, out-of-the-closet homo, who married the nephew of Danilo Medina, the president of the Dominican Republic. Speaking to his Jewish paymasters, he told them his “better half” was Jewish. Behold the blushing maiden… Read more »
Paying off the debt is an irrelevance; what matters is that Congress can generate the cash flow to pay the interest on the debt. When that ends; the system crashes.
What’s another trillion or two for interest added on to the debt every year? Not like we can ever have a balanced budget again. The only question I have, is how high the debt can go before we have hyper inflation or the loss of credit worthiness and are unable to operarte our deficit economy.
This will end badly. There is no way back. The decisions were made a long time ago.
As a practical matter, the “law” and Constitution have just become speedbumps on the highway to hell. The Regime just has to go a little more slowly with its program because “law” and “custom” have to be eroded gradually lest popular resistance arise. But acceleration is inevitable. The “Constitution” now is whatever 9 robed shysters say it is.
Correction, 5 robed shysters.
Christians are free to eat pork because they do not recognize the moral authority of the Muslims and Jews. That’s not an entirely accurate explanation for the pork-eating thing, but close enough I suppose for a non-theological post. Christians recognize the authority of Mosaic Law, so it’s not true to say they do not recognize the moral authority of Jews — at least traditional Mosaic Judaism. Jesus’ sacrifice relieved us of the need for strict adherence to the laws to obtain salvation, but they still represent the ideal moral good. Jesus said a few things about all foods being clean,… Read more »
This is incoherent. There was a big fight in the very earliest days of the Christian movement and the conclusion was that the Law was null and void. No circumcision, no sacrifices, no holidays… none of it.
Bull. I don’t know what fantasy version of Christianity you are talking about: Matthew 5:17-20 (Jesus speaking) 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever… Read more »
Try a google search of the Council of Jerusalem sometime.
You have entirely misunderstood the issues resolved by the Council of Jerusalem.
at the bottom and beginning of the insanity we are living is this. the origin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzDCI0JAhZY this is a great channel that debunks a ton of the leftists re-writing of history. this is where they started the work of destroying the foundation .
For example, the Bill of Rights is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government. Sigh. The whole Constitution is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government. Government was not supposed to be able to do anything not specifically delegated to it in the body of the Constitution. Madison makes this explicitly clear in one of the Federalist papers discussing the powers of Congress. Unfortunately, the concerns of those who opposed the Bill of Rights have come true: We have a Bill of Rights focused jurisprudence in… Read more »
“The whole Constitution is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government.”
There arguably is a Supreme Court majority who not only disagrees with this but who also doesn’t even understand the concept. Throwing bones would achieve more defensible outcomes.
Yup. The entire order is corrupt. As the Zman has said, we can’t reform the system from within the system, because the system is too corrupt. It all has to be torn down and rebuilt.
We know why Constitutional Law is always referred to as CON Law.
If men need it to be legal to defend their children they are not men, and whatever they are has no rights.
” The fact that the Bostock decision was written by a so-called conservative judge, one anointed by the allegedly conservative Federalist Society and appointed by Trump is critical.” Justice Neil Gorsuch, the author, literally wrote that he realized the Congress did not intend to include trannies as a protected class, but he kind of liked the idea so that’s the breaks. BOSTOCK marked the point of no pretense because previous judicial abominations at least were presented to be consistent with the original document. The United States will collapse as a functioning entity long before the Supreme Court can deliver the… Read more »
This is the White man’s burden and may be his downfall. They’ve (we’ve) attempted to spread their faith, morality and laws around the world and it’s coming back home to bite us in the proverbial ass. Just as the British elite butted in and banned suttee in India for example – a truly disgusting practice btw, but their way – now we have OUR elite butting in and all but banning normal marriage, biological sex and jogger intellectual inferiority and criminal proclivity, to name but a few. All under the guise that it offends THEIR morality – which of course… Read more »
uNt-
Another angle the controllers are using are the hijacking and destruction of popular culture, particularly music, film, and TV.
One example is the systematic destruction of almost every major popular film franchise in the past five years or so. The arcs of previously heroic characters are broken down and denigrated or outright destroyed.
The only substitutes that are offered by the controllers are those that conform to their purely degenerate GlobHom ideals.
We never should have allowed Hollywood to gain control of our popular culture in the first place. The Holy Bible, Greek Mythology, Arthurian Legend, etc should be our culture. Not crap like Star Wars and Star Trek.
Come now, we need to look forward to the day a black-robed sheboon decrees the price of 40’s. Sorry, that is today.
Nearly half of the U.S. population at this point is made up of third worlders and their first or second generation children. Now with the Biden/Obama administration all control of immigration has been abandoned. Forget immigration as compared to importing new cities. By the end of the Biden/Obama first term you will have imported state sized populations and I mean big state populations. The legal system, such as it was, has no chance of surviving that. You already have African points of view in courts all over the land to include the USSC. In many cases they are actual Africans… Read more »
Remember when there was an uproar over Sharia courts? A time is coming pretty soon when those will seem preferable.
I actually respect Muslim’s proactiveness in creating their own legal institutions. Whites will have to do the same if we want to survive. Basically, all the “Back the Blue” yard-signs need to be replaced with “Snitches get Stitches”.
Great point. At least the feminists might get put in their place a little.
Jurisprudential history of the Holy Roman Empire isn’t my strong point, but the word you’re looking for is Vehmgericht.
Oy Vehm! 😀
I’ve made the same point about our legal system in comments here over the years. Our legal system will not survive the coming wave of demographic change. It will be a simulacrum of a constitutional legal system. (Aging attorney here). As to your point about the composition of the US population, this is why I have stated repeatedly in the comments section here that the smart play for most of us here is going to be to leave the country as soon as practicable. The America we knew and loved is dead and gone, and it’s not coming back. There’s… Read more »
Epstein Island represented the temple of our new elites, Jew and Gentile alike. Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew enjoyed sex with underage girls just as much as Jeffrey Epstein and Alan Dershowitz.
Behind the temple financing this sex temple morality is the NGO’s of the elites.
And we thought back in the 1950’s and 1960’s that it was just about equality for all.
No, it’s about tyranny and the destruction of our very civilization.
It’s important to note that the girls who were taken to the island were, by and large, not underage. There are media reports of girls as young as 11 traveling there, but I have seen no credible evidence that underage girls were abused on the island. Epstein had a thing for girls as young as 14 when he was in New York and Florida, but the girls he pimped out for Mossad were usually in the age range of 17-22. My sympathy for these girls is limited. The media portrays them as children without agency, but we send young boys… Read more »
You’re missing the point, Guest. *Of course* they were willing; so what? The world is filled with dangers for women, and the primary danger is the consequences of their own actions, from which they need protection. You can’t just go around treating them like they are moral agents.
A 14 year old is a kid, dumbass. The middle age men were taking advantage of poor and powerless kids, to use them for blackmail. What the hell is wrong with you? If they wanted to, they could have murdered them and there wouldn’t have been a goddamned thing their families could have done about it. Maybe they did murder some for fun and to feel powerful. Who knows. I know one thing if their parents called the police and said these people took their child to a privately owned island, the cops they talked to would have sounded just… Read more »
Reading comprehension is not your strong point, is it?
Stephanie: Would you show such moral outrage if the ‘children’ taken to Epstein Island had been 17 year old boys instead of girls? Females, in general, are emotionally incontinent, highly impulsive, venal, and herd creatures. My ‘sympathy’ for the female ‘teen’ victims is tempered by this knowledge. Just like the purported ‘victims’ of ‘Me, too.’ They wanted fame and fortune and traded their bodies for it. This isn’t something new, sweetheart. And the same holds true for a companion issue – while old men fathering children in their dotage is morally questionable, I’d heavily bet the impetus for such children… Read more »
You sound like what the police officers sounded like when their parents called for help.
Adams said it at the start:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other.”
After which, that abominable son of his pushed through tariffs that were sure to provoke political divisions and seething sectional hatreds for decades. Some morality.
Yes. Alas, men will always fall short in the moral area.
The legal concept of “mens rea” used to be black letter law going back to its’ roots in the English legal system. Roughly translated “guilty mind”, it was a solid defense for any defendant to put forth that yes, he may have broken the law, but the law was so obscure he had no idea when he was doing it that he was committing a crime. All that’s gone now, as prosecutors and judges come up with ever more novel “interpretations” of laws to put defendants in prison. The Trump stuff is truly next level. In a democracy laws, like… Read more »
The Zman has a great point/couterpoint in this month’s edidtion of Chronicles magazine
Linkie-linkie?
Chronicles doesn’t have the letter from Anton paywalled as of right now. It is so embarrassing to Anton I am somewhat surprised Gottfried even published it. Gottfried’s response was very good and even including a shot at the Jaffa cult.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/polemics-exchanges/polemics-exchanges-september-2023/
Why does this give me the “I’m totally over my ex-boyfriend but am going to constantly rant about him two years later” vibe.
Yes perhaps. But the “No Enemies to the Right” thing is worth a lot of thought. Maybe Zman will address it because it’s an important topic.
That’s awesome as a theoretical strategy, but the truth is you cannot in fact trust a conservative. Ever.
Hilarious. As you read the long-winded article, the song “I ain’t missing you at all” plays on repeat.
Thanks for the link.
Anton picked on Z because he thought he was a small and soft enough target to placate his Claremont /Hillsdale paymasters, without alienating “more important” dissidents like Haywood or Yarvin. The Zman’s vigorous response, and the reaction to it, no doubt surprised him, and he has been playing defense ever since. However, Anton also made the mistake of attacking Paul Gottfried, who is a greater thinker and better educated than Anton could ever hope to be. Gottfried’s response in Chronicles is a master class. In the past, I have said that I feel sorry for Anton, and I do. He… Read more »
I have always got along with Paul and I do not wish to make an enemy of Anton, so I will not be writing about it. Sometimes it is best to just leave the fly on the friends face.
That whole exchange was meaningless dreck because not one of the three participants—Z, Gottfried, or Anton—has any idea what they are talking about. They all sound like they are speaking a different language. Not only a language that differs from English, but a language that differs from one another’s. It is clear that none of them are arguing from a coherent definition of “natural rights.” Anton seems to want a mind-independent foundation for classical liberalism (and paradoxically resorts to the products of the Enlightenment mind to provide it), while Z and Gottfried are simply triggered by the word itself, which… Read more »
This was excellent, thanks! That said, the danger of wallowing in all the semantic ambiguity around “natural rights” and “natural law” is that it doesn’t move the football down the field for Americans. As a pragmatic person, albeit one who appreciates the theory and philosophy, I’m persuaded by the “No Enemies to the Right” mindset. We need a touchdown and this bickering isn’t bearing much fruit. But while we’re on the topic, I think Anton kinda falls prey to begging the premise. Basically, his argument is: “these laws and rights are what I say they are”. Zman rightfully attacks this… Read more »
“Natural rights are not propositions or positive laws; they derive from existence itself. To say that natural rights do not exist because you’ve never tripped over a bag of them is a lot like those cartoonish atheists who say God does not exist because they don’t see any big person looking down from the sky. This is foolish.”
Reality derives from existence. “Rights” are fictions and pathetic attempts to ascertain a higher meaning from existence.
Maybe it is just a semantic thing or a failure to communicate. Reality derives from existence doesn’t seem too different from saying “rights” are just respecting the reality that derives from existence.
Or put another way, rights are just the respect reality pays to existence. Disrespect at your peril.
It isn’t just semantics, though. “Natural rights” is an attempt to sacralize reality and ascribe intelligent design, if I may, to what flows from existence. Disrespect may or may not entail peril although your point is taken. As I commented earlier, the concept of natural rights is a cope for the artifice of fleeting concepts of law and justice.
In the OP above, even Z himself mentions a natural law: The law of procreation that dictates what a marriage must be. You guys keep making this error. Nature does not come with a collection of normative claims. I suppose you have to do this because otherwise you have to face the fact that the authority for all moral claims is either your conception of God or the general agreement of society. That means tossing Aristotle and Aquinas aside, which ruins the whole act. My point about homosexuals marrying is that it is an effort to redefine marriage in such… Read more »
Sehr geehrter Herr Privatdozent:
Natur hier! Natur da!
Q: What’s an unnatural phenomenon more predictable than tomorrow’s sunrise?
(Nach einem Freund fragen.)
Tschüss!
To the extent that there may be natural rights, they are derived from natural law, which is eugenic and Darwinian. Fitness equals good. If you want to argue that’s the way God set it up, that is your prerogative, and I will not argue the point.
Don’t keep us in suspense, ID. Lay out some natural rights.
Further, pick your favorite natural right and tell me what percentage of blacks respects it versus the percentage of whites. Then explain the huge difference.
If natural rights exist it hardly matters because most of the people on the planet cannot perceive them strongly enough for their actions to be affected. It’s kind of like arguing for the existence of a God that never intervenes in human affairs.
“mens rea” was not so much a defense, as an element of the crime. More accurately it refers to “state of mind” – thus for murder, the defendant must have acted intentionally or with a certain level of recklessness. Running over someone with your car would not be murder if it was dark and you did not see him; running them over because you hated the bastard or you got so piss drunk that you couldn’t see straight is a different story.
This is correct. Mens rea is a defense only in that it can be argued that the requisite threshold has not been met. For example, only negligence has been shown rather than the necessary intent for a first degree murder charge so an acquittal is supposed to happen. Lesser included offenses are charged, sometimes in clear contradiction of what once was perceived legally permitted, to give jurors an out to convict. Cops will keep scooping up stuff, if not outright inventing it, to try to get any possible conviction, facts be damned, so even insufficient proof can get someone convicted.
Fair critique, I’m not a lawyer.
The WSJ used to bang on about mes rea quite a bit when discussing the incredible reach of federal statutes.
“…their calling is to usher in the Open Society, a world of free of discrimination and prejudice.”
…unless you are a bad white / unjabbed / Christian/ heterosexual.
According to their mauled interpretation of Popper, White, Christian Males are intolerant by their very existence. This isn’t hyperbole. The blood libel is that blatant.
I had a wordy comment that I shelved. The post today reinforces my belief, and real time experience, that “the law” is pretty much meaningless. (And that’s after 3 decades of being “the law”). If you live in an area of like minded people, things tend to work themselves out. I’ll let the smarter than average reader on this blog figure it out for themselves.
But, as a practical matter, avoid crowds.
That’s why they outlawed that in 1964.