Tag: decline and fall

Remember when all the pro-homogamy SJWs claimed that it totally would NEVER lead to polygamy and you were a homophobic bigot if you expected that it would? Yeah, guess what. I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but they appear to have lied.

NOW that the dust is settling from the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized a right to same-sex marriage, there are new questions. In particular, could the decision presage a constitutional right to plural marriage? If there is no magic power in opposite sexes when it comes to marriage, is there any magic power in the number two?

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s dissent in Obergefell raised this very question, intending to show how radical the majority’s decision could become. But the issue was hard to discuss candidly while same-sex marriage was still pending, because both sides knew that association with plural marriage, a more unpopular cause, could have stymied progress for gay rights. (Opponents of same-sex marriage had reasons to emphasize the association, while supporters had reasons to play it down.) With same-sex marriage on the books, we can now ask whether polyamorous relationships should be next.

There is a very good argument that they should. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell did not focus primarily on the issue of sexual orientation. Instead, its main focus was on a “fundamental right to marry” — a right that he said could not be limited to rigid historical definitions or left to the legislative process. That right was about autonomy and fulfillment, about child rearing and the social order. By those lights, groups of adults who have profound polyamorous attachments and wish to build families and join the community have a strong claim to a right to marry.

And while Justice Kennedy’s opinion does not explicitly discuss this possibility, it is easy to see how future generations could read his language to include polyamory or plural marriage. Earlier court decisions about marriage, Justice Kennedy wrote, had “presumed a relationship involving opposite-sex partners,” but now we understand that the presumption was wrong. Similarly, while Justice Kennedy’s opinion repeatedly presumes that marriage involves two people, it is not hard to imagine another justice in 20 or 40 years saying that the assumption is similarly unenlightened.

I find it hard to get worked up about these things now that the die is so clearly cast. The civilizational foundations have already been sufficiently undermined, so all they’re quibbling about now is the exact shape that the wreckage will eventually take.

Don’t worry about the politics anymore. At this point, you should be preparing for the inevitable politics by other means that are on the way.

I used to wonder what the historians meant when they wrote that “all Europe was waiting for war” in the years leading up to WWI. Now, I finally get it. The good news, to the extent that one can consider it good news, is that the financial elite has proved they can kick a can that looked to be unkickable, so we should be able to make it to 2033 or thereabouts as I’ve repeatedly predicted.

Rand Paul observes some legal rights are more equal than others:

While I disagree with Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage, I believe that all Americans have the right to contract.

The Constitution is silent on the question of marriage because marriage has always been a local issue. Our founding fathers went to the local courthouse to be married, not to Washington, D.C.

I’ve often said I don’t want my guns or my marriage registered in Washington.

Those who disagree with the recent Supreme Court ruling argue that the court should not overturn the will of legislative majorities. Those who favor the Supreme Court ruling argue that the 14th Amendment protects rights from legislative majorities.

Do consenting adults have a right to contract with other consenting adults? Supporters of the Supreme Court’s decision argue yes but they argue no when it comes to economic liberties, like contracts regarding wages.

It seems some rights are more equal than others.

I think Friday’s Supreme Court decision was the biggest step the USA has taken towards theocracy in some time. I already converted from pure abstract libertarianism to National Libertarianism some time ago for purely practical reasons; events had made it sufficiently obvious that the abstract position simply could not function in the real world.

Now I find myself wondering if even this more practical and pragmatic approach is logically consistent with real-world human behavior. It may be that if John Adams is correct and there is no system of government that can survive an insufficiently moral people, what the progressives think of as a linear progression will turn out to be even more cyclical than I had imagined. We know, per Cicero, that democracy leads to aristocracy. But does cultural degeneracy precede theocracy? Or is it simply the decline into low paganism that I have anticipated?

White Christian conservative attachment to the Constitution and traditional American ideals such as representative democracy are consequences of their deeper attachments. Once those connections severed, they are simply a larger, more dedicated, more effective, and better-armed group playing the game of power. I tend to doubt post-democracy is going to be all that those celebrating it now believe it will be.

And the rule of lying men. This should suffice to explode any last lingering doubts about the survival of the rule of law in the USA:

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

Roberts continued, “In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.”

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” Using the acronym for the Supreme Court, Scalia said his colleagues have twice stepped in to save the law from what Scalia considered worthy challenges.

“The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says ‘Exchange established by the State’ it means ‘Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.’ That is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so,” Scalia wrote.

Scalia added, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words ‘established by the State.’ And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words ‘by the State’ other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges.”

The USA presently enjoys not only the rule of men, but the rule of lying men rather than law. And, needless to say, Chief Justice Roberts helpfully demonstrates that electing more Republicans is not going to solve the problem.