The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 16)

p>The court will take that one up...at a later date. br> -- P. Aaron Jones br> Huntington Woods, Michigan /p>

And once you are looking abroad, why limit yourself to the relatively recent European experience. What about Egyptian law? Egypt has been around for 7000 years. What about Chinese law? China has been around for 3500 years. What about Japanese law? Japan has been around for 2500 years.

What about Native American practices? The Native Americans by definition precede the European colonists. What about Islamic Law? That is codified and has been around for 1,400 years, far longer than any modern European country.

And what about the wisdom of aboriginal peoples? The headhunters of New Guinea have been in their habitat since before historical times, which takes us back at least 8,000 years. THAT is pretty impressive precedent.

Today Europe. But tomorrow, sure as the sun is going to come up, someone is going to point out that that is civilizationist -- an arbitrary and narrow reference to the gorgeous mosaic of human experience.

And, finally, what is the law? Does it exist in the abstract, like the laws of physics? Is it context independent? No. It codifies the interaction between people. The whole basis of the legitimacy of American law is that it is created and can be changed by the public. On what basis does one cite laws not dependent on that legitimacy?

After all, the Nazis (as Senator KKK Byrd observed most amusingly in a different context) were careful to create a legal framework for their society. The Nuremberg Laws established the status of the various races in Germany. Would that be a useful precedent for the Supreme Court? Germany had claim to being the most advanced society in Europe at the time those laws were passed.

Why would they not apply to the United States? For one very good reason. They were not passed by American legislatures and they were therefore outside the bounds of the Constitution which protects us all. Once you discard that, then you have opened the floodgates. Never forget that Hitler had claim to IMPROVING German society and was very popular up to the middle of the war. He had the APPROVAL of his public. To many people, Fascism and National Socialism were the wave of the future.

p>There have been MANY fads among the intelligentsia in the 20th century which one does not now mention in polite company, such as eugenics, which was the progenitor of Planned Parenthood. Giving up our rights under the Constitution and the procedures it directs would be a disaster of biblical proportions. br> -- Greg Richards

topics:
Islam, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court, Founding Fathers, NATO, North Korea, Socialism, Fascism