Jumping into the Fray

I am a fan of Scrappleface, a humor website that does for print news what the Daily Show does for TV news. He publishes three or four "news" articles a day with a healthy eye toward phrasing the story so that the maximum irony is achieved. One of the best parts of the site are the comments, where a semi-regular crew of morons (Gang of Idiots is a registered trademark of Mad Magazine) make even more typically cogent points and jokes about the topic at hand.

One of today's offerings was ScrappleFace: Gov. Arnold Calls Mayor's Unlawful Acts 'Illegal' pertaining to the Mayor of San Francisco ordering his clerk's office to issue marriage certificates to any same sex couple that filed. I jumped into the crew with a comment regarding how Governor Schwarzenegger (hereafter referred to as "The Governator") as a highly advanced artificial intelligence has actually made a decision based on logical principle. I then went on to swallow my pride and say that Gloria Allred (note the spelling, it becomes important later) was tackling the issue in a more sound way than the mayor of San Francisco had.

A poster by the handle of SistersTalk responded shortly there after to my post agreeing with Allred. Note that she made the same spelling mistake I did.

Later a poster called The Great Santini got on SistersTalk and ranted on, less polite terms than here, about judicial tyranny. I gave him my opinion in a second post about 25 down. Look for Gamer.

What I'd like to do here is expand on my third thought in the second post. A lot of talk goes into how the Executive Branch has to act by the rule of law, and that the Judicial Branch has exceeded its scope over the years. On of the main points of libertarianism is the embrace of the irony of law, that freedom can not exist without law. In this instance, the law provides protection to the liberty of the citizens by limiting the actions of the government as defined in State and Federal Constitutions. Just because a law represents the will of the majority does not give it Super-Constitutional status. It is possible for the actions and wishes of the majority to be unconstitutional.

Living in California, I've seen propositions get approved with large percentages of the vote, only to be later struck down by the courts. The howls from the backers of the bills, be the of the Left or of the Right, are how dare these elite few judges throw aside the Will of the People. Well guess what? While one side is howling, the other side is thanking God, the stars, or whatever, that the judges were there to protect their rights. I've seen it enough times to see the same people howling and praising the decision from the other side than their previous go round. Neither side ever learns that they will someday be the other guy, the minority, at some point. Until that day comes, they will not know how precious it is to be protected from the whim of the majority. When they do, they all too often forget it when they are the majority whose whim is thwarted.