Justice Scalia on the Constitution

And in the end, money talked.

The landed gentry weren't giving up their gravy train.

Hey...if Scalia sees the constitution that way, that explains the whole "money is speech", and "corporations are people", bit of bull.

Yep, we solved that one.

Because it was eliminated by the 13th amendment. By Scalia's way of thinking, original intent can only be counterbalanced by an amendment. Therefore, slavery is one of the few areas where the framers' intent doesn't matter.

So the argument is indeed that everything that comes before the 13th amendment is to be interpreted as if it would allow for slavery, if slavery were not separately forbidden? That's pretty amazing.

^Amendments cannot be made before 1808 that change the constitutional provisions concerning the slave trade and direct taxation based on the census (see Article I Section 9).



38 Nebraska 1,826,341
39 Idaho 1,567,582
40 Hawaii 1,360,301
41 Maine 1,328,361
42 New Hampshire 1,316,470
43 Rhode Island 1,052,567
44 Montana 989,415
45 Delaware 897,934
46 South Dakota 814,180
47 Alaska 710,231
48 North Dakota 672,591
49 Vermont 625,741
50 Washington, D. C. 601,723
51 Wyoming 563,626

Exclude DC.

Scalia probabaly should have said 2.2 percent of US population could prevent an amendment from being ratified.

Take half the pop of the 13 states with the smallest pops and you get 6,862,670 and you divide that by around 310 million and you get 2.2 percent. Scalia was just reciting the extreme math - not the liklihood that those specific 13 states would vote at exactly 51 percent against ratifying the amendment. In theory, Congress could determine to use special ratifying conventions, and so using "representatives" of half the state populace wouldn’t even need half the actual population, so even fewer than 2 per cent could hold things up. In theory.

Actually all you did was repeat the same thing over and over again. Nothing which you posted contradicts my statement that it should have been started a decade ago. You stated that certain portions of the Army had gotten cultural training, yet from my link its pretty clear that many people who should have gotten this kind of training at the start of the fucking war did not. If a brigadier general can serve a tour in Afghanistan without any kind of cultural training, then that's a fucking problem. If said general does not get this kind of training until a decade after the war has started, that's a fucking problem. If the guys doing the bulk of the fighting and dying aren't getting this kind of training until a decade after the war begins, that's a fucking problem.

Its understandable that many of the first wave of soldiers going into Afghanistan wouldn't know a hell of a lot about the country's culture. That this situation was allowed to continue for five years (if we assume the military suddenly got its shit together after Petraeus published his book, which it clearly didn't) is inexcusable.

Having a few people, even if they're in charge of operations in a military theater, understand a society's culture is only slightly better than useless if the majority of the folks on the ground, encountering the locals on a daily basis, don't have a fucking clue as to what the local mores are. It is the folks on the ground, who through sheer ignorance, can completely undermine an entire operation, no matter how well planned, if they don't understand something like cultural do's and don't's.

Granted, having a President who clearly didn't give a shit about Afghanistan for eight years wasn't exactly helpful, but one would think that we, as a society, would have learned from our past mistakes and would have made cultural training for all members of the US military who're going into a combat zone a priority.

FOR THE FOURTH FUCKING TIME YOU FUCKING MORON: JUST B/C HE HASN'T HAD AN 8 MONTH CULTURAL AND LANGUAGE IMMERSION COURSE BEFORE DOESN'T MEAN HAS HASN'T HAD ANY CULTURAL TRAINING PERIOD. FUCK!

Perhaps you should read what the general himself said

It seems pretty clear to me from that statement that the first time he went there he didn't know dick about the local customs or language. How else can one interpret that statement?

So obviously, he's incapable of making any sort of mathematical calculation?

The 2010 census put the total population at 312,913,872.

In 2008, Obama was elected with 69,456,897 votes. That's roughly 22% of the population.

The 2000 census put the total population at 285,620,445.

In 2000, Bush was elected with 50,456,002 votes. Barely 18% of the population.

In 2004, Bush was elected with 62,040,610 votes. Around 21% of the population.


Looks like Scalia isn't the only one that's not a mathematician.

I interpret that as saying he gained much more language and cultural understanding after an 8 month cultural and language immersion class than he had before. That is not the same as never having had any cultural or language training. As I explained in my first post the Army has had cultural and language training for a long long time, just not nearly as extensive at the lower levels.

Sorry, I'm going to take him at his word. I would think that if he had had prior training that he would have mentioned it. You know, saying, "The 8 month course I had this time was better than the previous training" or something. If he'd had previous training, it sounds like he thought it wasn't worth mentioning (i.e. not very good).

I'm going to [-]go out on a limb here[/-] go with the obvious here, and suggest that Ancalagon is an expert on the training our soldiers receive prior to deployment. If what he's saying seems to contradict the McConville quote, then I'll just assume we are missing the context.

Now both of you, shut the fuck up, this thread is about bashing Scalia.

Look, the Army made it mandatory years ago for ALL SOLDIERS to receive cultural training, even file clerks and cooks.

Link:
http://www.army.mil/article/53928/army-language-culture-training--revolutionary/

For front line soldiers and officers much more than that minimum has been pushed down. NTC and JRTC (the places units go for over a month to train up before deployment) have literally HUNDREDS of immigrant role players. Hell for 11Bs (Infantry) it was part of our Basic Training way back in '06.

So once again, the idea that the military is 'just starting' cultural training is flat out wrong.

From your link

(bolding mine)
Nine years after the war started, or if we use the date you gave five years after. Not months, but years. And a "six-to-eight hour online" is not going to teach one very much of what, for all intents and purposes, is a alien culture.

Even the Army (again from your link) admits that they've been deficient in such training.

This

should be given to every soldier, not simply one out of a platoon.

Scalia is made of ka-ka.

As I said before that was mandatory training for ALL SOLDIERS, even those that would never step outside the wire. The more training the better, I'm glad we are putting more and more troops through immersion training, it can only help. But for what has to be the sixth fucking time, less than ideal training is not no training, which is what you originally claimed.

Scalia is an absolute historical illiterate, knowing nothing of the mindset of the framers of the Constitution. I think he needs to reread The Federalist, in which Madison and Hamilton articulate their view of what the Constitution REALLY is (and since they're among the Constitution's principal authors, I think we can accept their view as authoritative on the matter). They look at the fundamental law of the country as something that is solid enough to provide strong guidance for the people who would govern the nation in generations to come, but flexible and supple enough to adapt to the needs of a country they knew would grow and undergo significant economic, social and political change. Scalia sees it as inflexible and unchanging, meaning he fundamentally misunderstands the original intent of the framers which he claims to revere.

There is nothing so dangerous as a combination of inflexibility, ignorance, rigidity and stupidity--and that's exactly what we have in Antonin Scalia.

"Eat Scalia and die" works as a turn of phrase. I'll have to use it sometime.

And shitty, ineffective training can be worse than no training because it fools people into thinking they know something when they really don't.

None of which negates my original point, that if we, as a species (and not the Army), were capable from learning from history, then these kind of programs would have been implemented in '02 or '03 at the latest. Besides the various Indian Wars, we've had the war in the Pacific in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam to teach us that its goddamn important for every swinging dick to know as much as they possibly can about the country they're being sent to fight in.

Its also important (and this absolutely has not happened yet no matter how one wants to spin things) for the folks back home to understand the enemy and the culture we're up against. Just over 120 years ago, Americans were afraid of immigrants from China and other parts of Asia. We thought that they would somehow destroy our country (even though they were the ones building the railroads). They didn't. Then it was the Irish and other Catholics from Europe. They didn't either. Now, its people from Mexico, South and Central America, and Muslims who're going to "destroy" our country. They won't. Yet, despite the fact that probably 90% or better of us have ancestors who came from somewhere other than here, we still can't figure out that people coming to America is a good thing and be nice to them when they get here.

I'm glad I'm not responsible for teaching you mathematics. I despair of ever doing it.

Are you really pretending that all of the people who didn't vote and all of the people who were not eligible to vote (mostly minors) were 100% in favor of the candidate who lost?

Because otherwise your math is nonsense.

I really would like to know how much training you have had in mathematics, because you trying to teach me about mathematics has been a dismal failure so far...

And, therefore, freedom of the press applies not to the internet, or DVDs, or television, or even modern magazines, but only to newspapers printed using technology available in the 18th century?

How is that relevant? They played no part in the election. Therefore less than 25% of the population (who did vote and voted for the winner) got the guy elected.

You said "25% of the population" not "25% of the people who were eligible to vote and who voted". His math is correct, you just misspoke and are trying to pass the embarrassment off onto him.

Scalia represents that tendency within the Supreme Court that hides a reactionary political agenda behind his "textual" or literal interpretation of the US Constitution. This interpretation takes a deliberately provocative stance towards the interpretation of democratic norms and precedents, especailly as relates towards democratic rights.

While I have great issues with the fact that judges are not forced to recuse themselves for matters that they have a special interest in, you will never find a 100% impartial judge.

I would think it can provide hope for the future. There are many people on Wordforge who think the end is due any minute now due to the presence of those things you just listed, but apparently they don't mean the end of the world.

While I think Scalia starts in the right place, I find that i can agree with both you and Marso in saying this - the problem arises when one tries to extrapolate what "they would have thought" beyond the actual content of the document. I'd suggest that where the actual document does not have direct specific application that one ought not look for "implications" which suit one's on world-view.

if it were easy to amend, we'd have already been stuck with a Traditional Marriage Amendment by now.

What's mathematically true is not practically ever going to happen though.

The list of the 13 least populace states from the bottom:

Wyoming
Vermont
North Dakota
Alaska
South Dakota
Delaware
Montana
Rhode Island
New Hampshire
Maine
Hawaii
Idaho
Nebraska

Now - please provide an example of a constitutional issue upon which Rhode Island, Delaware, and Hawaii will agree with Alaska, Montana, and Nebraska.

Pretty sure Wyoming has less than ND.

True, but that was not 14th's argument. His claim was that, since 2% of the population could block the passage of an amendment, it would therefore take 99% of the population agreeing on it to pass one. Thus, what I said is relevant. It is absolutely relevant.

A blatant error, since it assumes that all but that small percentage must be in agreement for it to pass.

In reality, as you know very well, when 52% of the voters select a winner, that is a clear indication that a similar percentage of the population that is old enough to have an opinion on the subject is in favor of the outcome.

It is possible that, in a close election, the percentage of people in the total population opposed to the outcome might actually be a majority. "A similar percentage" does not mean "the same percentage" and 51% favorable is similar to 49% favorable. Nevertheless, it will never be the case that every last one of them will be opposed to the outcome. This assumption shows such a blatant ignorance of how statistical analysis works that arrogantly pretending to be such a superior mathematician when making that kind of error is seen to be laughable.