Right Wing Nation

Since everybody else in the dextrosphere is commenting on Jonathan Turley’s “lament” in USA Today (emphases are mine):

This term, the Supreme Court may finally take up the Voldemort Amendment, the part of the Bill of Rights that shall not be named by liberals. For more than 200 years, progressives and polite people have avoided acknowledging that following the rights of free speech, free exercise of religion and free assembly, there is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Of course, the very idea of finding a new individual right after more than two centuries is like discovering an eighth continent in constitutional law, but it is hardly the cause of celebration among civil liberties groups.

Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. Yet, two related cases could now force liberals into a crisis of conscience. The Supreme Court is expected to accept review of District of Columbia v. Heller and Parker v. District of Columbia, involving constitutional challenges to the gun-control laws in Washington.

What’s interesting about this — and as far as I’ve read, nobody else has pointed it out — is that the Second Amendment has been right there in the Bill of Rights from the very beginning, according to Turley for liberals to “blissfully ignore,” and it takes a SCOTUS case — two, actually — to force him to think about it.

Think about that for a moment, because it breathes truth into one of the primary and most powerful arguments against the “living document” theory of the Constitution. Turley is forced to acknowledge the Constitution at last only because the SCOTUS will hear two cases — and not because he has read the Constitution, and the Second Amendment has been right there, from the very beginning. But to him and his kind, the Constitution does not exist in any objective sense, but only in the “interpretations” of the courts. This, you see, is why Turley has for all these years “blissfully ignored” the actual Constitution, and why now that the question is to come before the SCOTUS, he is forced to acknowledge it.

Stop. Let those statements steep for a moment so you can appreciate their full bouquet. Blissfully ignore. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. Two related cases could now force liberals into a crisis of conscience.

Oh, did I forget to mention that Turley is one of the left’s favorite constitutional scholars? That he is tenured law faculty? And yet, he felt quite comfortable ignoring the Bill of Rights because, and I do quote, “It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda.” It’s much like a Classicist ignoring Cicero because it didn’t fit his agenda. Or a mathematician ignoring addition because it didn’t fit his agenda.

The Constitution, then, to this so-called constitutional scholar, is nothing more than toilet paper, unless it happens to fit his liberal agenda. I didn’t say it. He did. Actually, it isn’t even toilet paper. It’s a series of pronouncements laid down by courts.

Now everybody else is either noting (and linking to) it, or congratulating him for finally actually reading the Constitution. Me, not so much. Congratulations might be in order if he were some birkenstock-clad neo-hippie with a degree in Three-Toed Lesbian of Color Studies. I fairly strongly feel, however, that a celebrated, tenured “constitutional scholar” deserves no congratulation or appreciation for finally reading the Constitution.

Maybe I’m just grumpy. But I don’t think so. About the nicest thing I can say is give him credit for being honest enough to admit that he places his agenda above the Constitution.

You may want to read a couple of papers The Blogfather wrote on the topic (here and here).