Antonin Scalia - On American Exceptionalism

It depends on where you draw the line for acting in good faith. Justice Antonin Scalia's opening statement before a 2011 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is worth watching. ▶ this video Even more worth reading are the Federalist Papers, cover-to-cover, as he suggested. The depth to which the Framers considered the kind of situations we are in today is amazing.

I highly recommend watching this video [1] to understand why "progress has stalled". Believe it or not, it's by design. 1. ▶ this video

This is basically the intent of the structure of the US government. High degree of separation of powers (unlike most other democracies, the executive is separate from the legislative and there are two independent legislative bodies). High level of agreement across multiple bodies before a law can be passed (House, Senate and President). I thought Scalia's explanation was a good one: ▶ this video

Ron Chernow's biography on him is really excellent. It's so good that I think it's actually a disservice to mention that it inspired the Broadway play. If you can respect Scalia's legal talent, this video where he mentions them is interesting: ▶ this video

The design of the American system was always based on a distrust for power. The gridlock is the point. Not my favorite person but Scalia put it well: ▶ this video

Quite the opposite! Scalia had a great speech[0] where he argued that our Constitution is weak compared to other nations of history but had outlived those nations because of its slow nature to act. The point being, it doesn't matter how great your constitution is if your country is dead. [0] ▶ this video

This speech is a good reference point. ▶ this video Just because you wrote a good constitution doesn't make the government good. You can put anything you want into a constitution if you don't have the institutions set up right to maintain it. Further, it's intentional that the federal government at times becomes unable to do it's job in times of intense disagreement. That was an intentional design feature.

▶ this video Scalia has a great speech on this. Our Constitution has been outdone several times over the centuries, even by Russia. Ours is the best, though, because ours is still standing and the others are not. The bottom line is that the gridlock and glacial pace of progress that others decry is what gives the Constitution its robustness that other lack.

Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and then restrict the republic through a constitution. If Democrats were losing out to big numbers, they would pro-republic and Republicans would be pro-democracy. But, one of the best explanations for why founding fathers built the system the way they did is this[1], by late Justice Scalia. The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) - House represents the population - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). - The fundamental idea is that any bill must be agreed upon by: a. The will of the people not just in short term (house), but in mid-term (presidency) and long term (senate) also. When UK wanted out of EU, the remainers believed that they should have a revote because they didn't believe that people voted with full information. Of course, years later a second proxy vote through general elections made the intent clear, but in the US we will not go for a bill to be passed unless its not just what we voted for

The title is a bit inflammatory, but in this clip from Scalia's testimony relates the overall concept well. ▶ this video

I'd love to discuss with others here something related. I have lately (to my surprise) been drawn by some talks of Antonin Scalia on Youtube. Far from being repelled (or amused at his standing alone) as I was years ago by his coming down on the opposite side of judgements I thought were socially just and good, I now come to understand better what he was doing. At least if you believe his talks. After listening to his talks (and then thinking back to his opinions), I understand he was trying to make sure that the Constitution was followed to the letter of the law, and that if the people were unhappy with it, let them change it so that it reflected the popular desires. But let it follow that process. Not have social or political will creep its way in via individual judges' or courts' determination something was now "acceptable enough" that it could be ruled to have evolved and be constitutional at the present time. And that the writers of the Constitution were trying to prevent disaster as much as trying to enable progress -- and that we should be careful when we stray from the words encoding that goal, because when you do that it opens up all sorts of unintended consequences. (Hence the connection to this OP's story + comments about law as source code.) This really opened my eyes about what that aspect of judicial conservatism is about. Not that I agree with all of its philosophy or tendency (in politics) to court a certain sector of the vote, for example. But it did arouse in

Exactly! Which is why this conversation is so interesting – and why it seemed they were unfairly downvoted. The question of "does friendship compromise integrity of systems over time?" is quite fascinating, and there are many examples across many countries that show "yes, yes it does." So it seemed entirely legitimate to say that perhaps a system should penalize friendships, somehow. But, after watching Scalia, how can you not like him? ▶ this video link He was witty, charming, and a master orator. So when people hear "can't have a friendship with Scalia, even though you work with him," it's kind of like "can't breathe, even though you're human." It's a logical contradiction. And it's not even a well-defined problem: what is a "friendship," anyway?