Brennan's dissent in Harris v McRae is a fascinating document (he saw the Hyde Amendment as an attempt to impose the moral judgment of "the majority" on a decision the Constitution entrusts to the individual), but more so for the highlighted portion below: tcf.org/content/report…
In other words, in upholding Hyde, SCOTUS found that the government may use its coercive power to withhold state spending from the most financially insecure citizens in order to to accomplish the same end that the state is forbidden to write into law.
I find these post Roe v Wade decisions fascinating bc you see how rooting the abortion right in a privacy framework put the Court in a symptomatic (liberal) bind: how is depriving someone of the resources to exercise a fundamental right different from violating their rights?
Here's the Court's workaround in Harris v McRae:
But look closely: the state "may not place obstacles in the path of a woman's freedom of choice, [but] it need not remove those not of its own creation. Indigency falls in the later category."
the logic goes: government didn't create the poverty that prevents poor women from accessing abortions, so while poverty IS an obstacle, it isn't the government's responsibility to rectify it.
I find when the Court gets close to the fundamental contradiction (most universal liberal rights are, in fact, class rights available only to the rich), it begins protesting too much. Who says the government didn't create her indigence?? Well, the ideology of capitalism says so.
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we have not become more respectful of others, we've become more afraid of them! but we don't want to say that.
a lot of these ethical flare-ups that purport to be about respecting others' unknown life experiences, vulnerabilities, and statuses have an unspoken premise: that there's no way you could possibly find out anything about them, by I don't know, like, talking to them!
i guess ppl who pushed the gay lover theory of the Pelosi attack (e.g. conservative pundits, Don Jr, the CEO of twitter) will now say the SF police are lying, bc the only remotely honorable alternative would be to feel intense shame and apologize profusely justice.gov/opa/press-rele…
you'll say I shouldn't assume these people have normal brains / real emotions / the concept of honor, but if I had done something like this, and then found out how wrong I was 24 hours later, I would die of shame. I'd be unable to function. that would be it for me
.@DineshDSouza yesterday: “My conclusion? this guy, the assailant, is either a sexual partner or a male prostitute, and this is a sexual rendezvous that went sideways.”
“‘What do you do in this school?’ a teenage student asked her. ‘I’m a social work intern,’ she told him. ‘Oh,’ he said, comprehending. ‘You snatch babies.’” newrepublic.com/article/167627…
in “PMC” terms: Social workers are a disciplinary arm of capital, obviously, but their profession is made out to be something else, something about justice, which is both an authorizing myth AND the terms on which social workers themselves come to resist their assigned role.
i appreciate the Claremont Review for consistently confirming my theses about the right and race
(as ever, C. Murray keeps the flame of biological determinism alive)
Gotta hand it to the editors: Amy Wax on Charles Murray is a savvy commission
I'll keep hammering this: the point of reviving genetic theories of economic achievement is to naturalize the existing social order. The war on the concept of "systemic racism" is perfectly consonant with neoliberal aims: discouraging state intervention to help the underclasses.