John Holbo Profile picture
7 Jan, 16 tweets, 4 min read
So now we know what @scottjshapiro was REALLY up to, all those times he was light tweeting. Shame! Shame! 1/ reason.com/volokh/2021/01…
More seriously, this is not good enough. It's true Trump's Fed Society judges did not turn out mafiosi (as Trump hoped.) But the Fed Society has been happy to make Trump their vehicle - knowing who he is and what he is likely to do. Namely, something like we saw today. 2/
If the programmers running our little simulation were devising an experiment to test whether the Federalist Society is primarily committed to the Constitution - that is, to strengthening the impartial rule of law, rather than of men ... 3/
... or whether it instead more wants to leverage 'originalism' as a vehicle for the delivery of reliable, right-wing policy outcomes from the bench, a more lab-pure touchstone test than Trump could scarcely have been devised. The Fed Soc flunked this test. 4/
You are, you say, a supporter of 'originalism'. You have the chance to go along, to get along, with a rogue, known to have no commitment to any aspect of rule of law (very much to the contrary!) but who is open to purely transactional commitment to 'originalism' as cover. 5/
Once you take the trade (he gets 'commitment to the Constitution' cover for corruption, you get your agents on the bench) - IF you take it - you are, yourself, in for a penny, in for a pound. You don't need to be down, directly, with the worst aspects of the rogue's doings. 6/
Your tacit agreement with him to make 'originalism' a transactional token in the Great Game shows what you take it to have always been: not a boundary stone, planted on behalf of impartial rule of law. No, you are happy to trade it around. So how could it be a boundary stone? 7/
But (the counter-argument will run!) 'originalism' isn't bearer bonds, held by whomever. Federalist Society judges aren't bought 'bent' (as Trump learned to his chagrin.) So am I saying that Leonard Leo is like Sauron: "But they were all of them deceived" and all that? 8/
Federalist Society judges are like 'rings of power'; ultimately they still serve the One? No. Because, hey, that could be good! Maybe the One Ring they serve is just: the Constitution! This is actually how a lot of 'originalists' think about their deal with Trump. 9/
Trump thinks he bought bent judges, but - oh, snap! Pig in poke! - he bought honest judges! Sucker! The problem is that no one who SERIOUSLY wants to keep the law, and judging, above politics, would play it like this. 10/
You get 'originalist results' if Trump appoints Federalist Society types. But no one primarily concerned with preserving the Constitution, the rule of law, would WANT results secured this way. It's a bad trade, since the damage to the law, playing along, is obviously worse. 11/
Does anyone seriously think Merrick Garland would have been responsible for any day as bad for the law as Trump today? But the response comes back: but these good 'judges are on the bench for years! Decades! Trump's gone in two weeks! It was a good trade! 12/
Well, it may be a good trade politically. You get the decisions and policies you prefer, long-term, and the Constitution - a bit tattered - stays basically intact. But the manner in which you are pulling off this trick is plainly inconsistent with your own philosophy. 13/
Originalism shouldn't be the ends-justifes-the-means view that, if you can get results you like, long term, by renting out the word 'originalism' to crooks like Trump (who need cover and think they are buying bent judges) you should rent out 'originalism'. 14/
Originalism, if it becomes a consequentialist Realpolitik bank-shot double-cross you pull on a Mafia guy, ceases to be originalism. 'Originalism' is not supposed to be a reverse-Macguffin - a real thing, pretending to be a fake, which is thereby only pretending to pretend. 15/
Think about it! 16/

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More from @jholbo1

8 Jan
I've got to read this and think about it. But here's my first negative thought. To what degree is this bothsidesism valid? Not very, I think. 1/ tabletmag.com/sections/news/… Image
The comparison is between BLM protests - and riots - and Stop The Steal. But these aren't comparable. Why not? BLM was and is a reasonable civil rights protest movement, addressing actual existing problems of policing. Stop the Steal is an insane, delusional conspiracy theory. 2/
Now, normally you need to be even-handed about these things, in a formal way. 'Everyone has a right to their opinion'. 'Crazy people have the same free speech rights as everyone else'. 'You don't convince people by dismissing them as crazy.' All that's true. 3/
Read 25 tweets
7 Jan
It's impossible to focus on philosophy today but here's an ask. I'm doing a rapid fly-over of Augustine and Aquinas on my way to starting to teach history of modern. I can't spend more than a few minutes trying to give a 'flavor'. It's rather ridiculous, yes.
But does anyone has an idea what would be good readings from Augustine and/or Aquinas - I mean: 1-2 pages tops - that are extractable 'fun reads', also representative. I don't mean funny-amusing. I mean: students might get something out, small though these bits must be.
I'm going to touch on Augustine and that darned pear tree. But that's Augustine as autobiographer, on sin. Can someone suggest a short stretch where he is arguing, philosophically, strikingly. Maybe something about free will? The nature of mind? I really am not an Augustinian.
Read 4 tweets
5 Jan
I'm thinking of including this in my segment on p-values next sem. Lab-perfect example of p-values not telling us the likelihood that something happened 'by chance'. They tell, at most, relative to a model - in this case a suspiciously vague 'normal'. votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/anomalies-in… Image
It is hard to think straight about such problems, partly due to absolute cosmic unlikelihood of anything, in particular, happening - rather than some other thing. When every event is unlikely - but aren't they all? - you get a sort of one-size fits all cosmic paranoid style .
What do people think of it? I mean: set aside that anyone beavering away at proving fraud is probably severely confabulating at this point, it seems like a nice example of garden variety crude analysis, showing how genuinely hard good analysis of this sort is. Baseline agonistes.
Read 5 tweets
5 Jan
I googled 'Kierkegaard pseudonyms' because I wanted a complete list of his literary alter-egos. It turns out Google has a 'nicknames' feature? It's true he was nicknamed 'fork' by his family. (There's a good story about that.) Was Marx 'Charley' to friends? 'Bento'? Image
Huh. Image
Huh. Image
Read 4 tweets
5 Jan
Trump has taught the Republicans that a level of bald-faced nonsense-on-stilts can be sold, beyond anything our politicians have heretofore contemplated. It isn't just Greene. It's every elected R who is even dipping a toe, which is most R congresscritters by now. 1/
The 'fraud' claims at this point are a tight, normative contradiction, roped to an empirical double-absurdity - not merely an empirical long-shot. Normatively, the fraud-claimers are keeping their options open as to which of two contradictory principles they wish to espouse. 2/
1) the principle that 'all (legal!) votes should count', and any mere formal technicality that stands in the way - like, yes, we went through the counts, and through the courts, many times - is not enough. We need ALL LEGAL VOTES TO COUNT. 3/
Read 14 tweets
12 Nov 20
theamericanconservative.com/dreher/live-no… The 'live not by lies' crew collides with: people who won't stand for lies. Something's got to give.

What is actually going on in this little playlet? 'Concern about voter fraud among Democrats', as a response to Biden's acceptance, is ... a lie. 1/
And a disrespectful one. In the abstract, sure, somebody's job has to be worrying about voter fraud. But since everyone who has studied it certifies it cannot be - hence isn't - perpetrated at scale, all allegations to the contrary are, ahem, incredible lies. 2/
Now: suppose people on the other side - the leftists - are not willing to live by lies? As seems not unlikely. It's not clear what the punishment should be for living by lies, out loud, in the workplace, like this guy. Maybe everyone else should just roll their eyes. 3/
Read 14 tweets

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