Thread by @jholbo1

A couple days ago someone - sorry, forget who - was making fun of this Josh Hammer piece because it's written kinda funny. He misuses words in a flourish-y way. (The opening 'herewith' is a clunker.) 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

But one thing he does that I've always meant to comment on is gripe about the Anthony Kennedy line that gripes conservatives. “The right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” From "Casey". 2/

Usually the complaint is that Kennedy is being too agnostic. Hammer - possibly already thinking ahead to how is going to misuse 'eponymous' in the next sentence - blames it for being gnostic. (But relativist!) 3/

I would be funny to convene a roundtable of conservatives to argue whether it was Kennedy's gnosticism or agnostism that was the problem. But, getting to the point: it IS a goofy-sounding phrase to put in an opinion, and yeah I get why cons hate "Casey". 4/

But it seems a funny thing to get SO hung up on. Like: does anyone really deny “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life"? 5/

The alternatives seem to be: no one has the right, or someone else has the right to tell me what my concept of the mystery of existence is (and I'll take it and like it!) If you didn't think this thing Kennedy says, why would you think religious liberty was good? 5/

I mean: maybe you think religious liberty is just some temporary truce in the wars of religion while God's true soldiers rest & prepare to slaughter the heathen in a final push to come. 6/

Or maybe you think religious liberty is just about it being best to humor all the idiots - from the gnostics and agnostics - because it would be too much trouble to fight them all. 7/

I think most Americans believe that thing Kennedy said. It's this kind of goofy Emersonian-sounding thing. But what the hell ELSE does anything think is the way to run the railroad? I guess you aren't suppose to say the transcendentalist part out loud in an SC opinion. 8/

Hammer links to this hand-wringer. This sort of thing doesn't compute for me. All the 'puzzles' have Millian answers. And if you really think that dogs and cats just can't live together, how do you think religious liberty will work anyway? 9/thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10091

Anyone else have any thoughts on Kennedy's good 'ol 'mystery of existence'? (Honestly, it feels a bit retro - in the dark age of Trump. 10/