Activist judge
Peter J. Eliasberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said many Jewish war veterans would not want to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”
Justice Antonin Scalia responded that the symbol in the context of a war memorial carried a more general meaning. “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead,” he said.
Mr. Eliasberg said, “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew.”
Justice Scalia, who is usually jovial even in disagreement, turned angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”
And it would also be outrageous to conclude that Scalia's Catholicism has no bearing on his decisions whatsoever. Empathy be damned.
Labels: Scalia, supreme court
posted by John at 9:20 AM
6 Comments:
“I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”
Of course it's an outrageous conclusion, but please bear in mind, Justice Scalia, that outrageous conclusion is one you leaped to. I am sure Christians feel that the cross honors the war dead despite the fact that they are diminishing the religious beliefs (which, quite frankly, is all we have left after we shuffle off this mortal coil) of those it supposedly honors.
I don't know why Judges don't answer to anybody when they are so brazenly corrupted.
How does it "honor the war dead" to disprespect their individual beliefs/faiths/religions? Sound mighty disrespectful to me.
Anyway, this blog sums up Scalia well: http://greatbiglies.org/2010/05/01/supreme-court-all-dead-people-christian/
How convenient for Scalia to see this issue in a way that just happens to concur with his worldview as a conservative Catholic Christian. And then he becomes angry, rather than listens, when someone who has a competing worldview challenges his assertions. Am I the only one who is troubled by our Supreme Court having been seeded with "Justices" who apparently aren't all that interested in justice?
It's not Scalia's Catholicism that lead him to an awful decision but his rightwing ideology. Most Catholics recognize the Cross (actually we use a Crucifix more) as a symbol of Christianity and are sensitive to the religious symbols of other religions. Sadly, not all Catholics practice real Christianity.
You have to remember, Scalia is a rabid Catholic. If the Pope told him to subvert the Constitution, he would do it and find an argument to support his action. He clearly cannot separate church from state and probably wishes the doctrine itself would go away. Unless I am mistaken, at least three other justices, all in the New Majority (Far Right Wingnuts), are also Roman Catholic. It appears that the Vatican has succeeded in doing in our courts what it could not accomplish in our lawmaking bodies.
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