Property of a Lady

Deborah Lipp goes on about Wicca, politics, movies, Paganism, and cats. Not necessarily in that order.

We’ve had a couple of encouraging signs in the last few days.

On Friday it was Jim Geraghty’s dismay at Obama’s supposed contempt for New Rochelle commuters. (If the lifestyle of Rob and Laura Petrie isn’t sacred, what is?)

Yesterday it was faux outrage at Obama quoting The Untouchables, showing that the Republican War on Metaphors continues unabated. See, for example, Flopping Aces: (more…)

Via Ampersand, who got it from Ezra Klein:

Towards the end of the 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Dr. John Wane Prentice, played by Sydney Poitier, sits down with his fiance’s white father, played by Spencer Tracy. “Have you given any thought to the problems your children will have?” Tracy asks. “Yes, and they’ll have some…[But] Joey feels that all of our children will be President of the United States,” replies Poitier. “How do you feel about that?” asks Tracy, looking skeptically at the black man in front of him. “I’d settle for Secretary of State,” Poitier laughs.

Written in the late-1960s, the exchange was, indeed, laughable. The Civil Rights Act had been passed three years prior. Two years before, the Watts riots had broken out, killing 35. Martin Luther King Jr. would be assassinated a year later. But here we are, almost exactly 40 years after theatergoers heard that exchange. The last two Secretaries of State were African-American and, as of tonight, the next president may well be a black man. John Prentice’s children would probably still be in their late-30s. They could still grow up to be cabinet officials or even presidents, but they would not necessarily be trailblazers.

Tying movies to politics? Deborah Lipp: This is Your Life!

You know what? It’s easy to look at the current climate of racism; the hatred of brown people as expressed by hostility towards immigration, religious prejudice disguised as fear of terrorism, comedians who say “n****r” and then say they aren’t racist, Confederate flags flown with pride, comparisons of Barack Obama to a chimp or Curious George, conflation of all of it in the rank malificence that is the “Barack Hussein Obama” meme, to see all of that, and feel that pit in your stomach like, we’ve made no progress at all.

But by fucking golly, we have.

In an article about gay marriage that refutes a new Republic article by Ben Wittes, Glenn Greenwald reminds me that I find smart people really, really hot:

That a law invalidated by a court is supported by a large majority is not an argument supporting the conclusion that the court’s decision was wrong. Central to our system of government is the premise that there are laws which even the largest majorities are prohibited from enacting because such laws violate the constitutional rights of minorities. Thus, the percentage of people who support the law in question, and how lengthy and painstaking the process was that led to the law’s enactment, is totally irrelevant in assessing the propriety of a court decision striking down that law on constitutional grounds.

Contrary to Wittes’ extremely confused argument, a court striking down a law supported by large majorities is not antithetical to our system of government. Such a judicial act is central to our system of government. That’s because, strictly speaking, the U.S. is not a “democracy” as much as it a “constitutional republic,” precisely because constitutional guarantees trump democratic majorities. This is all just seventh-grade civics, something that the Brookings scholar and those condemning the California court’s decision on similar grounds seem to have forgotten.

(Emphasis in the original.)

The problem, of course, is that we don’t really teach “seventh grade civics” anymore. I kind of wonder if that’s a coincidence. I kind of wonder if destroying our educational system (most recently with No Child Left Behind) is, in fact, part of a Republican strategy to take over America by making Americans too ignorant to know the difference.

But I digress.

Here’s the thing. Minorities have rights. Even unpopular minorities. Even Jews and gays and Witches and blacks and Mormons. Even, y’know, Puritans, who came here because (wait for it) MINORITIES HAVE RIGHTS. And this, this is AGONY for conservatives. Unless, of course, they’re in the minority.

You see, the entire argument is disingenuous. Conservatives wish to argue that “judicial activism” is Bad Bad Baddy Bad when it does terrible things like prevent discrimination against gays, but when judges, I dunno, enforce discrimination against gays they aren’t in any kind of agony about judges overruling legislative action.

But Greenwald says it better. And smarter. And with restraint. Which is what gets me hot.