Good Riddance, Justice Antonin Scalia

Justice Scalia was a neo-fascist who tried to destroy America

Antonin Scalia (1936-2016) died yesterday, and good riddance. Our nation would have been better off if he had never been appointed to the Supreme Court. Scalia did his best to insert fascist ideology into the American legal system and Constitution. He was dishonest, manipulative, and unpatriotic. I only wish he had died sooner, preferably hanged like the Nuremberg criminals whose ideas he promoted.

Scalia was of Italian descent, and was the first-Italian American on the Supreme Court. Too bad, because there were many Italian-Americans with American values who would have made better Supreme Court judges. [disclaimer: I am of one-fourth Italian descent]

I do think being raised a Roman Catholic had a lot to do with his moral degeneracy. Roman Catholicism is at the root of fascism and other authoritarian political trends. But I should point out that many American Roman Catholics traded in their Dark Ages values for American rationalism during the very era that Scalia slimed his way through. [disclaimer: I was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools through the eighth grade. I have long been a atheist with a positive, nature-centric philosophy.]

Scalia became a committed ultra-conservative Catholic while attending a Jesuit-run school in New York City as a teenager. Depending on how you look at it, he either was smart or just spent a lot of time memorizing Jesuit nonsense. He then attended a Roman Catholic college, Georgetown University. By the time he reached Harvard Law School he was so deeply entrenched in lies and casuistry that he never emerged from the black pit. Instead, he worked hard all his life to suck American down into that pit.

I will leave it to others to try to analyze what was in Antonin's genes or childhood experiences that turned him to the dark side. Nor can I take on his opinions in thousands of Supreme Court cases in a short essay. What I want to convey to readers is his general method of attempting to destroy the Constitution. Contrary to his many eulogizers today, he did not invent these methods. They were conveyed to him. He simply reinvigorated them.

Suppose someone said to you: the right to bear arms, when the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, meant only the right to own muzzle-loading weapons requiring those who wish to fire them to dump some gunpowder and a bullet into the barrel each time.

Scalia, when it was convenient, promoted "originalism" and "textualism" for interpreting the Constitution. In this theory the words of the Constitution mean exactly what they say and cannot be interpreted in modern terms. They have to be interpreted the way George Washington and crew interpreted them.

Except when originalism and textualism where inconvenient to right-wing agendas, as with gun control laws, which he consistently ruled against.

This enabled Scalia to deny that women have rights other than the right to vote. He denied that Congress could create good laws and programs, unless they were specifically listed by in the Constitution. He even ruled that Congress cannot regulate campaign donations as part of its duty to regulate elections, because that is trumped by the right of wealth individuals, corporations, and labor unions to spend all they want on an election.

But originalism and textualism were a phony agenda, a means to an end. Scalia did not rule that guns using technology more modern than that of 1780 could be used only the the U.S. military and police forces. No, he even voted to overturn parts of the Brady Bill.

Scalia's real agenda was to push the nation towards an authoritarian, right wing, Christian (and evenually Roman Catholic) government. Perhaps with slight variations from the Pope Pius, Mussolini, Hitler, General Franco model. But certainly in the direction of the fascist model.

Some people say Scalia could be charming in person. People said the same thing about Mussolini and Hitler.

Scalia denied the reality of the Evolution of Species. He tried to force religious theology to be taught in public schools.

Scalia denied the rights of people to affirmative action. Affirmative Action is Justice, because it makes up for past injustice. But Scalia wanted to steer the nation towards ever increasing injustice.

Scalia was un-american. He was against democracy and human rights, including the right to the pursuit of happiness, instead of misery under a Pope. He wanted to push America into a purposefully ignorant society of obedient religious nutters.

Scalia was a liar and a scumbag in a black robe, which is pretty much what his Jesuit teachers were aiming for.

Within the Catholic Church Scalia refused to accept the move away from fascism known as Vatican II. While we may be unfortunate that he was ever appointed to the Supreme Court, and to some point he did manage to persuade people to find ways to interpret our Constitution in a fascist manner, we are lucky he was just one of nine.

More on Antonin Scalia by William P. Meyers: Impeach Antonin Scalia [June 28, 2012]

Impeach Antonin Scalia

Antonin Scalia's partly concurring and partly dissenting opinion in Arizona v. United States is not a simple prejudiced, racist misreading of the laws of the United States. It is as close to treason as one can get in the United States of America without actually, as the Constitution defines treason, "levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies."

Justice Scalia begins his argument by asserting "The United States is an indivisible 'Union of sovereign States.' Highlander v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co. 305 U.S. 92, 104 (1938)." That individual States are not sovereign is obvious from hundreds of Supreme Court Decisions, even infamous ones like Dred Scott. Scalia's argument is totally dependent on presenting careful selections from U.S. history as if they were strong precedents.

In fact the cases and historic examples he uses have been discredited, or have only minor significance. Given his attitude, it is surprising that Scalia did not cite the declarations of independence of the States that joined the Confederacy, and then forget to remind us that the Confederate States lost the Civil War and had no Supreme Court ever ruled that they had a right to declare independence.

Scalia even cites the (pre-Constitution) Articles of Confederation, neglecting that they were superceded by our Constitution, which created a nation with a federal system in which the national government, including its Supreme Court, are the supreme law of the land.

My opposition to Scalia's opinion is not meant to detract from the rights of States, and of the People, and of the limitations of the power of the central government outlined in the Constitution. It is not a problem for me when Scalia or any American argues for states rights when they actually exist. Scalia goes much further: he joins the rebels of the Confederacy, using their very arguments, and asserting boldly each individual State is sovereign.

Justice Scalia cites the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions to support his views, as did the rebels of the Confederacy. These Resolutions are part of our history, but they amount to an opinion that was not ultimately supported by our people or government. Not by most individual states most of the time, not by any Congress, never by a President (not even by their authors, Jefferson and Madison, once they became Presidents), and not by any Supreme Court justice except the rebel Scalia. States cannot judge laws passed by Congress (and signed by a President) to be unconstitutional. That judgment is a duty of the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court judge is not supposed to cite the losing sides of arguments as precedents. True, the Supreme Court occasionally overrules precedent, as when Brown v. Board of Education began correcting prior decisions that had limited the human rights of non-white citizens. Scalia, in Arizona v. United States, is not simply re-interpreting the Constitution, straightening out some flaw in its prior application. He is attempting to re-write history, law, and the Constitution, and to break up the United States into 50 separate nations.

At the beginning of Section II Scalia writes "One would conclude from the foregoing that after the adoption of the Constitution there was some doubt about the power of the Federal Government to control immigration, but no doubt about the power of the States to do so." But one's conclusion would be based on Scalia's editing of history to distort the whole cloth of law.

Scalia only reluctantly accepts that the federal government can control immigration "not because of the Naturalization Clause but because it is an inherent attribute of sovereignty no less for the United States than for the States."

So we see the rebel's reasoning clearly: Sovereignty is Supreme, and Scalia and his gang of right-wind legal thugs are to be the interpreters of the meaning of Sovereignty. Does Sovereignty mean trampling on human rights? To Scalia it does. Does it mean trampling on the U.S. Constitution? That is apparent from Scalia's opinion.

After falsely declaring each individual state to be Sovereign (in which case there is no real need for a United States) Scalia claims the case was "about a federal law going to the core of state sovereignty: the power to exclude."

Scalia would exclude illegal immigrants from Arizona. That is not a radical opinion. The problem is the basis of his opinion. Scalia earlier stated who can be removed by a sovereign State: "certain persons, or for certain particular purposes, according as he may think it to the advantage of the state," "obnoxious aliens" (even perhaps bearing Green Cards), "paupers, vagabonds," "persons with contagious diseases," and "freed blacks."

In other words, Scalia would exile anyone Scalia did not like. And a State could exile anyone it did not like. Perhaps Jews, Arabs, Blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, atheists and agnostics, or the unemployed. Perhaps a state ruled by the Republican Party would exile Democratic Party members. The sick and disabled might be cast out. It all depends on who controls a State.

This is madness. Preaching this poison, which is done all too much within the United States of America, is protected by our rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Sitting on the Supreme Court trying to rule based on this poison is not protected.

Antonin Scalia has exceeded the bounds of his appointment. He should resign. If he does not resign, he should be impeached. If Congress fails to impeach him, human rights in this nation will be gravely in danger of disappearing.