My Political Post for the Season
Originally published at The Mouse's Tale. You can comment here or there.
So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.
Thinking about the election tomorrow, this quote jumped into my head and won’t go away. From where things stand right now, it seems almost a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will be the next President of the United ( Read more... )
>Contentious issues normally only exist when there is no law or when people
>believe that the law needs to be something different. In neither case will >saying what the law is resolve the conflict.
No? The law is often far from unambiguous, particularly when it is faced with a situation that its authors could not possible have planned for or considered. For example: lacking any anti-abortion laws, is it murder? Is a fetus legally considered human?
>The Court's first major attempt at "fixing" white/black relations was a
>big step toward creating a war. The Court's second major attempt left us
>with a regime of obvious inequality which the political branches could
>(should!) have fixed on their own if only they had bothered. The Court's
>third major attempt was the progenitor of racial quotas, judge run
>bussing, and lingering confusion over just what the hell "equal" means.
>Exactly how this is an argument in favor of judicial conflict resolution
>eludes me.
Because all of them were better than nothing, particularly when the laws were questionably legal to begin with. The first major attempt (Dred Scott, I assume you mean) was arguably a direct reading of the law. As has always been the case, social standards and expectations entered into consideration. The second case (Plessy) was likewise as much the product of thought at the time as of the reading of the law.
And while it may not have been quite clear what "equal" meant, it was painfully what "equal" did not mean.
>No more than I need to mention the benefits of considering individual
>needs, and how it can often be cheaper in the long run to use a
>specialized tool rather than even a very heavily discounted blunt
>instrument.
Sometimes. But if we look around, we can learn something remarkable - programs like socialized health care don't have to suck. Government doesn't have to be inefficient. But that's only possible if you're willing to accept that it is possible. You can't govern efficiently if you don't believe in government.
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> Is a fetus legally considered human?
This isn't hard. In a total vacuum of abortion law, the second question doesn't matter (though the answer is "no"), and the answer to the first depends on the law.
In general, a fetus is not, and has never been, considered a person under the law. This is evidenced by the fact that, in the law, when protections are assigned to the fetus, the fetus is called out separately by name. This special handling is a strong indicator that the fetus is not included in the general definitions for the rights of and crimes against people.
As to whether or not killing a fetus is murder, well, Michigan's MCL 750.322 considers it manslaughter. That's technically different than murder (MCL 750.316, 317), but probably close enough.
> Because all of them were better than nothing
Is any decision made by a court better than no decision?
> Government doesn't have to be inefficient.
It doesn't have to be, but it is. It always is. It always has been. And the reason is fairly simple. The government has no incentive to be anything else. The government can't go out of business and it's hard to the point of absurdity to fire a government employee. Pay scales are stunningly mechanical. There are no rewards in government for innovative ideas. Any agency which spends under budget finds itself a target for budget cuts, rather than a bonus. And whenever anyone's tried to change these things, they've mostly found that their jobs don't last too long.
So tell me, how do you get performance out of a system which doesn't reward success?
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You use a system that doesn't suck. Yeah, sure, it would require a revamp on such a scale that would amount to taking everything apart and putting it back together, but government need not be inefficient.
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