April 22, 2005
David Brooks Is a Turd
C'mon, give the states a shot at this.
Having been caught up in the movie tournament, I have neglected my rare but vital duty to compose something approaching a substantive post. As a uterus-free person, this may be my first and last post on Roe v. Wade, but the disingenuous, historically fallacious, and insulting column by David Brooks (other comments here) required a little clean-up and attention. Never one to let the facts get in the way of a good misdirection play, he begins with:
Instead, Blackmun and his concurring colleagues invented a right to abortion, and imposed a solution more extreme than the policies of just about any other comparable nation.
Which, thanks to the superior graphing skills of Quiddity, is instantly disproven. The larger point that Brooks makes is that Roe v. Wade was the sort of judicial activism that cut short some sort of political debate that would, I guess, have inevitably resulted in individual state legislatures recognizing such a right for its women:
When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate.
First of all, I live in Texas. In this, the year of our Lord 2005, we are trying to rip foster children from the loving homes that gay and bisexual couples are providing for them. I'm pretty sure that the 14 million women in this state would be enjoying no such right, nor would they be getting bus vouchers for the nearest state that would (California? Iowa?). The idea that the religious right would have never developed as a political force in the absence of Roe v. Wade is absolutely nuts; they were there all along and would have fought state-by-state to assert their political power.
Which brings me to the parallel court decision argument advanced by the invaluable Michael Bérubé, who, by inserting Brown v. Board of Education (1954, integration) and Loving v. Virginia (1965, interracial marriage), makes Brooks' argument sound rather silly. Having read Simple Justice, the comprehensive history of the integration battle, several times, there was no way on Earth that Southern (and many Northern) legislatures would have developed a consensus to integrate. It took court decision after court decision, federal legislation, protests, riots, sending in the state guard, and battling demagogues like Lester Maddox and George Wallace. In 1954, I know that there were a lot of Brooks-type people who loudly lamented the judicial activism that took the power from the state legislatures on this; for instance, law clerk William Rehnquist.
In my previous post comparing the specious arguments against gay marriage to the specious arguments against interracial marriage, I noted that in 1968, people were against miscegenation by a 3-to-1 margin. This was after the Court had overturned it... a long way against a consensus which would have allowed for the freedom of two people who loved each other to marry and start a family. Again, I'm sure there were a lot of Brooks-type people who loudly lamented the judicial activism, etc., etc.
Other people with Constitutional experience can probably point out flaws in the Roe v. Wade decision, and how it might have been better decided on other grounds (equal protection rather that right to privacy), but let's not delude ourselves with fairy tales of a past that never was. Civil rights struggles are, by definition, not easy.
Your wise beyond Brooks who is just unspeakably stupid.
Clarence Thomas, who is not wise beyond yesterday's daily Limbaugh briefing couldn't be married to the lovely Ms. Thomas if it were up to many of the small people of this great nation.
It goes on and on. The silliness of Brooks first sentence is simply a justification of the silliness of the presidency of George Bush.
Posted by: jaye at April 21, 2005 09:23 PMWow. This isn't fair. You can do funny AND insightful. What's left for the rest of us blog-peons? In all seriousness, this is brilliant. Thank you.
Posted by: corndog at April 21, 2005 09:32 PMWhen I was in school I had the honor of meeting Sarah Weddington, the attorney who fought for Roe in Roe v. Wade- she was one incredible Texan lady. She has to deal daily with death threats, threats against her family . . . some culture of life, right?
But more importantly, she outlined to us the whole legal argument against her case. She told us how a fresh outta law school, female attorney managed to create a case that won out in a conservative court because of its consitutional solidity.
I have always argued that the courts are designed to keep us from succumbing to mob rule. The courts are there to reinforce not what is popular, but what is right. But now we have an administration that fails to understand that what is popular is not always right. That's why they keep harping on this supposed "mandate." And after reading on the subject of the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran . . . that's what scares me the most.
Posted by: Vestal Vespa at April 21, 2005 11:02 PMCool story, VV. I got to hear Weddington speak at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center where I was recently an employee. It must have been a hard decision for the staunchly right-wing leadership of that organization to let her speak there; George and Barbara Bush are both on the board. But, as a breast cancer survivor, she spoke out bravely on the subject of fighting her disease, which she seems to have approached with the same determination that won her Roe v. Wade. I don't even know if she's still alive, but I bet she is. The fighters always beat cancer.
Good call on the Rehnquist memo. He basically makes the same argument as Brooks for uphodling Plessy. (The debunking of Rehnquist's story at his confirmation hearings might be my favorite part of Simple Justice...)
Posted by: Scott Lemieux at April 22, 2005 12:42 AMI still wonder how you figure who a bisexual couple is. Is it cause they are a triple?
Posted by: punsandammo at April 22, 2005 03:34 AMNorbizness, you miss the point - the slippery slope people were right. They said if we allowed blacks/yellows to marry whites, then the gays would marry. Today we have interracial marriage, and now we're trying to allow gay marriage. Next we'll allow sibling marriage, followed by man-dog marriage, followed by man-tree marriage. DON'T YOU SEE?
Posted by: ChrisV82 at April 22, 2005 10:32 AMman-tree marriage
I know several men for whom this would mean finding their true intellectual equal.
David Brooks, for example.
Posted by: Vestal Vespa at April 22, 2005 11:07 AMThe new video dating service, courtesy of Monty Python: "Slide 1... the larch. The larch. And now... Slide 1... the larch."
Posted by: norbizness at April 22, 2005 11:09 AMSince the election, Brooks has been trying to deny the religious radical's stranglehold on his own party, without, of course, actually suggesting that Republicans ought to do anything about it. Instead it's a continual appeal to another of his imaginary demographics, the great centrist majority which gets its way on everything, somehow. So where's the centrist Republican party platform plank? Where's the centrist Anti-Abortion amendment? Hell, where's the argument in your own party, Dave?
Posted by: doghouse riley at April 22, 2005 11:26 AMGreat post -- thanks for the reminder on the Rehnquist memo. Too bad I didn't remember this when I was teaching the Brown decision two weeks ago.
Either way, Brooks is a brightly-colored, low-hanging pińata for those like us who cork our bats on this end of the blogosphere, for reasons that this column makes abundantly clear. Posing in both venues as a man of reason — here assessing the predictable venality of educated American elites, there cheering the unrelenting optimism and conservatism of the ordinary American people, who never fail to persevere through it all — Brooks continually disappoints, proving himself at the end of every argument to be yet another devoted, Republican simpleton. His ignorance of history is especially galling to someone who actually teaches the subject; Brooks is an unfortunate reminder of the sorry state of historical memory in this nation. His buffoonery, it seems, knows no limits.
Posted by: Axis of Evel Knievel at April 22, 2005 02:04 PMyou may want to re-think the title for this post. a turd, at least, can be used as fertilizer or as raw material for some kind of practical joke... brooks is just absolutely valueless.
Posted by: capital P at April 22, 2005 03:15 PMOkay, I hope this doesn't sound snarky, because I'm actually curious. Why do you stay in Texas? The Framers of the Constitution assumed that Federalism would work because people would vote with their feet and leave states that weren't doing as well, so we didn't need such a strong national legislature to make sure states didn't go batshit crazy. But doesn't Texas disprove this theory? No offense meant, but your state doesn't seem like it could be doing any worse by any measure.
Just so you know, I'm counting this as studying for my Con Law final.
Posted by: jengould at April 22, 2005 03:29 PMUh oh, I think jengould just messed with Texas.
Posted by: Vestal Vespa at April 23, 2005 02:36 PMjengould, that's the modern idea of Federalism. The old idea was more along the lines of:
Norb is a Texan and I'm a Wisconsonite, and our respective countries have a deal going that's a bit more than a treaty.
You probably aren't going to vote with your feet because that's not a figure of speech, you actually have to use your feet. And even the little states aren't all that little without a motor vehicle.