Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

Here.

You'd have to be crazy to send your child to Yale University, which is little more than a daycare center where everyone is taught that he or she is special. Sadly, this is true of a great many of our nation's colleges and universities.

Addendum: Here is a related blog post.

Absolute Torch and Twang (1989). Oh. My. God. That voice.

I am increasingly concerned for the constitutional balance of powers being threatened by Senate Republicans’ refusal to confirm Supreme Court justices. They have held up President Obama’s nominee by saying the choice should belong to the next president.

Now that Donald Trump’s chances are doubtful, first John McCain and now Ted Cruz are threatening to block anyone Hillary Clinton nominates. They say they will cut the number of judges on the court rather than confirm a Democrat’s nominee.

There have been nine judges for 150 years. There was no talk of cutting the Supreme Court when there was a chance of a Republican nominee. I fear the Republican Party has gone off the rails. I do not want to see the country go over the cliff with it. It is time for a change of control in Congress.

MARY ZINS, MIAMI

Note from KBJ: Raise your hand if you think Mary Zins would have written this letter had the parties been reversed.

A natural-law theory is a critical reflective account of the constitutive aspects of the well-being and fulfillment of human persons and the communities they form. Such a theory will propose to identify principles of right action—moral principles—specifying the first and most general principle of morality: namely, that one should choose and act in ways that are compatible with a will toward integral human fulfillment. Among these principles are respect for rights people possess simply by virtue of their humanity—rights that, as a matter of justice, others are bound to respect, and governments are bound not only to respect but also, to the extent possible, to protect.

Natural-law theorists of my ilk understand human fulfillment—the human good—as variegated. There are many irreducible dimensions of human well-being. This is not to deny that human nature is determinate. It is to affirm that our nature, though determinate, is complex. We are animals, but rational. Our integral good includes not only our bodily well-being but also our intellectual, moral, and spiritual well-being. We are individuals, but friendship and sociability are constitutive aspects of our flourishing.

By reflecting on the basic goods of human nature, especially those most immediately pertaining to social and political life, natural-law theorists propose to arrive at a sound understanding of principles of justice, including those principles we call human rights. In light of how natural-law theorists understand human nature and the human good, it should be no surprise to learn that natural-law theorists typically reject both strict individualism and collectivism. Individualism overlooks the intrinsic value of human sociability and tends mistakenly to view human beings atomistically. It fails to account for the intrinsic value of friendship and other aspects of human sociability, reducing all relationships to means by which the partners collaborate with a view to more fully or efficiently achieving their individual goals and objectives. Collectivism, meanwhile, compromises the dignity of human beings by tending to instrumentalize and subordinate them and their well-being to the interests of larger social units—the community, the state, the volk, the fatherland, the führer, the future communist utopia. Individualists and collectivists both have theories of justice and human rights, but they are, as I see it, highly unsatisfactory. They are rooted in important misunderstandings of human nature and the human good. Neither can do justice to the concept of a human person—that is, a rational animal who is a locus of intrinsic value (and, as such, an end in himself who may never legitimately treat himself or be treated by others as a mere means), but whose well-being intrinsically includes relationships with others and membership in communities (beginning with the family) in which he or she has, as a matter of justice, both rights and responsibilities.

(Robert P. George, Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, American Ideals and Institutions Series, ed. Robert P. George [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2013], 76-7 [italics in original])

Not a joke.

Addendum: These morons have all but ensured that they will never hold judicial office or any other position of public trust in the United States. They are putting their own moral purity ahead of the best interests of the American people, both now and in the foreseeable future. Do they not realize that, however bad Donald Trump will be as president, Hillary Clinton will be infinitely worse? The irrationality is truly staggering.

Here is Pat Buchanan's latest column.

Sad Wings of Destiny (1976). How could 40 years have passed?

To the Editor:

Re “Next Job for Obama? Silicon Valley Is Hiring” (news article, Oct. 25):

Maybe Silicon Valley is hiring and would pay better, but if Hillary Clinton is elected president, the next job for President Obama should be as a justice of the Supreme Court. What better response to the current Senate majority for the collegiality and the respect shown to her predecessor?

And how rewarding such a job would be for a former teacher of constitutional law who would bring a real-world, legislative set of sensibilities to the bench that has been lacking since Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stepped aside?

MARK BOOTHBY

Nashville

Note from KBJ: I see your Barack Obama and raise you a Ted Cruz.