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

To the Editor:

A Feb. 12 Op-Ed by Stuart Stevens asks, “How Far Left Has America Moved?”

Not far enough to even inhabit the same political universe as every other democracy in the world. Yet Republicans like Mr. Stevens continue to portray centrists like President Obama as the loony left.

Mr. Obama’s “leftist” health care initiative didn’t even permit discussion of a single-payer plan. His support for same-sex marriage came only after numerous courts and state legislatures had made it clear where the country was going. And Mr. Obama’s call for universal background checks for gun purchases is not leftist; it is common sense shared by the vast majority of Americans—including the vast majority of gun owners, even National Rifle Association members.

Meanwhile, it is the right extreme of the political spectrum that has gone antic. The Tea Party has turned Congress into a no-fly zone for governance of any kind, leaving the Republican presidential candidates to struggle frantically to get to the right of each other—I’ll see your waterboarding and raise you carpet-bombing.

I agree with one of Mr. Stevens’s points—President Bill Clinton did indeed move the American political center to the right. The great hope of Bernie Sanders’s candidacy is that it might help rationalize American politics by pulling that center back where it belongs.

DAVID BERMAN

New York

Note from KBJ: David Berman lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Pat Buchanan is right: free trade has been a disaster for this country.

This man has Trump Derangement Syndrome. (You heard it here first.)

Here.

Here.

On campus today. Click to enlarge.

To the Editor:

Re “Resetting the Post-Scalia Supreme Court,” by Linda Greenhouse (Op-Ed, Feb. 18):

What a refreshingly candid appraisal of the pros and cons of Justice Antonin Scalia’s effect on the Supreme Court and our country.

While it is always fair to praise someone’s accomplishments at his death, it is also appropriate to weigh the balance of his legacy. Inarguably brilliant, Justice Scalia—like all of us—left a mixed record in his long tenure, and his impact on the Supreme Court and on our culture is not uniformly to be praised.

I once heard Justice Scalia speak at the City Club in Cleveland: He was articulate and brilliant, and had a scathing sense of humor. I asked a question, and he sidestepped it to deliver a powerful answer on a facet he cared more about than my question’s focus. Sometimes his dissents read the same way.

While we should acknowledge his many accomplishments, Ms. Greenhouse is right to urge us to “reset” the role of the court away from the “originalism” of the dead document that Justice Scalia fought so hard to impose on the next generation.

If we were to follow his philosophy, where would women and blacks be today: still treated as the second-class citizens and slaves of our founding fathers?

JAMES S. BERKMAN

Boston

Note from KBJ: Hell hath no fury like James S. Berkman snubbed.

Note 2 from KBJ: James S. Berkman might want to read the United States Constitution. It provides for its own amendment. "Dead document" indeed!

The legal academy is a cesspool of irrelevance, political correctness, and incivility. I have no idea how it will be cleaned up. The first step is probably to abolish tenure.

Taken on my bike ride the other day. Click to enlarge.

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. "Absolute power," he added, "corrupts absolutely."

(Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, ed. CC Goldwater, The James Madison Library in American Politics, ed. Sean Wilentz [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007 (first published in 1960)], 8-9 [italics in original])