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8.26.2004
LYNCHBURG, Va. The Reverend Jerry Falwell will open a law school next week in hopes of training a generation of attorneys to take up conservative causes. Step 1) Assume that there is some hidden and orchestrated agenda behind American progress. Step 2) Use that assumption to justify an open and orchestrated agenda to fight it. This was the same process used to turn the media to the right. First, people like Falwell shouted all day long about the "Liberal Media" till enough people became convinced that it existed (hint: it doesn't, at least not in the way they mean). Then they used that falsehood to justify the deliberate purchase and set up of right wing radio stations across the country. So there WAS no deliberate left wing agenda to control the media but there IS a deliberate right wing one to do so. Only now, with the start of stations like Air America do we see a deliberate case of "liberal" media. Irony? Now, Falwell is pulling the same tactic on the law. First he states that there is a conspiracy of lawyers foisting liberal values on us against our will: Falwell says the future lawyers will work to outlaw abortion, gay marriage and other issues that he believes the legal establishment has forced on the public. Then he will deliberately set about to distort the law to his own purposes. It's an extension of the battle the right has been waging against the legal establishment for years. They never quite got over their loss with Roe v. Wade, they lost, so they naturally assumed that there is something sinister about the American legal system; that its been possessed by evil Harvard lawyers hell-bent on pushing their worldview on us. When in reality the right wing religious nuts are just losing the war of ideas. Falwell's thinking is an extension of the "If I'm losing, you must be cheating" mentality. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "activist judges?" Again, an attempt to build a conspiracy where there is none. Once you are convinced that judges are being "activists" then it follows that we should work to undermine their powers. The judges will stop being activists as soon as they subscribe to Falwell's version of the God given truth. This is not some simple debate about whether lawyers and judges are correctly interpreting the law. Falwell assumes that they are not, and that they are doing so to promote a political agenda, just like the gays and the journalists. The Homosexual Agenda The Liberal Media The Activist Judges Do you see a pattern here? These are the groups dragging the American people away from what they truly want, a theocracy based on Falwell's interpretation of God's will? I have to make sure I make my distinction clear here. I have no problems with people arguing for their own interpretations of the law using their own evidence and reasoning; its how we come to a consensus. But here we have an assumption of conspiracy to justify an agenda that will be promoted regardless of its legal merits. There IS a conspiracy, but its a conspiracy of institution. I've been making this point for months. If you look at the law and you look at journalism what primary characteristic do they both (supposedly) share? Evidence based reasoning. Falwell has no use for evidence, he has dogma. He knows God's will and he only has to convince other people to believe likewise. His conclusions are already drawn and anyone that tries to use evidence to prove otherwise is undermining God and should be destroyed. Jesus loves me yes I know Because the Bible tells me so. Is that a sound basis for a legal system? Being the good liberal that I am, I am open and susceptible to a good argument. Make your case. |
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