Stupidity: Right or Privilege?

August 4, 2010


A few words, please, about gay marriage and abject, chronic stupidity.  While I am sympathetic to the idea of same sex marriage, I would not consider myself an aggressive advocate.  Thus I am offering these comments mostly about one of my favorite subjects: “stupidity,” rather than my opinion on gay rights.

As with most Republican (as opposed to “conservative”) bills, the bill in California, banning gay marriage was, most likely, not reviewed by attorneys, or at least, any qualified attorneys.  This is, unfortunately, the way Republicans do business.  Perhaps this is due to their habit of proposing so many unconstitutional bills, e.g. Medicare Part D, the Patriot Act, illegal searches and wire taps, to name only a few.  In Florida, a Democratic bill was recently defeated, one that proposed to allow gays to marry.  Whether I agreed with the bill or not, it was properly written and assumed that gays did not have an inherent right to marry but that voters might give them that social privilege.  In California, the bill actually (I can’t believe this!) assumed that gays had the right to marry and that voters were supposed to not only deprive them of the right, but forcibly take it from them.

To me this appears to rank even higher on the abject stupidity meter than the recent decision by the Republican Supreme Court to allow corporations unlimited political donations because their money is the equivalent of expression of freedom of speech.  What do these two phenomena have in common, you ask?  Neither the California gay marriage bill nor the Supreme Court decision was reviewed by even one competent attorney.  The five blatantly ignorant Republican “Justices” failed to read the Constitution’s First Amendment (on purpose, of course), and claimed that money and speech are the same. Somehow, I couldn’t seem to find that clause in the Amendment, no matter how hard I searched.  Worse yet, every school child knows, of course, that money and speech are hardly the same.  Money is valuable, speech or advice is not.  In fact, I have found that “free” advice is usually worthless!

The four “liberal” justices failed to read the First Amendment as well- it’s the one, judges, that clearly states: “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...”  Nowhere could I find the part that they claimed that Justice Holmes had found, justifying infringing on corporations’ freedom of speech.  It is in fair to assume, therefore, that barring any cases of Alzheimer’s dementia afflicting our august jurists, that none of them had recently read the First Amendment of our Constitution.

As for Alzheimer’s dementia, we found, during the Berger Court, that dementia is not grounds for disqualification of even a Chief Justice from the Court.  Apparently, violation of the Constitution and lack of ethics do not qualify either.  Welcome to the Supreme Court, Ms. Kagan!  After constant attempts to obstruct justice in the true spirit of Eric Holder’s “Justice Department,” she should feel right at home with her new playmates.

Allen Finkelstein, D.O.