Antonin Scalia and Dangers of Public Intellectuals

HOWARD MEGDAL: Antonin Scalia certainly didn’t do his brilliant reputation any favors with his response to lawyer Peter Eliasberg during oral arguments last week.

From TAPPED:

“It’s erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead,” Scalia said of the cross that the Veterans of Foreign Wars built 75 years ago atop an outcropping in the Mojave National Preserve. “What would you have them erect?…Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?”

Peter Eliasberg, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer arguing the case, explained that the cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity and commonly used at Christian grave sites, not that the devoutly Catholic Scalia needed to be told that.

“I have been in Jewish cemeteries,” Eliasberg continued. “There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”

There was mild laughter in the packed courtroom, but not from Scalia.

“I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion,” Scalia said, clearly irritated by the exchange.

So to summarize: Eliasberg raised a relevant point. Scalia’s response was to get outraged. Well played, Antonin.

But there is a larger issue here- the public intellectual. While I believe intelligence is something that should be celebrated in the public sphere, and that, too often, anti-intellectualism rules the day, that is different from the public intellectual.

He’s the one whose brilliance is unquestioned. His arguments are usually supported by pointing out that he supports them. And too often, that means the issue in question isn’t properly heard.

Think Antonin Scalia and any number of recent Supreme Court cases, Alan Greenspan and the U.S. Economy, or the Best and the Brightest (a term that the great David Halberstam meant ironically, but somehow became a stamp of approval to many) and Vietnam.

Of course, there are those that hear they should support something because “brilliant person X does” and run in the other direction. That, of course, would be just as foolish as accepting it blindly.

But I do think we can be well-served by vetting ideas in the public sphere, rather than accepting them as true based on a single point of view. This is not to say we should eschew expertise in any given discussion. Rather, a single person’s expertise, or unchallenged point of view, shouldn’t carry the day. Too often, dangerous decisions, wars and meltdowns loom when that happens.

DAVE TOMAR:  I am both amused and repulsed by the generic label which has come to apply to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  Over the course of his years on the bench, Scalia has developed a reputation not just for obsessively demanding a strict constructionist view of the U.S. Constitution, but for expressing this view with the utmost of sarcasm, arrogance and irreproachability.  As a reward for a career of saying terribly wrong things with a hostile confidence that makes him seem right, Scalia is today frequently referred to as ‘brilliant.’

Examples of this appendage include such phrases as ‘the brilliant justice,’ ‘Scalia’s brilliantly composed minority opinion,’ or ‘the brilliant remarks defending slavery and the eating of children.’  I have a real objection to referring to Scalia as brilliant.  He’s a sociopath.  He’s brilliant like Jim Jones or Idi Amin.  And I’m inclined to wonder at what point his irrational totalitarian interpretation of the Constitution qualified him for this type of intellectual praise.  I bet there were some S.S. guards who could turn a clever phrase too.

That we respond to Scalia’s lifetime appointment with such an endorsement of his consistency suggests just how in-over-our-heads we are with respect to the Supreme Court.  I mean, we have to put up with this guy until he dies.  And like Neil Patrick Harris, Matt Damon and Russell Crowe, his greatest success was pretending to be a genius.  Is that a rational or reasonable way for us to respond to the admittedly impressive inversion of logic which he perpetrates in execution of his duties?  Take the following opinion from a case “involving legal requirements for the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters”, which would prompt Scalia to remark that the dilemma afforded “a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck’s aphorism that ‘No man should see how laws or sausages are made.’”  Consistent with his character as a whole, this was Scalia being charming and at the same time suggesting that the less we know as a public, the better.

Such is an appropriate posture for a man who once defended his constructionist view of the constitution by remarking “I don’t think it’s a living document, I think it’s dead. More precisely, I think it’s enduring. It doesn’t change. I think that needs to be orthodoxy.”  I doubt Scalia would be embarrassed, therefore, to tell you where he comes out on the Civil Rights Amendment or the Emancipation Proclamation, which were clearly the radical acts of ‘activist judges.’  I would also suspect that after delivering an unabashed answer containing the phrases ‘darkie’ and ‘you and the boat you came over on,’ he would gain the laudatory praise of countless pundits who have helped to perpetrate the lie of his brilliance.

This brings us back to the exchange that Howard cites between Scalia and Eliasberg.  The ethnocentric assumptions that drive Scalia’s dismissive and sneering tone suggest that the brilliant judge is fitted with very much the same philosophical orientation as the average racist grandmother who has no idea why we don’t call the Chinese ‘yellow terror’ anymore.  With respect to Scalia’s comments in the Eliasberg debate, if you took the names off of this dialogue and just said Person A and Person B, or maybe Person BStein, you would come away from it going, “Person A is a real asshole and he obviously missed the point.  I hope his arms get torn off while he’s riding his tractor.”

The exchange between Scalia and Eliasberg reminds me of this article by virulent Mexican-hater Lou Dobbs that makes me want to choke him to death with a gefilte.  In a defensive screed about the universality of Christmas (which itself sparked this week’s discourse on Christmas between our own Zoe Rice, Akie Bermiss and Emily Saidel-http://perpetualpost.com/?p=3081), Dobbs takes issue with the desire of Jews to not celebrate Christmas:  http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976861235

Note the inclusive ‘most of us’ in the opening line of the article, indicating a ‘this is just between us Christians’ sort of perspective.  Scalia’s thinking the same thing.  He’s looking around at other Christians and going, ‘do you believe this Jewish asshole?’   To be sure, Scalia is a bitter old man who reflects a deeply ignorant America.  While we wait for his kind to die out, it is a good idea to clear the air on who these men really are.  The fact that Scalia leaves us with any doubt is a brilliant accomplishment indeed.

Tags: Alan Greenspan, Antonin Scalia, The Best and the Brightest, Vietnam

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