Justice Scalia Would Vote for Slavery and Segregation?

It's one thing to be a conservative - it's something wholly different to be a racist, sexist and anti-gay bigot who seeks to inject religion into the civil laws. Yet Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia clearly falls into the latter category based on his recent comments. I am truly wondering whether or not he is suffering from Alzheimer's or some similar malady that he would publicly utter such bigoted views. Perhaps he feels emboldened by today's utterly lunatic GOP. According to Scalia, the U.S. Constitution provides no basis for evolution as knowledge and society progress. Instead, the Constitution - or so he says - is locked in the mindset/level of knowledge of the drafters of the Constitution. I wonder how Scalia would like it if his Italian forebears had been treated with such legal bigotry based on their immigrant status and Catholic faith? Scalia clearly sees some citizens as having more value/rights than others and sees himself as an arbiter of who falls into which category. The man is a menace. Here are some highlights from comments made by Scalia during an appearance at the University of Arizona College of Law via the East Valley Tribune:

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One of the most conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday his more liberal colleagues are trying to manufacture new constitutional rights that were never intended by the drafters. “The fight is about the Supreme Court inventing new rights nobody ever thought existed,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in an appearance at the University of Arizona College of Law.

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“Right to abortion?” he asked. “Come on. Nobody thought it violated anything in the Constitution for 200 years. It was criminal.” The same, said Scalia, is true of homosexual sodomy. Yet the nation’s high court has struck down state laws banning both. “They may be bad ideas,” Scalia said. “But don’t tell me it’s unconstitutional.”

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Scalia said those who do not share his “originalist” philosophy are now deciding what the 14th Amendment of the Constitution means, the one that guarantees “equal protection of the laws” to all citizens. “Does it include same-sex marriage? A requirement for equal pay for equal work?” he mused. Scalia said those who believe in an “evolutionary” approach “close your eyes and decide what you think is a good idea.” Scalia said the problem with that approach is that it is designed to produce a result that some might like better.

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He said there is a remedy for those who want different or broader rights: Go to the Legislature. He said those bodies are free to decide whether abortion or homosexual activities should be legal.

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In sum, according to Scalia, the majority gets to decide what rights, if any, minority groups will be allowed to have. Using this approach, there might still be segregation in the South, women denied the right to vote, child labor and any number of horrors that the federal Courts have helped to push onto the trash heap of history. The further irony, of course, is that the framers were actually radicals/liberals in their day and age and favored intellect over superstition. Indeed, under the Constitution as originally signed, the framers did not trust the populace to directly elect Senators (the state legislatures selected each state's U.S. Senators) or the President - hence the Electoral College.