Tracking the chaos...
This week brings the confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. The GOP members in the Senate have vowed to vote against her, even though she is more qualified than most of the more junior members on the Court. At stake is her refusal to embrace 'originalism', a philosophy that we should do EXACTLY as the Founders said, not necessarily what they intended. In support of this onerous and odious idea, the conservatives repeatedly make up quotes by people such as Madison, and simply lie about the rest.
Via Heather Cox Richardson, US historian: A 2019 speech by then–attorney general William Barr at the University of Notre Dame offers an explanation.
In that speech, Barr presented a profound rewriting of the meaning of American democracy. He argued that by 'self-government' the Framers did not mean the ability of people to vote for representatives of their choice. Rather, he said, they meant individual morality: the ability to govern oneself. And, since people are inherently wicked, that self-government requires the authority of a religion: Christianity.
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