I love Doug Wilson's writing. He is always engaging, always on point, and even when I disagree, he is always convincing. Currently he's engaged with some other good folks in a debate about some things that would take too long to explain here, but he is so quotable that I've published a few of his lines from a recent blog post here out of interest.
Here they are-
"How we arrive at our decisions is as important (over the long run) as what decisions we make. For example, any powers you give to the office of the Attorney-General when a Good Guy occupies that office will be a power that is still there when a Bad Guy shows up.
There is an important point in recognizing the difference between good guys and bad guys, and righteous decisions and unrighteous ones. Sure enough. But there is another level, and that is the level of understanding that you are creating a political power in a world where good guys and bad guys rotate through office."
"The Founders wanted to create a form of governance that famously utilized "checks and balances." They were afraid that if those checks and balances eroded, the way was opened to ungodly tyranny, and the nature of man would ensure that ungodly tyrants would find that open way instanter and go straight through it. And here we are, watching the great Tumor of the Potomac metasticize before our eyes."
"Prior to the (Civil) War, the Bill of Rights restricted the power of the federal government ("Congress shall make no law . . ."), and the states were the partial guarantors of that set of restrictions. As a result of the War, the Reconstruction amendments, and how those amendments came to be interpreted in subsequent court cases, the Bill of Rights was then applied to the states, with the federal government becoming the final arbiter of what was 'constitutional' or not. An important constitutional check on centralized tyranny had been removed.
... Indeed, I believe Patrick "Nostradamus" Henry laid the whole thing out in front of us beforehand, and in chilling detail. I believe he even identified the unlocked door of the judiciary as the place the tyrants would get in."
"So it has now been deemed constitutional, for example, for going on half a century, that American babies can be chopped up into little pieces. The content of Roe was appalling, of course, but we need to ask how and when it came about that the federal government got the structural power to tell almost all the states that were protecting unborn life that they had to cease and desist with that protection. It didn't come from a clear blue sky, so where did it come from?"
I disagree with Doug Wilson's views a lot, but he's a heck of a writer, and a thinker. He always challenges me, and reading him makes me a better writer.
ReplyDelete