But should we?
From politics to science to economics to religion, the ability to do something doesn't mean that it is right for us to do something. To often, drunk with our own power, we rush to do something simply because we can - rather than thinking through why the limitation was there in the first place. Chesterton put it this way:
California, I'm looking at you."In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."-- The Thing, in "The Drift from Domesticity" (1929)
2 comments:
Loved the picture.
The statement is true that just because we can doesn't mean it's right.
I saw the other day that the judge self-identified as "gay", and I wondered about the wisdom of putting someone like that on this hotbed topic. I'm not exactly sure that it is a problem, since he missed his first appointment to the court because of a ruling he made against "gay rights" some years ago. Still, how reasonable is it to ask one of only two (now three) openly-homosexual federal judges to handle a case of this magnitude on this topic? "No, no, I'm quite sure that his personal beliefs on the subject didn't inform his judicial conclusions" ... a manifest impossibility.
Don't worry - when it gets to SCOTUS, Kagan will hammer it out fairly (maybe with Sotomayor providing some of her trademarked Latina wisdom for the consent).
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