My notebook: 6/28/22

Factoids, ideas, thoughts, and predictions

Photo by niu niu on Unsplash

Not all facts, ideas, and arguments are created equal. Here are the items from my reading that impressed me most yesterday, along with my thoughts and predictions. Likewise, not all questions are created equal. Some are more fundamental than others, like these for instance…

Five questions we should all discuss with regard to abortion

All of my future abortion discussions will reduce to the following questions…

1. Do you want to arrest and punish for murder women who get abortions and the doctors who perform them?
2. Would you be willing to execute these arrests and punishments yourself, or are you only comfortable with it if you can delegate the dirty work to other people?
3. Would you want to see your daughter punished for murder if she chose to get an abortion?
4. If your daughter decided to get an illegal abortion would you want a competent doctor to help her, or would you be content for her to seek the aid of someone with no training?
5. Just to be clear, if some competent doctor did decide to help your daughter, would you want to see him or her arrested and punished for murder?

I believe these questions should help us to sidestep a great deal of posturing and virtue signaling, and get to the heart of how people really feel.

Reviewing Alito’s Roe v. Wade opinion one paragraph at a time

Paragraph 2: For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law). After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.

I mentioned the lack of any reference to constitutional issues in his first paragraph. He corrects that defect here by mentioning the non-constitutional irrelevancies that were included in the original Roe opinion. I agree and approve. I think the Court is supposed to enforce the Constitution, not judge history and the common law, except insofar as those things help to define the meaning and intent of the text.

However, the idea that any issue has ever been or could be decided by “the views of citizens,” as Alito claims, is completely fanciful, given that there will always be a host of views among the citizenry. In reality, politics always imposes the views of some on unwilling others.

The idea that majority or plurality opinion can adequately represent all opinions is a pernicious myth.

Indeed, the Founders crafted the Bill of Rights specifically to combat this majoritarian error. Therefore…

The idea that politicians or voters at the state level can somehow decide fundamental moral questions on the basis of a majority or plurality vote, leaves me cold. I much prefer the idea that a unanimous jury must decide when one entity has aggressed against another.

Could we find a unanimous jury to sentence a mother or doctor for a murder rap based on an abortion, absent firm instructions from the judge? I doubt it.

But back to the Constitution — can we find a federal protection for abortion in the Constitution (as was implied by Roe). That remains to be seen as we continue to read Alito’s opinion.

But let me make one other point before I depart this subject for the day, lest anyone assume I am a slave to the constitutional text. All judges, enforcers, and jurors must first have a dedication to justice over and above even the Constitution, or any other statute crafted by mere humans.

This was the principle defended at the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War 2, and I think it applies in all situations, including this one.

So I want to see Alito defend justice first, and the Constitution second, while rejecting all issues of majoritarian preference.

Indeed, I would be thrilled if we began to require the same unanimous verdict that we require from juries before the Supreme Court can affirm that something is a crime (no matter what the Constitution does or does not say).

An Australian trade union study finds that nuclear is cheaper than other power sources

A trade union study in Australia finds that nuclear power is much cheaper than wind, solar, and fossil fuels. Public support for nuclear also seems to be growing in Australia, but the politicians are lagging behind. That’s the way of it. Politicians are always followers, rarely leaders.

Please notice that the comparison in the picture is to large-scaled nuclear, rather than niche uses of solar power. This is because niche solar is only half as efficient as large-scale solar, which makes it all the more impressive that even large-scale solar is still so costly.

These realities are obscured by tax-funded subsidies that hide the true price from consumers. The former anti-nuclear but now pro-nuclear environmental activist, Michael Shellenberger, makes note of this in his excellent TED talk, while also pointing out the extreme environmental harm large-scale solar plants do.

Of course, nuclear would be even cheaper if so-called environmentalists would quit interfering with nuclear construction projects. Vox has a good rundown on what has made nuclear more expensive in the U.S. compared to other places.