Scalia as Jeremiah.
Dahlia Lithwick tries to condescend to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She writes:
He [Scalia] is convinced that civilization is in decline and that this banishment of religion is directly responsible. He truly believes that the coarseness and callousness of modern mores and practices have imperiled us all. And if those beliefs make him sound more Jeremiah than Judge [sic], well, Scalia would probably welcome the comparison.
(*) That is incredibly presumptuous. Apparently no reasonable person could believe that Jeremiah knew what he was talking about, or that the coarseness and callousness of modern mores and practices are in any way deplorable. Apparently no one could be correct to believe that our civilization is in decline, or that it has anything to do with “banishment of religion.” Apparently such banishing would be constitutional. Ridiculous.
Lithwick also offers this laugher:
And he joins many of the nation’s religious groups in feeling besieged and marginalized by the constitutional wall that’s been erected between church and state—a wall that keeps the devout from practicing and proselytizing in the public square.
Of course, the Constitution does not prohibit people from practicing religion or proselytizing in the public squre. Lithwick seems to have mixed up this country with the Soviet Union.
The kind of erroneous, misleading nonsense we have here from Lithwick tends, over time, to erode public trust in the law, and that is indeed deplorable.