JLH normally spends his time translating German texts for us. However, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision prompted him to take a break from the umlauts and eszetts to pen this poetic pastiche in the spirit of Charles Dodgson.
Father William Veers Left
by JLH(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)
“You are Left, Your Honor,” the young man said,
“And your thinking is not very bright.
You ceaselessly stand the Law on its head.
Do you think what you’re doing is right?”“In my youth,” said the Justice Supreme, “my son,
“I feared it might injure the Law.
But now that I’ve learned that there really is none,
I don’t care which way it might yaw.”“You are Left,” said the youth, “as I mentioned just now,
And have grown quite mentally lazy,
Yet insist that the Law do a Triple Salchow —
A thought that is palpably crazy.”“In my youth,” the Justice Supreme then replied.
“I tried to keep on thinking.
But then I discovered this socialist bromide
Which I think everyone should be drinking.”“You are Left,” said the youth, “and your mind is too weak
To delve deeper than The Washington Post.
Yet you give the Law and Constitution a tweak,
And instead of hiding, you boast.”
“In my youth,” said the judge, “I studied the law,
And argued each case with my cat.
What I learned from how he would wave his left paw,
Has formed my decisions since that.”“You are Left,” said the youth, “And it’s hard to take in,
That your perception has not been affected
Yet you found the angels on the head of a pin
That famous attorneys neglected.”“I have brilliantly answered your questions ’til now.
Your questions are lèse majesté.
Don’t try to interpret; you wouldn’t know how.
Leftism is now here to stay!”
Brilliant. The last verse displays the arrogance of the far left.
Yes, we have all gone down the rabbit hole and Wonderland is not a nice place!
Bedtime reading from grandfather goose
There are two legal problems with the same sex marriage decision. There is this one, which is getting a very tiny bit of attention in the media: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/26/aclu-we-dont-believe-in-religious-liberty-when-it-conflicts-with-our-antidiscrimination-agenda/
Then there is another one: it seems that the exact same arguments used by the justices can also be used to support plural marriage. This is being completely ignored.
What’s going to happen when we have both plural marriage and same sex marriage? For example, let’s say there is a man A married to both a man B and a woman C. So if A dies then are B and C married? Are they all married equally to each other, or is A married to B, and A married to C, but B and C are unmarried?
The next case that we will most likely see is that of a Muslim man who wants to marry a second wife. When this is refused, the man along with some Saudi funded organization will sue. At this point, it seems that there won’t be any real legal basis for refusal.
These recent decisions could turn out to be the galvanizing point for which we have all been waiting. Think about a point in the not-so-distant past; Vietnam War ended poorly, Iran held our hostages, punishing interest rates, “malaise”, Cold War threats, Soviet invasions and the like. The finest man to hold office in my lifetime ushered in an era of incredible stability and patriotism. We can all do something to start this galvanization – start by Googling the Convention of States and see what you can do! Light cannot be defined without darkness.
Then thunder sounded and the sky cracked wide
and God on His throne appeared
saying, “I have given My Law and Grace beside,
but your conscience sir, is seared.”
Take heed of the lad, who knows My Word
and My cause did rightly plead,
lest I find thy arrogance to be abjured
and thyself of a foul breed.
The Justice Supreme looked up from his bench
at God on His Throne overhead,
saying, “Hie thee away with your religious stench,
you are supposed to be dead!”
Who are you to rail against Me?
you whose life I hold in my hand.
You are not angel or divinity,
you are flesh, simply a man.
Then the lad begged the Supreme to repent
before the throne of Almighty God,
but in his pride the Supreme would not relent
and the sinner’s path to hell he trod.
Long ago, I actually read the didactic poem that Lewis Carroll satirized in his “Father William”. I cannot quote it from memory, but the gist was that a young man asks an oldster (Father William) the secret to his longevity, and the gist of the old man’s reply was that he remembered his Creator in the days of his youth, and God has not forgotten him in his old age. The poem was by Isaac Watts, who is revered in Protestant circles as “the father of English hymnody” (prior to Watts, Anglophone Protestants mostly sang versified Psalms).
Frankly, the idiocy that the majority on the current SCOTUS has been pushing on us represents what happens when the seat of the scorner and the way of the ungodly are exalted. We’ve seen five of the supposedly wisest old folks in America proving that they are becoming fools (see Romans 1).