The Huffington Post: Antonin Scalia Actually Rooted For Elena Kagan’s Nomination.
http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwhvPpsyk
As the rhetoric of hate and division steals center stage in the Presidential campaign, it is a fine time to contemplate the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s support for the nomination of liberal Justice Elena Kagan.
In purely ideological terms, Kagan was the enemy.
But Scalia, despite his deep conservative convictions, had far greater respect for intellectualism than for ideology.
His support for Kagan is but one example.
His longtime and deep friendship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is another.
Scalia wanted to do battle with intellectual equals, and he understood that meaningful personal relationships could, and did, transit even the deepest ideological divides, that lifting the level of discourse was essential to ensuring the best possible decisions.
This lesson, quite obviously, has been lost in the political diatribe surrounding his death and his succession.
That loss underscores everything wrong in the American political system today.
Blind loyalty to divisive ideology precludes any hope of compromise.
Yet the very foundation, the very creation, of this great nation rests on compromise.
The Declaration of Independence.
The United States Constitution.
Great historic documents forged by compromise.
Take the time to read The Federalist Papers by Madison, Jay and Hamilton.
Political divides throughout history were bridged by reasoned compromises forged by intellectual giants.
Today, intellectual pygmies seek government by divide-and-conquer. Pygmies like Cruz and Rubio, among others.
Special interests buy votes and influence.
Perhaps there is a greater message in the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a message sent in the most timely fashion, on the eve of an election of singular possible importance to the future of Democracy.
Perhaps that message has far more to do with the significance of Justice Scalia’s friendships, his respect for uplifting intellectual debate and compromise, than the divisiveness of some of his decisions and dissents, a tradition rooted in the great debates involving Clay and Calhoun and Webster.
Perhaps it is a message capable of bridging a great gap dividing this nation today, a gap as capable of ripping it asunder as the Civil War, fought with stunning loss of life, a war that left bitterness in its wake to this very day.
Perhaps the message from the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, and the looming fight over his succession, is a final, seminal one aimed at preventing us, like cattle stampeding blindly, from plunging over a cliff to our doom.
There are intellectual moderates with exemplary credentials who can be nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States.
They, of course, will not please either extreme, not the far right, not the far left.
But their appointment can show that the center is holding, can give us an opportunity to compromise for the greater good, can allow us to step back from the very edge of the cliff.
That compromise must begin with President Obama and his nomination of a successor.
How he handles this may well determine how history judges him.
Then, it will be up to the United States Senate, where divisions of historic magnitude exist, where compromise has virtually disappeared, where governance has been sacrificed to ideology, but where true leadership can bring us back, toward the center, away from the cliff.
And all of this will unfold on the eve of a national election, where a new President, one third of the U.S. Senate and the entire U.S. House of Representatives will be elected.
Voters should be watching closely.
With ballot in hand.
This election is not about money and influence.
This election is not about partisan ideology.
This election is about the future of Democracy.
Government Is NOT Your Friend 