Another conservative position, contra what you seem to be arguing here, is that the ends do not justify the means. Saying they do is, of course, very tempting to us all, but it can obviously take us down some bad roads, even when the ends (desegregation, for example) are in themselves laudable. This is why I don't like the idea of advocating judicial activism for Board but not Plessy. (Incidentally, I think a stronger case can be made that Board was an instance of judicial restraint, since it rested in part on a narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. But then this is the Warren Court we're talking about, so I won't insist on it.)

Lastly, I would suggest if you have to look for reasons not to get off the Internet, it's probably time to get off the Internet, which I will now do as it's rather late. My thanks to you for a calm and rational discussion.

Duly noted.

I don't have his stuff in front of me, but I would recommend a read of Thomas Sowell sometime for an explanation of why judicial activism is something originating with the progressive movement. Of course individual progressives as well as individual conservatives will support such activism when it furthers their policy goals, but calling for the courts to follow the letter of the law and not look for hidden meanings between the lines is really the conservative position.

MovieMan, I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to argue here. But it sounds like you're saying "progressives support racial equality, therefore a progressive would not have supported the Plessy case, therefore the case was not a progressive ruling." Your logic isn't bad, but your assumptions, in my opinion, are flawed.

As to whether I think judicial activism is automatically progressive, the answer is yes. But whether it is or not, you can't advocate it only when it results in outcomes you agree with. That's not what the rule of law entails.

This is probably an example of ironic understatement, wouldn't you agree?

My argument? (I was gone all afternoon for a wedding and just now got back.) I wasn't really arguing anything; I was merely pointing out that, contrary to slipperyfolks' claim, the Nazis really weren't into classes. In fact, one of the selling points of nationalism is that it's supposed to break down class distinctions and form the people into a single, undifferentiated mass, bound together by the idea of a shared nationhood. Of course, it never works out that way, in the Third Reich or anywhere else, but that's the ideology in its purest form. Communists believe the bourgeoisie prevent mankind from achieving utopian bliss; most hard-core nationalists wouldn't disagree (though they cite the bourgeoisie's alleged cosmopolitanism rather than their class exploitation). That's the context of the Hitler quote.

You know what was also "progressive"? Plessy v. Ferguson, which rested on a selective interpretation of the Constitution and finding hidden meaning in its clauses: You know, the sort of thing progressives such as yourself champion on a regular basis. So...yeah.

That's what a few years of book larnin'll do for you. :-)

Yes, CLASSICAL liberalism is about equal rights. Modern liberalism is about divvying out rights based on what groups the elites think are most deserving.

As for nationalism being a "right-wing ideology"--don't make me laugh. Nationalism is based on tearing down traditional institutions and making all citizens subject to the dictates of the imagined community of nationhood, as expressed through the state. Kind of like socialism, only socialism uses the imagined community of class. There's nothing "right-wing" about it.

Once more, good article Andrew! Seeing Spock and Kirk in the Nazi uniforms is very creepy, for the record.

"We {Nazis} did not defend Germany against Bolshevism back then because we were not intending to do anything like conserve a bourgeois world or go so far as to freshen it up. Had communism really intended nothing more than a certain purification by eliminating isolated rotten elements from among the ranks of our so-called 'upper ten thousand' or our equally worthless Philistines, one could have sat back quietly and looked on for a while."

-Adolf Hitler