This quote reported by Allahpundit at Hot Air:
I have seen this kind of hate before. I have seen this discussion before. I have seen snarling dogs going after people who were trying to peacefully assemble. I have seen the eyes of people who were being spat upon.
This is all about activity trying to deny the establishment of a civil right. And I do believe that health care for all is — a civil right. And I think that is why you see this kind of activity. This is an attempt on the part of some to deny the establishment of a civil right.
The speaker of these words? House Majority Whip James Clyburn. This is beginning to get really and truly unbearable. And by the way: I wish Rep. Clyburn would just shut up and go back to playing the piano. That was something he was good at!
Comments 15
Does he really play the piano or are you alluding to something more figurative?
Apropos his comment: I never personally witnessed any ’60s Southern-style crowd control, but my parents were friends of the Schwerners, whose son and two other civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan in Mississippi. I’d be embarrassed to flirt with such analogies. But I guess if you’re the proverbial “piano player” nothing embarrasses you.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Howard, was this a gag on Van Clyburn?
Seth, yes, an outrageous analogy. The man sounds like a first-rate jerk.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Seth, Peter — I see my jokes are falling once again like piani on the heads of i passerbi.
Sorry. Yes, the joke was that the name Clyburn (spelled with an “i” instead of a “y”) is that of a concert pianist who was popular mid-20th century.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Quoth the Rayburn, “Nevermore”
August 14th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
An interesting combination of sentences by a member of congress:
“This is all about activity trying to deny the establishment of a civil right. And I do believe that health care for all is — a civil right.”
1. rights are found in the constitution.
2. if it already exists in the constitution there is no need to establish a right.
3. if it doesn’t exist in the constitution congress is acting against same if it purports to create a right.
4. So he’s outright saying that if congress passes the health care plan it will be acting against the constitution.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Sully, spot-on commentary.
I still maintain he plays a mean piano.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
So what else’s new? The ability to discover hitherto unsuspected rights in the Constitution has been strictly routine since the 1960s. Clyburn has little to worry about. ALCU lawyers go over the document like water dowsers traipsing across a field with divining rods. They then induce five other and similar wizards on the Supreme Court to shout ‘Eurekamon! Easy as you please, there’s a new right-in-a-box-with-a bow-on-it, with everyone in the press applauding or slapping their foreheads wondering how was it no one saw this perfectly obvious thing before.
The notion that the government can “act against the Constitution” is a charming one but is also quite dated.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
@Sully –
If that were the case, there would be no need for the 9th Amendment to the Constitution.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Aelfheld,
The ninth talks of other rights “retained by the people.”
It may just be possible for an intellectually corrupt Supreme Court justice to find justification for government action against some citizens in favor of other citizens in that amendment; but the clear meaning is rights not to be trampled on by government.
And even then, congress cannot simply of itself “establish” a right to all the cotton candy you can eat in the Ninth Amendment.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Joe – “The notion that the government can “act against the Constitution” is a charming one but is also quite dated.”
The increasing acceptance of that point of view is poison to a system that depends on consent of the governed. The current joiners of the militias and other nut groups are fringe folks. No one knows, or can know, the point at which tea starts being dumped into harbors by ordinary folks.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Funny, the Van Cliburn thing simply skipped my mind
FWIW, I don’t think Rep. Clyburn was merely being a jerk. No self-respecting Jew of a certain age would make trivial comparisons to Nazism or pogroms and no comparably situated black man would analogize these town hall meetings to Selma and the like. But a cynical would be racial demagogue very well might decide that scoring cheap political points was more important than preserving accurate historical memory.
August 15th, 2009 at 9:18 am
@Seth Halpern – I agree. The word “jerk” was ambiguous, because it used to mean “dope” and in recent years has come to mean “bad person.” I was using it in the latter sense.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
@Sully – The point is that there are rights not explicitly recognised by the Constitution.
Congress, and the executive, and the courts can declare anything a ‘right’. They can also declare the sun rises in the West, that white is black, and that cats are dogs. Their doing so does not make it so.
That the Federal government has exceeded the bounds of the Constitution is evident to anyone able to comprehend the written word. That so few are able these days we can attribute in part to the (unconstitutional) interference of the Federal government in education.
August 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Thus also thoroughly obnoxious resolutions that require Representatives to affirm facts that they can’t really know – like the one that recently just happened to affirm that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. It was just a “whereas” slipped into a 50th Anniversary of Statehood commemoration, but the point was clearly to have the chamber – in this case by unanimous vote – swear a loyalty oath, an agreement to believe regardless of proof or lack of it. Just to be clear, I have very little interest in “Birtherism,” but I’m opposed to the abuse of language and legislation, and to having our legislators creating truths by fiat. It is by similar processes that rulers are deified, or that other points of politicized faith may be forced upon us.
August 16th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
@CK MacLeod – (insert lame Tsar joke)
August 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm