Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is the final free version, so please click on the button below to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with an “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events. Don’t get left behind!
Dear Friends,
My wife, my 9-year-old daughter, and I are taking a very long road trip to the east coast at the end of July and early August. And I thought I should include this APB and ask for your help. A little crowd-sourcing, if you will.
My daughter has never seen a beach—which astonishes me. And it is something that she would very much like to do. As we scour the various booking websites and apps we’ve discovered that the entire hospitality industry is infuriating. The websites are terrible, the apps un-navigable. And nobody will show you the cost up front—the initial “per night” number is laughable when you add in the taxes (some of these locales are … WOW I CANNOT BELIEVE PEOPLE GO THERE) and fees. Yeah, that $90 per night AirBnB looks great! I’ll take it! Oh, what’s that? A $130 “cleaning fee”? Yeah, right.
So here is my question: Do any of you have any leads and/or recommendations or know anyone who can offer reasonable accommodations on the eastern seaboard? The dates would be August 1st through 3rd. And listen: when I say “eastern seaboard,” I am serious. We are interested in anything from Virginia Beach southward to Hilton Head. Anything in-between. Outer banks? Some off-the-beaten-path hideaway? I’m all ears. All it needs is a bed or two, a sandy beach, and be close enough to the Atlantic Ocean. Just comment or reply to this email if you have any ideas! And many thanks.
That wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear from mainstream media outlets is the result of a blockbuster two days at the United States Supreme Court. Yesterday the high court released the opinions in two consolidated cases concerning Harvard College and the University of North Carolina’s admissions standards. The question is whether it is constitutional for them to use racial preferences as a means of obtaining their desired levels of diversity. In other words, this was a watershed test for what is called “Affirmative Action”—the belief held by the court’s minority that “the Fourteenth Amendment permits state actors to remedy the effects of societal discrimination through explicitly race-based measures” (Roberts, majority opinion: p.34).
And this morning the Court released the opinions in 303 Creative v. Elenis, yet another case involving the State of Colorado’s attempt to force Christian creatives (or anyone, for that matter) to express “state-approved” messages by baking custom wedding cakes or making custom websites for same-sex marriages. Can the state coerce artisans to celebrate that in which they do not believe?
In both of these cases the Court said “No.” Emphatically “No.” In the Affirmative Action case Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority what National Review’s Ed Whelan calls “The Chief Justice’s Greatest Opinion.” In 303 Creative, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a straightforward majority opinion reiterating the Court’s longstanding jurisprudence: the state cannot compel “pure speech.”
The 6-3 rulings in these landmark cases dating back to the Dobbs ruling of last year seem to me very significant. The conservative majority seems to have found its footing and, more importantly, its confidence. Even the Chief Justice, long known for his caution, prioritizing consensus, and making the most narrowly tailored rulings possible, showed a different side of himself this term. This term Roberts was just a full-throated originalist following Constitution and law where it leads. As a matter of pure speculation on my part, I do wonder if the leak of the Dobbs decision last year has put him in a very different mood that has led to less collegiality toward his liberal colleagues on the bench. If the leak came from one of their chambers (as I think he suspects), perhaps that betrayal of the Court has him less inclined to bend their direction. Death threats and attempted assassination might tend to have that effect.
My speculation is bolstered by another notable thing about the decisions this week. The solidly progressive bloc of Justices Sotomayor and Jackson (Justice Kagan was surprisingly quiet) was busy releasing dissents, as usual. Rather unusually, the majority was busy bludgeoning those dissents to smithereens—at times fiery, blistering, pointed, piling-on, humiliating critiques by usual standards. The dissents are frankly embarrassments to the legal profession, and Justices Roberts, Thomas, and Gorsuch in particular went to great lengths to make sure everyone knows that. From Chief Justice Roberts marveling at the dissent’s failure to cite any of the Court’s previous relevant precedents, Justice Thomas’s breathtaking smackdown of Justice Jackson’s embedded critical race theory, to Justice Gorsuch’s bewilderment that “it is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case,” there was no mercy. The vivisection was not done with a wink and smile.
Collegiality seems at a low ebb at the Supreme Court. This is a Court with a majority of jurists who embrace originalism as their methodology and this term they confidently batted away attempts to lure them into legislating well-meaning policy (with the possible exception of the redistricting case). Instead, they simply stood up for longstanding American constitutional law—no, state actors cannot discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, no matter the good intentions. No, a state cannot force an artist to speak and express things they do not believe. Period. The End. These cases were about equal protection of the law and the liberty to speak your mind.
But that, my friends, is not what you will read in your newspaper or favorite mainstream digital outlet. Today you will read horrifying headlines about how the Supreme Court is a racist cabal trying to deny educational opportunity for blacks and Hispanics, and how they have now opened the door for widespread discrimination against the LGBTQIA++ community. You will read hysterical rhetoric about a mythical Supreme Court that threatens our body politic by erasing “rights” from people—six black-robed theocrats who are forces of “oppression” standing in the way of progress. It is, of course, a fairy tale.
But it is a fairy tale that the progressive left is confident they can sell to their willing victims. They have lost the Court for a long time to come, and the reason for that is that the Constitution and law is not on their side and the Court is now filled with jurists who actually care about the Constitution and law. For a generation the Supreme Court was their go-to method to introduce public policy they couldn’t achieve through normal democratic means and now that is all over. All that remains for the Left is to spin these decisions in such a way that it outrages their constituents and juices turnout in upcoming elections. That is why you will not read any substantive commentary on the decisions themselves; you will read caricatures of the decisions designed to fire people up who are living in a left-wing bubble.
But I’m wrong. That isn’t all that remains. They have already been engaged in a major media effort to discredit the institution itself. Over the past number of months you might have noticed a dramatic uptick of stories about “ethics violations” or “ethical concerns” about a number of Supreme Court Justices. These supposed ethical violations are a farce—every last one of them. Did you know that Justice Gorsuch wrote on a disclosure document “Inc.” instead of “LLC”? Sweet Mother of Melchizedek! What is the world coming to? Did you know that Justice Thomas’s wealthy friend bought his mom’s house and paid for school tuition for a family member? Disgusting! How will we ever survive!
These are attacks on the legitimacy of a Court now well outside the Left’s control (they can thank their very-own “Notorius RBG”). And it is all designed to prime the pump to “pack the court”—just add a half-dozen more mediocrities like Justice Sotomayor to the bench (sorry: “mediocrity” is too generous) and they’ll get their way. It’s just power politics, as usual, and none of it has anything to do with the law.
I am going long, so I will finish up with just a few more observations.
Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Harvard case should somehow be framed and hung on a wall. It is a tour de force history lesson about our Constitution and its long journey to live up to the promise found in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.” And then it is an astounding smackdown of critical race theory that views all disparities through the lens of “oppressor/oppressed.” Justice Jackson is basically Ibram X. Kendi in a robe, and Thomas will have none of it. He ends with this stirring conclusion:
The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements are superior to the Constitution.
The Court’s opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled. And, it sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes. Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our Nation’s equality ideal. In short, they are plainly—and boldly—unconstitutional. […]
While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.
Justice Thomas is an American treasure. Not only does he have the most inspiring biography of any American Supreme Court Justice—born into a poor, fatherless, segregated world deep in the heart of Georgia and ending as one of the nine most powerful judges in the land—I am prepared to argue that he is the greatest jurist this country has ever known.
There is a group of people on the right who might be tempted to celebrate the wonderful liberties the Court has protected this week, but they shouldn’t. Does the author of the following tweet sound like somebody who would embrace Justice Thomas’s “colorblind” Constitution? Nope. For him Thomas is just a “post-war” revisionist conservative who is out of touch with the “real American tradition”—the racist one.
Pro-tip: Do not join up with “Christian nationalists” who, by logic, are on the wrong side of a Clarence Thomas legal opinion.
Finally, I would encourage you to do something 99.9 percent of Americans will never do. Click here and read the Harvard decision. Click here to read 303 Creative. Sure, maybe some of the lingo will be challenging; being challenged is good for your brain. But don’t be content to take my word for it, or anyone else’s word for it. The U.S. Supreme Court makes these things public for a reason, and anyone who chooses to remain ignorant is choosing to remain ignorant.
The opinions are fascinating to read. And, since I am a geek I will add: the font and formatting of Supreme Court decisions are simply the best. They are pleasant to read, especially when they are legally and morally correct.
And we have a lot of those to read these days, thanks be to God.
Thanks for reading The Square Inch Newsletter. This is last call to hop on board this train into the future. The paywall is going up because writers need to feed their families, too. Even if they publish on the Internet! I do hope you’ll join me for years more commentary. Have a wonderful weekend.
There is nothing quite so pleasant as the sound of the Ibrahim Kendis of the world grinding their molars into powder.
If those grifters had a time machine, they'd go back and murder MLK themselves, merely for the treachery of his single most famous utterance.
Good week. Satan's biggest flaw... Impatience.
Lessee. Am I subscribed?