More Dred: Robert P. George is Stupid

John Schuyler in Frank Powell's A Fool There Was (1915). Via.

David Brooks:

Robert P. George, probably the most brilliant social conservative theorist in the country, argued that just as Lincoln persistently rejected the Dred Scott decision, so “we must reject and resist an egregious act of judicial usurpation.”

Robert P. George:

Faced with the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, Lincoln declared the ruling to be illegitimate and vowed that he would treat it as such. He squarely faced Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s claim to judicial supremacy and firmly rejected it. To accept it, he said, would be for the American people “to resign their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Was the Dred Scott decision biblical?

Jesuitical deception! The conservative Catholic site Patheos runs this image as Rembrandt's illustration of Paul's epistle to Philemon, but there is no such painting, and this is Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's representation of the parable of the Prodigal Son (1667-70). I call shenanigans.

Via Juan Cole, on the subject of biblical marriage:

And remember, if your sex slave runs away because you’re cruel to the person, the Bible (Philemon) says that other people have the duty to return the slave to you, i.e. basically imposes the duty of trafficking slaves back to sadistic sex maniacs who exploit them. But if the owner is nice and a good Christian, he might consider letting the sex slave go. But he doesn’t have to.

Off the subject of biblical marriage, it occurs to me that Chief Justice Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott case is biblically based: the Fugitive Slave Act is just what Paul's epistle to Philemon requires. Is that proof that the Confederate States of America were founded as a Christian nation?

Seems Frederick Douglass noticed it too:

Dred not, neither be afraid

Uncle Sam grabbing a wave, from CongressForKids.

Everybody's talking about former Boy Wonder Ralph Reed not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, oh, not much:

“The battle looked like it was lost, but it really wasn’t,” Reed said of the immediate aftermath of the Dred Scott decision, which went on to embolden abolitionist activists. “And that’s kind of like where we are right now. Anybody heard lately that we’re losing the marriage issue? Anybody heard that argument? You notice some similarities? I’m not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, OK? I’m just pointing out that when you have these fights, what’s interesting is that if you look at same-sex marriage, it’s now legal in 17 states....