February 16, 2016 5:08 AM

There will be no tap dancing on any graves around these parts

I think it’s a pretty poignant quote for every progressive who has spoken about Scalia over the past couple days. That we can argue and be pretty outraged by his political beliefs and his thoughts about the Constitution. That is fair play. But to be a bit happy that he’s dead is probably outside the realm of decency. I don’t know if he was a good family man or a good friend. I assume he was. Ginsberg thought so. He thought highly enough of Kagan’s legal mind to recommend her to Axelrod. So take a step back as y’all continue to talk about Scalia over the next week. Shoot at the aircraft, not the man.

Sometimes, it feels like we need to be reminded that political beliefs don’t define who we are. They’re not barometers of our humanity. They’re simply an adherence to a fixed set of beliefs that resonate with an individual. Those beliefs may revolve around things others consider despicable, reprehensible, and/or just plain ridiculous and evil. That doesn’t make a person less human, it doesn’t reflect on their value as a human being; it’s just what they believe. A person can disagree with widely held opinions and beliefs without being of any less value or lacking basic human rights. It just means they think differently…and while we may hold some thoughts to be reprehensible and/or beneath contempt, thoughts don’t rise to the level of criminality. None of us, even Justice Antonin Scalia, are what we think. It’s a lesson all of us, myself included, could stand to be reminded of.

It may have been Howard Zinn (or Jim Gaffigan?) who once said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Dissent may take many forms, sometimes as simple as holding opinions that are unpopular and/or decidedly outside mainstream thinking. We can believe someone to be wrong, but we should respect their right to voice their opinion(s) even when they understand there will be blowback. Of course, there’s a difference between dissent and the sort of crude, crass childishness and offensiveness engaged in by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Dissent may be protected free speech, and we should respect it, but that doesn’t mean we have to mutely accept that dissent and let it pass without response.

Scalia may have outwardly seemed a difficult personality to love. I personally found his public persona and comments to be disgusting, disingenuous, and certainly beneath the dignity of a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Of course, this presumes Scalia could experience shame and possessed even a whiff of dignity. I can’t speak to those things, of course, and my concern here is more with finding a way we can, if not honor a man’s life, then certainly respect and honor that man’s humanity.

When it comes to politics, it’s easy to misdirect our anger or strong opinions in directions that aren’t productive, reasonable or accurate. We see politicians and their policies in stark terms- black and white…and never the twain shall meet. We reduce people to ideologies and stereotypes when those people almost certainly have dimensions to their lives we may know nothing of.

The challenge, at least so far as I see it, is separating the person from the political animal. I abhorred virtually everything Antonin Scalia stood for, but I’d be remiss were I not to recognize that he loved America and served it to the best of his ability based on what he thought was right. Justice Scalia, though he couldn’t understand or recognize the breadth and depth of human diversity, was an accomplished jurist with a solid (though decidedly lacking in compassion) understanding of the law. He undoubtedly had friends and family who loved him and held him in high esteem. To those he left behind, I imagine he was a caring person who will be greatly missed.

That’s Antonin Scalia the man, not the unreconstructed bigot and homophobe who too often surfaced in public. As objectionable and reprehensible as Justice Scalia could be (and very often was) in public, he- like all of us- had disparate private and public lives. We should understand that Justice Scalia’s public life was littered with abhorrent and distasteful positions and statements…but we didn’t know Antonin Scalia the person. Yes, he too often turned himself into a caricature, and it was all too easy to despise the ugliness and hatefulness of the person giving voice to it. Even with that in mind, I have to assume that even Antonin Scalia left behind people who will miss him greatly.

We can and should be talking about Justice Scalia’s legacy. We don’t have to like what he stood for and/or the votes he’s cast over his 30-year Supreme Court tenure. What we don’t need to be doing is making legitimate discussion and debate into an excuse to hate Justice Scalia, who, like any of us, was not his job. Being a Supreme Court Justice may be what he did, but that didn’t- and shouldn’t- define his value to humanity.

Perhaps we could all take a lesson from Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), who while recognizing their differences, considered Scalia a close friend. There’s the human and there’s the political/religious/ideological…and they really are best kept separate. Demonizing a person because we find their thoughts and words objectionable can and usually does ignore the truth that how a person behaves in public is not who they are in private among those who love them.

In the end, we need not miss Justice Scalia’s nor respect his words and opinions, but we’d be something less than honest if we ignored that there were those in his life who loved and cherished him. He’ll be missed by those who saw the good in him, which is something all of should hope will hold true when we shed our mortal coil.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 16, 2016 5:08 AM.

Feel the Bern: The truth hurts was the previous entry in this blog.

If political signs possessed even the barest shred of integrity is the next entry in this blog.

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