The College Fix

Probably the best political reading on the web today, a candid interview with Justice Antonin Scalia in New York magazine:

On race or sex discrimination:

“The issue is, “What is discrimination?” If there’s a reasonable basis for not ­letting women do something—like going into combat or whatnot… There are some intelligent reasons to treat women differently. I don’t think anybody would deny that. And there really is no, virtually no, intelligent reason to treat people differently on the basis of their skin.”

On the coarsening of society:

“One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can’t go to a movie—or watch a television show for that matter—without hearing the constant use of the F-word—including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know don’t talk like that! But if you portray it a lot, the society’s going to become that way. It’s very sad.

And you can’t have a movie or a television show without a nude sex scene, very often having no relation to the plot. I don’t mind it when it is essential to the plot, as it sometimes is. But, my goodness! The society that watches that becomes a coarse society.”

On homosexuality:

“I still think it’s Catholic teaching that it’s wrong. Okay? But I don’t hate the people that engage in it. In my legal opinions, all I’ve said is that I don’t think the Constitution requires the people to adopt one view or the other.”

On the Devil:

“You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore… What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.”

On Hunting:

“My eldest son married a girl from Louisiana, whose father was an avid hunter. He got me into deer hunting up in Mississippi. There, I fell in with some Cajuns—including Louis Prejean, the brother of Sister Prejean. He’s as conservative as she is liberal… I got in with them, and I got into goose hunting, duck hunting, redfish fishing—it has been a great addition to my later years. It gets me outside the Beltway with people of the sort I had never known before. They could live in the woods. Give ’em a gun, they could survive in the woods on their own. It’s nice to get in with a different crowd. None of them are lawyers. Or very few.”

This interview presents a casual, unbiased portrait of perhaps the most influential jurist of his generation. Not a wacko leftist hit piece, not a right wing homage–just the man in his own words. In particular, if you want to understand how our culture’s increasing alienation from Christianity is driving a wedge right down the middle of our political culture, I recommend giving it a careful read.

Catch the full story here.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

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