The Blanshardians in our midst

Current events in our nation's capital make this Independence Day an especially opportune occasion to observe that Blanshardism is not finished.  By Blandshardism I mean, of course, the activities of those who believe what wrote in his best-selling book, American Freedom and Catholic Power nearly seventy years ago: "the Catholic problem is still with us." Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and McGeorge Bundy were among the books most famous fans.  Following their master's lead, contemporary Blanshardians echo his call for a "resistance movement" to Catholics' "antidemocratic social policies."  A catalogue of Blanshardian grievances against Catholics and their Church is at hand in an article (here) I wrote several years ago. The article closes with Blandshard's agreeing with Hilaire Belloc that holding and adhering to the Catholic view of things about how this world is to be arranged and governed ensures "monstrous conflict" with those who prefer a state that is the agent of "the new morality" (a term I borrow from Edward Rubin). 

Of special salience in light of the aforementioned current events is the Blanshardian dogma that "overpopulation" encouraged by Catholic doctrine regarding human sexuality presents "the most basic and formidable threat to the future happiness of the human race."  It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the force driving this anti-human program.  Blandshard himself didn't shrink from aping the "three generations of imbeciles are enough" O.W. Holmes of Buck v. Bell in defending it: "Fortunately, neither the people nor the courts of the United States agree that there is anything necessarily wrong in depriving an insane or feebleminded person of the capacity to reproduce by a simple and relatively painless operation which does not even deprive him of the satisfaction of sex."  Here one does well to recall that Holmes's opinion in Buck, from which the Catholic Pierce Butler alone dissented, was joined by Stone, Brandeis, Taft, Sutherland, Van Devanter, Stone, and, of course, McReynolds. 

I am of the mainstream view that Buck v. Bell was wrong, but I am also of the view that Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a so-called "substantive due process" decision from which even Holmes did not dissent, and a decision contemporary neo-conservatives have a hard time justifying in terms of their judicial philosophy of choice, was and remains right.  Be that as it may, our Supreme Court's power and authority to set aside acts of the legislature on the ground that they are substantively deficient are not going away, and for that sufficient reason it makes good sense for the Senators to inquire into the substantive views of judicial nominees.  When the Senators do make those inquiries and make them openly, We the People can assess whether their own criteria for evaluating those views are Blanshardian, as they often are and will be, and then decide for ourselves if we will keep voting Blandsharians into high office.  Blanshardians usually beget Blanshardians.