Letters: Scalia had mindset of tea partiers

Despite possessing a towering intellect and the advantages that accompany growing up in an academic family, Antonin Scalia spent his time on the Supreme Court rejecting all things analytical in favor of a puerile philosophy called “originalism.”

To him that meant that he, beyond all others, was capable of reading the minds of the squabbling group of men (and zero women) who laid down our nation’s founding principles.

The fact that he was a devout Catholic, and that he saw those principles as conforming perfectly to his ultra-conservative Catholicism, seems not to have moved him to apply critical thinking to his beloved prejudices.

Any member of the Roman Curia could have sat in his chair, and with respect to the opinions he wrote, no one would have noticed.

There are people — we call them tea partiers — who believe that thought and analysis are signs of weakness, that morally strong people make up their minds on important subjects in their youth and never re-examine their conclusions as adults.

Like Scalia, they believe strongly in ghosts and in the immutability of opinions issued by desert nomads thousands of years ago.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Letters: Scalia had mindset of tea partiers."