To leftists, like Laurence Tribe, truth is of zero value. Winning ideological points matters, and Tribe is perfectly content to lie, if it means such a win, as Ken Masugi at American Greatness notes
A brief interview of Tribe with the Washington Post identifies some of his former students as “Barack Obama, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Merrick Garland, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Ted Cruz.” We are supposed to be impressed. But these are mostly politicians, and perhaps Tribe shouldn’t be held responsible for their flaws. But the professor is fully responsible for this whopper from the interview:
Post: Do you consider the Supreme Court to be in crisis now?
Tribe: “Yes. I have no doubt that the court is at a point that is far more dangerous and damaging to the country than at any other point, probably, since Dred Scott. And, in a way, because we even find Justice [Clarence] Thomas going back and citing Dred Scott favorably in his opinion on firearms, the court is dragging the country back into a terrible, terrible time. So I think that it’s never been in greater danger or more dangerous.” (Emphasis added.)
If that statement made issue a “WTF”? it should. Because, Thomas issued no applause or praise of Justice Taney or the Dredd Scott ruling, What Justice Thomas wrote was, well, crystal clear
But what Justice Thomas actually wrote “in his opinion on firearms” (New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen) concerning Dred Scott and Taney was this mockery of Taney:
“Writing for the Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), Chief Justice Taney offered what he thought was a parade of horribles that would result from recognizing that free blacks were citizens of the United States. If blacks were citizens, Taney fretted, they would be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, including the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Id., at 417. Thus, even Chief Justice Taney recognized (albeit unenthusiastically in the case of blacks) that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms—a right free blacks were often denied in antebellum America.” (Emphasis added.)
Ah, so Thomas did not use the decision to praise Taney in any way, he uses the decision to note that even a man like Justice Taney knew that carrying arms was a component of the right to keep and bear arms.
Yet, cares not what Thomas wrote, he just wants to condemn and smear Thomas, and if that means lying like a cheap rug, well, sign Laurence Tribe up! As Masugi notes, it reveals how far down the hole of Statism leftists like Tribe are.
Thus the Tribe taunt is not simply a vulgar partisan shot but a reminder of how divided we are as a nation and how little our luminaries seem to understand its true nature. If we as a nation have forgotten John Locke’s maxim that every man belongs to himself, how can we even think about recovering the truths of the Declaration?