FREEING THE MUNCHKINS

I've taken some flack in the last 24 hours due to some celebratory words on the death of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.


But this "do not speak ill of the dead" business is the ultimate in hypocrisy. Are people saying that we need to observe some kind of revisionist history as soon as someone dies?

It's important to not just remember but remind people of the suffering Scalia caused and the irreversible damage to the country and even the world he has wrought.


As a matter of fact, Scalia's legacy is one of hypocrisy, his so-called "originalism" being a convenient myth to be turned on and off to justify predesignated results that supported his vision of American fascism.


Brilliant? Yes... brilliantly diabolical. He is the father of the very corporatism many of us seek to reverse this elections season. What better time to discuss that legacy than upon his death and the death of the Scalia era of constitutional abuse?


You'll get no apologies from me. I'm deliriously happy one of, if not the most murderous figures of our time is dead. People claim that every life is precious. But there's a unique irony here in welcoming the death of someone who has made so many lives so cheap.

How many women have died- or worse lived lives of poverty and misery- due to lack of abortion services?.. How many guns are on the streets killing our kids? How many state-sanctioned murders- often of people too poor to buy their way out or even of the wrong person- has he caused? How many died in Bush's wars after Scalia appointed him? Now is not the time to be silent.

In a way we're really debating the old canard regarding whether one would go back in time to "kill baby Hitler" but with the "twist" of asking whether we should be happy if someone else did.


By law, death was the only way Scalia's reign of terror was going to end. And it couldn't have come a day too soon.

Personally I'm long beyond the youthful folly of blanket pacifism in the face of powerful- for lack of a better word- evil. That doesn't indicate any less of an adherence to the principles of non-violence, just a recognition that the death of an active oppressor can be time for celebration.


Frankly, I'm still kind of apprehensive of the flying monkeys.