Thread:Comments:Internet security firm to donate revenue to charity after Anonymous protest of Westboro Baptist Church/Does no one see that WBC is the good guy in this story?/reply (9)

No, you've misapprehended me. I'm free of your logic; I think I may have been subject to the legalistic illusion once upon a time, but if so, I moved past that phase decades ago. If I seem circumspect on this thread, it's partly because I've had too much experience with the impossibility of arguing someone out of an intellectual trap once they're stuck in it; one can offer opportunities for the trapped party to find their way out, but the initiative to take those opportunities has to come from them.

Since you ask, I'll offer just a few additional remarks.

You're trying to base your view of things on an absolute foundation that's built of sand. Human institutions, including governments, are all about give-and-take. The legalistic viewpoint, which I'm quite familiar with, is very like computer programming (which I'm also familiar with), but actual human society is not altogether like computer programming. It may seem a convenient approximation to pretend government regulates society from outside, but tragic consequences can follow from forgetting that government is itself part of society.

It's comparatively incidental that the US constitution doesn't give SCOTUS the power to decide what the constitution means; that it couldn't do so even if it tried, if one accepts that the power of the government devolves from the people; and that historically, SCOTUS maneuvered to establish precedent "giving" itself final say (within the government) over constitutional interpretation.