Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
Interpretation
Constitutional debates, though seemingly unexciting, can lead to significant outcomes.
This quote by George Will emphasizes that discussions surrounding constitutional matters, which may appear tedious or uninteresting, hold the potential to create profound and impactful results in society. It serves as a reminder that even the most mundane topics can lead to important changes and decisions that shape the legal and political landscape.
In practice
During a lecture on constitutional law, one might quote this to engage students.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of america is justice and securing the blessings of liberty.
The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.
The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.
To those who have no personal experience of this revolutionary aspect of Christian truth, but who see only the outer crust of dead, human conservatism that tends to form around the Church the way barnacles gather on the hull of a ship, all this talk about dynamism sounds foolish.
The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they deny somehow that God has a feminine face. However, if you go to the holy texts, you see there is this feminine presence.
Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.
Life of the soul is union with God, as life of the body is union with the soul. As the soul was separated from God and died in consequence of the violation of the commandment, so by obedience to the commandment it is again united to God and is quickened. This is why the Lord says in the Gospels, 'The words I speak to you are spirit and life' (Jn. 6:63).
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.