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 broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
It never really occurred to me to believe in God.
Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.
Our forms of government - though both cast in the democratic pattern - are greatly different. Indeed, sometimes it appears that many of our misunderstandings spring from an imperfect knowledge on the part of both of us of the dissimilarities in our forms of government.
Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.
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