Bet you thought I’d have given up on this daily flashback post bit by now.
From March 24, 2005, “The Scandal of the Originalist Mind“:
There are, in other words, two problems with evangelicals’ alleged “simple,” “common-sense” approach to the text. First, such an approach doesn’t work. Second, this isn’t really what they’re doing anyway. The supposedly literal approach begins with certain presuppositions (cultural, personal, psychological, economic) and then finds these very same presuppositions as obvious and self-evident in the plain meaning of the text. Thus the sacred word becomes a mirror and our exegesis begins to resemble Stuart Smalley’s daily affirmations.
Scalia’s originalism seems slightly less naive than evangelicals’ literalism, if only because he at least seems to acknowledge that he has presuppositions. His overweening confidence that these presuppositions never influence his strict originalist interpretations, however, may be even more naive.
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