Define the Enemy, Then Destroy It

When one conducts a proper war, the first thing is to define the enemy.  The next thing is to destroy that enemy.  (Cartago delenda est.)  That's the way of war.

Thus when we read Kennedy's decision in Windsor, a bell should be ringing.  The bell could be inscribed "Dred Scott."

...Justice Scalia rightly identified as particularly outrageous the Court’s assertion that the purpose of the definition was a “‘bare … desire to harm’ couples in same-sex marriages.”...

Could Kennedy really believe that?  Yes, he could:

...from what counts as serious discussion by serious people in our country it is clear that most well-placed and influential Americans have come to believe that opposition to same-sex marriage can only be a matter of ignorance and bigotry. They are convinced that a social institution that involves sexual differentiation can have no legitimate function or right to exist, and the point is so obvious that no rightly constituted mind could possibly believe otherwise....

IOW, the Ruling Class--the Elites--have come to the conclusion that Kennedy used as an assertion:  those opposed to same-sex marriages are Hating Bigots, devoid of rational thought.

The Enemy has been defined, folks.

Such views [that were expressed by Kennedy here] are considered an obvious demand of reason and justice. To reject equal fulfillment as the highest standard and technology as the model for putting it into effect can, it is thought, only be a matter of greed, bullying, sadism, or irrationality. After all, the alternative to giving people what they want equally is preferring some people and their desires to others, the alternatives to technology are passivity on the one hand and magical thinking on the other, and the alternative to equal respect is suppression of some people and what they want for the sake of a scheme that other people want to impose on them. How can any of that be justified?

Since it is all so obvious, or so it is thought, resistance is not merely misguided or wrong but an expression of gross irrationality that can only be motivated by gratuitous hatred. It is evidently for some such reason that the Windsor majority treats those who disagree with it, in the words of Justice Scalia, as hostes humani generis: enemies of the human race.

If this is a war, the "define-the-enemy" stage is now accomplished.  All that remains is to destroy that enemy.

Kennedy is a tool; we saw that in his infamous Lawrence obiter dicta when SCOTUS overruled Bowers.  It's clear that he is easily influenced at cocktail parties.  But this simple tool has a black robe--and friends--and his blather will have effects.

Should the logic of the war analogy prevail, we have just seen the second Dred Scott decision.  Let us hope that what follows does not resemble 1861.