25 Years Out

University of Wisconsin Law Professor Ann Althouse has a post up at her eponomously named blog, taking Radio Personality Rush Limbaugh to task for his, in her view, inconsistent take on the First Amendment.  The title is "'For justices in the middle, I don't think they want to be on the wrong side of history' on same sex marriage".  This is from Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan.  Ms Karlan says:

"Unless we see a massive about-face (in public attitudes), 25 years from now people will look back at this and wonder why (equal marriage rights) took so long.

First, looking at the "Wrong side of history", we have, in the comments, Kevin saying:

People talking about "the right side of history" or the "wrong side of history" should periodically acknowledge the guy who invented the concept - Leon Trotsky.

There was another comment about former Senator Chris Dodd suggesting that if we opposed Communism in Africa we might find ourselves on the wrong side of history, but then Senator Dodd is history, except for trying to abuse our First Amendment rights and impose harsh and self-defeating copyright laws.

The other thing that interested me was the trend of commenters to question the idea that we have a clue what is going to happen 25 years out.  Obviously, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B Taney thought things were going to go on as they had when he rendered his Dred Scott v Sandford decision in 1857.  Then, there were the folks, in the 1980s, who thought that the Cold War would go on for ever and that President Reagan should pull back from tweaking the Soviet Union.  Then there is Scandinavia, where heterosexual marriage was a big deal, until it wasn't any longer.

Regards  —  Cliff