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Oct. 2, 2018 - Steve Pieczenik
04:43
OPUS 79 Keep Calm and the Republic Goes On!
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Hi, this is Dr.
Bachchanik and Steve speaks and talks and interprets.
Let me tell you something about this week.
It's been a very interesting week as most of you have gathered.
It's something that is very typical of our republic.
A republic is not necessarily a democracy.
A republic means that we have representatives who in turn make decisions about our fate.
But in this case, we have seen that our republic has a very human face to it, both in the presence of Brett Kavanaugh and in the presence of those people who were questioning him.
There was much sound and fury, but it did signify something.
It signified the fact that most of our people who are both in the legislature and want to be in the legislature and run our government are humans.
They have a background, they have a present, they have a future.
Does the background, filled with all kinds of contradictions, sobriety, alcoholism, intoxication, memory loss, memory regain, does that all mean something?
Well, that's for the individual to decide when making an evaluation of another individual.
Unfortunately for the Republic, we don't have a lot of people who are trained psychologists or psychiatrists.
Now, I'm not touting my own profession, but I am saying that it's going to be an important part of the judicial system, and particularly judges, for them to have a course on psychology, on personality disorders, because they don't learn that in law school, and it was quite obvious in the tête-à-tête that was going on between Kavanaugh and the interrogators.
Let me talk about two concepts that did not come out.
For the most part, we would call Kavanaugh a conservative.
Why is he a conservative?
Well, he's a conservative because, number one, he's what we would call in the legal profession a textualist.
T-E-X-T-U-A-L And what that means is that he takes a literal interpretation of the Constitution.
He does not infer or imply anything about the Founding Fathers or what they thought.
The second part is he believes in natural laws.
In other words, there are certain inalienable rights which we have in the Constitution and are universal.
In that sense, he is a constitutionalist and a conservative.
In contrast, you would have Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a lovely lady who was from Rutgers University, Cornell University, who in deference to...
Kavanaugh would say, no, the intention of the writers of the Constitution was the following.
She would imply or infer an intention.
At the same time, she would say the natural laws have now extended to women's rights and the rights for abortion.
Well, that is what's going on at this present moment.
It's not ideological as much as it is judicial and interpretation of the Constitution.
But let me tell you one important thing that's forgotten in all this hoopla, and that is that the republic has remained intact and is viable.
In contrast to those doomsday scenarios where they said we have a civil war, we're fractionated, we're divided between the right and the left, that's all nonsense.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, who was brilliant in psychology, he said that every so-called We have to remember that the republic must allow some bloodletting.
That's part of the evolution of the republic and the democracy.
At the same time he said something that was even more important.
Don't judge an individual by the words that they speak or the words that they write but judge them by the actions that they have committed or will commit.
In that sense we have to wait to see what it is that Kavanaugh will do in the future.
We know what he has done or perhaps might have done but we really don't know what he's going to do in the future.
So from a perspective of personality it's important to understand the dynamics of each one Let me quote again Thomas Jefferson, and this is something that the Supreme Court Justice Brad Kavanaugh can remind himself.
Jefferson said that a person should always be calm and unruffled under all conditions and circumstances.
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