Mr. Will Finds an Acorn

I congratulate George Will for recognizing the absurdity of the conservatives’ dissents in Miller v. Alabama. Mr. Will was a little coy about his criticism, but at least he felt moved to say something. When it comes to human rights, you can’t resort to constitutional originalism. In reality, you can’t go back beyond 1945. It was only after the survivors of World War Two saw what humans had done to other humans and faced the prospect of nuclear annihilation that we got serious about human rights. There are many things that were not considered particularly cruel and certainly were not unusual prior to 1945 that are now considered violations of people’s human rights. To argue that we cannot interpret the Eighth Amendment according to post-war standards of decency is barbaric. The conservatives on the Supreme Court are barbarians. You can trust Mr. Will to forget this insight by suppertime.