Quote of the day—Timothy Sandefur

The Fourth Circuit has shown that it isn’t interested in proof. This runs a dangerous risk of changing the rational basis test into a “Get out of the Constitution free” card.

Timothy Sandefur
October 23, 2013
Fourth Circuit: don’t bother us with the facts
[Not only do the courts not want to be bothered with the facts they will ignore facts presented and even refuse to rule on something.

A long time ago when I was much younger and even more naïve than I am now I believed the courts could and would straighten out a lot of the constitution issues with all the repressive gun laws.

I have reluctantly concluded that my friend Eric E. was correct when he told me over 10 years ago in regards to class action suit that I was involuntarily a part of and thought was totally wrong (paraphrasing), “Going to court is just rolling the dice. If you reject the settlement then you are giving up money that you should have collected some other time when you should have won but lost because the dice came up snake-eyes.” I cashed a check for something like $18,000.

As an engineer I am accustomed to the physical world being rational and predictable. The people world is, at best, a very thin veneer of rationality over seemingly random emotions. The result is a great deal of frustration with most people.—Joe]

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8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Timothy Sandefur

  1. “The result is I experience a great deal of frustration with most people.”

    Sigh. As a fellow software wenius, pretty much my life encapsulated.

    • Frustration is the result of expecting one thing and getting another, i.e. it results from believing a false premise. Stop falling for it and you’ll stop being frustrated in the same way that (I assume) you don’t get frustrated by the specific gravity of water or the perdiod of Earth’s rotation simply because you know what they are and that you can’t do anything about them.

      • But I happen to LIKE the specific gravity of water and the manner of the earth’s rotation! 😉

  2. as a fellow engineer, I think the world would be a better place if the lawyers were all swinging from lamp posts. they cause a big chunk of the misery in the world…

  3. Its clear the courts do not care what the words say. Only the outcome they want. The consistently defer to the government, which is not the way it is supposed to work. Most of their decisions can be boiled down to “We rule for the government, because X”. Whether X is GUNS or GOVERNMENT. Its a sham, all a sham.

  4. I took a class on on-line stock trading once. The teacher went around the room and asked us each what our real jobs were. When I said “Process Engineer for a Semiconductor Company” he laughed and predicted I would be very frustrated in the class, because I’d expect there to be relatively good rules to follow, when in reality being right about 60% of the time was great for any trader.

    He was right. He taught me that not losing money was goal number one, and after that, maybe being right anything more than 50% of the time was real success in stocks.

    People? Brownian motion with random, moving magnets arrayed in their environment, as far as I can tell.

  5. “I believed the courts could and would straighten out a lot of the constitution issues with all the repressive gun laws.”

    Of course they COULD, but then so COULD Congress, by not violating the constitution in the first place or by correcting the past violations. Regular American citizens COULD change Congress too, if we weren’t so easily distracted, or so cowardly and obsequious.

    A lot of the judges have been specifically picked as activists, because of their willingness to legislate Progressivism from the bench. The game is rigged, but it’s a reflection of the population at large.

    Getting angered or frustrated by it makes no more sense than getting angry at the sunset. It simply is, but the one difference between human corruption and the sunset is that we have some small chance of altering human corruption from time to time. First is to understand what it is and where it comes from, then to see it in ourselves, and thereby to understand the difference between being a gang member on one side, fighting gang members on another side, verses being a non gang member in opposition to gangs and gang mentality. The latter makes you everyone’s enemy, but it’s the only way to change anything for the better.

  6. “I believed the courts could and would straighten out a lot of the constitution issues with all the repressive gun laws.”

    Lyle, is he asking for a man on a white horse to come in and straighten things out extra-legally?

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