Such was his November 2016 tribute to Antonin Scalia, given to the Federalist Society. He began with examples of the late Justice’s wit (beloved alike by Justice Thomas and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Respectively, they agreed with Scalia most of the time—and little of the time.):

In PGA Tour vs. Martin [Scalia] wrote: “I am sure that the framers of the U.S. Constitution aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland, prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this August Court would some day have to wrestle with the age-old jurisprudential question for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer?”

And we will not soon forget Justice Scalia’s rebuke of legislative history in Chisholm vs. Roemer. There the Court reasoned that the absence of legislative history could be likened to the dog that didn’t bark. Justice Scalia responded: “Apart from the questionable wisdom of assuming that dogs will bark when something important is happening… In ascertaining the meaning of a statute, a court cannot in the manner of Sherlock Holmes pursue the theory of the dog that didn’t bark. We are here to apply the statute, not the legislative history… Statutes are the law, though sleeping dogs lie.”

The Heart of Thomas’s Message

For decades in cases large and small, Justice Thomas continued, “Justice Scalia delighted us with his with his command of the English language.” Then he got down to the more profound things he had come to say about his friend:

Much may be said about him, but little needs to be said for him…. I can hear his voice. “What do you think is the reason America is such a free country? If you think that what sets us apart is the Bill of Rights, you’re crazy…. The Bill of Rights for the former evil empire, the USSR, was much better than ours.” He would then make his point. “Without the structural constraints that the Constitution places on government power, the Bill of Rights is just words on paper.”

The separation of powers, Scalia wrote, “may prevent us from righting every wrong—but it does so to ensure that we do not lose liberty.” Thomas then quotes James Madison, from across the centuries:

“If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  —Federalist 51

C-Span’s five-minute précis of Justice Thomas’s speech can be heard, and a rough transcript of his text, can be had by clicking here.

For those willing to devote a little more time to this learned man, click here. (Scroll to minute 20 for the speech proper.)

This quotation is now going around the web, broadly attrib­uted to Churchill. Is it accu­rate? “Social­ism is a phi­los­o­phy of fail­ure, the creed of igno­rance, and the gospel of envy, its inher­ent virtue is the equal shar­ing of misery.” —M.S. via email.

It is more or less correct, but it’s a truncated version of two separate comments, run together to make them more interesting (in the eye of the drafter).

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” —Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948, in Churchill, Europe Unite: Speeches 1947 & 1948 (London: Cassell, 1950), 347.

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” —House of Commons, 22 October 1945

A variation on the above is: “I do not at all wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries, that what used to be called the ‘submerged tenth’ can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level…” —House of Commons, 13 June 1948

Churchill’s legacy includes his philippics against socialism, said the late Dr. Harry Jaffa,

which are no less trenchant than those against fascism and Communism. Consider the following excerpts from a speech in the Commons in 1949: “I was brought up to believe that taxation is a bad thing, but the consuming power of the people a good thing. I was brought up to believe that trade should be regulated mainly by the laws of supply and demand and that, apart from basic necessaries in great emergencies, the price mechanism should adjust and correct undue spending at home….I was also taught that it was one of the first duties of Government to promote that confidence on which credit and thrift….can alone stand and grow. I was taught to believe that these processes, working freely within the limits of the well-known laws for correcting monopoly….would produce a lively and continuous improvement in prosperity. I still hold to those general principles.

“Socialists [on the other hand] regard taxation as good in itself and as tending to level our society….Everything possible is done discourage and stigmatize the inventor. The Chancellor [of the Exchequer] speaks in slighting terms of profit earners….What a lot of contempt he put into it—”profit earners.” There was an old Gladstonian expression: ‘Let the money fructify in the pockets of the people.’ That is regarded as a monstrous device of a decadent capitalist system.”

This moreover puts us in mind of that dictum concerning property asserted by the Father of the American Constitution, James Madison, when he said, in the Tenth Federalist, that “the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property [is] the first object of government.” One might add that according to Madison, the U.S. Constitution is intended to provide equal protection to unequal abilities. This is just as surely what Abraham Lincoln meant when in 1864 he wrote to the Workingmen’s Association of New York that “Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.” *

* Harry V. Jaffa, “Requiem for Socialism and the Iron Curtain,” Remarks on Churchill’s Birthday, 30 November 1990.