Neil Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump and evidently exhibits his sponsor’s level of concern for the well-being of other people. According for reporting by NPR’s Nina Totenberg, because Justice Sonia Sotomayor has diabetes and is consequently at high risk should she be infected with the coronavirus — high risk as in possible death — Chief Justice John Roberts has asked the other members of the Court to wear masks during arguments. Gorsuch, who sits next to Sotomayor, won’t.
This is shameful and pathetic.
Gorsuch is a proponent of natural law jurisprudence. That has it that people have rights not just those conferred on them by law, but by God, nature and reason. Undoubtedly Gorsuch’s notion of rights contributed to his voting against the Biden OSHA vaccine mandate.
But what about wearing a mask on behalf of one’s colleague’s well-being?
Let’s go back to natural law and the concept that there are rights that derive from God.
One of the people who is arguably closest to the divinity on this planet is Pope Francis.
In a book published last fall, Let Us Dream: A Path to a Better Future, Francis writes that people who resist simple, sensible actions that can protect one’s fellow man in the face of the pandemic “are incapable of moving outside of their own little world of interests.”
Clearly, on Planet Gorsuch, any inconvenience for him is too large to bear.
Gorsuch, incidentally, was raised as a Catholic but now attends an Episcopal church. Perhaps he doesn’t feel that the Pope’s observations are relevant.
Does one’s religious affiliation matter? One could make the case that it does for a constitutional originalist, but we’ll not go down that road here.
What can be said for a man who refuses to do something that is essentially irrelevant to him in order to help protect someone who is at risk of death is he apparently missed a clause in the first sentence of the Constitution: “promote the general Welfare.”
Some 852,000 American citizens have died as a result of the COVID pandemic.
And how does Gorsuch’s behavior “promote the general Welfare”?
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings. He writes primarily for the right column.
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