To follow up on Michael’s post, when Rubin writes that Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind “rendered the left gobsmacked” — excellent word choice there; le mot juste — “by Bloom’s critique of the downfall of elite institutions (most especially higher education) that had beached themselves on the rocky shoals of relativism,” I couldn’t help but think of a timely and rather striking example of that downfall: President Barack Obama’s snit about the Supreme Court and his much-discussed comments that seemed to display a shocking ignorance of Marbury v. Madison (so shocking, in fact, that a three-judge panel of Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals immediately required clarification of the president’s position from the Department of Justice).
It’s not just that that the president was ignorant of the high court’s authority to strike down an unconstitutional federal law, though that would be enough by far. It’s that this particular president:
- taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago
- graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law
- was president of the Harvard Law Review
I would say that not only did the president damage himself by his comments this week, but his comments also embarrassed Chicago and Harvard — or should have.
