Where does the American “right to privacy” come from?
The U.S. Constitution?
English philosopher John Locke?
America’s Founding Fathers?
No, as talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh’s kid cousin will tell you, it comes from the moon.
That’s according to his quirky parody that pokes fun of the logic used by Supreme Court Associate Justice William Orville Douglas, who served on the court from 1939 to 1975.
The parody features Stephen Limbaugh – son of U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. and cousin to Rush Limbaugh and commentator David Limbaugh.
Limbaugh is also a singer, songwriter, concert pianist and conservative who owns a selection of colorful and wildly decorated pants.
His latest video, a whimsical takedown of how leftists interpret the Constitution, is “New Voices: What’s a Constitution among Friends?”
Watch Limbaugh’s parody:
[jwplayer tKiYmTIl]
Limbaugh explains the concept of a penumbra, or a shadow surrounding the moon.
“This was the rationale used in a famous Supreme Court case known as Griswold vs. Connecticut,” he explains.
In that case, Justice William O. Douglas used the term to describe what he believed were implied powers emanating from the Constitution’s specifically enumerated rights.
Limbaugh explains that Justice Douglas used this rationale to justify “very bad things,” like disregarding the rights of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II.
In yet another case of questionable reasoning, Douglas argued that “inanimate objects” should have legal standing in court.
“No word on whether he thought the Japanese maple tree should have standing or should be allowed to be cut down due to Democrat political interests,” Limbaugh jested.
In Douglas’ dissenting opinion in the landmark environmental law case, Sierra Club v. Morton, he reasoned that “environmental objects” should be allowed “to sue for their own preservation”:
“The critical question of ‘standing’ would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.”
Douglas continued:
“Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole – a creature of ecclesiastical law—is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases…. So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes – fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.”
Limbaugh also notes that Douglas, who was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a well-known womanizer who was married four times.
“He once got caught in his office chasing a flight attendant around, trying to solicit sex by ripping her clothes off,” Limbaugh added.
He noted, because of the “moon-inspired rights” in Griswold v. Connecticut, “there has been a slew of very bad decisions that have resulted from it” – including the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and the Supreme Court’s recent legalization of same-sex marriage.
