What happens when people in authority make muddle headed decisions?

King Solomon wrote these two proverbs three thousand years ago to answer this question. The first proverb is this.

Where there is no expertise, a nation fails

For safety lies in many advisors (Proverb 11:14)

Verse 14b expresses confidence in the decision which is reached in cabinet or committee, when a number of men have put their heads together, and suggests further that the wider the consensus, the better is the quality of the advice or policy likely to be. (Proverbs Mc Kane)

In the close split 5-4 decision made, Chief Justice Thomas said this.

“[T]his court is not a legislature,” he wrote.  “Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

The second proverb is this.

It is for his good sense that a man is praised,

But a muddle headed person is a laughing stock. (Proverb 12:8)

Verse 8 is set in the same frame of intellectual values. As I have pointed out elsewhere, wisdom is a grasp of affairs, with competence and success, and in all these respects betrays the practical tendency of the language of old wisdom. The antithesis of v.8 is thus constituted by lack of intellectual grasp and muddle-headedness. Intellectual clarity and incisiveness make a man master of a situation and win him acclaim, while confused thinking bring him into contempt. (Proverb 12:8)

You can decide for yourself whether it is better to cry or laugh about the decision made by the Supreme committee of Eastern lawyers. King Solomon also wrote this verse about times in life.

A time to weep and a time to laugh.

In a past time, people both laughed and cried when the Supreme Court made their now considered muddle headed Jim Crow decision.

Regards and goodwill blogging.




How the Supreme Court’s conservatives explained their votes against gay marriage