July 16, 2025

Nothing worse

I find it appalling that the Saipan Tribune would choose to publish on Monday’s editorial page a grossly deceptive and mendacious opinion piece by John Yoo—the architect, apologist, and facilitator of the Bush administration’s torture policy—portraying Obergefell v. Hodges as an attack on democracy. Mr. Yoo, I am sure, would consider Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves as an attack on democracy rooted in the sanctity of property; the War Between the States as an attack on democracy expressed in the choice of secession; Loving v. Virginia, striking down laws criminalizing interracial marriages as an attack on democracy; Griswold v. Connecticut, protecting the right of couples to use contraception if they choose, and other cases protecting the privacy of individual choices in the bedroom and elsewhere, all as attacks on democracy.

Tyranny is the arbitrary and capricious enforcement of the will of the ruler on the people by any means. Tyrants have always had their “philosophers,” like the sophists of ancient Greece. The function of sophistry is to make falsehood masquerade as truth. The Founders, in framing the American Constitution, did not set out to protect democracy, they set out to safeguard liberty while building a strong nation. Their greatest fear was the triumph of tyranny.

As Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” And if angels were to govern, we would not need constitutions and Supreme Courts. So the Founders set out to create a republic, but not just any republic, a democratic republic, because the roots of legitimacy for governance have to be found in the individual. Not in the democratic mass, the “tyranny of the majority,” but in the fundamental worth of each and every individual.

The Supreme Court, notwithstanding Mr. Yoo’s distaste for the messy diversity of life, has once again risen to the task of fulfilling its highest purpose: the protection of the dignity and value of each and every individual, without which there can be no true democracy and no true justice. Autonomous individuals are the building blocks of democracy. Without them, there is no democracy, just a collective, run by a tyrant.

John Yoo is a philosopher for tyranny, a sophist whose only use for democracy is to invoke its name in furtherance of oppression, to brandish its mantle as an excuse to trample on the rights, freedom and dignity of some, to hold himself up by ruthlessly and senselessly pushing others down.

There really is nothing worse than brilliant use of the written and spoken word to evil ends, and Mr. Yoo is a master of that. The Tribune should not allow its pages to be defiled with such trash.

Stephen C. Woodruff
Via email

0 thoughts on “Nothing worse

  1. Speaking of being appalled, I find it hard to accept your role as moral arbiter and expert determiner of who speaks for or against tyranny, Woodruff. Your qualifications for that would be what? That you are so upright personally that you’ve been disbarred in the CNMI? That you have a typewriter and happen disagree with Yoo’s opinion in the op-ed cited? Other? Please, pray tell what?

    Rather than self righteous moral indignation and a call for censorship, Woodruff, why not just give your opinion and move on?

    1. Actually, there are a couple more questions for you, Skywalker:

      Doubtless Woodruff expresses “moral indignation” in his letter. But what makes it “self righteous”? Just that he dares to have an opinion? Or that he disagrees with you? That he dare criticize one of your idols?

      Perhaps the Biblical admonitions against idolatry and the golden calf and false prophets would be worth recalling.

      Where was the “call for censorship”? Woodruff has the right of freedom of speech, and he exercised it. The Tribune has freedom of the press, which means they can choose to publish or not publish whatever they wish. Censorship is the PROHIBITION of the exercise of those rights. Woodruff does not have the power to prohibit anything. Neither did he urge anyone with such a power to use it

      He simply said that the Tribune showed bad judgment in publishing John Yoo’s tripe — and he explained why he thought so. So it would appear that he did “just give [his] opinion and move on.”

      Only you have the answers, Skywalker. Now, can you explain your “logic”?

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