I've looked over two of today's SCOTUS decisions. Both of them feature heavy majorities with both "conservative" and "liberal" justices; but both of them feature concurring opinions that clearly demonstrate one of the deep divisions currently present on the court.

Scalia and Thomas believe that a judge should take no notice of Congressional intent when interpreting a law, so they don't join the parts of Justice Stevens' opinion for the Court in the first case that talk about Congressional intent.

Stevens and Breyer believe that if there's a question about a statute, then it makes sense to consult what the people who wrote and passed the statute said about what they thought it meant, so they write separately to add the analysis that's missing from Justice Scalia's opinion for the Court in the second case.

One of these positions is more democratic and more sensible than the other. Guess which.

Also: Chief Justice Roberst is arguably a failure. His Court is producing extremely fractured opinions, one-paragraph concurrences, and the like; the Justices are not cooperating and are not writing collegially, with an eye to achieving consensus with their fellows, and that is one of the few responsibilities of the CJ.

Also, anyone who complains about "judicial activism" is most likely an ignorant asshole. But that's a topic for a different day.

I don't get migraines. I don't take any prescription medication. The only daily medication I take is an H2-antagonist for acid reflux, which controls it effectively, and an antihistamine during particular seasons, both OTC.

I've been to the emergency room for myself just once in my life. I barely get colds, and they rarely last more than 24 hours. I don't get the flu. I've never had food poisoning have symptoms last more than a day; I've had food poisoning that completely resolved in under two hours.

I have very mild asthma; I don't have an inhaler. If I get bronchitis, I've had it so many times it just registers as part of the asthma/allergy complex, and I certainly don't treat it as anything worth taking note of. I don't receive regular medical care for any chronic conditions.

Well, I have pretty crappy eyesight, but I've been wearing glasses every waking moment of my life since I was four, so it pretty much doesn't register. The kind of doctor I've seen more than any other is a dermatologist, because I'm prone to cherry angiomas and skin tags, which are completely harmless, if sometimes inconveniently located; no melanomas. I have rarely had atrial fibrillation, entirely due to stress, and eliminated by reducing stress; atrial fibrillation is essentially harmless.

Sometimes my back is sore in the morning. Sometimes my knuckles ache a little in the morning depending on the weather. I can walk for hours, several days in a row (but I can only walk up hills in short bursts). I should exercise and lose 40 pounds, but so far the weight hasn't cost me anything medically.

So there you go. By any reasonable standards, I'm thoroughly healthy. I don't have to make plans taking my health into account, or worry that I'll have to cancel anything because of a flare-up. I don't have to worry about running out of endurance or carrying my inhaler or my pills. I don't have to wake up and worry about whether I'll be able to function today.

The ability to conduct my life without those constraints is the essence of privilege, at least in the sociological sense. Because of my good health, things are just easier for me than they are for someone who does have a health condition.

I have other privileges; heck, in America, I may have them all: White, straight, male, healthy. Decent education, decent income, decent family, decent social network. Native born. Taller than average. I even have Christian privilege, since I'm Catholic (leaving aside being an atheist).

Having privilege isn't immoral per se; most of the conditions that give rise to it are inborn, and it's difficult to argue that an inborn condition could be inherently immoral. But privilege can give rise to immoral behavior; it is a moral hazard.

The first problem is that it's often very difficult to recognize that you have a particular privilege. As a human, you're very sensitive to noticing when you're denied something. It's harder to notice when you get it for free, and hard to notice that other people don't, and even if you notice it, it's very easy to believe that you deserve it.

I didn't know I had health privilege until I had a good friend who didn't, and even then, I didn't really notice on my own and had to get slapped upside the head for being an asshole. Same for most of the other privileges; I'm kinda slow, I'm kind of an asshole, and I'm pretty selfish.

Not recognizing your own privilege sometimes means that you're condescending or rude to people who don't share it. One of the most common incarnations of male privilege is seizing control of female conversations; a man comes charging into a comment thread, giving instructions on how to solve the issue, or raising an analogous male issue and expecting it to be given equal status or even priority.

The second problem is that everybody with privilege has a voice inside their head telling them that other people don't have it because they're failures. Like health. Since I, by definition, am normal, all you people who are sick all the time or whining about their migraines or panicking at the specter of bronchitis, you're all just pussies.

Marriage is for a man and a woman. She deserved to get raped. He's an illegal, so it doesn't matter if he gets mugged. I'd hire him, but he just wouldn't fit our office. I'm not privileged, I worked hard to get into that prestigious university and where I am today. You're just not trying hard enough.

That's the voice of privilege. That's the chief moral hazard of privilege: Justifying your advantages by believing that everyone else's failures are their own faults.