What Scalia was saying is that the majority has the right to decide what the minority does—but that's not the purpose of the Constitution. The majority view of any society does not need to be protected. It already has the power. The American system of law is, on its face, anyway, specifically designed to protect those with unpopular views; that's what free speech means: the freedom to say things people disagree with.
On one level we might describe Scalia as a majoritarian. He believed that the majority should have rights over the minority. The problem was that his own views were not really mainstream, any more than the Moral Majority was a majority. They just claimed to be one.
Among Scalia's triumphs of "originalism" was his decision in the landmark 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller. This led to our current problem with guns, and consecrated the viewpoint that the Second Amendment guarantees an absolute right to carry a handgun.
Scalia claimed that you can find out all you need to know from the original text, but he had to write 64 pages to say what 27 words meant. The Second Amendment reads, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
"Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command," he wrote in his decision. So we know he knows logic exists. then he threw out logic by saying that the first part of the sentence (a well regulated militia) was merely prefatory, and the real substance was in the second part (bearing arms). He "proves" this by elaborating at length on the definitions of "keep," "bear," "arms," and the phrase "bear arms." He might as well have found that the Constitution protects the right to arm bears.
In a dissent from a famous decision on abortion, he wrote, "I am sure it does not," meaning that the Constitution does not protect that right. Why not? "Because of two simple facts: (1) the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it, and (2) the longstanding traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed."
The Constitution also doesn't mention breathing, eating, or flying kites. And "longstanding traditions of American society" goes exactly contrary to the idea of "original intent." It's as close to pure hypocrisy as you can get.
When I imagine a real conservative, it's someone who practices restraint, who leaves their neighbors alone, who follows the law, and who respects the idea that everyone gets to pursue their own happiness, as long as they don't hurt others. It's someone who conserves the power of government to maintain a stable society, which means using the power of regulation to protect the people, the environment, and the interests of the nation.
I don't think that's what we got, but it's certainly what we need.
