Edited to be more about the club. Does that help?

-1: The guy is 49, with a long career in the public eye and writing articles and books about his views. Who cares what he was thinking when he was aged 14-18?

@oddthinking I would think that the evolution of someone's political and activist views when they are about to be a SCOTUS justice for life is a pretty worthwhile thing to look into.

@ff524 How is it not notable and falsifiable? Clubs tend to engage in activities, publish things, get reported on in school papers, etc. Is that not provable? Or is this a matter of semantics?

@ff524 Thanks for the pointers. That would definitely be better, and I will keep that in mind for the future (for now, it has been answered fairly thoroughly so seems a bit moot).

Removed gratuitous politics from the question and restricted to the claim and facts.

@Oddthinking Hmm... Part of me agrees with you, but, on the other hand, when there's a source as widely-read as Daily Mail at least implying that a nominee for Supreme Court of the United States was literally a fascist, I tend to think that's probably worth debunking.

@reirab: The real question is he a fascist now, but that is largely a meaninglesss question. This is a terrible proxy question.

@Oddthinking this is not a proxy question, maybe the DM is implying that, but the question itself is not implying anything. It's about a fact.

@oddthinking this is not a proxy question and I would not think he'd be a respected justice if he was a fascist now. I asked the question to find out about his earlier activity, and (in the original text) to see whether the club (if it existed) was more of a joke or just misguided politics.

@Oddthinking - I'd think you'd have a stronger point if you were talking about 4-8. Yes, teenagers do stupid things. Yes, people hopefully mature. Yes, people often change viewpoints based on life experience. But the baseline values and opinions as fed to them in their home lives are often established and set by time they reach that age. People caring those values forward is probably more common that people rejecting them. Having said that, I'm pretty skeptical that any school would allow an actual club with a title like that to be sanctioned.

@odd "Who cares what he was thinking when he was aged 14-18?" Social Media. Heck, media in general. Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi soldier to a costume party, and the media went into a frenzy.

@RonJohn: "Social Media" isn't a responsive answer. The print media went into a frenzy about Prince Harry, at the time, aged 20. That's a false equivalence. The fact is someone attempted a political assassination of Gorsuch when he was going for a political role by talking about an irrelevant joke he made as a juvenile over 30 years ago, and we stooped low enough to give it oxygen, even though it was irrelevant to judging his character today given the copious better evidence available.

@Oddthinking do people claim that college students are wise, and that they make prudent choices?

@RonJohn: shrug If the answer is yes, it emphasises why Prince Harry's experience is a false equivalence. If the answer is no, it emphasizes why the claim is an empty political assassination. But it is a false dichotomy anyway.

@odd I don't think, and never implied, that there's a false dichotomy between the Gorsuch and Harry media storms.

@RonJohn: I am not sure this discussion has been productive. The false dichotomy would be to try to answer the question "do people claim that college students are wise, and that they make prudent choices?" with a yes/no answer.

Most people don't say "All college students are wise." Most people don't say "All forty-nine-year-olds are wise." They do say "You are 18 now, and you are expected to act better than a school-child." They do say "You are old enough to be tried as an adult." It is a spectrum.

@Oddthinking and yet sooo many college students do such incredibly stupid things. They are definite many unwise people that age. (The brain, after all, is still changing at that age, and the only reason 18 year olds have the right to vote is the 1960s.)

@RonJohn Cn you understand why I don't think the discussion is being productive?

Yes, many college students do incredibly stupid things. Probably at a higher rate than 49 year olds (although there are no shortage of examples of that too). Probably at a lower rate than high school students. I suspect we are agreed on that.

Which is why it is silly to use the high school antics of a 49 year old as evidence of how they would behave in the future, when the same person has a long public record that provides much more compelling evidence.

It is why it might be reasonable to be interested in a poor taste joke made by a 20 year old yesterday, but not in a poor taste joke made by a 17 year old 32 years ago.

@Oddthinking social media, and the media in general, don't care whether it was yesterday or 32 years ago, or how old you were. They just want to attack you.

And we are back to the original question I asked. Thanks for the chat. I am out.