Trashing the Constitution
One of the problems with discussing Dobbs with anyone on the left is that it was decided on the grounds of what’s in the Constitution and what is not. Why would that be a problem? Simply because the left is not interested in assigning any value to the Constitution except when it serves their purposes. So any argument defending Dobbs on constitutional grounds is akin to defending it with reference to something outdated and outworn, like phlogiston.
Commenter “TommyJay” quotes sports guy David Portnoy as saying something similar. But Portnoy himself actually isn’t on the left; he’s more of a libertarian iconoclast. However, what he says here about the Constitution is something the left has been pushing and embracing for years:
“At what point do you look at the Constitution and say, hey this was written by people who had slaves, and maybe not everything is exactly to a tee in the Constitution,” Portnoy bloviated. “Like a million years from now you’re going to use the Constitution as a document written in… it’s just nuts, in what world. The world evolves, people evolve, technology evolves. You gotta evolve.”…
“The left f*cking hates me. The woke left, the liberals, they’re crazy. They’re insane people. Yet, I end up having to vote for a moron like Biden because the right is going to put Supreme Court people in who are just ruining this country, taking basic rights away,” he insisted.
That’s how someone who seems to hate the left becomes a useful idiot himself in service of it.
When I say that views like that have been pushed by the left for many years, I mean it. I probably could find something similar even earlier if I looked carefully, but the most prominent statement of the sort is something I remember writing about almost ten years ago on this blog. Here’s an excerpt from the post:
Yesterday there was a big brouhaha over an op-ed of Louis Michael Seidman’s that appeared in the New York Times.
It was the type of piece that, on first reading, appears to be some sort of ironic Onion-esque parody—but sadly, it’s not. It’s also the sort of thing you’d expect from a leftist college student with no knowledge of history and no understanding of the Constitution.
But author Seidman is a well-known professor of constitutional law at Georgetown, one of the most elite law schools in the nation…
Read the whole thing if you can stomach it, just for the flavor, and the exposure to the strangely tortured logic (and lack of historical accuracy) of this particular law professor. Seidman not only shows a lack of knowledge (actual? or strategic?) of the true position of most of the Founders regarding slavery, he also expresses the typical leftist position that we should throw away the wisdom of the past (wisdom? how can that be; they’re just a bunch of propertied white guys—just like Seidman, by the way) because we want to do something, and that pesky old white-guy document stands in our way.
At the time Seidman’s piece was written in late 2012, it seemed at least somewhat shocking that it had been published in the Times, because it seemed to be advocating somewhat of an outlier position – at least in terms of public statements as opposed to things only discussed in the bosom of inner leftist circles. Now it’s positively a mainstream view, because the left has managed to shift that Overton window considerably in the decade since.
The last paragraph of my post about Seidman’s op-ed was this:
As for why the Times decided to publish this piece right now, one can only conclude they see the time as ripe for delegitimizing the Constitution in order to further the leftist agenda, and seek to use Seidman’s credentials to make the argument from authority. The ground has been well prepared for this by our president, the MSM, and our educational system, so their calculations may indeed be correct.
[NOTE: That post of mine on Seidman’s article got me a ten-minute-ish gig on The Michael Savage Show, of all places. I managed to save the audio and you can listen to it here:
The interview was done is an interesting way. An assistant of his called me and read me the questions, and I answered while he recorded me. Then later they must have patched in Savage’s reading the questions. I never spoke to Savage himself.]
So Portnoy’s complaint is we are trying to follow the Constitution? Has he considered that if not then anything goes?
“From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be”
Al Stewart Nostradamus
Elie Mystal (he of the bizarre hair and the abrasive manner) has stated his belief that the Constitution is, in fact, “trash”. His new (and worthless) book has been showered with almost unanimous praise on Amazon, although his credentials to discuss historical and legal matters are no more impressive than those of Nikole Hannah-Jones, who also happens to possess an outlandish coiffure. Both, of course, are highly-paid and much-lionized race-baiting grifters of the worst sort, but few indeed are willing to attack their ludicrous ideas from the most abject fear of “cancellation”.
It goes back even further than that. The reason the constitution is more relevant than ever is because the Founders understood human nature. Technocrats focus on scientific change, etc., but the human nature surrounding one person’s desire to lord over another hasn’t changed one bit.
Funny who took similar positions at the height of the Soviet Union…
From “The Naked Communist” by Clive Skousen, read into the Congressional Record in 1963 as 45 Communist Goals for America: “29 – Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. 30 – Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man.”
Nice to hear your voice behind that apple.
I think it’s a generation steeped in education at Marxists Seminaries.
No one is explaining how a free society works. I am all but finished Richard Pipes Russian Revolution and it goes through how a whole society gets sucked into being controlled by academics who have lots of miss construed theories but are going to run everything based on those .
If the Constitution is thrown out, then so is Roe vs Wade. That is what it was based on.
Roe was overturned because Trump didn’t have to be conciliatory about his Supreme Court picks — because the Democrats had chosen to trash that previous policy themselves.
Getting rid of the primacy of the Constitution would greatly increase state rights, because the laws of the state would take precedence.
As usual, in their haste to trash anything they don’t like, the Left will make it worse for themselves.
What happened to your voice between the ages of ? and 64?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFftPDNvh5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmRENWUDpks (start at 1:23)
This is what New York sounds like.
Art Deco:
I explained it all in this post from 2010.
Remind me again, didn’t we see something like this in central and south America? I mean the idea that you just ignore what the constitution says in places such as Honduras and Bolivia. As I remember it both had clauses to prevent dictator for life issues and ended up with coups when they tried to ignore it and the courts signed off on it. My worry is that we’d have something like that here and who knows how bloody that would turn out.
What a Saturday treat, neo speaks from behind the apple!
Michael Savage, meh. Mostly he’s about outrage and pushing buttons IMO.
IIRC neo posted another audio clip with Dr. Sanity at one time. I don’t recall what that conversation was about.
When I was in grade school (back in the Dark Ages, I know), we were taught that there is a reason why the oldest warship still afloat was named after the Constitution: durability in service to our country.
Long may the document and its namesake sail on– and lest we forget what happened 210 years ago this coming August: https://www.nps.gov/bost/learn/historyculture/ussconst.htm
Topical?
https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/06/25/the-decision-to-overturn-roe-shows-that-chief-justice-john-roberts-has-lost-the-confidence-of-the-courts-conservative-majority-n584096
The left has faced a problem (since 1933 if not earlier) that it has important objects in conflict with constitutional provisions. Instead of acknowledging that and attempting to work within constitutional procedure, it responded with systematic sophistry. In the first instance, sophistry was employed to legitimize acts of Congress and the issue of federal regulatory agencies. In the second, it was employed to debar exercises of discretion by elected officials in state capitals and in localities. The left was assisted in these objects by the cultural chasm which separates the appellate judiciary and the law professoriate on the one hand from the rest of the country on the other. The constitution did not exist as a law to be understood to regulate the discretion of public officials, but as an icon, as a rhetorical thrust, and as an excuse.
Over time, their opponents developed a counter current and were now and again successful in placing their nominees on the bench so the counter-current found a voice in judicial opinions (now and again). So, some of the sophistry which commanded we do what they want and which removed the impediments to them doing what they want was peeled away. And the response was not to use proper procedures to change the constitution, but instead to trash the courts for thwarting them.
In fact, everything the left does nowadays reflects a contempt for procedural values, a contempt for their opposition. Import large numbers of foreigners to build an electoral base, employ widespread vote fraud, get rulings from Hawaiian judges, use every bit of influence you have to turn public education and the media into your personal sandboxes, &c. At the same time, the content of their viewpoint is ever more bereft of actual policy goals with minimally disinterested objects. Policy is designed today to injure social strata they despise, full stop.
We are not seeing, in the culture of succeeding generations, any bottom. You might have thought Gen X administrators, drawn from cohorts which voted starboard in their youth, might be more circumspect and sensible than people older, but it appears that the social processes which generate elites didn’t take Gen X of the modal type. Gen X managers are the worst ever and Millennial managers will be drawn from cohorts in which the mass of youth was disoriented and strange in ways young Gen X were not. And it appears the post-Millennial cohorts are liberally salted with frank head cases. This will not end well.
When the constitution is trashed, we have no rights and no protections from the abuse and persecution of the powerful. The left is advocating harnessing the violence of political power to force obedience by the citizenry.
The evil inherent in this should be readily apparent to all. Once upon a time it was. I graduated law school in 1981. I can’t imagine even the most liberal of my classmates at the time being comfortable with this kind of strong-arm, authoritarian use of naked power.
om:
I don’t think Roberts ever really had the confidence of the Court’s conservatives. Certainly not all of them. He often went a different way and they did not follow. Now there are more of them, so they can determine outcomes and he doesn’t have as much power as a sometimes swing vote.
om:
Yeah, I’m not really a natural for Savage’s program.
My guess is that most of the left can be found stating lots of contradictory views about the constitution. It would be nice if someone could choose some of these people and compile a list of such quotes.
I haven’t a visceral understanding of your personal odyssey. I grew up in an area where the local accent is not aesthetically charming (hear, again, the lady prosecutor in that video, who provides a sample). For whatever reason, I was not razzed for it when living out of area and I’ve never had the slightest motivation to lose it.
That is what it was based on.
No, it was a naked exercise in the appellate judge’s ukase, based on nothing but the will of those issuing it.
Getting rid of the primacy of the Constitution would greatly increase state rights,
It wouldn’t. It would remove constraints on the Merrick Garland’s of this world.
savage lives in san francisco, for reasons unclear, eventually even trump didn’t satisfy enough for one reason or another,
a scorpion stings, that’s in their nation, those who empower like the notorious 14 have done on a fundamental point, well thats a fish of a different color
the original constitution sans the bill of rights had a very unitary executive view, because diffuse authority was the problem in the articles, although the legislative is the first branch, remembering the problem of King George,
No one is explaining how a free society works.
It doesn’t need a whole lot of explanation. What we’re suffering from is that various fractions of the bourgeoisie – august and scruffy – have contempt for the rest of us and are in the business of injuring us at every opportunity (and trashing our ancestors as well). We’re also suffering from a reality that concerned students of social life in the 1950s – the abnormal other-directedness of much of the bourgeoisie, the business types in particular. I’m not understanding what makes people who have a business to run, who can consult income statements and balance sheets to understand the health of that business, and who have spent decades being promoted within the ranks and learning being jerked around by HR, jerked around by corporate communications, and jerked around by petitioning nosepickers at lower levels of their own organization. Does not compute.
I was watching an interview with Alan Dersowitz, where he called yesterday’s decision “unconstitutional”, but it must have been someone else. I did find the interview, but he never characterized it that way. The point he made was the case brought didn’t require the court to overturn Roe, but only to affirm that states had the right to set limits on abortion, which is what Roberts had proposed. He did say eventually the court would have overturned Roe when the right case came before them.
Here’s the interview on Newmax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KHCGZTUYzY
https://www.commonsense.news/p/they-questioned-gender-affirming
You know, people who come out of teachers’ colleges these days are very commonly sick-o. The question is what we do about all these sick-o people who want access to everyone’s children.
it was decided on the grounds of what’s in the Constitution and what is not
That’s because our glorious newspapers are bemoaning the loss of the ‘constitutional right to abortion’ bestowed by the Roe v. Wade decision, and now ‘obliterated’. It results in mass bamboozlement instead of public understanding of the Constitution, and I believe the MSM wants it that way.
@ Chester Draws
Getting rid of the primacy of the Constitution would greatly increase state rights, because the laws of the state would take precedence.
You wouldn’t think that those who get rid of the Constitution wouldn’t replace it with some domineering document which created a top-down autocracy in Washington DC which would trump all those troublesome States, would you?
I love the phlogiston reference. For physicists, the “ether” was a blind alley for some time. And Neo speaks! Amazing.
Today I mentioned the point that the Constitution can be amended, just as Neo had 9 or 10 years ago. That speaks to how obvious the point is, I suppose. It’s just too cumbersome for effective mob rule.
stan,
“When the constitution is trashed, we have no rights and no protections from the abuse and persecution of the powerful.
I subscribe to the proposition that our inalienable rights have been granted to us by our Creator. Trashing the Constitution cannot cancel what stands above the Constitution, which is simply a formal recognition of our inalienable rights.
But it may well require defending them from revocation with arms.
That natural right to if necessary armed defense of our “self-evident” rights is ultimately our protection from the abuse and persecution of those who would deny our inherent and thus inalienable rights.
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of ‘playing with fire’ by people who don’t even know that fire is hot…” George Orwell
truly, the rights are not granted by the document, but are to be enforced by them, which leads to the Lord Acton problem, ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this regime had arrogated to itself, power over aspect of human affairs, those taking the ‘blue pill’ do not fully understand this, seeing this as a typically errant variation of what has gone before, but in truth, this nation is on life support, thats why the possums unwarranted grant of authority, is so dangerous,
Michael Savage is a complicated guy. He has a degree in botany and back in the day he lived in North Beach (San Francisco) and hung out with Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, arguably the two most famous beatnik poets. According to wiki Savage aspired to be a comic in the Lenny Bruce mold.
As I periodically mention, the beatnik-hippie movement wasn’t entirely brainwashed by the hard left.
Denigrating the Constitution goes back to the Progressives of the early 20th century. (see, e.g., the Beards’ “Economic Interpretation of the Constitution”) Woodrow Wilson and others saw it as an impediment to their enlightened agenda even back then.
So Portnoy thinks Republicans are “taking basic rights away.” Where does he find these basic rights, if he hates the Constitution?
“Phlogiston.”
I absolutely love that word!
“Portnoy’s complaint?!”
That’s pretty funny, Chases Eagles!
Woodrow Wilson and others saw it as an impediment to their enlightened agenda even back then.
True. Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” (2008) was quite enlightening on that score–however far Goldberg may have fallen since.
___________________________________
In the greatest hoax of modern history, Russia’s ruling “socialist workers party,” the Communists, established themselves as the polar opposites of their two socialist clones, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (quicknamed “the Nazis”) and Italy’s Marxist-inspired Fascisti, by branding both as “the fascists.” Jonah Goldberg is the first historian to detail the havoc this spin of all spins has played upon Western thought for the past seventy-five years, very much including the present moment. Love it or loathe it, Liberal Fascism is a book of intellectual history you won’t be able to put down—in either sense of the term.
—Tom Wolfe
Regarding Art Deco’s comment on your accent, or lack thereof, and the link to your post on the topic, I had the same initial reaction when I listened to the Savage clip posted here. It is a rather accentless accent (which neo states was her goal), but I senses a twinge of Virginia or maybe even a very subtle North Carolina in neo’s voice. Did any of neo’s University experiences transpire in one of those states?
What’s also odd is neo has posted the Savage clip before and I have listened to it before, yet I remembered her accent being a New York accent from my prior listening.
Odd.
stan @ 5:51pm nails it!
People should understand that we have two choices; either the individual is sovereign or men and women are to be governed. Whether you think the Founders nailed self-governance with the Constitution, or it needs to be Amended to better encapsulate and protect that concept, the only other choice is a slide (gradual or quickly) into servitude.
Mr. Dave Portnoy would do well to contemplate the words of Sam Adams:
As a freeman in a free nation Dave Portnoy is free to use his substantial personal wealth to assist women seeking abortions. He is not free to force me to fund his schemes. And I am confident Dave Portnoy prefers to not have me dictate how he should spend his money, or live his life.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Nope, I have no connection to those places. Nor do I think I consciously adopted the accents of the places where I did attend college. I believe what I came up with was pretty much this.
As for your earlier perception that I had a New York accent, I’m stumped – except perhaps you were confusing me with Michael Savage 🙂 ? He grew up and lived his early adulthood in NY and has a New York accent, at least to my ear.
Every individual is certain that he or she should be free.
Many also want to dictate what their countrymen and women do with their freedom.
Odd that folks think those two things can be reconciled.
neo,
I’m stumped too. It had to be at least 5 years ago when I heard your Savage clip so my only guess is reading you write about your New York childhood so much in the ensuing years imbued my mind’s ear with a New York accent in the narration I read?
I’ve written about it before, but I underwent a very similar transformation, although mine was not conscious. I had a comically stereotypical Chicago accent. Even Chicagoans singled me out as a near parody of the accent. At 22 I moved to Texas and was often teased because of my accent. I made no conscious effort to change, but within a few years my Chicago accent disappeared and now I have a very, midwestern, newscaster accent. If I’m visiting Chicago or talking to old friends some of the accent can creep back in, but most folks now assume I grew up in Kansas or Iowa. Although I did swap out “y’all” for “you’se” while in Texas and that remains.
huxley,
I read, “Liberal Fascism” and enjoyed much of Jonah’s recounting of history and his argument for his central thesis. However, it seemed to lack an Editor. It almost seemed to be written backwards. He made his argument rather persuasively early on and then just kept beating the same drum. I think it would have held up better over time if it were more like a textbook; a history of fascism that correlates the movement with Liberalism at the end.
Regarding accents,
I’ve met a lot of non-native English speakers who have thick accents but I’ve encountered a few who speak accent free English. Those folks told me, like neo, they made a very conscious effort over time to perfect their pronunciation. They did many, many drills on consonants, vowels, clusters…
I guess we see actors and actresses do this often, so it should be no surprise humans can do it. What’s more interesting is that so many can live in a region for many years without picking up the local accent, or move to a foreign land and retain a thick accent.
Of course there is a flippant rejoinder to all of this:
‘Okay, you’re right. The Constitution is archaic and of minimal value. Let’s ‘evolve’! Specifically, on January 6, 2021, Mike Pence should have ignored any Constitutional duties and rejected all the electors from the states Trump disputed.
After all, it was after his ‘careful study’ that the President reached a ‘considered judgment’ that a particular course of action (rejecting the electors from the disputed states) was ‘best for the country’. QED
Be sure to stay at arm’s length if you make that argument to anyone on the left.
But seriously, come on! Everyone on the right knows people like Seidman are completely disingenuous. ‘The constitution for me, but not for thee!’ He’s a knave, and the many other knaves on the left are well aware and very much approve. What is exasperating is that there are still fools (in 2013 and today) who take this disingenuous drivel at face value.
I read, “Liberal Fascism” and enjoyed much of Jonah’s recounting of history and his argument for his central thesis. However, it seemed to lack an Editor. It almost seemed to be written backwards. He made his argument rather persuasively early on and then just kept beating the same drum. I think it would have held up better over time if it were more like a textbook; a history of fascism that correlates the movement with Liberalism at the end.
Rufus:
Perhaps. I would argue that if it had been more like a textbook, it would never have become a book to criticize.
Goldberg, despite Wolfe’s puff, is not a historian. He majored in political science and he is basically a conservative nerd-boy made good. Through connections and cleverness he made it to National Review. “Liberal Fascism” was his first book and a huge stretch for him. He wasn’t writing a textbook. He was trying to get it down as best he could.
The book was accessible and it worked. I had never seen that information consolidated anywhere else in one place. I gave a copy to an old leftist commune friend and even he was impressed.
Portnoy’s usually a clever guy, but he doesn’t understand that saying that the Constitution has to evolve while asserting that there are such things as “basic rights” is mutually contradictory. Can basic rights evolve? It seems to me that Portnoy is arguing against absolute, unchanging values, while claiming some of those values are fundamental. Maybe Dave should stick to sports.
Also, why do so many women want to kill babies?
Also, why do so many women want to kill babies?
Johann Amadeus Metesky:
I’d say it’s a little more complicated than that.
However, it is interesting to note that the abortion rate has been declining overall since 1980 for whatever reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States
Jimbo: “The reason the constitution is more relevant than ever is because the Founders understood human nature. Technocrats focus on scientific change, etc., but the human nature surrounding one person’s desire to lord over another hasn’t changed one bit.”
This!
They hate the Constitution because it stands in their way on the road to the shining lie of a Marxist paradise.
The Fonders knew human nature and tried to craft a government that would prevent a slide into tyranny. It’s what stands between us and a life in any number of Marxist Banana Republics.
Someone who experienced fascism up close in argentina montes bradley sr was much impressed by liberal fascism his follow up that was tediously topical stealing a title from james burnham was less so
@ Jimbo > “30 – Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man.”
@ AF Jag > “Denigrating the Constitution goes back to the Progressives of the early 20th century. (see, e.g., the Beards’ “Economic Interpretation of the Constitution”)”
That was the connection I saw immediately, having read Beard in a graduate PoliSci class.
This is still the charge that the Democrats use to smear Republicans, although the Ds are now the party of oligarchic elites (and arguably always have been, just different oligarchs than those of the GOP) and the Rs are starting to gain traction with the bourgeoisie that used to be the (alleged, never genuine) concern of the Left.
Orwell was an outlier among early socialists because he really DID care about the poor and working classes; however, he eventually learned that the rest of the party really did not.
@ PA Cat > “When I was in grade school (back in the Dark Ages, I know)”
Sometimes old is not so bad.
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-17-at-9.47.21-AM.png?resize=768%2C1152&ssl=1
@ Brian E > “The point he made was the case brought didn’t require the court to overturn Roe, but only to affirm that states had the right to set limits on abortion, which is what Roberts had proposed. He did say eventually the court would have overturned Roe when the right case came before them.”
From the Court’s decision (p. 72):
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
I recommend reading the entire section — it makes abundantly clear, as om’s link suggested, “that-chief-justice-john-roberts-has-lost-the-confidence-of-the-courts-conservative-majority”; the relevant part for this point is at the end:
The very best post, as usual now, is from the Babylon Bee.
Neo is quite right: “Satire is best when it’s closest to the absurd truth.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/roe-v-wade-aborted-in-198th-trimester
“Orwell was an outlier among early socialists because he really DID care about the poor and working classes; however, he eventually learned that the rest of the party really did not.”
But it was his experience in Catalonia that was the eye-opener.
As an anarchist sympathizer fighting to defend the Republic, he witnessed Soviet-style “socialism” (for the common good, of course) up close and personal—wherein all its absurd and deadly contradictions were revealed and unraveled—and almost didn’t live to tell the tale….
That’s exactly what’s undermining the “American experiment”—the disregard for the constitution and of course also the American founders. The Left knows that if they take that away they’re basically taking away the country as we know it, all the better to start fresh with the ideology already taking over our institutions. Our constitution, that set of ideas for ordering our society, is what holds us together. It’s really all we have, it’s the basis for our loyalty to the country. No wonder anyone who says so is suspect as a possible domestic terrorist.
And thanks, Geoffrey Brittain, for the Orwell quote I hadn’t seen before:
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of ‘playing with fire’ by people who don’t even know that fire is hot…” And we see it every day.
Sarah Hoyt had an interesting take on Dobbs, especially considering the early attempts to get “Biden is the new FDR” trending.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/06/25/wrecking-ball/
Rufus, if you are still following this thread, the Savage clip really doesn’t do justice to Neo with regard to her voice. I first found her via the podcasts she did with Dr Sanity (hope she is OK as she disappeared) and another fellow whom I can’t remember his name. If Neo has some links to archives of those podcasts they would be much better quality in terms of sound.
Dave Portnoy doesn’t need to read Samuel Adams as much as he needs to read Calvin Coolidge, specifically that President’s remarks on the occasion of this country’s sesquicentennial.
More specifically:
“About the Declaration, there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
Talking about the age of a document, when we still reference the Magna Carta, the Koran, the New Testament, the Old Testament, and study the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid and such is not a great argument against the value of an important writing that is ‘more than 2 centuries old written by dead guys who weren’t perfect.’
Thanks, physicsguy. I did an Internet search and found a link to one from January, 2007, but the podcast seems to have disappeared. Also searched for it on Dr. Sanity’s blog, but it doesn’t seem to be there either.
Dr. Sanity stopped updating her blog in 2012. It was interesting scrolling through the site and seeing how much of it was still spot on relevant to the Biden Administration.
Some great comments here. Thanks to all! A slight nit that I raised in a comment a few days ago:
The Constitution does not “guarantee our rights.” The Constitution is an attempt to instruct those we elect in how to not attempt to usurp our rights. But even if they attempt to usurp* them they cannot negate, eliminate or remove them. Our Natural Rights exist separate from the Constitution or any government instituted by men.
All men and women on Earth share those rights, no matter the nature of their local government.
Selfish people are constantly trying to gain power over others, and through the threat of force inflict their will upon them. Their fascist actions can never change the truth that they have no dominion over mankind.
*And they try. Oh, how they try!
The Constitution mitigated the progress of slavery and diversity [dogma]. The Constitution mitigates progress for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. That’s one less baby aborted, one giant leap for humankind.
That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception, a woman, and man, have four choices, and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation. The wicked solution is neither a good nor exclusive choice.
Here’s the basic truth: Most people simply assume the society/social order they’re born into is “just the way things are.” They have absolutely ZERO understanding of how their society functions, why it works that way, and what was done to make it all possible. For example, even university-level political science professors can be completely ignorant of how eliminating the electoral college would dramatically alter the entire political culture of the U.S.
And we’re also seeing the hangover of the “inevitable Democratic majority” tripe that’s been a big thing on the Left since the early 2000s. If you assume the majority will always agree with you on everything, why not get rid of the Constitution or any mediating institution standing in your way?
Mike
even university-level political science professors can be completely ignorant of how eliminating the electoral college would dramatically alter the entire political culture of the U.S.
Because it wouldn’t. The utility of the electoral college is that it is congruent with leaving administration of elections at the state level and limits the effect of Democratic vote fraud to the state in which it occurs.
They have absolutely ZERO understanding of how their society functions, why it works that way, and what was done to make it all possible.
It’s a reasonable inference they understand very well those parts of it for which they are responsible and (to a degree) those parts which have an impact on their daily life.
Also, why do so many women want to kill babies?
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Sarah Hoyt had an interesting take on Dobbs,
Overstated.
Through connections and cleverness he made it to National Review.
IIRC, he was out of work and broke in 1998. He’d attempted over the previous seven years to make a career producing documentaries and he’d had some sinecure at AEI at one point. NR had no digital platform at the time and he had some webmaster skills and the right politics. His wife has worked in corporate communications and the like for decades, but has no LinkedIn profile for whatever reason. National Review has a history of paying scandalous salaries to some of its employees and he benefited from that grift no doubt. He and his wife have one might guess come into some money in the intervening years as they are sitting on a pricey piece of real estate oddly large for a married couple with one college-age child. (His father-in-law was one of this world’s extraordinary men. I don’t believe Mrs. Goldberg ever worked in any of his businesses, but she may own a piece of them; you can read about the late Mr. Gavora here https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsminer/name/v-paul-gavora-obituary?id=16779262)
“Because it wouldn’t.”
Yes, it would. Eliminating the Electoral College would essentially make half or more of the states almost completely superfluous at the Presidential level because you simply couldn’t win them OR lose them by a big enough margin to make a difference to a national popular vote. The Founding Fathers didn’t come up with the Electoral College because it was “congruent.” It was part of ensuring the federal government was truly a national government and not a handmaiden of regional power.
Thanks for proving my point.
“It’s a reasonable inference they understand very well those parts of it for which they are responsible and (to a degree) those parts which have an impact on their daily life.”
That would be reasonable for a naive six-year-old. Look no further than the American political establishment which has now spent years trashing political norms and traditions out of hatred of Donald Trump, ultimately damaging its own standing and authority. Or that you have to try and infer understanding instead of being able to point to a clear example of it in the real world.
Mike
That would be reasonable for a naive six-year-old.
No, it’s perfectly normal for an ordinary adult.
Look no further than the American political establishment which has now spent years trashing political norms and traditions out of hatred of Donald Trump,
The problem there is not one of knowledge, but of ethics and morals.
Eliminating the Electoral College would essentially make half or more of the states almost completely superfluous at the Presidential level because you simply couldn’t win them OR lose them by a big enough margin to make a difference to a national popular vote.
Which is a nonsense statement in a national popular vote regime. Eliminating the electoral college introduces novel problems in the task of electing a president. It does not affect culture.
“…ultimately damaging its own standing and authority….”
Yes, but since they thought that their conspiracies would NEVER be discovered, they believed they would NEVER have to pay a price for it.
We’re talking:
Weaponizing the IRS
“Shock and Awe”
“Russiagate”
The Iran “Deal”
And the grand bouffe: Nov. 2020
Bidenflation
Supply chain fiasco
Energy shortage, etc.
(Along with all those other more minor pieces de resistances (tampons? baby formula?) along the way…)
As it is, some of their conspiracies HAVE been discovered, or partially so—but these have been effectively covered up by the corrupt media, who (after all), if not co-conspirators, colluded with them all the way—and as such, the Democrats up until this point, have not really had to pay any price at all.
So they just keep truckin’ on with the next outrage. And the next. And the next.
(I think the official term is “positive reinforcement”…or at the very least ZERO negative reinforcement…)
It IS a bit more difficult to “cover up” hyper-inflation” but they’re doing their very best tried and true dancing monkey routine, redirecting blame, distracting attention, letting rip absurd denials again and again and flat out LYING day in and day out.
But why should they stop? Since they will NEVER have to pay the price…
(At least so they think. That is, so they are firmly convinced.)
And should they achieve the total power they crave, the total dominance they’ve been aiming for—and which they’re certain they WILL achieve—that WILL ensure that they were right.
Palestinian rules, like turtles, all the way down.
no it means you only have to win new york california new jersey, perhaps a few others, the rest of the country can go hang
The abortion question gets tangled up in medical practice and political fantasies. I support ” abortion on demand” since I see no way to separate “medical necessity” from “convenience”. The mother must survive. I see no need of Constitutional hocus-pocus when it comes to medical treatment. The “Spremes” were just a cheap variety show.
Context: My late wife all but died during her third delivery. “Never get pregnant.” “OK. Tie my tubes.” No hospital would sanction the procedure since, “You might want to have more children.” We were “careful”, but she reacted horribly to hormonal birth control and had erratic periods, so we would never be able to determine a possible date of conception. Thus pregnancy would be a likely death sentence. The problem was resolved when uncontrollable bleeding necessitated a hysterectomy. About ten years ago, in Ireland, Ms. Savita Halapanavar (Sp?) was allowed to bleed to death since the doctors couldn’t be “sure” that she wasn’t pregnant. (I’d still be in prison.)
After my late wife’s surgery, friends wanted a second child. The woman had several miscarriages with dangerous preeclampsia. A physician was “sure” that he could bring a pregnancy to term but would not do an emergency abortion if he failed. Our friends had to pay “out of pocket” to have a second physician on stand-by.
I can’t think of a way to define a “medically necessary” .abortion that would prevent the abuse of “convenience” abortions that make so many people irrational. I can’t conceive of any timeline, heart beat regulations, etc. that would cover the situations that I have encountered. Terms like “Emergency” are medically vague. Who is to decide when preeclampsia is at an emergency stage? The damage to eyes and brain that can result from pregnancy-related blood pressure surges are grotesque.
Hence unrestricted abortion “on demand”. I want a physician focused on the patient, and not looking over his shoulder at what a jury may think. A physician trains for years, and practices to get experience. The jury gets free lunch.
Abortion will be “abused”. The physician is more important to me and mine.
Gosnell. Planned Parenthood and the Ferrari funding plan. Follow the money. Margaret Sanger and Eugenics. I can’t think of any reasons.
Any other cheap variety shows or scripts come to mind?