06-30-2022, 10:38 AM
The most telling sign of how healthy a social order is that it responds to calamities appropriately. Preserving the status quo by resisting all change neglects the one sure cause of ruinous change: rottenness built into the system that first prevents any effort to reform the rot out of existence and ultimately the crippling of that society so that it can be dissolved from without. The Roman Empire is a prime example, at least in the West; it became an increasingly rigid order that kept spending more on imperial pomp while importing luxuries for its elites; meanwhile it became more oppressive to landless toilers on the elites of the giant estates In the latter decades, Roman armor and weaponry failed to keep pace with that of the barbarians. The Roman order failed because the farm laborers had no stake in preserving the system, and in the end Odoacer chose to dissolve the Empire. Pensioning off Romulus Augustulus without establishing himself as Emperor (King of Italy would be all that was possible) or setting up a puppet Emperor.
I look at the mischief that three highly-politicized, ideological nominees can do to the US Supreme Court. With the sort of thinking that nullifies the concept of stare decisis that establishes legal certainty, we may need to adopt a new legal basis of establishing basic rights. America got away with English common law as the unwritten assumptions of law that established basic rights that needed not be enumerated in the Constitution. This could include something so basic as the right to travel, let alone the assumption of a right to privacy.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. -- Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
In the last century, the conservative norm was that the federal government was to avoid centralizing power by taking away the un-enumerated rights. Such a view protected Big Business, a cornerstone of American conservatism, from facing regulation and any power of organized labor to having the right to monopolistic and predatory practices. The Right used to oppose the centralization of authority; now it supports such centralization oif power if such can enforce its will. Basic human rights can disappear in favor of corporate power, and the assault on the right to abortion could be but the first. Maybe slavery cannot be restored, but a powerful State can legalize contracts that peonize anyone in a desperate situation -- and damn the children of peonage into similar subjection.
It weas only a matter of time before a ruthless and unprincipled demagogue would appeal to mass resentments of straight, white, anti-feminist Protestants who see non-whites, non-Christians who see people not white, Christian, straight, or beholden to male white heterosexuality pass them by economically -- while promising to restore corporate power as existed no later than the pre-New Deal Era, if not the Gilded Age. In return for damning those not straight, white, male, and Christian to subjection and salving the hurt feelings of such people, Big Government would grant giant corporations the easy profits from crony capitalism with no constraints upon monopoly and the subjection of workers. In South Africa it was called Apartheid.
All sorts of mischief are possible when three of the Justices of the Supreme Court basically get crib notes from a shadowy organization that dictates what the decisions are to be. Maybe we find that the traditional protections of English common law that needed no enumeration in any Constitution or any civil code are no longer certain if the judiciary runs amok.
We may be obliged to go to something more like the continental codes inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte just to protect human rights that we assumed existed. We may need even to adopt a new Constitution that honors those rights that we used to assume and protects vulnerable people
So look at a country that ended the Second World War with practically all institutions in disgrace for a reversion to despotism, the complete destruction of civil rights and the sanctity of property, and a calamitous war that forced the dissolution of the national entity. The Grundgesetz of the German Federal Republic enumerated such rights as academic freedom/ We have at most vague phrases as "general welfare", but what constitutes the "general welfare" means very different things to shareholders (maximal profits) executives (maximal compensation) and workers (a living wage that productivity can support).
The Grundgesetz came into force in the German Federal Republic with the consent of the three Western occupying powers with the objective of preventing any restoration of anything resembling you-know-what. It includes a total ban on the criminal syndicate that ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945... I'm not sure that we need a ban on any Nazi-like Party or the KKK.
Obviously, Donald Trump is not Hitler; he is more like King George III. It is with knowledge of George III that the fledgling United States of America that the Founding Fathers established a Constitution in 1789. The Founding Fathers assumed that the populace would be wise enough to refrain from voting for callow demagogues like Donald Trump because Christian values permeated American life and because wise people would well know when to not infringe upon rights that people assumed existed. Nobody predicted the rise of great enterprises capable of corrupting the political process as now happens in America. Nobody predicted that religion could become so fanatical as to destroy civil liberties at its discretion when such civil liberties violate some standard of Holiness.
Did we really need to establish such basic rights as the right to travel, to contradict the demands of those wielding economic power, to protect the environment, to ensure sexual freedom were necessary inclusions in the Constitution? For forty-four Presidents (Grover Cleveland is President #22 and #24) such was unnecessary. We needed no Constitutional amendment to establish same-sex rights. The Supreme Court took its time, and President Barack Obama (yes, conservatives -- you may dislike his agenda but you must recognize that he handled the powers of the President as well as can be done).
Donald Trump has given us a taste of how a President can mess things up badly when the Congress of the time acquiesces because a bare majority is effectively bought and paid for. As with George III, so it must be with Donald Trump; the Bill of Rights worked to specifically prohibit the abuses as power as George III committed. As it is we have plenty of people who would be Adolf Hitler or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seeking power.
As for abortion rights -- I am satisfied that abortion be safe, legal, and rare, much like amputations.
I look at the mischief that three highly-politicized, ideological nominees can do to the US Supreme Court. With the sort of thinking that nullifies the concept of stare decisis that establishes legal certainty, we may need to adopt a new legal basis of establishing basic rights. America got away with English common law as the unwritten assumptions of law that established basic rights that needed not be enumerated in the Constitution. This could include something so basic as the right to travel, let alone the assumption of a right to privacy.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. -- Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
In the last century, the conservative norm was that the federal government was to avoid centralizing power by taking away the un-enumerated rights. Such a view protected Big Business, a cornerstone of American conservatism, from facing regulation and any power of organized labor to having the right to monopolistic and predatory practices. The Right used to oppose the centralization of authority; now it supports such centralization oif power if such can enforce its will. Basic human rights can disappear in favor of corporate power, and the assault on the right to abortion could be but the first. Maybe slavery cannot be restored, but a powerful State can legalize contracts that peonize anyone in a desperate situation -- and damn the children of peonage into similar subjection.
It weas only a matter of time before a ruthless and unprincipled demagogue would appeal to mass resentments of straight, white, anti-feminist Protestants who see non-whites, non-Christians who see people not white, Christian, straight, or beholden to male white heterosexuality pass them by economically -- while promising to restore corporate power as existed no later than the pre-New Deal Era, if not the Gilded Age. In return for damning those not straight, white, male, and Christian to subjection and salving the hurt feelings of such people, Big Government would grant giant corporations the easy profits from crony capitalism with no constraints upon monopoly and the subjection of workers. In South Africa it was called Apartheid.
All sorts of mischief are possible when three of the Justices of the Supreme Court basically get crib notes from a shadowy organization that dictates what the decisions are to be. Maybe we find that the traditional protections of English common law that needed no enumeration in any Constitution or any civil code are no longer certain if the judiciary runs amok.
We may be obliged to go to something more like the continental codes inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte just to protect human rights that we assumed existed. We may need even to adopt a new Constitution that honors those rights that we used to assume and protects vulnerable people
So look at a country that ended the Second World War with practically all institutions in disgrace for a reversion to despotism, the complete destruction of civil rights and the sanctity of property, and a calamitous war that forced the dissolution of the national entity. The Grundgesetz of the German Federal Republic enumerated such rights as academic freedom/ We have at most vague phrases as "general welfare", but what constitutes the "general welfare" means very different things to shareholders (maximal profits) executives (maximal compensation) and workers (a living wage that productivity can support).
The Grundgesetz came into force in the German Federal Republic with the consent of the three Western occupying powers with the objective of preventing any restoration of anything resembling you-know-what. It includes a total ban on the criminal syndicate that ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945... I'm not sure that we need a ban on any Nazi-like Party or the KKK.
Obviously, Donald Trump is not Hitler; he is more like King George III. It is with knowledge of George III that the fledgling United States of America that the Founding Fathers established a Constitution in 1789. The Founding Fathers assumed that the populace would be wise enough to refrain from voting for callow demagogues like Donald Trump because Christian values permeated American life and because wise people would well know when to not infringe upon rights that people assumed existed. Nobody predicted the rise of great enterprises capable of corrupting the political process as now happens in America. Nobody predicted that religion could become so fanatical as to destroy civil liberties at its discretion when such civil liberties violate some standard of Holiness.
Did we really need to establish such basic rights as the right to travel, to contradict the demands of those wielding economic power, to protect the environment, to ensure sexual freedom were necessary inclusions in the Constitution? For forty-four Presidents (Grover Cleveland is President #22 and #24) such was unnecessary. We needed no Constitutional amendment to establish same-sex rights. The Supreme Court took its time, and President Barack Obama (yes, conservatives -- you may dislike his agenda but you must recognize that he handled the powers of the President as well as can be done).
Donald Trump has given us a taste of how a President can mess things up badly when the Congress of the time acquiesces because a bare majority is effectively bought and paid for. As with George III, so it must be with Donald Trump; the Bill of Rights worked to specifically prohibit the abuses as power as George III committed. As it is we have plenty of people who would be Adolf Hitler or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seeking power.
As for abortion rights -- I am satisfied that abortion be safe, legal, and rare, much like amputations.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.