I’m reminded of the truism in military strategy of knowing your enemy. In the arena of great policy debates, it takes the form of knowing and being able to summarize your opponent’s arguments. Don’t expect such awareness among the general public. They have neither the time nor inclination to do the homework. More commonly, they have vague analogies and precepts in their heads to help them make sense of the world. The origins of these ideas are unknown, just blindly accepted as fact, and for which they have adapted their lives around. Thus, not knowing that these fuzzy ideas have a birthdate, it’s very hard to get the electorate to reverse a notion maybe born in their childhood but one that they have grown accustomed to.
We are simply stuck with the democracy that we have.
Yesterday, Kansas voters soundly rejected Amendment 2, an attempt to remove an earlier exercise of raw judicial power when the state’s high court wrote into the Kansas constitution something that isn’t there, namely the right to abortion. “Raw judicial power”, yes!
That gets to the crux of the matter. The general public is mostly unaware that the Kansas high court was egregiously out of their lane, actually to the point of deserving impeachment and removal from office. They legislated from the bench, a habit taught to them by the Warren Court and its federal progeny.
Formerly, new rights, powers, and privileges were in the wheelhouse of our elected representatives, our legislators. If you can’t get an idea past our elected representatives, well, that’s called a democratic republic. Don’t run to black-robed jurists trained in the application of laws to make the laws for you on the fly. That’s called autocracy. Distinctions in the basic functions of government aren’t taught and, therefore, most people only have the experience of their limited experience to guide them. Our instructional and informational organs have fallen flat on their face.
As a result, relatively new ideas – new in the sense of a lifespan of only a generation or two – have an extended grip for an understandably oblivious public. They do their duty, go to the polls, and express a discomfort in reversing something whose origin and basis is mostly unknown to them.
No, don’t mistake this for popular “wisdom”. It’s always “wisdom” if your side wins. It’s “racism” or some other scapegoat if your side loses. Welcome to the airheads of The Squad and fans of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Who is to blame? Not the general public, for how can we expect them to exhibit a mental acuity that large groups have never shown before? If you have a desire to point fingers, aim them in the direction of the media and schools, or maybe the proponents for not doing the necessary groundwork.
The media and schools have been particularly derelict. Don’t expect your teacher or mediagenic news personality to patiently explain “raw judicial power”. That would require knowing the existence of the first three articles of the US Constitution. They establish three branches with their own lanes of competence: to legislate, to carry out the law, and to apply the law. Today, the appliers now legislate, ergo “raw judicial power”. How? The propagandists of the imperial courts claim the law says something that it doesn’t. Well, it doesn’t say it in clear words, they say, but the words that do exist can be stretched to cover what it doesn’t say. Got it?
For those 17-year-olds taking US History, it’s called “The Living Constitution”, and in the high school where I did the bulk of my teaching, the textbook has an entire chapter devoted to it. The “grooming” starts early.
No wonder people get attached to The Living Constitution. Yet, opinion polls consistently show disapproval of its consequences. How else can one get to racism as anti-racism from equal protection in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments? How else can one get to defund the police, no-cash bail, non-prosecution of crimes, blanket early releases from prison, and filthy, homeless, dangerous, and drug-addled streets and parks? How else can one codify in court opinions the newly minted wall of separation between gender and chromosomes? And as a result, get masturbation, new ideas for playtime, and drag queens in elementary school and public libraries? How else can sports designed for one set of chromosomes be destroyed by the forced acceptance of those with a different set? How else can we get to Obama and Biden Justice Department letters threatening Title IX actions against schools who insist on keeping distinct bathrooms for each set of chromosomes? Want your ten-year-old daughter to share a bathroom with a twelve-year-old XY “girl”? The Living Constitution folks do. The malformation of the Constitution knows no bounds.
It doesn’t stop there. Try to announce the obvious and you’ll face condemnation, maybe prosecution, disciplinary action, termination of employment, ostracism, and a life under the chronic threat of Twitter-hell. There are dire consequences for speaking truth to . . . .
If we are ever to get back to law being law, and not just an utterance of the zeitgeist, people who are cognizant of the nonsense must stand up and work to correct the miseducation coming from our educrats and telegenic poseurs. Strap on your waiters for this is going to be a long hard slog.
RogerG
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