Yascha, I'm disappointed with your take on the Colorado Supreme Court case at the lead-in to the December 23 Good Fight podcast.
If we take George Washington at his word in his Farewell Address -- and I for one certainly do -- then the objective of the American Revolution, what in fact made it a "Revolution" at all, was the establishment and extension of Liberty, in the Enlightenment sense summarized in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man as the individual's right to, "[do] anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law." The Constitution was established to institutionalize that objective of Liberty under law, and to continue to extend it. Democracy was not and is not an additional objective, it's an instrument to achieve and protect THE objective, Liberty. When Democracy supports and fortifies Liberty, it can and should be extended; when it threatens it, it should be limited. Liberty, not Democracy, is all. The people under our system have NO democratic right to abolish their own Liberty.
The Constitution is not a list of suggestions, nor is it an Enlightenment Sibylline Books, written in riddles and prophecies. It is law, written to be read as law, and to be enforced as law. If 40% of the population objects to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, that should be irrelevant: as Washington says, it's the law and binding on all, until the People change it in the method to amend it that they've established. There is no way that the Constitution can save us from demagogues, if we're willing to abandon it without resistance the first time we're threatened by a demagogue with a following.
You and I both know that a fundamental item in Donald Trump's agenda is to set the Constitution aside. We know the danger to Liberty that a second Trump Administration would pose. If we make our own pre-emptive strike on the Constitution to "let the people decide", how do we then defend Liberty if they decide wrong? And even if we win this time, if we voluntarily debilitate the Constitution in the process, how do we protect ourselves from the next Trump, and the one after that?
I don't think that the Supreme Court will try to write Section 3 out of the Constitution. a Textualist and an Originalist myself, I think that a majority of them sincerely share those philosophies and will find a way to uphold them, although they may delay for several months more. If they disappoint me, we'll have a new, very serious problem to deal with then. But none of us should be cheering for it in advance.
A New Year of health, happiness, and hope to you and yours. Thank you for all that you do. We can never say that enough.
I think what is missing from Milanovic's analysis is the cost to the US of the post Bretton Woods Global Order which has included the US Navy policing and protecting the shipping lanes... a non-trivial enabler of the globalism that benefits so many countries having bypassed their own steps to real industrialized self-sufficiency. Most of those that bypassed are Asian countries including China. With the US pulling back, because it has to because it is trillions in debt and the idiot countries benefitting from all that US largess have decided that they can denigrate and criticize big daddy for never doing enough for them... they are going to implode. Even today OPEC countries are stopping the shipping of oil due to the Houthi rebels attacking container ships and tanker ships. It will only take a small bit of this pirate and terrorist activity before the shipping insurance bankrupts the insurance industry and completely destroys the delicate system of overseas shipping that drives the global economy.
The US has enabled billions on the planet to raise their standard of living but at a cost that the American working class and poor can no longer afford. Wring your hands about inequity today... and tomorrow that worry will look silly by comparison. We are heading to a giant global economic correction that will cause many countries to fall back to their normal and justified state.
Yascha, I'm disappointed with your take on the Colorado Supreme Court case at the lead-in to the December 23 Good Fight podcast.
If we take George Washington at his word in his Farewell Address -- and I for one certainly do -- then the objective of the American Revolution, what in fact made it a "Revolution" at all, was the establishment and extension of Liberty, in the Enlightenment sense summarized in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man as the individual's right to, "[do] anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law." The Constitution was established to institutionalize that objective of Liberty under law, and to continue to extend it. Democracy was not and is not an additional objective, it's an instrument to achieve and protect THE objective, Liberty. When Democracy supports and fortifies Liberty, it can and should be extended; when it threatens it, it should be limited. Liberty, not Democracy, is all. The people under our system have NO democratic right to abolish their own Liberty.
The Constitution is not a list of suggestions, nor is it an Enlightenment Sibylline Books, written in riddles and prophecies. It is law, written to be read as law, and to be enforced as law. If 40% of the population objects to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, that should be irrelevant: as Washington says, it's the law and binding on all, until the People change it in the method to amend it that they've established. There is no way that the Constitution can save us from demagogues, if we're willing to abandon it without resistance the first time we're threatened by a demagogue with a following.
You and I both know that a fundamental item in Donald Trump's agenda is to set the Constitution aside. We know the danger to Liberty that a second Trump Administration would pose. If we make our own pre-emptive strike on the Constitution to "let the people decide", how do we then defend Liberty if they decide wrong? And even if we win this time, if we voluntarily debilitate the Constitution in the process, how do we protect ourselves from the next Trump, and the one after that?
I don't think that the Supreme Court will try to write Section 3 out of the Constitution. a Textualist and an Originalist myself, I think that a majority of them sincerely share those philosophies and will find a way to uphold them, although they may delay for several months more. If they disappoint me, we'll have a new, very serious problem to deal with then. But none of us should be cheering for it in advance.
A New Year of health, happiness, and hope to you and yours. Thank you for all that you do. We can never say that enough.
I think what is missing from Milanovic's analysis is the cost to the US of the post Bretton Woods Global Order which has included the US Navy policing and protecting the shipping lanes... a non-trivial enabler of the globalism that benefits so many countries having bypassed their own steps to real industrialized self-sufficiency. Most of those that bypassed are Asian countries including China. With the US pulling back, because it has to because it is trillions in debt and the idiot countries benefitting from all that US largess have decided that they can denigrate and criticize big daddy for never doing enough for them... they are going to implode. Even today OPEC countries are stopping the shipping of oil due to the Houthi rebels attacking container ships and tanker ships. It will only take a small bit of this pirate and terrorist activity before the shipping insurance bankrupts the insurance industry and completely destroys the delicate system of overseas shipping that drives the global economy.
The US has enabled billions on the planet to raise their standard of living but at a cost that the American working class and poor can no longer afford. Wring your hands about inequity today... and tomorrow that worry will look silly by comparison. We are heading to a giant global economic correction that will cause many countries to fall back to their normal and justified state.