Big Picture: The Left Is Freaking Out That ObamaCare Might Be Invalidated Because Their Dreams Require Massively Empowered Government

Interesting piece. Read the whole thing, but here's the nut of it.

Observing an author (Jack Balkin) discuss his book (Living Originalism) at Yale Law School, the faculty went Full Squatch.

It is impossible to convey the constitutional establishment’s near-clinical obsession with, and hysteria over, the possible invalidation of the ACA’s individual mandate. It would, they say, amount to an unconscionable act of aggression on the democratic process. A reversal of the New Deal and a resurrection of the ancien régime of the Second Republic. A judicial coup d’état. The Constitution in Exile... Much handwringing arose over the elite media’s commitment to be fair to both sides even when, as here, there is no reasonable other side. The plaintiffs’ briefs are beneath contempt. Randy Barnett is a creature of The New York Times and its addiction to a false neutrality...

Me, I can explain it only this way: the resistance is to the very notion of any limit, qua limit. This is why progressivism always exceeds its own reach. You can’t just defend abortion as a constitutional right; you have to defend partial birth abortions. You can’t just defend equal rights for women; you have to insist that spousal abuse is a federal hate crime. You can’t just advocate campaign finance regulation and disclosure; you have to insist that the Federal Election Commission can ban books and movies.

I don’t think that my friends at Yale actually believe any of these positions. (They hold many false beliefs, but they are not insane.) Nor can they seriously believe that, but for their extravagant positions, we would hand over the country to Opus Dei, bind our wives’ and daughters’ feet, allow George Soros or David Koch to buy their very own Congressmen, or for that matter toss ailing widows and orphans into the streets. The real fear is that the Constitution might pose some limit to progressivism’s anything-goes imagination.

One could argue that the Constitution was enacted for precisely that purpose.

Which is why they must recreate it to serve their true purposes.

posted by Ace at 06:55 PM

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