It's Our Constitution...If We Can keep It.

It's a little histrionic, but the point is valid and powerful...

The Law That Ate the Constitution

During a democratic town hall event hosted by the Human Rights Campaign and CNN on October 10, 2019, then-candidate Beto O’Rourke proposed revoking the tax-exempt status of churches and religious organizations that oppose gay marriage. “There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break,” he intoned, “for anyone, or any institution, any organization in America, that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us.” O’Rourke’s abuse of the term “civil rights”—his pandering attempt to borrow the moral grandeur of 1964 in order to abrogate the First Amendment—is no longer an anomaly. On the contrary, as Christopher Caldwell so ably shows in The Age of Entitlement, his remark is a perfect example of what civil rights has come to mean.

One of the most astute observers of contemporary politics, Caldwell argues that the United States now has two constitutions. The first is the one on the books. The second arose in the 1960s and replaced the old liberties with new, incompatible ones based on group identities. “Much of what we have called ‘polarization’ or ‘incivility’ in recent years is something more grave,” he writes. “[I]t is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail.” More bracing still, he puts the blame for this crisis on the most sacred totem in American politics: our civil rights legislation.

I find most offensive the idea that Americans are incapable of change. That we are incapable of making informed decisions. For instance, I believe it is a business owner's right to exclude anyone he wishes from his establishment. And it is my right to bypass his establishment on the way to one whose owner is more in tune with what I believe about "civil rights."

Would America have moved past race as a primary indicator of social standing (and so much more) without federal civil rights legislation? Yes, I believe so. Would it have happened as quickly? Perhaps not, but we would not have been left with a massive federal bureaucracy that is coupled to an equally massive grift, which have combined to sour the basic idea of civil equality.

It's a mess, and I don't see much on the horizon that can reverse it.

[The Ban Hammer^TM was just overhauled, so please be aware!]

posted by CBD at 02:15 PM

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