Justice Ginsburg's Teachable Moment

It seems that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn't all that enamored of our Constitution. She recently visited Egypt as part of a State Department trip to offer legal advice to the fledgling democratic movement there (which will not survive rule either by the military or the Islamists, but that's another issue).

Her advice on whether to use the US Constitution as a model: Don't.

Apparently, the US Constitution is too parsimonious with "rights", so the JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT suggested following the Constitution of South Africa, or the European Union Declaration of Human Rights, or the Canadian Charter of Rights instead. Really?

The significant difference between our Constitution and those others is the fundamental limitations on government embodied in our Constitution. Apparently, that's not such a great idea to Justice Ginsburg. Ugh.

Moreover, any "right" to material goodies that requires coercion of others to get it for you is a farce. When you hear the Leftists screaming that "Education (or other such benefit) is a RIGHT, not a Privilege!", lock and load.

Making the simple argument that the state taxing us all in order to provide education to the poorest citizens at no or minimal cost to them may be a good deal for society is one thing, but demanding that such a benefit is a "right" is something altogether different.

However, it does reveal the mentality of those who believe the government has the unbridled power to do whatever it wants. It's not hard to see why so many liberal Demunists today take one look at the vast gatherings of decent, middle-class Americans known as tea parties and instantly think "fascists!" Never mind that fascists, properly understood, don't usually demand less government intervention.

What we have here is a fundamental conflict of visions, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. One side believes that people are born into their station in life and it is the government's job to make their miserable lives a little better. Indeed, it is the natural order of things for the government to provide jobs, health care, homes to the people. If you object to this concept of government, it must be because you want to "punish" the downtrodden and discriminated. You must be animated by racism, sexism, greed, "fascism!"

The other side says that our rights come from God or from Natural Law, not from government. That while the government has an obligation to promote the general welfare, it doesn't have a holy writ to design the nation as it sees fit. The Constitution is not a coupon insert in your local paper, brimming with all sorts of giveaways and two-for-one deals. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights delineate what the government cannot do, not what it can. What was so fantastic and revolutionary about that is that for the first time in history, a nation was founded on the proposition that the government should mind its own business. Believing that doesn't make you a fascist, it makes you a patriot.

But leave it to a weenie at Slate to try to cover for "Justice" Ginsburg:

If you want, here you go: Proof that a Supreme Court Justice believes looks to other countries for advice on an evolving Constitution! Of course, we've known this about Ginsburg for years, because she's said so repeatedly. It's proof that a SCOTUS justice wouldn't use the American Constitution as a model for a new country -- but, well, neither does anyone who advises new republics about this stuff.

‎"An evolving Constitution", my ass. That, like "living breathing document", is an excuse for judicial tyrants to read anything they want into the Constitution, and read anything they *don't* want out. Constitutions are amended, not evolving. If a rule of law is one length one day and another the next, it is no longer a rule of law.

Why on earth is a Justice of the *United States* Supreme Court 'looking to other countries for advice' on our Constitution? Before you say "English Common Law" - such law is specifically incorporated by statute in California (and, presumably all other) state laws and was explicitly understood as the basis for our own civil laws. Sorry, but "Justice" Ginsburg's comment demonstrates a deep disrespect for the Constitution that she has sworn to uphold. This is pretty outrageous.

However, it is, to borrow a term from the Leftist scum, a "teachable moment". The "Progressive" Left (Newest Left?) are uniquely infuriating in their contempt for Americana. Compared to Ruth Ginsburg, Earl Warren was a regular flag waver in terms of his attitudes toward America, Western Civilization, etc. The New Deal / Great Society Left may have been wrong, but they were still patriots. The Left now has a whole new attitude that is openly contemptuous of this nation, and we the people. I don't just call them "Demunists" or "Commiecrats" for rhetorical pizazz.

And Ground Zero for this new attitude was arguably right here in the NorCal area, although Bostonians might beg to differ. I used to laugh the leftists off as minor figures in the picture, who got all the attention in The Land Of Fruits And Nuts, but were not the actual movers and shakers. But then the Cold War ended, the actual defense / hardware workers and producers packed up and left the state, and the Leftists became the "Creative Class Elites" (Destructive Class would be more like it).

Many leaders of the modern Left have open hatred and contempt for the traditional American ideals that made our country great. Limited and humble government, overseeing a responsible, individualistic, and strong citizenry who really were at liberty to arrange their own affairs largely as they saw fit. Instead, the modern Left wishes for all-powerful government that rules a citizenry that is dependent upon their largess.

The Leftist Government and Media Elites ceaseless orgasming over Barack Obama makes much more sense in light of "Justice" Ginsburg's remarks. President Obama was raised in a foreign country, under a very foreign culture, and was exposed to the most leftist politics as a child. He is what we would have called in the 30s and 40s a "red diaper baby." It is clear to me that he certainly does not love America, and I doubt he even likes America just a little bit. He spent 20 years attending church with a pastor who explicitly hates America. He was close pals in Chicago with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, actual, unrepentant, domestic terrorists who avowedly hate the American system and *killed people* to try to change it. His own wife proclaimed that the first time she was ever proud to be an American was when her husband was nominated to be President. One of his biggest campaign speeches during the last campaign was in Germany - to a largely foreign audience. He displays little or no overt patriotism (and, yeah, that matters a lot when we're talking about the President of the United States). He repeatedly bows to emperors and kings of foreign counties - an utterly unique and weak affectation among American Presidents. He clearly holds much of the American citizenry in total contempt, and thinks of us as "bitter clingers".

Independence Day?

Mark Steyn points out how we are losing ours, as the Obamunists push us toward becoming another banana republic:
....in America "Independence" seemed as much a statement about the character of a people as a designation of jurisdictional status. The first Americans were British subjects who had outgrown a British king as benign and enlightened as any ruler on the planet. They demanded "independence" not from foreign rulers of another ethnicity but from their own compatriots with whom they had a disagreement about the nature of government. Long before the Revolutionary War, small New England townships governed themselves to a degree no old England towns did. "Independence" is not about the replacement of a king in London with a president in Washington but about the republican virtues of a self-reliant citizenry free to exploit its own potential.

Please, no snickering. The self-reliant citizen? In the damning formulation of contemporary American vernacular, he's history — as in over and done with, fuhgeddabouttim. What's left of that founding vision on this less than Glorious Fourth of July 2011 in the Brokest Nation in History? "You go talk to your constituents," President Obama taunted Republicans on Wednesday, "and ask them, are they willing to compromise their kids' safety so that some corporate-jet owner continues to get a tax break?"

In the Republic of Brokistan, that's the choice, is it? Give me safe kids or give me corporate jets! No corporate aviation without safe kiddification! In his bizarre press conference on Wednesday, Obama made no fewer than six references to corporate-jet owners. Just for the record, the tax break for corporate jets was part of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" — i.e., the stimulus. The Obama stimulus. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid stimulus. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Democratic-party stimulus that every single Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against. The Obama–Corporate Jet stimulus that some guy called Obama ostentatiously signed into law in Denver after jetting in to host an "economic forum."

Charles Krauthammer did the math. If you eliminate the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Corporate Jet Tax Break, you would save so much dough that, after 5,000 years, you would have clawed back enough money to cover one year of Obama's debt. Five thousand years is the year 7011. Boy, our kids'll really be safe by then. I see some leftie at MSNBC has just been suspended for characterizing the president's performance on Wednesday as that of a demotic synonym for the male reproductive organ. So I shall be more circumspect and say only that even being a hollow unprincipled demagogue requires a certain lightness of touch Obama can't seem to find.

Speaking of corporate jets, did the president fly commercial to Denver? Oh, but that's different! He's in "public service." A couple of weeks before he flew Air Force One to Denver, he flew Air Force One to Williamsburg, Va. From the White House (well, via Andrews Air Force Base). That's 150 miles, a 30-minute flight. He took a 747, a wide-bodied jet designed to carry 500 people to the other side of the planet, for a puddle-jump across the Potomac.

Oh, but it was for another "economic forum." This time with House Democrats — the ones who voted for the Obama Corporate Jet Tax Break. "Economic forums" are what we have instead of an economy these days.....And the least the beneficiary of such decadence could do is not condescendingly lecture those who pay for their own transportation. America's debt is an existential crisis, and playing shell games with shriveled peas of demonizable irrelevancies only advertises your contempt for the citizenry.
(...)
What else isn't "the same for everyone"? A lot of things, these days. The president has a point about "tax breaks." We have too many. And on the scale of the present tax code that's a dagger at the heart of one of the most basic principles of free societies — equality before the law. But, of course, the president is not opposed to exemptions and exceptions and special privileges on principle: After all, he's issued — what is it now? — over a thousand "waivers" for his own Obamacare law. If you knew who to call in Washington, maybe you got one. If you didn't, tough.

But that's the point. Big Government on America's unprecedented money-no-object scale will always be profoundly wasteful, stupid, and arbitrary (as in those waivers). But it's not republican in any sense the Founders would recognize. If (like Obama) you're a lifetime member of the government class, you can survive it. For the rest, it ought to be a source of shame to today's Americans that this will be the first generation in U.S. history to bequeath its children the certainty of poorer, meaner lives — if not a broader decay into a fetid swamp divided between a well-connected Latin American–style elite enjoying their waivers and a vast downwardly mobile morass.

Toys in "Happy Meals"

When did 3 out of 5 of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors become such WEENIES?
I expect this in SF and/or Berkeley, but Santa Clara County always was a safe enough distance away. Maybe not anymore.
Whenever anyone on the Left cries something about "keep your laws off my body" - just remember that it is the Left that is continuously telling us how to live our lives, what we can eat, what we can drive, etc. And now, what kind of promotional toys a fast food chain can pass out. This micromanagement of our lives is a loss of liberty - many, many small losses add up to a significant loss of our freedoms.

Oh but this is for the good of kids, who aren't adults, they say? Fine. If we're going to regulate what kids can see about sugary cereals and plastic toys in fast food because it might be bad for them, how about we regulate what they see in schools about sex and their bodies?
--No more teaching them that sodomy or other gay sex is perfectly normal, and safe as can be as long as you use a condom.
--No more enabling them to have abortions without their parents' consent.

But will the Left do that? I thought so, or not.

What the McDonald's Corporation should tell these liberal local governments.

The Innate Immorality Of The Lib Left

If your father went into his grandson's room, found his wallet and took all the money in it, what would you call it? I know what I'd call it. It's exactly what I'd call a twelve trillion dollar IOU run up by the Baby Boomers who will be long retired — and sucking even more money out of the system — when the true measure of such a monstrous lack of morality gets realized.  It's called stealing, and I can't think of a single moral code on the planet which condones it.  Let me explain something to the hand-wringers who decry the "lack of compassion" in Americans who believe they're entitled to the lion's share of their own labor. There is no such thing as compassion in government-mandated wealth redistribution. When I hear so-called religious leaders talking about the sanctity of such, even going so far as to say, "that's what Jesus would do," it makes me gag. Perhaps the only thing worse are secular leftists invoking Christ's name to promote some freedom-killing concept, despite the fact that most of them despise religion.  Memo to the terminally misguided: the entirety of Judeo-Christian principles is based on the concept of free will, not coercion. Genuine compassion consists of voluntary giving, aka charity. And by the way, conservatives give far more to charity than liberals. Liberals idea of compassion is giving your money to their pet causes, after siphoning it through government, and skimming a little of the top as payment for their oh-so compassionate ways.  Furthermore, Christ wasn't a leftist, which is exactly why leftists attempt to denigrate, control or eliminate religion whenever they acquire enough power. Leftists know that religious-based morality is beyond government control and in direct competition with the totalitarian demands of complete fealty to the state.  Make no mistake: the neo-Marxists in Washington, D.C. — and that's exactly what they are — want as many Americans as possible to be totally dependent on government.  Such dependency is completely immoral. The condition of our inner cities is a testament to that reality. We've always had poor people. What we didn't have prior to the Great Society was the virtual destruction of the nuclear family and the virus of unconscionable behavior that destruction abetted — despite the fact America was far more racist in the past than it is now. We didn't have legions of unapologetic nihilists with no concept of dignity, self-reliance, or hope for the future. We didn't have hucksters promoting eternal victimhood — for which there is no remedy other than government.  It's absolutely amazing that the American left has never been taken to task for this ongoing, orchestrated tragedy. And spare me the "best intentions" excuse. Results count, and the expansion of the welfare state has been an unmitigated disaster.
What's more immoral than having a vested interest in maintaining a certain level of human misery?

What's more immoral than liberals taking pride in how many people they've put on government programs? Isn't genuine morality defined by how many people one can get off government programs?
It sure as hell ought to be for many reasons, even if one of them is purely pragmatic: we're literally going bankrupt promoting the faux-morality of liberalism.  Which is why morality itself must be re-defined by liberals. Government confiscation and redistribution, no matter how onerous, is hailed as "social justice." Anyone who lacks anything, whether or not such lack is due to irresponsible behavior, is deemed "worthy" and automatically entitled to compensation. Anyone who has "more than his fair share" is inherently evil. Even the religiously-inspired idea of "be your brother's keeper" becomes "be your brother's keeper — or else."  In the coming weeks, Democrats and their media shills will be in full pitch mode, telling the American public what a great idea health care reform is. What they won't tell you is nobody said it wasn't. But this bill wasn't about health care reform. If it were, Democrats wouldn't have had to bribe members of their own party to pass it. They wouldn't have to force people to buy insurance, or fudge the CBO numbers to make it seem like this bill was deficit neutral. They wouldn't have left out tort reform, or exempted themselves from it. They wouldn't have front-loaded the goodies and back-loaded the economically destructive poison. The wouldn't have seen unrelenting resistance by a majority of Americans, or a total lack of support by Republicans.  They wouldn't have to keep selling it after they've already passed it.  A Fox News poll shows that 79% of Americans believe the economy could collapse. It also showed a substantial majority doesn't think that "elected officials Washington, D.C. have ideas for fixing it." Absolutely, totally wrong, my fellow Americans. Of course the politicians know how to fix it. But all of the fixes require a reduction of government power and the expansion of individual freedom. The Obama administration, and a Democratically-controlled Congress will never countenance that. Never. Better to rule in hell, as it were.
And that's utterly immoral.

Republicans Beware: The Health Care "Fix" is really a Cover-Up

Now that this bloated, bankrupting, health care debacle has passed the House and will likely become law in the next several days, the statists who supported it are now laying the rhetorical groundwork to convince Republicans to come on board. The Democrats need cover. They are well aware that they've jumped over a political cliff and they are anxious to make sure they don't have to face gravity alone. (Politics is one of the few venues where suicide isn't fatal if you can convince others to fall on their swords, too. They know that the people aren't ready to throw everyone out at once.)

Their tactic will be pretty straightforward, "The bill passed and you crazy libertarians, and conservatives, and defenders of the Constitution, and proponents of fiscal sanity, and others we characterized as "extremists" didn't like it, so help us make it better." To wit: this is the time to Fix It. I'm warning Republicans: Don't fall for the gimmick, don't go back to the pre-Tea Party, Beltway mindset that "doing The People's work" means passing legislation, even if it's bad. The People's don't want more government and the best work to be done is opposing more government. The legislators who opposed the extraordinarily unpopular bill that just passed must understand that popular opposition to this bill isn't simply because of all of the undeniable corruption involved in its passage. That provided some sound bites, but the opposition goes far deeper than that. The bill is fundamentally flawed because there simply is no way to make health care more affordable by giving more control over health care to the most fiscally irresponsible player ever to enter the field, the U.S. government. Miraculously, people saw through the statist baloney and understood that a government takeover was a bad idea. That takeover is the essence of the bill that passed and it can't be fixed by rearranging the pork used to tempt Democrat holdouts. Any attempt to recast the fundamental problem with the bill as simply embarrassing pork or some other form of mere political excess is a betrayal of that understanding and the many tens of millions of voters who got it. To define the problems of this bill in the typical Beltway terms of this or that political misstep is to really misunderstand the popular opposition that it spawned. And, such opposition will drive the 2010/2012 elections if the GOP doesn't fumble the ball.

So, don't go along with the Fix It bill. In fact, don't even use that terminology. The upcoming legislation to "correct" things like the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, etc. isn't a Fix It, it's a Cover-Up. The GOP message on this should be: We didn't commit the crime and we won't take part in the cover-up. Let those who passed this corrupt pig stand alone in putting lipstick on it. You Dems passed the bill without any Republican support and the bill you passed is an abomination, both in process and in substance. We warned you and the American people warned you and you arrogantly defied that warning. Don't ask us to give you cover so that you can pretend you didn't vote for a corrupt bill. You did. We gave you better options and you ignored them. The bill that passed is entirely yours. You will be judged on that bill in November, not on some other bill.

Meanwhile, if the changes the Dems are proposing are such obvious improvements, then the coalition that passed the original legislation should have no trouble getting "the fix" passed. (Though it begs the question of why the original bill was so bad if a better version was politically viable...) Maybe the tricks used to get the original through will help get the cover-up through. Of course, using pay offs and arm twisting to cover up pay offs and arm twisting may not be such a great idea, but one expects the corrupt to stick to their strengths. Whatever approach taken to pass the cover-up, the GOP would be downright stupid to lend legitimacy to it.

little differences of opinion

As I have many times before, I recently watched a political discussion where a statist had centered his argument on a popular (and generally worthless) idea. The idea was that proposed legislation was worthy of passage because of the good intentions of those who wrote it. The problem arises that everyone thinks they have good intentions. Aside from a few actual psychopaths, we can safely assume that even history's monstrous leaders never woke up and asked themselves, "How can I make life worse for my people? How can I advance the cause of evil?" Even as they sent countless people to their deaths in gas chambers, dissident executions, mass starvations, and other atrocities, it's a safe bet that they had convinced themselves that it was for the greater good, that they were using the government's power to solve the people's problems but that every great omelet requires breaking a few eggs. And, they seldom acted without some imprimatur of popular support: Many people agreed to trust the politicians and governments to solve perceived social problems, rather than to tackle the problems as free individuals with the uncoerced aid of others.

There are plenty of ways to encapsulate the dichotomy between that way of thinking and the thinking represented by the American ideal. Here's one of them. (Click to see it full-sized.)

The Obama Supporter Economic Mentality

What I believe is the misunderstanding of the Barack Obama followers is that they truly believe he is going to be "Robin Hood" and take from the rich to give to them.
Wrong. The government will take from the rich to benefit its government programs, some of which will go back to the right politically connected "rich" so enough of them are in on the Big Government Con Game.

For example: The machine operator believes that Barack Obama and his minions will bring him up closer to the level of, say, his supervisor or the business entreprenur in salary, benefits, etc. But in reality, Barack Obama and his minions will lower the supervisor's salary to match the social-economic status of the machinist, and the balance goes to the government. Of course, at some point the supervisor, or entrepreneur, decides the rewards are not worth it, and productivity and the economy decline.
Kill the ambition and you kill the spirit. Should you receive according to your needs, not wants, and all have more or less the same household income (according to their needs)? Then why spend 12 years in college to become a heart specialist when you can go to a trade school for 15 months and work less hours with less stress?

As that spiral cycle begins and the country starts to lose its productivity, the government must once again step in "for the good of the country" and, to keep Utopia as is, tell you what your career will be - because, after all, that is "service." Again, does this sound sadly familiar?
Our Constitution states that each American has the right to liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution did not promise anything else to anyone.  It gave Americans the freedom to succeed or fail according to their thought process. And if one should fail, they have the freedom to change direction.