If Obama can suspend the employer mandate, why couldn’t a Republican president suspend the capital gains tax?
Or the corporate income tax? Or the whole damn code?
Democrats never think through the long-term implications of their lawlessness, because they assume that through it, they will gain eternal power. We can’t let them.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Repeal the Bill of Rights!” So say Obama supporters. No surprise to me. Just more of that old-time “liberal” fascism.
The decline and fall:
The radical scholars recognized Western Civ had to be erased to achieve their goal of destroying the old order and ushering in the new “inclusive” inclusive manifesto. (Remember Jesse Jackson’s chant at Stanford? “Hi-ho, hi-ho, Western Civ has to go”). In the process, the General College was abandoned – and with it went the foundation of a proper college education.
And out went academic standards, which suited the radicals who adopted grade inflation as a gesture against the Vietnam War. College students found it much easier to remain full time students without contending with the onerous course load, and even easier to maintain a 2.0 academic average – the minimum to avoid losing the student draft deferment. Plus students could now choose courses across the spectrum without having to build a foundation of academic rigor.
By the late 1970s, many radical scholars were gaining tenure — the archaic privilege enjoyed by academics that guarantees a job for life — and the power to push their advantage to mold the curriculum to their purposes. New hires were screened for allegiance to the radical manifestos. Traditional liberal arts course work was re-defined to focus on women, race, sexual technique, gays and the environment. The result has been unsound subjects masquerading as worthy academic pursuits — and college graduates who are unaware of their inherited culture.
The public was mostly unaware of this revolutionary change.
Unfortunately, it probably still is. As noted in the piece,the current “humanities” aren’t worth saving, or worth the cost of the tuition for them. At least more people are starting to figure that out.
Thoughts from Sarah Hoyt on incentives.
Yes. “Elections are necessary but not sufficient for a democratic republic. You also need limits on state power, and civil society. Frankly, what’s most impressive to me is how resilient and robust Egyptian civil society has been in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood’s clear effort to establish an Iran-style theocracy.”
I’d also add that a republic (which per Franklin’s famous statement after the convention, we have, or at least had until the last few decades) is not a democracy, either.
On the anniversary of the birth of America 1.0, Michael Barone reviews a timely new book
Some thoughts on the 150th anniversary of the victory. I hadn’t realized that there was even a controversy about whose fault the loss was. I’d always thought it was clear that it was ultimately Lee’s responsibility — he ordered the charge — though having better information from Stuart might have resulted in different decisions on his part. I think that, after his previous string of victories, he’d grown overconfident, and was overcome with hubris.
Also, a bonus link to libertarian perspectives on the war. I’ve always thought that the tragedy of the war was that states rights were so damaged because the southern states chose to use them to defend slavery.
[Update a few minutes later]
How not to remember Gettysburg:
What, one must say, led this prolific best-selling writer to think anyone concerned with the meaning of Gettysburg would give a damn about where she and her husband slept when they were overnight guests at the White House? I was waiting to hear her say that, unlike others, she didn’t have to pay for the honor. And anyone who read her Dartmouth commencement address already knew this story.
As a historian, Kearns Goodwin should know that history is the means by which we, as a people, learn about our country’s past — how our ancestors took risks and measures that made the United States the hope of the world and created the great republic in which we now live and breathe as free men and women. Instead, Kearns Goodwin used the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the most important battle held on our own land to talk about herself, and the would-be greatness of the contemporary liberals she holds in esteem.
No less than what I would have expected.
Can we detect them with current telescopes? That assumes they exist at all, of course.
What is the political equilibrium?
One thing I can imagine is setting up a defensive perimeter around yourself with your own swarm of them. But that’s the kind of world that lies ahead, absent a technological collapse (which would be even more horrible).
It is both perverse, and inverse:
The Left generally sees a vast sea federal power limited by islands of protections for various rights. From that perspective, the relevant question is whether there is something in the Constitution (or its principles) that defeats federal legislation. Many on the Right start from a different premise: The Constitution authorizes islands of federal power in what is otherwise a sea of questions reserved to states or the people. These characterizations are broad generalizations, to be sure, but I think they capture a real divide in conceptions of federal power.
From the Right’s perspective, the question is not whether some specific provision in the Constitution invalidates Section 4 of the VRA, but whether it is expressly authorized — whether it fits on one of these islands of federal power. The argument for the Shelby County majority is that the extraordinary nature of the federal authority exercised through the VRA (as authorized by the 15th Amendment) can only be justified by extraordinary conditions. This is because the 15th Amendment only authorizes Congress to “enforce” its protections through “appropriate legislation.” Therefore, Congress has to be careful about imposing limitations on states that are not constitutionally required. In the majority’s view, justifying limits on states in 2006 based on conduct from the 1960s and early 1970s fails this test — it does more than “enforce” the 15th Amendment’s guarantees, and therefore exceeds the scope of federal power. Although the majority never says so explicitly (perhaps intentionally), this imposes limits on the 15th Amendment’s enforcement power similar to those imposed Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. the enforcement power.
Yes, that’s what limited government was supposed to be about. The Left thinks that anything that’s not explicitly unconstitutional is constitutional, whereas the Founders specifically enumerated the powers of the federal government. That was the idea of the Ninth and Tenth amendments, which have largely become dead letters, but which some, such as Justice Thomas, are trying to revive.
Steven Wolfe, a former congressional space staffer, has what looks to be an interesting new book out. It has a lot of good blurbs.