Has it ever struck you as a little odd that the 13th Amendment outlaws involuntary servitude, and yet, there we have a Selective Service system that forces men, on pain of imprisonment to join the military whether they want to or not? It’s true that the US military has been all volunteer since 1973, but an act of Congress could still reinstate the draft in case of national emergency.
Have you ever wondered why we have a 1st Amendment that forbids abridging freedom of speech or press, and a Federal Communication Commission wholly dedicated to doing just that?
Have you ever considered why we have a 2nd Amendment that strictly forbids infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms and an entire federal bureau commission to do exactly that? Or a “free press” striving implacably, under cover of the 1st Amendment, to obliterate the freedoms supposedly protected by the 2nd?
These are thousands upon thousands of examples I might have chosen to write about, in which the laws that we imagined were there to control the government, or the rights that we imagined we possessed, always seem to evaporate, somehow, in the harsh light of reality.
It kind of makes all of the blather we hear about “law and order” ring hollow. Sure, illegal immigrants, to name a single group at random, violate the law every time they step across the border, but in exactly what way does that make them different from any American politician who breaks our laws?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in an America where government entities were compelled, not just to obey the letter and the spirit of the law, beginning with the highest law of the land, our Constitution, but to energetically and stringently enforce it, beginning with those who work in and for the government itself?
Unfortunately, we will never find out. We have allowed left-wing politicians to destroy this great nation by dumbing down generations. Where once students were taught in civics class that the legislative branch makes the law, the executive branch enforces the law, and the judicial branch interprets the law; and each branch is supposed to follow the Constitution’s rules and stick to its assigned job, today.
Today they are taught by professors such as Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule who rejects how our Founders designed the judiciary to follow the Constitution in favor of judges’ power to control the Constitution.
As an example of progressive Marxist educators, Vermeule believes government should be more powerful; that they should help us “form more authentic desires for the individual and common good, better habits and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.
In an article he wrote for the Atlantic, Vermeule says that you and I, whom he calls “subjects,” eventually will come to “thank the ruler” for it. He
describes all sorts of things he wants this uber-powerful government to do for us: protect us from pandemics, climate change, corporations, the free market, corporate exploitation of the environment, and employers’ exploitation of workers as “atomized individuals.”
Wait, what? Is that what government is supposed to do? The way America’s Founders designed it, government doesn’t exist to manipulate our beliefs, desires, or habits. The Declaration of Independence says that government exists to secure our unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
No wonder Vermeule wants to change the Constitution. That’s the only way to radically transform the power and purpose of government. But he wouldn’t let the American people decide whether they want to change their own Constitution; he wants the revolution to come from judges, who are supposed to follow the Constitution. He calls his system “common-good constitutionalism” and would have judges “read into” the Constitution various principles and meanings that would turn it into a different Constitution altogether.
William F. Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the telephone directory than the Harvard University faculty. Personally, I would rather be governed by the American people and those we elect than by unelected judges and bureaucrats.
source: Wouldn’t It Be Nice? Introduction: The Rule of Law by L. Neil Smith; The Constitution Doesn’t Mean Whatever Judges Think It Does by Thomas Jipping, Heritage Foundation; Beyond Originalism by Andrian Vermeule, The Atlantic
