Category Archives: Constitution

DO The-Shoe-Is-On-The-Other-Foot-Test, Says Dershowitz

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty

“There are no more civil libertarians left,” warns celebrated attorney Alan Dershowitz, on “Tucker,” May 30, 2018.

Dershowitz, a life-long liberal and civil-libertarian, has refused “to allow partisan politics to preempt his views on the Constitution,” in the matter of Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller and his tribunal.

The ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) has supported the FBI’s manifestly unconstitutional raid on Michael Cohen’s offices, asserting that the removal of his client-attorney privileged files was a good thing.

“… all indications thus far are that the search was conducted pursuant to the rule of law, and with sign-offs from Trump appointees,” [which is] a stunning rebuke to the basic concepts behind the ACLU’s mission. ”

“The left is less interested in civil liberties.” Much less.

“The ACLU is dead in the water when it comes to defining the civil liberties of people they don’t agree with.

Do “The shoe is on the other foot test” says Dersh. Everyone has to pass it. “If the shoe were on the other foot, would you be taking the same position you’re taking today?” Then you’ll grasp civil libertarians or libertarians.

For us, it’s about justice for all, so that each one of us is safe. Simple. Defend the rights of all to be “be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” so that each and everyone of us can live free of unconstitutional raids on our businesses or bedrooms.

“Too many on the right and the left do not pass the shoe-is-on-the-other-foot” test, averred Dersh: Conservatives fail the test. Liberals fail the test.

“We need neutral principles. We need standards of constitutionality,” Dershowitz inveighed.

We have them, sir. We don’t abide them. We’ve ditched them.

This is why civil libertarians like Alan Dersh and creedal libertarians (check) will always be on the fringe, annoying partisans on both sides.

Whodunit? Who “Meddled” With Our American Democracy? (Part 2)

America, Conservatism, Constitution, Democracy, Government, Russia, States' Rights

THE NEW COLUMN is “Whodunit? Who “Meddled” With Our American Democracy?” (Part 2). The unabridged version is on WND.com. A slightly abridged version is on Townhall.com:

Not a day goes by when the liberal media don’t telegraph to the world that a “Trumpocracy” is destroying American democracy. Conspicuous by its absence is a pesky fact: Ours was never a country conceived as a democracy.

To arrive at a democracy, we Americans destroyed a republic.

One of the ways in which the republic was destroyed was through the slow sundering of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. The 10th was meant to guarantee constitutional devolution of power.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The de facto demise of the 10th has resulted in “constitutional” consolidation.

Fair enough, but is that enough? A perceptive Townhall.com reader was having none of it.

In response to “Whodunit? Who ‘Meddled’ With Our American Democracy” (Part 1), the reader upbraided this writer:

“Anyone who quotes the 10th Amendment, but not the 14th Amendment that supplanted it cannot be taken seriously.”

In other words, to advance the erosion of the 10th in explaining who did our republic in, without mentioning the 14th: this was an omission on the writer’s part.

The reader is admirably correct about Incorporation-Doctrine centralization.

Not even conservative constitutional originalists are willing to concede that the 14th Amendment and the attendant Incorporation Doctrine have obliterated the Constitution’s federal scheme, as expressed in the once-impregnable 10th Amendment.

What does this mean?

You know the drill but are always surprised anew by it. Voters pass a law under which a plurality wishes to live in a locality. Along comes a U.S. district judge and voids the law, citing a violation of the 14th’s Equal Protection Clause.

For example: Voters elect to prohibit local government from sanctioning gay marriage. A U.S. district judge voids voter-approved law for violating the 14th’s Equal Protection Clause.

These periodical contretemps around gay marriage, or the legal duty of private property owners to cater these events, are perfectly proper judicial activism. It flows from the 14th Amendment.

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government—the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

Put differently, matters previously subject to state jurisdiction have been pulled into the orbit of a judiciary. Yet not even conservative constitutional originalists are willing to cop to this constitutional fait accompli.

The gist of it: Jeffersonian constitutional thought is no longer in the Constitution; its revival unlikely. ….

Into the Cannibal's Pot
Order columnist Ilana Mercer’s polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

 

… READ THE REST:  THE NEW COLUMN is “Whodunit? Who “Meddled” With Our American Democracy?” (Part 2). The unabridged version is on WND.com. A slightly abridged version is on Townhall.com.

Using Wall Money To Bomb Syria

Constitution, Debt, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Just War, Nationhood, Reason, War

No idea why bootlickers are elevating Laura Ingraham’s mild objections to the Syria strikes. It looks like what she’s saying is that “if we had the money; then OK. But we’re broke, so not now.” Tucker Carlson, on the other hand, offers principled objections to The American Way (intervening everywhere).

Sure, money is an important consideration, but it’s entirely a side issue here—Ingraham’s utilitarianism makes no appeal to the Constitution, to the War Powers Act (a bad bit of legislation, but still); not to the sovereignty of nations, or to justice. Yes, her protestation is better than nothing, but arguments like hers are dodgy.

You see, the same argument is made against The Wall. This, as we use so-called wall money to bomb Syria. Even if we had the money, we don’t have the right, really. We do, however, have the obligation to stop aggressors from entering the US—whether they wage welfare, bring in hitherto eradicated diseases, or harbor hatred for Americans that spills over into hate crimes (terrorism and racially motivated crime).

UPDATED (4/5): South Africa Land Theft: Crappy Constitution All But Allows It

Africa, Communism, Constitution, Free Speech, Private Property, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN: “South Africa Land Theft: Constitution All But Allows It” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. Unabridged version can be read on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

Up until, or on the day, a predictable calamity unfolds in South Africa, you still find Western media insisting that,

* No, there’s no racial component to the butchering of thousands of white rural folks in ways that would make Shaka Zulu proud.
* No, the mutilated, tortured bodies of Boer and British men, women and children aren’t evidence of racial hatred, but a mere artifact of good old crime. No hate crimes. No crimes against humanity. Move along. Let the carnage play on.

And the latest:

To listen to leftist, counterfactual, ahistoric pabulum served up by most in media, a decision by South Africa’s Parliament to smooth the way for an expropriation without compensation of private property came out of … nowhere.

It just so happened—pure fluke!—that the permanently entrenched, racialist parties in parliament used their thumping majorities to vote for legalizing state theft from a politically powerless minority. Didn’t see that coming!

And still they beat on breast: How did the mythical land of Nelson Mandela turn into Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”?

How did that country’s “vaunted” constitution yield to “the horror, the horror” of land theft?

Easily, even seamlessly—as I’ve been warning since the 2011 publication of “Into the cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” which provided the analytical edifice for what’s unfolding. You can pile more murders, more state corruption, more horror atop the same analytical foundation; but, distilled to bare bones, the truth about South Africa remains unchanged.

One of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidential campaign promises was to finally get down to the business of the people: stealing private property. Since replacing Jacob Zuma as president, Ramaphosa has openly endeavored to “speed up the transfer of land from white to black owners after his inauguration two weeks ago.” Yet, this inherently aggressive, coercive act was studiously finessed by the news cartel.

Before Ramaphosa, Zuma, too, had “called on parliament to change South Africa’s Constitution to allow the expropriation of white-owned land without compensation.”

Unlike so many celebrity journos involved, both men know that said constitution is no bulwark against state expropriation. Or, against any “public” or private violence, for that matter. As a protector of individual rights to life, liberty and property, the thing is worse than useless—a wordy and worthless document.

Take Section 12 of this progressive constitution. It enshrines the “Freedom and Security of the Person.” Isn’t it comforting to know that in a country where almost everyone knows someone who has been raped, robbed, hijacked, murdered, or all of the above—the individual has a right to live free of all those forms of violence?

Here’s the rub …

… READ THE REST.  “South Africa Land Theft: Constitution All But Allows It” is now on Townhall.com. Read the long version on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

UPDATE (4/5): Free Speech? Not under the SA Constitution.