We have a SCOTUS that really no longer cares much for precedent.
That's true, skeeter, and it cares still less—much less—for the Constitution.
On Ghandihttp://www.markshep.com/peace/Myths.html
“The second form of mass Satyagraha was noncooperation.
This is just what it sounds like. Noncooperation meant refusing to cooperate with the opponent, refusing to submit to the injustice being fought. It took such forms as strikes, economic boycotts, and tax refusals.
Of course, noncooperation and civil disobedience overlapped. Noncooperation too was to be carried out in a “civil” manner. Here too, Gandhi’s followers had to cheerfully face beating, imprisonment, confiscation of their property—and it was hoped that this willing suffering would cause a “change of heart.”
But noncooperation also had a dynamic of its own, a dynamic that didn’t at all depend on converting the opponent or even molding public opinion. It was a dynamic based not on appeals but on the power of the people themselves.
Gandhi saw that the power of any tyrant depends entirely on people being willing to obey. The tyrant may get people to obey by threatening to throw them in prison, or by holding guns to their heads. But the power still resides in the obedience, not in the prison or the guns.
Now, what happens if those people begin to say, “We’re not afraid of prison. We’re even willing to die. But we’re not willing to obey you any longer.”
It’s very simple. The tyrant has no power. He may rant and scream and hurt and destroy—but if the people hold to it, he’s finished.
Gandhi said, “I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill.”
“That was Gandhi’s concept of power—the one he’s accused of not having. It’s a hard one to grasp, for those used to seeing power in the barrel of a gun. Their filters do not pass it. And so they call Gandhi idealistic, impractical.”