..for reading.
My Constitution is a very flexible Constitution. You think the death penalty is a good idea. Persuade your fellow citizens and adopt it. You think it's a bad idea. Persuade them the other way and eliminate it.
You want a right to abortion? Create it the way most rights are created in a democratic society: Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and enact it. You want the opposite? Persuade them the other way.
That's flexibility.
But to read either result into the Constitution is not to produce flexibility, it is to produce what a Constitution is designed to produce: rigidity.
Abortion, for example, is off stage. It's off the democratic stage. There's not use debating it. It is unconstitutional -- I mean, prohibiting it is unconstitutional. No use debating it any more.
Now and forever, coast to coast, until -- I guess until we amend the Constitution, which is a difficult thing.
So, for whatever reason you might like the living Constitution, don't like it because it provides flexibility. That's not the name of the game.
And that's the crux of it...proponents of a "living, breathing Constitution" don't really want a flexible Constitution that changes with "society's evolving standards." They want judges to enact their preferred policies...policies that those proponents could not enact through the democratic process...because they are contrary to society's standards...indeed, they want to use the Constitution (by pretending to "interpret it to read into it something it doesn't say) to legitimize their undemocratic policy enactments.
My favorite topic:
Mark R Levin on Liberal Justice Power Grab
CSPAN, NRO | Mark R Levin
Posted on 04/11/2005 9:40:56 AM PDT by marylandrepub1
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1381474/posts
All in all, the judiciary is only furthering the interests of its foundation -- the United States LEGAL INDUSTRY. . . . It ISN'T Liberal/Conservative, etc., etc.
HDR