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The Left, the Right, and the Constitution (Great Read)
NRO ^ | 6/27/2012 | Yuval Levin

Posted on 06/27/2012 2:54:01 PM PDT by mojito

Whatever decision the Supreme Court announces on Obamacare tomorrow, the various liberal missives of anticipatory anxiety in recent days have already revealed a great deal about the Left’s attitude toward our constitutional system. What we’ve learned can hardly come as news to conservatives, but it has been put forward in an unusually clear and undiluted form, and so is worth some thought....

The basic message of these left-leaning diatribes is pretty simple: A majority of the Court could only disagree with liberals about whether requiring all Americans to buy health insurance is beyond the proper bounds of the Congress’s power to regulate commerce if that majority acted in a purely political or partisan way; there is no room for disagreement regarding the actual interpretation of the actual Constitution.

[....]

It would be easy to criticize all this for its sheer unselfconscious lack of seriousness: These people are actually saying that any outcome except the one they want must be driven by an outcome-oriented political crusade. Only their view could result from an actual engagement with the question before the Court, and any other view could only be a function of corruption or of cynicism. It must be nice to be so enlightened.

[....]

[Liberals] imply that there ought to be no connection between the most basic political divisions that define our public life—crudely encompassed in the Left/Right division—and ways of understanding the Constitution. This is a profound mistake, and a very telling one. As the Left often does, they underplay the substantive seriousness and significance of the Left/Right divide, presumably because they do not think of themselves as possessed of a particular worldview and believe they are merely objectively analyzing the obvious realities of the world around us. But there’s much more than they think to the Left/Right divide.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: obamacare; progessives; progressives; scotus
A short course in American political philosophy. The intellectual divide between right and left has seldom been so succinctly and persuasively put.
1 posted on 06/27/2012 2:54:08 PM PDT by mojito
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To: mojito

bfl


2 posted on 06/27/2012 3:08:15 PM PDT by VRW Conspirator (I like to think of FreeRepublic as the new White Horse Inn - FReeper Springfield Reformer)
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To: mojito

Mr. Levin outlines the basic structure of the left/right division very well. That liberals assume their worldview is objective and any opposition to it’s goals is some sort of political plot is definitely accurate. Like most, I believe the Supreme Court will rule the insurance mandate provision of Obamacare unconstitutional but, unfortunately, allow the rest to stand. The predictable cries of anguish from the political left, seeing one of their most ambitious and vigorously defended schemes for massively increasing the power of government over the lives of American citizens, fail, will be music to my ears.


3 posted on 06/27/2012 3:10:23 PM PDT by Jim Scott
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To: mojito
A BTT for an excellent article. I sum it up this way: the divide does encompass an attitude toward the Constitution. A progressive insists that it is only a starting point on the road to something better, and that bits of it that might impede that progress may rightfully be discarded. That is, after all, what a "living" Consitution means: a road to a stronger, more pervasive government. A conservative regards this course of action as arbitrary and potentially harmful; that there is no certitude that this sort of "progress" is inherently benevolent, and that the Constitution represents a rein on government, not an enabler.

People of good will can agree to disagree about the particulars. When it becomes harmful is when disagreement becomes warfare, and that, unfortunately, has become the hallmark of increasingly rigid progressivism. The author remarks that it is often written in German, meaning Marx and his followers, and that is, in fact, where the idea comes that opposition to progressive aims is a declaration of war, and that violent and unethical means are justified in addressing it. To Marx I would add Hitler, another idealistic progressive who was eager to achieve his imagined utopia through violence, through an overthrow of an existing system and its replacement with one more futuristic. That sort of progress we can do without.

4 posted on 06/27/2012 3:16:19 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill

In their 5-4 vote in Heller, four of these geniuses couldn’t even bring themselves to admit the 2nd Amendment is an individual right. So that just about sums it up for me...


5 posted on 06/27/2012 3:29:35 PM PDT by Jerrybob (Truth -- the new hate speech.)
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To: Billthedrill
Read the thoughtful comments from “madisonian.” He has a more jaundiced, and probably more accurate view of the left and their “German” - by way of Alinsky - inclinations.
6 posted on 06/27/2012 3:41:29 PM PDT by mojito
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To: mojito

Those were excellent comments, and thank you for pointing me to them. The “crowd” Madisonian refers to centers around the Critical Law movement, whose central tenet is that the purpose of law is not to provide a level playing field but to tilt it in the pursuit of class advantage; that law has always been like this, and that all that matters is, as Humpty Dumpty said, “who is to be master.” This is clear thinking only in the sense that nihilism is.


7 posted on 06/27/2012 4:08:09 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill

Those on the left see the world as static with one pie with it’s size set. The pie will not, can not get any bigger. Those on the right see the world as opportunity with many pies of varying sizes and they can be increased in size with effort. New pies can be created also like Bill Gates’ Microsoft.

Those on the left will say “I am going to work to earn money”. This ties in with one pie, set size and there is no more. Those on the right say “I am going to make some money”. They talk in terms of creating wealth and then proceed to do exactly that.

To Obama we are stealing from the rest of the world to maintain our wealth. In reality we decided we wanted a bigger pie so we built one L of a big one and if the blasted socialists would get off our backs we can build another one even bigger.

One thing in Europe I noticed they always talked about earning money. Here in the US it almost always is “I’m going to make money”. Let us not adopt European ways.


8 posted on 06/27/2012 5:28:37 PM PDT by W. W. SMITH (Maybe the horse (RNC) will learn to sing)
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To: mojito
Great article. It's like the Left and right live on different planets with regard to the Constitution. I look at an article from a lefty site like this, which finds it alarming that "RYAN BELIEVES RIGHTS COME FROM GOD". Unbelievable.
9 posted on 07/02/2012 8:28:52 PM PDT by denydenydeny (Admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt one has for others.-Tocqueville)
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To: mojito

The American left is a “death cult”. Their rage & hate against their fellow conservative Americans is borderline insane. The left, in their blind rage against the constitution & any rational judical restraint is no longer normal. It’s just pure “will to power”. They are hollow people. And the modern American democratic party is a “criminal party”. They have no respect for any rules or norms. They will do anything to gain power.

The left believes, above all else, in the theory of non-discrimination. Everything, every action, every culture, every behavior....is equal in their mind. There are no distinctions in their philosophy. They are “the walking dead”.


10 posted on 07/02/2012 8:49:33 PM PDT by LongWayHome
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