It's a serious question. With a point to it ;)
And you consider this a healthy system?
"Healthy" or "unhealthy" doesn't enter into it - it is. And will continue to be.
If the only reason we needed a constitution was to protect against blatant usurpations, then we could just as easily do without it completely, since the people will always resist overt attempts on their liberties.
More or less. The Constitution has as much or as little value as the people assign to it, pretty much just like the courts. This is why I said before that "fixed meaning" was worthless if you can't find anyone to agree with you - we may both agree that the Second Amendment has a particular fixed meaning, but if the day comes that the people of the United States decide that the Second Amendment is a meaningless nullity, you and I will be out of luck, fixed meaning or no.
Wrong, completely wrong. If they followed society, then there'd be little need for them to strike down state laws that liberals don't like (especially ballot questions!), since the people would have already struck them down through the democratic process.
You're missing the point - they still have a narrow area within which they can range. They don't track the polls perfectly, but they don't stray very far either.
Tell me, do you think "the people" are really all that offended by Moore's monument? Do you think "the people" wanted to maintain racial preferences at the University of Michigan? Most especially, do you think "the people" would ever have approved of, let alone demanded, using Eurotrash socialistic hogwash as a basis for a SCOTUS ruling?
It's not about what the people like - it's about what they will tolerate. And they have, are, and will continue to tolerate all those things, as far as I can see. Tell me, do you really think that the courts would have produced such rulings if they thought they were going to spark rioting in the streets? If they thought they were going to produce a serious effort to amend the Constitution? Not on your life, my friend. Whether the people like or want what the courts have done is simply irrelevant - the point is that they will tolerate it, and the courts know that. Someday the people may not tolerate such rulings, and then they will simply blow away like smoke in the wind - I guarantee it.
That's all very touching, but the fact remains that despite their apparent shift to the right, they're still getting more and more brazen with their power.
And they will continue to do so, for exactly as long as the people tolerate it, for exactly as long as the people let them. They can hardly afford to do otherwise. And that's a fact.
I have a feeling you know the answer already, but I'll be a good sport. States don't derive their powers from the federal constitution. They derive them from their own constitutions.
"Healthy" or "unhealthy" doesn't enter into it
Sure it does. You've been saying in your previous pests that this system you're describing is a good thing.
The Constitution has as much or as little value as the people assign to it, pretty much just like the courts. This is why I said before that "fixed meaning" was worthless if you can't find anyone to agree with you - we may both agree that the Second Amendment has a particular fixed meaning, but if the day comes that the people of the United States decide that the Second Amendment is a meaningless nullity, you and I will be out of luck, fixed meaning or no.
If that's true, then the Constitution is useless. But it's not true, because words have meaning, the words on the Constitution don't move around (unless you take a good whiff of that hemp paper it's written on, but I digress), so it's possible for people - at least enough people within a given population - to look at it and objectively work out the correct meaning. The reason this doesn't happen is that they've relinquished that responsibility to the courts. And that's precisely because of the illusion that you so correctly pointed out, but seem so disturbingly unconcerned about.
You're missing the point - they still have a narrow area within which they can range. They don't track the polls perfectly, but they don't stray very far either.
I'm not missing the pont at all. It's one thing to say that courts are restrained by public opinion (and to a large extent that's true), but something completely different for you to say that they don't lead society and in fact follow society. They very much do lead society, even if they are a bit - judicious - about it.
[they're still getting more and more brazen with their power.]
And they will continue to do so, for exactly as long as the people tolerate it, for exactly as long as the people let them. They can hardly afford to do otherwise.
Of course they can afford to do otherwise. They don't have to keep grabbing more power for themselves. They do it because they can. And you're right, people continue to let them, and that's the problem. As for changing hearts and minds, that's what I've been trying to do with you right here.