CBS - staying classy
From
Breitbart:
CBS Runs Segment Called 'Let's Give Up On The Constitution'
From Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman:
I've got a simple idea: Let's give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it's really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie. For example, most of our greatest Presidents -- Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts -- had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.
To be clear, I don't think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago. Unfortunately, the Constitution also contains some provisions that are not so inspiring. For example, one allows a presidential candidate who is rejected by a majority of the American people to assume office. Suppose that Barack Obama really wasn't a natural-born citizen. So what? Constitutional obedience has a pernicious impact on our political culture. Take the recent debate about gun control. None of my friends can believe it, but I happen to be skeptical of most forms of gun control. I understand, though, that's not everyone's view, and I'm eager to talk with people who disagree.
But what happens when the issue gets Constitutional-ized? Then we turn the question over to lawyers, and lawyers do with it what lawyers do. So instead of talking about whether gun control makes sense in our country, we talk about what people thought of it two centuries ago. Worse yet, talking about gun control in terms of constitutional obligation needlessly raises the temperature of political discussion. Instead of a question on policy, about which reasonable people can disagree, it becomes a test of one's commitment to our foundational document and, so, to America itself.
This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today. If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.
Words fail -- the 470+ comments are along that vein too...
Professor Louis Michael Seidman's
university web site is here. The
Wikipedia entry states that:
Louis Michael Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, a widely read constitutional law scholar and major proponent of the critical legal studies movement. He opposes the United States Constitution.
Seidman also authored this Op-Ed in the
New York Times:
Let�s Give Up on the Constitution
As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.
Consider, for example, the assertion by the Senate minority leader last week that the House could not take up a plan by Senate Democrats to extend tax cuts on households making $250,000 or less because the Constitution requires that revenue measures originate in the lower chamber. Why should anyone care? Why should a lame-duck House, 27 members of which were defeated for re-election, have a stranglehold on our economy? Why does a grotesquely malapportioned Senate get to decide the nation�s fate?
You do not get to pick and choose your arguments -- if you say that one thing is outmoded, you also need to recognize that it is the Senate's responsibility to pass a budget every two years -- something that is five years overdue. All spending appropriations originate in the House. This is just one example of the system of checks and balances that our Founders so wisely put in place. There are three co-equal branches of the Government with checks and balances on each branch to prevent one from acquiring too much power. Asshats like Seidman want to erode this and allow a free-for-all power grab that will plunge us into the darkest days of Stalinism.
Posted by DaveH at January 27, 2013 9:30 PM