“Liberals hate the Constitution,” says a recent letter-writer, in perfect Foxobeckian unshackling from planet Earth. (Feb. 22, “Lots of stuff we can mandate.“) Health insurance mandates are a progressive idea, he adds, willfully ignoring the fact that it’s a cornerstone of Romneycare, and originally proposed by congressional Republicans as an alternative to a public option (which is a progressive idea).
Even conservative legal scholars have said the one Republican judge who struck down the Affordable Care Act (after three others upheld it) overreached and predict eventual affirmation. (Given the recent ethical lapses of Scalia and Thomas and the partisan judicial activism of Roberts and Alito, I’ll believe it when I see it: but we liberals are an optimistic bunch.)
Yet, reading such a letter, it’s hard to be optimistic about our political future. Hate the Constitution? Which party currently has an unprecedented number of sweeping constitutional amendments on the table? Who is it that reflexively hates everything the American Civil Liberties Union stands for, when what it does is seek to apply constitutional protections to all, including the least among us? What was constitutional about rounding up American citizens and holding them without charges; about circumventing the court specifically established to review eavesdropping? No problem: it was a Republican president. And, following Nixonian logic, if a Republican president does it, it’s legal by definition.
To claim liberals hate the Constitution is to dismiss half the population as traitors, while pushing the solving of our problems ever further toward impossibility. It is also to swallow the right-wing disinformation campaign — predicated on a gullible audience — hook, line and sinker.
Sid Schwab
Everett
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