Wisdom of Alexis de Tocqueville, Anticipating The Demise of American Democracy

Alexis de Tocqueville in 1850 

(RMN-GRAND PALAIS/ART RESOURCE, NY)

[From article]
Alexis de Tocqueville was a more prophetic observer of American democracy than even his most ardent admirers appreciate. True, readers have seen clearly what makes his account of American exceptionalism so luminously accurate, and they have grasped the profundity of his critique of American democracy’s shortcomings. What they have missed is his startling clairvoyance about how democracy in America could evolve into what he called “democratic despotism.” That transformation has been in process for decades now, and reversing it is the principal political challenge of our own moment in history. It is implicitly, and should be explicitly, at the center of our upcoming presidential election.
[. . .]
What’s missing in volume 2 of Democracy is concrete, illustrative detail. Volume 1 mines nine months of indefatigable travel that began in May 1831 in Newport, Rhode Island—“an array of houses no bigger than chicken coops”—when the aristocratic French lawyer was still two months shy of his 26th birthday. Tocqueville’s epic journey extended from New York City through the virgin forests of Michigan to Lake Superior, from Montreal through New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee by coach, steamboat, and even on foot through snow-choked woods, until he and his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, boarded a steamer for New Orleans. From there, they crossed the Carolinas into Virginia, visited Washington, and returned to New York to embark for home with a trunkful of notes and American histories. Tocqueville had watched both houses of Congress in action and interviewed 200-odd people, ranging from President Andrew Jackson, ex-president John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State Edward Livingston, Senator Daniel Webster, Supreme Court Justice John McLean, and future chief justice Salmon Chase to Sam Houston, a band of Choctaw Indians, and “the last of the Iroquois: they begged for alms.”
[. . .]
Tocqueville didn’t go to America out of blind democratic enthusiasm. “It is very difficult to decide whether democracy governs better, or aristocracy,” he mused:
[. . .]
For the Pilgrims, Tocqueville explained, “Religion looks upon civil liberty as a noble exercise of man’s faculties, and on the world of politics as a realm intended by the Creator for the application of man’s intelligence. . . . Liberty looks upon religion as its comrade in battle and victory, as the cradle of its infancy and divine source of its rights.”
[. . .]
In French, the word is moeurs, meaning manners, morals, core beliefs, and customs—what we would callculture. There are “three major factors that have governed and shaped American democracy,” Tocqueville argued, “but if I were asked to rank them, I would say that physical causes matter less than laws and laws less than mores.”
[. . .]
Most Americans believe [. . .] that “the man who properly understands his own self-interest has all the guidance he needs to act justly and honestly. They believe that every person is born with the faculty to govern himself and that no one has the right to force happiness on his fellow man.” And they believe in human perfectibility, the usefulness of the spread of enlightenment, and the certainty of progress, so that what seems good today will give way tomorrow to something better but as yet unimagined.
Why are your ships not built to last? Tocqueville once asked an American sailor. Naval architecture improves so quickly, the sailor replied, that the finest ship would be obsolete before it wore out. A Silicon Valley engineer would sound the same today.
Not surprisingly, a culture that leaves men free to judge for themselves in religion and politics nurtures independent self-reliance from childhood on. Even in the schoolyard, American children make up their own rules and punish infractions themselves. As adults, they never think of waiting for government to solve everyday problems. If a road gets blocked, they organize themselves to fix it. If they want to celebrate something, they spontaneously join together to make the festivities as fun and grand as possible. Spontaneous nongovernmental associations spring up for furthering “public security, commerce and industry, morality and religion,” Tocqueville marvels,
[. . .]
The typical American is “ardent in his desires, enterprising, adventurous, and above all innovative,” Tocqueville writes. Focused on material gratifications, and seeing idleness as shameful, Americans “think only of ways to change or improve their fortunes,” so that “any new method that shortens the road to wealth, any machine that saves labor, any instrument that reduces the cost of production, any discovery that facilitates or increases pleasure seems the most magnificent achievement of the human mind.”
[. . .]
With the same natural advantages, but different mores, the Spaniards of South America have created some of the most “miserable” nations on earth. Similarly, with a vast wilderness stretching from their doorstep, French settlers in Canada have chosen to “squeeze themselves into a space too small to hold them.”
[. . .]
With the same natural advantages, but different mores, the Spaniards of South America have created some of the most “miserable” nations on earth. Similarly, with a vast wilderness stretching from their doorstep, French settlers in Canada have chosen to “squeeze themselves into a space too small to hold them.”
[. . .]
A century and a half after the Puritan settlers established the little republics of New England, the Constitution carefully preserved the spirit of localism in its federal structure. Congress takes charge of such national matters as foreign relations, war, and international trade, but, lacking any means of knowing the innumerable details of local needs and customs, as Friedrich Hayek later argued about the inevitable failings of centralization, it leaves local matters to the state legislatures and the town meetings.
[. . .]
Tocqueville also saw that the Puritans’ religiosity remained, two centuries later, an undiminished force in American life. It still kept the spiritual realm and its values vibrantly present in minds otherwise materialistic. When an American strikes out into the wilderness to make his fortune, his Bible always goes with him, along with the religious habit of his heart, with its “moral truths.” Tocqueville stresses that religion retains its vitality in America because it has “remained entirely distinct from the political order.” For when religions meddle in politics and take political stands, theirs is but one more mere opinion, subject to disagreement and derision. Thus if clerics make political pronouncements, “they run the risk of not being believed about anything”
[. . .]
With everyone feverishly striving, though, whenever some individual manages to shoot up out of the mass to wealth and power, his fellows respond with envy and wonder if he’s a crook.
So while democracy often gives rise to “a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed,” it can also lead weak men “to want to bring the strong down to their level”—with such base fervor as ultimately to defeat democracy’s purpose by “preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”
[. . .]
So while democracy often gives rise to “a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed,” it can also lead weak men “to want to bring the strong down to their level”—with such base fervor as ultimately to defeat democracy’s purpose by “preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”
[. . .]
uch intellectual tyranny weighs most heavily on writers and politicians. With no need for the racks and chains of old, democracy’s very mild tyranny “ignores the body and goes straight for the soul,” Tocqueville laments. It leaves the dissident his life, liberty, property, and civic privileges, but it makes them useless to him by making him a pariah, unable to gain the votes or the esteem of his fellow citizens, who will shun him for fear of being shunned themselves. Little wonder, therefore, that America has produced no great writers. And if you want a refutation of the wisdom of crowds—the “theory of equality applied to intelligence,” Tocqueville scoffs—look no further.
[. . .]
That same majoritarian tyranny explains why America’s elected officials are so mediocre. To win votes, they have to flatter public opinion with the obsequiousness of Louis XIV’s most sycophantic courtiers. Andrew Jackson is Tocqueville’s Exhibit A. He “is the slave of the majority,” Tocqueville sneers; “he obeys its wishes and desires and heeds its half-divulged instincts; or rather, he divines what the majority wants, anticipating its desires before it knows what they are in order to place himself at its head.” Like most politicians, he cares only about reelection, so that “his own individual interest supplants the general interest in his mind.”
[. . .]
Given the threat of majoritarian tyranny, such as reigns over U.S. public opinion, such a centralized administration would pose a fearful danger. If the central power could not only issue orders and frame general principles but also carry them out in detail, if it could reach down and seize the individual by the collar, “then liberty would soon be banished from the New World,” Tocqueville asserts.
[. . .]
Physiocrats, whom we remember today as laissez-faire economists—clearly perceived this gigantic governmental machinery and began speculating about the social uses to which it could be put, anticipating not only the whole program of the French Revolution, Tocqueville notes, but also “the subversive theories of what is today known as socialism” and anticipating as well (as he could not know) an almost Leninist totalitarianism. For “socialism and centralization thrive on the same soil; they stand to each other as the cultivated to the wild species of a fruit,” Tocqueville presciently observed.
[. . .]
they had no idea that since Louis XII, French kings had been “dividing men so as the better to rule them” and that by the end of the eighteenth century, “it would have been impossible to find . . . even ten men used to acting in concert and defending their interests without appealing to the central power for aid.” Nor was there even any personal affection to support the king and aristocracy against the overwhelming, all-devouring resentment of the people. So the ancient monarchy came crashing down, and there was nothing to stop the demons “who carried audacity to the point of sheer insanity” and “acted with unprecedented ruthlessness.”
And they could do so because the centralized machinery was in place to carry the reign of terror throughout the nation. “The same conditions which had precipitated the fall of the monarchy made for the absolutism of its successor.” That giant state machinery was there for Napoleon in turn to create his million-man army and set forth to conquer all Europe. And it was still there in 1856, when The Old Regime appeared, and when “the French nation [was] prepared to tolerate in a government that favors and flatters its desire for equality practices and principles that are, in fact, the tools of despotism.”
[. . .]
He liked America’s administrative decentralization—in the 1830s, there were only 12,000-odd U.S. officials, as against France’s 138,000—for its political and cultural effects: “People care about their country’s interests as though they were their own,” he noted. “In its successes they see their own work and are exalted by it.” Matters are different today, now that the federal government has more than 2.7 million employees, state and local governments have 14.3 million, and college students don’t know who won the Civil War or who the U.S. vice president is, and don’t care. Americans have come to resemble the French of Tocqueville’s day, who don’t know what’s happening in their country, are “indifferent to the fate of the place they live in,” and think that the fate of their town and the safety of their streets “have nothing to do with them, that they belong to some powerful stranger called ‘the government.’”
[. . .]
with few Americans even noticing and most unaware of the magnitude of the revolution even today. We created a giant administrative regime, just as Tocqueville feared, composed of such executive-branch agencies as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Elections Commission, and on and on.
[. . .]
These executive-branch agencies legislate by making binding rules for individuals and corporations, and they then adjudicate and punish infractions of them through juryless administrative courts indistinguishable from those run by the French intendants and the Royal Council, lacking due process and usually with no appeal to the real court system. They provide, to use Tocqueville’s words, “an image of justice rather than justice itself.” Nor, as in the ancien régime, can the victims of these agencies’ absolutism sue them or their functionaries. As for the congress whose legislation gave life to these bodies, it is as much a sham as the old French town corporations or magnificently titled nobles. It does little but seek exemptions from the agencies’ rules for corporate donors—whose companies the agencies’ original rationale was to control. And the Constitution that gave life to the government Tocqueville so cherished is, if not dead, then dying.
[. . .]
And when the New Deal took administrative government to new depths of unconstitutionality, Franklin Roosevelt and his brain trust used almost Tocquevillian language in explaining why, in the age of giant corporations more powerful than any individual citizen or mediating institution, only an equally mighty government could protect the wee, timorous, cowering individual. “Thus the industrial class needs to be regulated, supervised, and restrained,” wrote Tocqueville, “and it is natural for the prerogatives of government to grow along with it.” The argument will be, Tocqueville predicted, that “as citizens become weaker and less capable, government must be made more skillful and active, so that society can take upon itself what individuals are no longer capable of doing on their own”—a sentiment that could have come from one of FDR’s fireside chats.
[. . .]
Tocqueville couldn’t find a precise enough name for the new oppressiveness that he saw coming into being— [. . .] “ ‘Despotism’ and ‘tyranny’ will not do.” He groped for a description that would adequately convey the almost otherworldly force he glimpsed in outline, a presence like something out of science fiction, human and yet inhuman.
[. . .]
This new kind of sovereign, “after taking individuals one by one in his powerful hands and kneading them to his liking,” will spread over society “a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules,” which constrain even the best and brightest. “He does not break men’s wills but softens, bends, and guides them. He seldom forces anyone to act but consistently opposes action. He does not destroy things but rather prevents them from coming into being. Rather than tyrannize, he inhibits, represses, saps, stultifies, and in the end reduces each nation to nothing but a timid and industrious flock of animals, with the government as its shepherd.”
[. . .]
Under the New Deal’s mesh of minute and complex rules, the sovereign—with the Supreme Court’s blessing—punished a farmer in 1942 for growing grain in excess of his allotted quota, to feed to his own livestock. Today the iron cage of administrative rules prevents new businesses from opening, old ones from hiring, doctors from treating patients as they think best, groups of citizens from uttering political speech, even a landowner from moving a pile of sand from one spot to another on his property, purportedly because it could affect a navigable waterway 50 miles away. It slows projects to a crawl, so that building a bridge, a skyscraper, a power plant takes years—whereas in the old America, the Empire State Building rose in 11 months.
And today’s sovereign does force men to act as well as suppressing action, so that nuns must provide their employees with birth control that their religion holds to be sinful, bakers must make cakes celebrating homosexual marriages that their religious beliefs abominate, private colleges must regulate their students’ sex lives, banks must lend to deadbeats. The immense tutelary power has turned private charities into government contractors, so that Catholic Charities or Jewish Social Services are neither Catholic nor Jewish—though most public welfare comes direct from the state, from babies’ milk to old people’s health care and pensions, for which only a minority has paid. As Tocqueville observed, “It is the state that has undertaken virtually alone to give bread to the hungry, aid and shelter to the sick, and work to the idle.” In New York State, where even in the 1830s Tocqueville saw administrative centralization taking form, the sovereign has commanded strictly private clubs to change their admissions criteria, so that even the realm of private association is subject to government power. And whatever traditional American mores defined as good and bad, moral and immoral, base and praiseworthy, the sovereign has redefined and redefined until all such ideas have lost their meaning. Is it any wonder that today’s Americans feel that they have no say in how they are governed—or that they don’t understand how that came about?
Such oppression is “less degrading” in democracies because, since the citizens elect the sovereign, “each citizen, hobbled and reduced to impotence though he may be, can still imagine that in obeying he is only submitting to himself.” Moreover, democratic citizens love equality more than liberty, and the love of equality grows as equality itself expands. Don’t let him have or be more than me. “The only necessary condition for centralizing public power in a democratic society is to love equality or to make a show of loving it. Thus the science of despotism,” Tocqueville despairingly concluded, “can be reduced . . . to a single principle.”
But, wonders Tocqueville, is this what human life is for?

http://www.city-journal.org/html/end-democracy-america-14332.html

The End of Democracy in America
Tocqueville foresaw how it would come.
Myron Magnet
Spring 2016

Is A Not For Profit Corporation With a $37 billion Endowment A Lobbyist?

Will this procedure include lobbyists from the homosexual lobby, the women's lobby, the black racism lobby, the ACLU, CAIR, CCTV, and other special interest groups who derive much consideration from the City Councilors they lobby? What about the zoning lawyers? They are usually experts to who the City councilors and zoning board and planning board members defer during hearings and council meetings. Then there is the community organization with a $37 billion endowment, the training school for ministers, Harvard University.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/4/6/lobbying-bill-divides-council/

Lobbying Bill Reveals City Council Split
By JOSHUA J. FLORENCE and SAMUEL VASQUEZ,

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
April 6, 2016

US Courts Work During Presidential Primary Campaigns

[From article]
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama by blocking federal regulations to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the centerpiece of his administration's strategy to combat climate change.
On a 5-4 vote, the court granted a request made by 27 states and various companies and business groups to block the administration's Clean Power Plan. The move means the regulations will not be in effect while litigation continues over whether their legality.
[. . .]



The 27 states opposing President Obama's regulations are acting in self defense. In other words, these states, including West Virginia, need these plants to create jobs.
The Obama administration did not consult these states and try to find some common ground, a reasonable point between concern for the environment and paychecks.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/the_other_big_story_of_the_day.html

February 11, 2016
The other big story of the day
By Silvio Canto, Jr.

States Lack Integrity, Transparancy and Access To Public Records

Massachusetts Got an F in Access To Public Information. See complete study at this link

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/09/18716/states-flunk-integrity

[From article]
Kansas was rated as one of the least transparent states in the nation last year by a national study, but lawmakers of both parties are looking to change that.
Several bills being considered in Topeka this session seek to make Kansas government more open and accountable to Kansans. Lawmakers of both parties are pledging to support these efforts.
[. . .]
The pledge, drafted by new nonprofit Open Kansas, asks lawmakers to support legislation that will increase the public’s access to information.
Open Kansas noted that Kansas was one of 11 states to receive an F when the Center for Public Integrity rated states on transparency last year.
Kansas such a low grade is a loophole in the state’s open records law that allows state officials to conduct public business on private e-mail.
[. . .]
“This goes beyond tweeting or making a pledge to be open,” Carpenter said in a news release. “This bill represents creative problem-solving to find a new and workable solution that will get the job done and bring committee hearings to anyone who wants to listen in.”

http://www.govtech.com/state/Kansas-Lawmakers-Unite-for-Transparency.html

Kansas Lawmakers Unite for Transparency
Kansas was one of 11 states to receive an F on transparency last year, and both Republican and Democratic legislators are determined to change that in 2016.
BY BRYAN LOWRY

THE WICHITA EAGLE

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

Citizen Action More Effective At State And Local Levels Fighting Dumbing Down Policies And Propaganda

[From article]
We need a revolution if we are to survive as a people and as a nation. While the changes in federal policy needed to undo the damage of leftism are high-profile presidential election issues, the real revolution needs to come at a different level of government and with a different purpose.
What we are fighting, really, is fifty years of leftist indoctrination from education, information, and entertainment. Until we fight back and win the battles at this level, we will continue with the drearily familiar mind control of the left over our lives.
[. . .]
We can win that battle, and we can begin the fight today – right now, if we want – through state governments. Republican muscle in state governments is overwhelming. Only eight states have Democrats controlling state government completely, while Republicans control a whopping twenty-three with 47% of the American population. These governments control education, run public television and radio, and fund research projects through university systems.
[. . .]
What if research studies from several respected colleges (or research centers created by states to study global warming) determined that man-made global warming is not "settled science," that there is a pernicious groupthink in academia about global warming, that data has been altered, and that there may be global cooling or global warming uncaused by man? The impact would be felt around the world.
Here is another example. David Horowitz has been waging for years a lonely battle to have state legislatures enact an Academic Bill of Rights, which would have the effect of granting harried and persecuted conservative students protections against thuggish and bullying leftist professors. Why hasn't every state run by Republicans passed this law?
[. . .]
The impact of winning – heck, the impact of just fighting – on a hundred different areas left today by default to the left could change American society and begin to open the eyes of those Orwellian slaves of leftist indoctrination who, today, have simply never been exposed to anything but the dull, predictable glop of leftism.
This is the peaceful, orderly, necessary revolution that is the linchpin of every other political reform. It is the key to unraveling the madness that controls many Americans, especially the young raised on the bitter milk of state education. If this is the battle to be won, why are we waiting? Begin the revolution now.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/the_revolution_we_need.html

December 21, 2015
The Revolution We Need
By Bruce Walker

Cambridge, MA Conference on Homelessness Determines Problem Needs More Study

Priority of Larry Oaks should be encouraged. Sandler recognizes limiting discussion to Cambridge may be misguided. Other cities have more accessible housing, e.g., Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, Brockton, Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield. Cunningham mentions "the voice of the Community." Who speaks better for people without homes, than those people? Only ownership is permanent housing. Even that can be ended by government taking. Councilor McGovern remains focused on delivering taxpayer funded health care to persons without homes. More business for the human services industry. Disappointing conclusion for another review of the findings. How many times must housing persons without homes be studied? How much time and money is wasted studying this problem instead of stopping the waste of taxpayer funds and housing people. Stop the nonsense. Here's an action plan. Get people off the streets.    



[From article]
Larry Oaks, director of Corporation for Supportive Housing, [. . .] said. “Who can address their other issues when they’re living on the street?”
[. . .]
One idea was to offer landlords more incentives for providing affordable housing, possibly through the city’s housing department.
[. . .]
Bill Cunningham expressed a concern that the meetings had not adequately represented “the voice of the community.”
[. . .]
Questions arose as to whether the housing would be transitional or permanent housing; whether there was “flexible funding” for it, so people can get in without waiting for months; and whether there was funding for services to go along with the housing.
[. . .]
“The homeless are mobile, so you need to help people beyond the borders of Cambridge,” said Martha Sandler, executive director of On the Rise,
[. . .]



Another speaker added that suburban towns could be doing more to provide more low-income housing.
[. . .]
Mark McGovern, director of Cambridge-Somerville Health Care for the Homeless, strongly recommended “low-barrier” shelters where homeless individuals can bring their belongings, pets and partners. There, he said, visitors could also access appropriate health services.
[. . .]
“early warning systems” can help in prevention. Something as simple as someone not paying their rent could be a sign. Also assessments are needed of who needs what kind of assistance or intervention, and if it should be short or long term.
“People don’t know who to call or what services to ask for. We need to help them do that,” said Oaks.
Ultimately, though, the goal to is “move people on,” according to Oaks, so they are back in the mainstream.



The next steps in the process of helping the city’s homeless will be to review all the findings from last week and to draft an action plan, according to Shelly Chevalier, planning and development manager for the city’s Human Services Programs.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150923/NEWS/150928267

Housing challenges take focus at Cambridge Charrette on Homelessness
By Paul Angiolillo
Cambridge (at) wickedlocal.com
Posted Sep. 23, 2015 at 2:10 PM
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle

Spending Other People's Money Society Alive And Well In Cambridge MA

HYA Associates' home office is in Rosemont IL, with branches in Jersey City, NJ and Palo Alto CA. What happened to Buy Local? Universities have presidential search committees which include students, faculty and administrators. Some of them employ consultants as the Cambridge School committee does. Does the city of Cambridge lack qualified individuals who may be able to identify superintendent candidates without spending taxpayer funds on consultants?

[From article]
Hank Gmitro, president of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, said on Thursday, July 2, during the firm’s first meeting with the School Committee. “It’s far more important that you find the right person than a person.”
The School Committee signed a $21,500 contract with HYA June 16, the national consulting firm that ran superintendent searches in Boston, Somerville and Lexington.
[. . .]
Mayor David Maher said the Cambridge School Committee hopes to hire the superintendent before the November municipal elections. The search, he said, would be extended if the board does not find a suitable candidate by October.
“It comes down to the election calendar and trying to get it resolved with this committee. It would be grossly unfair to a new committee when the old committee knew this was going to happen for over a year,” Maher said in a follow-up interview.
[. . .]
School Committee member Kathleen Kelly said
[. . .]
“We are isolated from the community. There’s even misunderstanding between the City Council and the School Committee and different ways that we consider the positive things that are going on with our school system,” [School Committee member Kathleen Kelly] said . “It is an opportunity for us to have people involved in understanding where the school system is really at and what they can contribute to the system, and to overcome some of those barriers that exist right now.”
“Through that process we can learn as well about what expectations other community members that are not parents and educators have in terms of what they would like the school system to be within the community,” she added.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150710/NEWS/150719677/?Start=1


Timeline set for Cambridge superintendent hire
By Sara Feijo
sfeijo (at) wickedlocal.com
Posted Jul. 10, 2015 at 8:36 AM
Cambridge Chronicle

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Voids Town Ban on Drinking While Watching

[From article]
The town of Mendon can’t ban alcohol at strip clubs because its restriction is too broad and violates the Massachusetts Constitution, the state’s highest court ruled today.
Showtime Entertainment was barred from selling alcohol at its prospective strip club after the town enacted bylaws “restricting the service of alcohol” in its adult entertainment district. The Supreme Judicial Court said the ban was overbroad and violated the state’s version of the First Amendment.
The SJC agreed that the town presented enough evidence to show that adult entertainment paired with alcohol would lead to increased crime. But, it ruled that the bylaw was too broad and thus unconstitutional.
[. . .]



The SJC ruling is the latest victory for Showtime. A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the company, indicating that limitations on the physical plant and operating hours were unconstitutional, The federal court sent the alcohol question to the SJC because it involved the interpretation of state law.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/sjc_rules_town_of_mendon_can_t_ban_booze_at_strip_clubs

SJC rules town of Mendon can’t ban booze at strip clubs
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
By: Bob McGovern
Boston Herald

Unconstitutional Supreme Court Activism, New Book

Book Review:
The Constitution: An Introduction 

by Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen

Basic Books 2015

[From review]

The Paulsens are at their best when critiquing the modern era of judicial activism. In their telling, the Warren Court (1953–69) produced “careless” decisions, because the justices were focused on achieving policy goals rather than upholding the law. The nadir of this results-oriented jurisprudence was, as the authors correctly point out, the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which invented a federal right to abortion on demand. The authors assail Roe as “the most extreme example of judicial activism in the twentieth century.” They even compare the decision—unfavorably—to Dred Scott, the notorious pro-slavery decision that helped provoke the Civil War. “Not even Dred Scott,” they argue, “so completely seemed to disregard the text as Roe did.”
Rather than citing the Constitution’s actual language, the Roe Court relied on the doctrine of “substantive due process,” the idea that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment empowers judges to strike down laws that they consider flawed, even if not strictly unconstitutional. That doctrine had been strongly endorsed by the Court eight years earlier inGriswold v. Connecticut, in which Justice William O. Douglas famously discovered a constitutional right to privacy hidden in “penumbras, formed by emanations” of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments.
[. . .] 

The authors take aim at many other sacred cows of progressive jurisprudence. The famous police warnings mandated by Miranda v.Arizona (1966) reflected the Court’s “policy judgment” and not the text of the Fifth Amendment. The Court’s rejection of school prayer in Engel v.Vitale (1962) was based on a notion of the separation of church and state that is “found nowhere in the Constitution.” The Court’s 2013 decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act was “cryptic and meandering in its reasoning.” Lawrence v. Texas (2003)—which struck down state anti-sodomy laws—is portrayed as an abrupt reversal of an earlier precedent (Bowers v. Hardwick) driven by certain justices’ desire to legislate from the bench. On affirmative action, the authors take a hard line: the plain meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “renders nearly all forms of state affirmative action programs illegal”—notwithstanding the Court’s continued tolerance of certain forms of affirmative action.
[. . .]
The Constitution is a structural document—its purpose is to create a central government and simultaneously to limit that government’s scope. The document’s framers cared deeply about rights, but they believed that the best way to protect Americans’ rights was to limit the power of the federal government. The right to local self-government—ultimately enshrined in the Tenth Amendment—was the right that would safeguard all others.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/bc0616af.html

ADAM FREEDMAN
Against Judicial Activism
Defending the Constitution from those who would rewrite it
June 16, 2015

High Stakes In Supreme Court Decision On Obamacare

[From article]
Prepare to be shocked, shocked, shocked! It’s increasingly looking like Republicans won’t have any contingency plan in place if the Supreme Court guts subsidies for millions in three dozen federal exchange states. Jonathan Cohn has a must-read this morning in which he reports that there are no signs of any public Congressional debate among Republicans about this contingency fix.
As Cohn notes, there’s a reason Republicans aren’t offering any temporary contingency fix or broader health reform alternative: They don’t agree with the idea of “creating a truly universal coverage system in which everybody has access, regardless of income or health,” because that “requires some combination of regulation, taxes and redistribution.”
New HHS numbers illustrate that the stakes have only grown higher: Some 6.4 million people are now at risk of losing subsidies nationally.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/03/morning-plum-the-stakes-in-obamacare-lawsuit-just-got-a-whole-lot-higher/

Morning Plum: The stakes in Obamacare lawsuit just got a whole lot higher
By Greg Sargent

June 3, 2015 at 9:33 AM

New York State Assembly Speaker Vows He Is Innocent But Resigns Anyway

Sheldon Silver, New York Asembly Speaker

[From article]
Silver spokesman Michael Whyland says Friday that Silver filed a letter saying his resignation as Assembly leader will take effect at 11:59 p.m. Monday.
The 70-year-old Manhattan Democrat had already announced that he would relinquish the position he held for 21 years after he was arrested last week on federal corruption charges. He denies the charges and intends to hold on to his seat in the Assembly.

http://nypost.com/2015/01/30/sheldon-silver-resigns-as-ny-assembly-speaker/

Sheldon Silver resigns as NY Assembly speaker
By Associated Press
New York Post
January 30, 2015 | 6:20pm

Cambridge MA Activists Lament Changing Demography

Attorney Clarey refers to "a democratic process that is on the verge of being derailed by your [the city council's] upcoming vote." Why should Cambridge city government listen to voters? State and federal governments ignore voters and taxpayers as established legal policy. The purpose of government is to govern, not to listen to gentle flowers who whine because they oppose change. Cambridge is an upper class elite city. It will take a while to rid the city of its poor people, but it will be done. Welcome the new wealthy residents. They need housing. Build it so that they can come here to live.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150518/NEWS/150516678

LETTER: North Cambridge Stabilization Committee asks council to reject Mass+Main project
Posted May. 18, 2015 at 2:14 PM
Updated May 18, 2015 at 2:18 PM
To the editor:
Richard Clarey, Attorney
Editor's note: This is an open letter to the Cambridge City Council.

Republicans Owe White House For Election Wins

[From article]
believe it or not, there are reasons to be grateful to them.
They have awakened a sleeping giant from a hallucinogenic dream that started in 2008, and that giant bellowed on Election Day. As Howard Beal might declare, we were mad as hell and would not take it anymore.
The aftermath of the election has been dramatic. Barack Obama been repudiated: his policies, after all, were on the ballot and many of his enablers are looking for jobs now.
[. . .]
Democrats [. . .] exercise complete control over the legislative process in just eight states.
[. . .]
Nearly half of all Americans will now live in states under total Republican control;
[. . .]
As Noah Rothman has noted “A generation of Democrats lost in the Obama era.”  Much of the party’s talent pool, the young candidates that were being groomed to be national leaders, perhaps presidents, were crushed. They could have been contenders; they could have been somebodies. These run the gamut from attorneys general, governors, representatives, senators, to state treasurers. Gone, gone, gone, gone.
[. . .]
In the words of liberal columnist Ron Fournier, Obama has destroyed the credibility of government itself

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/thank_you_mr_president.html

November 20, 2014
Thank you, Mr. President
By Ed Lasky

States Deceive Voters and Taxpayers Regarding Unfunded Liabilities

Hiding facts from voters and taxpayers, is the dominant paradigm in Washington DC.

[From article]
Aside from the nearly $18 trillion national debt, many state governments are looking at future budgets that are trillions of dollars in the red. And they've hidden the numbers by dramatically under-reporting that debt, according to a new report by the think tank State Budget Solutions.
The group looked at what are known as "unfunded liabilities" -- or debt states will owe down the road. It found a number of states are fudging their numbers -- big-time -- using tricks like assuming their stock investments will soar.
The book-cooking could mean bad news for public pensions and other programs that rely on these budgets. The report finds that, nationwide, states have unfunded liabilities of nearly $5 trillion, or $15,000 per American (even though the states allegedly low-ball that number at $2.7 trillion).

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/13/report-state-budgets-fudge-numbers-projected-debt-worse-than-reported/

Report: State budgets fudge numbers to hide massive debt
By Maxim LottPublished
November 13, 2014
FoxNews.com

Boston Minister Laments Silence Of Public Officials and Alleged Victim Advocates After State Rep. is Expelled From Legislature For Attacking A Woman

Posted February 7, 2014 8:28 PM ET; Last updated February 9, 2014 5:45 AM ET

[From article]

What especially concerns me is how black leadership, most recently the NAACP, has supported Henriquez in his desperate attempt to stay in office, or has remained silent on the issue. This is as disgraceful as the violence itself. Black leaders have, with rare
exceptions, failed to raise their voices to call for Henriquez’s expulsion from the Legislature.
As a black man, I am outraged. The black political leadership of the city and the state have not displayed courage in repudiating the misbehavior of their own.
Perhaps more amazing is the silence of black female elected officials. The same must be said of the various anti-violence groups, not least those that are led by black women. Where were their voices?

Don't feel bad Rev. Scott. People in Massachusetts, see, hear and speak no evil. Cambridge city officials and Harvard University officials and their police employees, dominated by limousine liberals, "always" speak for the "most vulnerable." Meanwhile they allowed and joined in a 43-year-ongoing program of harassment, insults, provocations, humiliation, ridicule, abuse, character assassination of a 70-year-old white man who they all say is "crazy." City, state and U.S. taxpayer funded agencies whose mission is to protect such persons join in or stand by and allow it to continue. Currently it is a Harvard University campus policeman. The lesbian graduate student in psychology at Harvard University Medical School who was conducting a criminal behavior conditioning campaign trying to make me into a homosexual failed. The Harvard University campus police officer who protected her, appeared at my residence to take her place disturbing my sleep, tampering with my browser, operating system, and causing my computer to crash. In the film Five Easy Pieces, a woman asks Susan Anspach, "Don't you think that more harm has been done in the name of love than in the name of evil?" Anspach gets upset and walks out. I'm told that this policeman "loves" me. Huh? Probably loves me like the woman who told everyone I met and everyone I knew and know, "He's a retired drug dealer." She and her husband too said they loved me. With friends like these who needs enemies? How long before the President of Harvard University and the General Counsel appear on premises to do the same? Harvard and Cambridge residents love to torment people they believe are vulnerable and unable to fight back. They say they speak for them. It is a charming state and it is to be expected that they remain silent about a state rep being jailed for attacking a woman. As Hillary Clinton said, "What difference does it make?"

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." -- Albert Einstein

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/02/scott_black_leaders_support_of_carlos_henriquez_a_disgraceful

Scott: Black leaders support of Carlos Henriquez a disgraceful turn
Friday, February 7, 2014
Boston Herald
By: The Rev. Mark V. Scott

Federal Databases Available To Local Police, and To Public

[From article]
As Seattle perfects its massive surveillance system, the technology is likely to replicate nation-wide as more and more mesh network nodes pop up across major cities. While these networks could positively benefit certain first responders, the federal government’s involvement gives extra assurance that the system will be used against law-abiding Americans, as it already has.
With Homeland Security’s blatant targeting of peaceful American citizens, such as their labeling of military veterans as the number one terror threat, opposition to the illegal spy grid takeover has become more essential than ever.

http://www.infowars.com/new-mesh-network-documents-confirm-police-vehicles-real-time-access-to-dhs-spy-cameras/

New Mesh Network Documents Confirm Police Vehicle’s Real-Time Access To DHS Spy Cameras
Mikael Thalen
Infowars.com
November 16, 2013

NC Warns Of Women Drivers, Obamacare

[From article]
The North Carolina Department of Transportation sent out a traffic alert, warning people of female drivers, rain and Obamacare.

http://charlotte.cbslocal.com/2013/11/07/botched-nc-traffic-alert-warns-of-women-drivers-rain-obama-care/


Botched NC Traffic Alert Warns Of ‘Women Drivers, Rain, Obama Care’
November 7, 2013 11:41 AM
CBS News Charlotte NC

Marriage Supporters Decry SCOTUS Decisions

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/06/26/supreme-court-issues-two-illegitimate-decisions-on-same-sex-marriage/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fmost-popular+%28Internal+-+Most+Popular+Content%29

Supreme Court issues two illegitimate decisions on same-sex marriage
By Brian S. Brown
Published June 26, 2013
FoxNews.com

Importance of Marriage, Chastity, Religion

[From article]
Among African Americans, only 17 percent come from families with always-intact married parents. By comparison, 90 percent of African American families were intact when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.
[. . .]
Who would ever have thought that chastity is tied to the growth rate of the American economy?
[. . .]
Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results when they cooperate.
[. . .]
If all three of society's people-forming institutions fail to deliver (and they are failing more and more), then the two instrumental institutions that build societies-the marketplace, which provides for material needs, and the government, which preserves order and peace-will also deliver less and less,
[. . .]
History is littered with stories writ large of the damage caused when one institution tries to displace or take on the tasks of another, most especially when government and religion try to do each other's work.
[. . .]
Much like the farmer who neglects the basics, the peoples of Spain, Italy, and Greece have given up on traditional family life as the core of their culture and their future, and have vied with each other over the last few decades for the lowest fertility rate in the world.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/02/7821/

The Wealth of Nations Depends on the Health of Families
by  Patrick Fagan
Witherspoon Institute
February 6th, 2013

Conservative Justices Support Federal Power Over States

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/unreliable-ally_648229.html?page=1

Unreliable Ally
Advocates of small government shouldn’t look to the Supreme Court for help.
JUL 16, 2012, VOL. 17, NO. 41
BY ROBERT F. NAGEL