Sunday, September 26, 2004

America the Conservative

Okay, back to Professor Glaesor's article in the LA Times. I'm going to dabble in the speculative art of reading between the lines to show why the Supreme Court has become such a battle ground for liberals, and why liberals wouldn't necessarily be opposed to our defeat in war by a foreign power.

First, we have the good Professor telling us how evil and conservative the Supreme Court has been.
The powerful, unelected Supreme Court has supported conservatism at many critical periods in our history. For example, in the late-19th century, it declared the income tax unconstitutional; in the 1930s, the court ruled that the New Deal was unlawful; and in 2000, it intervened to decide the presidential election.

Interesting logic here. The Supreme Court is conservative whenever it makes a decision liberals don't like. Nevermind the fact that FDR did his own flirt with authoritarianism by trying to short circuit the Constitution in order to get the New Deal passed. Nevermind the income tax was unconstitutional at the time. And nevermind the only thing conservative about the Court's decision in 2000 was the man who became president. The real key here is the Supreme Court is powerful and unelected. That means if they can control the Court, they, like FDR tried to do, can do an end run around the Constitution and implement any damn thing they choose. Right now, it pisses them off that they do not control it, and it occasionally makes decisions they dislike.

Next, we look at why some liberals may not be opposed to the U.S. losing a destructive war, right here at home. For liberals in this category, the socialist state is the pinnacle of human governance. Nothing bad happens in socialist governments, everybody's happy (Look at Sweden! Look at Sweden! they cry.) But why hasn't the U.S. embraced this yet? It is obvious to them that it is part due to our racisim and greed, but there is another factor:
Some small nations introduced proportional representation before World War I in response to uprisings that threatened their governments' stability, but the war was a watershed for great powers like Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungary. These nations' armies had traditionally checked militant labor unrest, just as in the United States, but during World War I, mass mobilizations and steady demoralization broke the armies' will to fire on rioters. As the armies' policing power vanished, empires were upended by left-wing revolutions. The new constitutions of these countries were written by socialist leaders like Friedrich Ebert, who were determined to craft institutions, like proportional representation, that would entrench socialist power. France had a constitution drafted by a socialist-heavy group, but this had to wait until after its defeat in World War II.

By contrast, the U.S. has not lost a war on its home soil and thus has never faced the internal disruptions caused by such a collapse.

There you have it, folks. We need to die at home in large numbers, to have our homes, belongings, and lives destroyed. Why? Because most of us are too friggin' dumb to see what the good Professor knows-that socialism is best for all. So we all need to be made miserable to see this. ENDS JUSTIFY MEANS. Think of this next time you see a liberal oppose our war against terror. There may very well be a deeper reason for their opposition. They think we need to lose for our own good.

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