The Democratic Strategist (co-edited by William Galston, Stan Greenberg, and Ruy Teixeira) aims to provide “serious, data-based discussion of Democratic political strategy.” Today, a special “Urgent” issue was published, regarding the Supreme Court and warning about the “covert extremist agenda” of the Republican right. The report raises an alarm about the legal agenda currently promoted by “the Christian Right, the Tea Party Movement, and the radical Federalist Society legal wing of the Right.” The report provides three examples. First:
Since the 1990’s, the Christian Right has sought to replace the traditional American separation of church and state with the notion that the U.S. was actually created as a “Christian Nation” in which Christianity was intended to receive favored treatment by government policy. The most startling recent expression of this view was last month’s decision by the Texas School Board to remove Thomas Jefferson—the symbol of America’s tradition of religious freedom and tolerance—from the states’ history curriculum.
The report is accurate in that some (although hardly all, or necessarily most) supporters of the “Christian Right” believe that the government should favor Christianity over other religions. Most of the Christian Right does believe, as did Chief Justice Rehnquist, that in some circumstances the government may favor religion over irreligion. See Wallace v. Jaffrey (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting from decision to declare moment of silence in schools unconstitutional).
The report’s description of the Texas State Board of Education (not the “Texas School Board”) is inaccurate. Under the new proposed standards, Jefferson is part of the required curriculum for 5th grade American History, 8th grade American History, and the high school class in U.S. Government. He was removed from the standards for World History class, because the Texas State Board thought that he should not be included among “European Enlightenment philosophers.” In the 8th grade American History class, not only is Jefferson required, so is his good friend, the famous enemy of organized religion, Thomas Paine. Only George Washington appears in the Texas curriculum standards more often than does Jefferson.
Item 2 in The Democratic Strategists’ parade of horribles is the lawsuits against Obamacare:
The basis for such suits—typically a denial of the power of Congress to legislate economic matters under the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the U.S. Constitution—is automatically and unavoidably a collateral attack on the constitutionality of a vast array of past legislation, including most New Deal/Great Society programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
The word “basis” has a footnote cite to an article by Matthew Yglesias. The Yglesias article criticizes the notion that Commerce “among the several States” should be “understood as basically about transporting goods across state lines.” Yglesias points out: “the Louisiana Purchase, the Bank of the United States, Henry Clay’s ‘American System,’ a transcontinental railroad, land grant colleges, etc. And in particular since the New Deal the commerce clause has always been understood as granting wide-ranging authority to regulate the national economy.” True enough in a broad sense (although most of Yglesias’s 19th century examples do not involve the interstate commerce power). So if the lawsuits were premised on the idea that the federal power over interstate commerce extends only to the sale of goods across state lines, The Democratic Strategist’s warning would be apt.
However, if you read the complaints filed by Virginia and by the 18-state coalition led by Florida, there is no argument against the interstate commerce power as it existed on March 1, 2010. Rather, the complaints argue against an unprecedented expansion of the interstate commerce power: namely the purported power to force an individual to purchase a product he does not want to purchase, and an unprecedented use the tax code to punish someone for choosing not to purchase a product.
While the cases do complain about changes in the state funding formula for Medicaid, they never question the constitutionality of Medicaid itself. Thus, an attack on Obamacare is not “automatically and unavoidably a collateral attack” on even an iota of the New Deal and the Great Society. As I have previously detailed, finding the Obamacare mandate and its associated tax to be unconstitutional does not require overturning, or even questioning, a single precedent in existing Supreme Court law.
The third and final item in the parade of horribles:
The Republican revolt against any cooperation with Democratic legislation and initiatives has carried an extraordinary number of conservatives into a general attitude of defiance towards the rule of law itself and flirtation with constitutional doctrines of state nullification and succession. These doctrines were developed as arguments for state sovereignty by the Confederacy in the civil war era and as 1950′s and 1960′s era segregationist strategies to thwart desegregation and civil rights for African-Americans. [And, later in the document:] Let them bring it on with all the segregation-era legal strategies of succession and nullification.
Well, not exactly accurate. First, the doctrine of “succession” describes how Barack Obama became President after George W. Bush. One of the first uses of the constitutional doctrine of succession was when John Adams became President after George Washington.
The doctrine of “secession” long predated the Confederacy. It was advanced by, among others, some New Englanders who wanted to leave the Union during the War of 1812, by Southerners who advocated the right when objecting to the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, and by some persons at the very end of 18th century who feared that President Adams was moving the country towards dictatorship. Thomas Jefferson, in his 1798 letter “Patience and the Reign of Witches,” counseled against secession as response to “a temporary superiority of the one party,” notwithstanding the “oppressions of enormous public debt. . . . Better keep together as we are. . . If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost . . . .”
The Democratic Strategist rightly reveres the great Thomas Jefferson, so it is surprising that TDS does not know (or, at least, does not acknowledge) that the constitutional doctrine of nullification was first articulated by Jefferson himself, in the Kentucky Resolution of 1798. As Jefferson put it, “where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.” James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, articulated the milder doctrine of Interposition, in the Virginia Resolution, declaring that the states “have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”
The Democratic Strategist affirms “that the Democratic Party proudly upholds the traditional American view of the constitution—the view of the founding fathers of this country—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams.” The Democratic Strategist then accuses its imagined enemies of being anti-american for allegedly trying “To establish the right of individuals or states to ignore and disobey any laws that they happen to interpret as impinging on their freedom or natural rights” and the right of individuals “to ignore any laws they choose.” This is straw man. As far as I know, no employee of The Federalist Society ever said that any individual could ignore any law he chose. All of the Founders, including Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and Adams, did believe that in cases of great urgency and necessity, disobedience was a moral duty–which is why they helped to remove one government and replace it with another in 1776. Even under that new government, Jefferson and Madison thought that states had a duty to protect their citizens from federal laws which violated both natural rights and the Constitution–as did the Sedition Act, in the view of Jefferson and Madison. And of course many great Americans in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s refused to obey racially discriminatory laws which they believed to be contrary to natural rights and the Constitution.
Americans in the 21st century are free to disagree with Jefferson and Madison, just as did many Americans of 1798, since other some other state legislatures voted to reject the call to support the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions.
Near the end, the TDS memo announces: “Let them bring it on with all the attempts to write Thomas Jefferson and the separation of church and state out of American history.” May people of every political persuasion resist every attempt to write Thomas Jefferson out of our history. May everyone extol, as does TDS, ”the traditional American view of the constitution—the view of the founding fathers of this country.” And so in our modern debates on the Supreme Court and judicial policy, may everyone be free to disagree with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, but let no-one who espouses the constitutional doctrines of these great Americans be maligned as unamerican.
Orin Kerr says:
The Democratic Strategist (co-edited by William Galston, Stan Greenberg, and Ruy Teixeira) aims to provide “serious, data-based discussion of Democratic political strategy.”
It seems worth noting, though, that its first editorial goal is list as “provid[ing] an explicitly and unapologetically partisan platform for the discussion of Democratic political strategy.” Which sounds to me a lot like “talking points.”
[DK: Very true. Public discourse is improved when talking points are accurate, and do not mischaracterize the views of political opponents. Hence my post.]
[OK: But Dave, isn't it understood by everyone that this is just spin? You appear to be assuming that people actually take the claims of "The Democratic Strategist" seriously. Is there any evidence of that? I have never heard of "the Democratic Strategist," but it doesn't read like something that a person would expect to be accurate.]
April 13, 2010, 1:17 amPerseus says:
So if nullification and secession constitute a general attitude of defiance towards the rule of law, then I suppose that they are equally critical of, say, Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King for advocating civil disobedience to “stop the machine.”
April 13, 2010, 1:27 amConstantin says:
I dispute this. Not in a “Jefferson would vote my way on abortion/war/taxes” sense, but rather as a matter of fact that the Democratic Party long ago ceased appealing to the “view of the founding fathers” as justification for its policy goals. Woodrow Wilson had discarded the Constitution as a worthwhile foundation for governing by the beginning of the 20th Century.
Within a decade before he was elected president, Barack Obama denigrated the Constitution as a “fundamentally flawed document.” He wasn’t just talking about slavery; he also disputed the entire idea of a charter of negative liberties. I don’t believe for a second that he, nor the party he leads, cares a bit for the view of the Constitution held by its framers.
April 13, 2010, 1:53 amyankee says:
As a partisan Democrat, I’m happy to agree that this is arrant nonsense. It’s a distressingly common sort of ahistorical projection of one’s personal political views onto the founders of this country. You sort of squint at their views until some of them look like yours, and then you ignore the rest.
This does sound like talking points rather than a serious attempt to analyze the political situation though. It’s not a good idea for political strategists to believe their own propaganda, any more than it is for litigators. But if you want to win you keep your true beliefs behind closed doors. That seems to be what’s going on here.
Either that or the people at the Democratic Strategist have fallen into the grip of ideology to the point where they’re confusing it for reality. It’s not an uncommon foible.
Also, how did Jefferson make it onto the list of Enlightenment philosophers in the first place? He was a politician and plantation owner, and a dabbler in a bunch of other things, but he doesn’t really belong on a list with Berkeley, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, Locke, Rousseau, and Spinoza.
April 13, 2010, 2:37 amRicardo says:
“The Democratic Strategist” ought to be pretty pleased with Justice Scalia then:
April 13, 2010, 2:56 ambadlaw says:
Can we agree that the liberal view of the Christian Right entirely disregards separation-of-church-and-state and wants Christianity put above any other religion is just as much an effort at fearmongering based on irrational, paranoid belief and floating propaganda meant to engender animosity and bias as the conservative meme that Obama just wants to take away our guns? I bet, on average, as many, if not more, liberals believe the former view to be generally correct about the Christian Right than conservatives believe the latter view about Obama.
April 13, 2010, 5:07 amRicardo says:
What specific belief are you trying to attribute to liberals about the Christian right? As for the gun question, 60% of conservatives and 62% of Republicans think that Obama will try to ban the sale of guns in the United States while President. So what belief did you have in mind about the “Christian right” that you suspect has more than 60% support among self-identified liberals or Democrats?
April 13, 2010, 5:50 amMark N. says:
One I’d guess is: “Do you think that the American notion of justice is based in significant part on the Ten Commandments, and believe that the Ten Commandments ought therefore to be displayed prominently in and near courthouses?”
But I agree it’s an inapt comparison, because most members of the Christian Right really do support that, and would attempt to enact it (whereas Obama is not attempting to enact a gun ban).
April 13, 2010, 6:42 amPubliusFL says:
False comparison there, between what one side “would attempt” to enact versus what the other “is not attempting” to enact. Are there any bills pending in Congress now to require the 10 Commandments to be displayed prominently in and near courthouses?
April 13, 2010, 7:08 amMark N. says:
Well, here’s one from the previous session of Congress. Miscellaneous other pro-10-Commandments stuff shows up on a regular basis as well. Nothing significant has successfully passed, but there’s certainly a committed core of the religious right that keeps introducing such bills, and some get 30-40 cosponsors. They’ve been more successful on the state level, where a number of states in which the Christian Right has power have not only proposed sticking the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, but actually done so (Alabama’s Supreme Court even defied a federal court order against it on the subject).
April 13, 2010, 7:27 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Ricardo, I’ll see Scalia’s St. Paul and raise him a Thoreau:
Utterly unamerican, that Thoreau, and a great friend of slavery.
April 13, 2010, 7:27 amDaveW says:
Orin Kerr: [OK: But Dave, isn’t it understood by everyone that this is just spin? You appear to be assuming that people actually take the claims of “The Democratic Strategist” seriously. Is there any evidence of that? I have never heard of “the Democratic Strategist,” but it doesn’t read like something that a person would expect to be accurate.]
If nobody buys spin then why do party strategists spend so much time with it?
Of course people buy it. And the media repeats it. I think you mean something like “seriously engaged people that actually know anything about this wouldn’t take it seriously”.
What percentage of the population does that describe? I promise you my neighbor would take this at face value.
April 13, 2010, 7:47 amAnton Sirius says:
I think that should be re-phrased as ‘People buy it because the media repeats it’, Dave. If the mainstream/corporate/insert-preferred-term-here media actually did their jobs and challenged stuff like this, instead of just regurgitating it, it’d never gain any traction.
April 13, 2010, 8:16 amPeter Gerdes says:
Unprecedented? Did you read Raich? I mean that held that regardless of state laws to the contrary the federal government could reach in and punish someone for growing medical marijuanna that never left the interior of their own dwelling because other people took other similar products over state lines. On top of this there was no decent evidence that any compelling governmental interest was being advanced by this other than telegraphing moral indignation. Indeed, all the government did was suggest it might affect prices in other states.
Healthcare, unlike MJ, has a record of being resistant to significant state experimentation given the fundamentally national nature of the product (you can leave your weed at home when you travel but you need your health insurance for emergencies). Also unlike MJ there are significant difficulties arising from the constitutionally mandated ease of movement and commerce that make it particularly difficult (tho not impossible) for any state to make a huge shift towards universal coverage (healthy people may move away, corporations may shift unhealthy workers without insurance to your state). Not to mention that despite the state insurance commissioners many insurers are national companies and the industry already runs via national standards.
So yah, given that Raich was good law a month ago I don’t see how you could possibly think health care is an unprecedented legal expansion.
As far as penalizing people for not buying health insurance that’s no different than what the government already does. I’m penalized for taking out IRA money early. And modulo rewording the ‘penalty’ is actually a universal tax and owning health insurance simply provides an exemption from that tax no different than home buyer’s tax credits. Economically it’s really indistinguishable from any other tax based behavior incentive.
April 13, 2010, 8:48 amAnonsters says:
TJ, but it’s a Kopel post, so it’s tangentially relevant.
Did anyone see the Daily Show segment on open-carriers last night?
/TJ.
April 13, 2010, 9:26 amSill says:
Thomas Jefferson booted from the enlightenment; at least now, we know that 17th century America is free from the taint of European civilization. Wait, where did that name America come from? unAmerican, indeed!
April 13, 2010, 9:34 amTNeloms says:
I don’t think the people who buy this kind of thing are the same people who read the Volokh Conspiracy, nor would they believe Prof. Kopel even if they did.
Also, your neighbors might take this at face value, but have they seen it? This is a pretty obscure publication.
As Anton Sirius said, people buy this because the media repeats it. Until then, this is just bottom-feeding. It’s pretty easy to find some partisan somewhere who is saying something ridiculous. If it becomes mainstream, then it may be worth shooting down. Even then, it’s better to rebut a more reputable source that’s repeating the claims.
April 13, 2010, 9:37 amwolfefan says:
Scalia thinks we have a democratic government? Don’t let Georgia know about this. Unless he’s talking about someone else, in which case he’s referring to international law. Don’t let Oklahoma know about this.
April 13, 2010, 9:38 amtherut says:
Oh the propaganda is good!!! The Religious Right is out to get ya stuff is good. Just do not look under the lefts rug and see the Religious Left waiting to take over. Seperation of church and state my butt. The liberal theology is also lurking in the left wing as a useful idiot waiting to be strangled by their own guts after their usefulness is over. Goodness people are stupid.
April 13, 2010, 9:45 amPascal says:
It seems as though our Founders profited quite a bit from the Catholic perspective of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Indpendence, and a very highly educated patriot. A recent book, American Cicero, is worth reading, if only for the discourse that this man brought. If I read the book correctly, the Texas folks were wrong as Jefferson was thought to be controlled by the French.
April 13, 2010, 9:51 amMark Field says:
I’m not following you here. Both Thoreau and King believed in civil disobedience, but they also believed in accepting the punishment for it. That’s exactly the opposite of nullification and secession, both of which claim the right to ignore the law without punishment.
And do you really claim that on the substantive issues involved, there’s some legitimate basis for comparison?
April 13, 2010, 10:03 amAngus says:
There is absolutely no question that the Christian Right is behind the Texas curriculum changes, and that their goal is to put God back in the classroom. Why is there no question? Because they’ve flat out said what their goal is:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-04-12-editorial12_ST1_N.htm
April 13, 2010, 10:09 amAF says:
It’s an unfortunate habit of Democrats to publish their strategy memos.
That said, the statements in the memo are at least as accurate as Kopel’s purported correction of them. For example, based on past blog posts Orin Kerr appears to agree — or at least consider it reasonable to believe — that striking down health-care reform implies that Great Society programs are unconstitutional (though presumably not “unavoidably” so).
April 13, 2010, 10:45 amAndy Rozell says:
Maybe the Christian right is behind the changes in the Texas curriculum, but if they are, they’ve been remarkably ineffective in getting anything done.
I’m a Christian, and a conservative, and I go to church with people who are probably a lot more conservative than I am, and I’m a Texan.
And I can pretty much tell you that there really is no such thing as “the Christian right.” It’s a shared delusion. It started out as a figment of Jerry Falwell’s imagination and, sort of like in a bad horror movie, it’s come to occupy the nightmares of liberals all over the country.
The real truth about political activism and conservative protestant Christians is more like this:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/
It’s interesting that this ran today.
April 13, 2010, 11:34 amtheobromophile says:
What bothers me most about this is painting mainstream viewpoints as if they are held by only a tiny minority of people – people who are mentally unbalanced or intellectually dishonest. First of all, the legal profession, as a whole, is pretty far to the left of America; that the Federalist Society happens to exist hardly makes it “radical”.
Second, a poll of Massachusetts – Massachusetts! – residents found that 50% are on board with the Obama Administration’s agenda, but 40% find themselves more in line with the Tea Party movement. Now, if 40% of people in my state support something, it’s either “mainstream” or “really freakin liberal”; radical right-wing would not be it.
April 13, 2010, 12:25 pmJon Rowe says:
It’s interesting because neither King, and especially not Thoreau seemed to be Christians in the traditional sense of the term (with MLK, it’s a debatable proposition); but this seems exactly the traditional Christian approach to civil disobedience when one synthesizes multiple biblical texts on the matter like Romans 13 and Acts 5:29. You can disobey government when necessary to obey your conscience (or obey God and not man when the two conflict). But the believer must ALWAYS submit to the higher powers (ala Romans 13), accept the civil legitimacy of the punishment, even if it means being thrown in to the lions Den.
April 13, 2010, 12:38 pmleo marvin says:
What makes you think that? That he hasn’t mentioned it proves to me he’s up to something. If he’s got nothing to hide, why not show the birth certificate? My theory is he knows he can’t get away with banning the guns, so he’s got some smartypants like Cass Sunstein writing regulations to secretly change the caliber of the bullets.
April 13, 2010, 12:39 pmDilan Esper says:
Theo:
Everyone tries to move the overton window by painting the opposition as extreme. To that extent you have a point.
That said, a lot of democrats would argue that if you actually present the issue of whether, for instance, the constitution does not permit the federal government to regulate health care or some of the more idiotic removals of material from texas school books, this stuff wouldn’t poll very well at all. Just because voices are loud doesn’t mean they are not extreme– joe mccarthy was one of the most prominent republicans of his time and anti-communism was very popular; when his views were fully aired, he was nonetheless judged to be an extremist by the public.
Some of the stuff coming out of the tea party movement probably falls in the same category.
April 13, 2010, 12:40 pmCal says:
Andy Rozell: I clicked on your link and the first entry is entitled, “Moby Dick as Anti-Bible,” (I think the lede changes like this blog) but it is ironic given your point and the discussion of the Christian Right’s influence on education. “Moby Dick as Anti-Bible”?
April 13, 2010, 12:46 pmAndy Rozell says:
When I linked it, the lede was the article on the Herd of Unicorns
April 13, 2010, 12:53 pmAndy Rozell says:
Here you go
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/04/13/the-herd-of-unicorns-the-myth-of-evangelical-political-engagement/
April 13, 2010, 12:59 pmSteveMG says:
Thomas Jefferson booted from the enlightenment; at least now, we know that 17th century America is free from the taint of European civilization.
As DK points out, Jefferson was removed from the list of European enlightenment philosophers and not the philosophes as a whole.
April 13, 2010, 1:01 pmb= says:
“And I can pretty much tell you that there really is no such thing as “the Christian right.””
Yeah, and there aren’t “liberals” either. It’s all made up.
April 13, 2010, 1:04 pmA. Zarkov says:
One can only laugh at this fanciful power of the “Republican Right.” It sounds a lot like the hate speech once hurled against Jews for controlling everything. Some Jews I know used to read this stuff to remind them of how powerful they really are.
The liberal world view, including their notion of the proper scope and power of government, dominates the following institutions: (1) The media which includes all the major TV networks except Fox; (2) The major newspapers including but not limited to, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times; (3) Academia including all the Ivy Leagues Schools, the UC System, Stanford, and many others; (4) Most of the K-12 public school systems because the teachers unions are solidly liberal; (5) Most parts of the legal system, particularly trial lawyers and law professors; (6) Pretty much all the major tax-exempt philanthropic organizations such as the Ford Foundation, The Pew Memorial Trust, The Rockefeller Foundation etc; (7) Many large and powerful corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Cisco, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Adobe, … Indeed the Obama Administration is full of ex-Google employees. (8) Government. Liberals now completely dominate the Democratic Party which controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Most big-city municipal governments are run by liberal Democrats. Mayor Bloomberg in NYC is only formally a Republican. In terms of policy, he’s solidly in the liberal camp.
What does the Republican right control? Most of talk radio, but NPR is solidly liberal. A few think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. Some state governments such as Oklahoma and Texas.
But all this power is evidently not enough. The Democratic Strategist wants it all.
April 13, 2010, 1:07 pmSarcastro says:
Just about the entire world is to A. Zarkov‘s left!
This proves that they are all biased and nothing about Zarkov‘s position.
Similarly, the entire world is above a flounder.
April 13, 2010, 1:24 pmDavid V says:
Having lived through Reagan, both Bushes and the Republican control of Congress under Clinton, I can categorically confirm that there is a voting bloc one can easily label “The Christian Right”. And given their voting track record and the obvious paths to how they are influenced to vote they are inexorably tied to whatever is filling in for the ‘Conservative Movement’ at any given time- “Silent Majority”, “Tea Party”, “Republicans”, whatever.
I come from a Libertarian/Democrat family where there was more often agreement on political philosophy. We agreed on guns, states rights*, separation of church and state. *This was always sticky because we always had to come back to the argument about consent to be governed and what I have posted before about Madison’s changing views of government from Federalist to Republican- always arriving at the conclusion that there are some things the government should do regarding public welfare because it is fiscally and logically sound for them to do so, given that there is and sort of must be a central government- interstate transportation systems, healthcare and staying out of corporate rescue situations or subsidies.
I consider that reasoned discussion- even if there is thoughtful disagreement with the ideas.
The Christian Right however makes no evidence of reasoned or rational thinking. It’s guttural, visceral, selective, exclusionary- it’s religious- with the Tea Party being some of the worst -zealotry. Of course the un-Christian behavior of its leaders (Gingrich, Robertson, Palin) gives it that added air of hypocrisy.
Whatever sides of the discussions people come down on, allowing this minority of the “Christian RIght” to influence policy just because they have the best media presence should make ones blood boil.
April 13, 2010, 1:24 pmAndy Rozell says:
Wow.
People with similar backgrounds, values and interests often vote alike.
Is that scary or what?
Yeah. It should really make us mad that people try to use the media to influence the outcome of elections.
I think the article I linked pretty much makes my point – if the “Christian right” were really a powerful and monolithic influence, abortion would already
April 13, 2010, 2:21 pmbe illegal and a lot of other things would be different.
Peter Gerdes says:
Umm, no. Nullification and secession, at least in the context of the United States, are legal positions which hold that it’s in fact completely legal (an implicit part of the constitutional bargain that formed the country) for states to leave this voluntary union and to nullify federal laws inside their own boundaries.
I don’t think it’s a correct argument but the question at hand is over what powers the federal government legally possess so if these views were right then they wouldn’t be illegal.
April 13, 2010, 2:43 pmSarcastro says:
The proof that there is no voting bloc is that not all of their policy preferences have been enacted. Because interest groups always succeed utterly.
And even if there is a voting bloc, it’s just people with similar values voting together. That’s not the definition of a voting block at all!
Finally, I fear commies voting together. That’s why America is getting all socialist! But it is very mockable for libs to fear religious dudes voting for stuff they hate. Silly libs, they are correct, so what they want isn’t scary, it’s awesome!
April 13, 2010, 2:47 pmDilan Esper says:
Actually, one of the better indications of the outsized power of the religious right is not the Texas school book shenanigans, but the Terri Schiavo controversy. It’s perfectly clear that most of the public thought that her husband was in the best position to honor her wishes and that the state court decisions leaving the issue to her husband to decide were perfectly reasonable.
However, the religious right was able to force Bush to cut short a trip and come back to Washington, and a late-night / weekend debate and congressional vote on a (plainly invalid) law to exercise federal authority over this case. (Note, by the way, that in doing so, the Christian right trampled on all the tenets of federalism that they now so conveniently espouse.)
And, of course, it turned out that what they did was deeply unpopular and, indeed, was viewed as extremist.
I’d say that episode says as much about the reality of the Christian right’s power and the danger it poses as any.
April 13, 2010, 2:47 pmDavid V says:
People who vote because someone scares them or misleads them in to a position by preying on their values- that is scary and that is what happens in the Christian Right. Even more scary is when the values are manipulated in to thinking that one position is in keeping with their moral compass but is in effect counter to the teachings of their religion. That is also scary. That is also the Christian Right.
Yes, especially when that information is based on factual inaccuracy and cognitive dissonance.
I find the type of spin released by the Dem. Strategist off-putting because it continues the discussion in a manner fit for the same playground.
April 13, 2010, 3:04 pmDavid V says:
That is only proof that they don’t effect the majority all the time, yet.
April 13, 2010, 3:06 pmA. Zarkov says:
The flounder still swims above the netherworld whose unfortunate pagan inhabitants are forever denied even a glimpse of the divine light.
April 13, 2010, 3:13 pmSarcastro says:
But that’s not what the flounder told me!
April 13, 2010, 3:28 pmWill says:
Interesting news today for the Florida AG leading the state’s efforts against the individual mandate: apparently Florida State University has a requirement that all incoming freshman have health insurance or pay for insurance provided them. FSU has asked the AG for clarification. Wonder if other universities have the same requirement?
April 13, 2010, 3:29 pmA. Zarkov says:
Then you need to associate with a better class of flounders.
April 13, 2010, 3:42 pmChrisTS says:
Dave V:
I agree. Rather than shriek about ‘what your side does,’ we might all want to ask that this inane war of spin and half-facts stop.
Perhaps Prof Kopel could show us the way.
April 13, 2010, 3:44 pmneimoller says:
i’d suggest a tinfoil hat, but then you already know tin’s liberal bias….
April 13, 2010, 3:48 pmA. Zarkov says:
Tell me which one fails to qualify.
April 13, 2010, 4:13 pmMark Field says:
I don’t see how this is inconsistent with my point that “nullification and secession … claim the right to ignore the law without punishment.”
April 13, 2010, 4:16 pmCrunchy Frog says:
They might have excluded Jefferson, but at least they left his moose.
April 13, 2010, 4:17 pmDesiderius says:
J. Rowe,
“It’s interesting because neither King, and especially not Thoreau seemed to be Christians in the traditional sense of the term (with MLK, it’s a debatable proposition”
Your Stockholm Syndrome is acting up again.
The religious right hysteria is about class. Those who’ve been brain-drained away from their communities to the New Class commanding heights (and, as importantly, the parents who encouraged them to do so) need to believe they’re in a more enlightened place to make the tremendous effort and sacrifice of doing so all worthwhile. Truth has little hope with so much else at stake.
Those of us with no skin it that game would do well to note it.
April 13, 2010, 4:40 pmDavid V says:
Almost as if he were listening:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/824
Vaccine-autism claims, “Frankenfood” bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public’s growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.
April 13, 2010, 4:46 pmyao says:
David Kopel: “The report’s description of the Texas State Board of Education (not the “Texas School Board”)”
Wait a minute – this is the Volokh Conspiracy’s most fervent defender of the locution “Obamacare” talking?
April 13, 2010, 5:15 pmChrisTS says:
Mark Field:
Not to mention that secession and nullification are not analogous to individual acts of disobedience.
April 13, 2010, 6:39 pmPerseus says:
As Lincoln might say, there is ultimately no tenable middle ground between revolution and law–be it nullification or civil disobedience–and therefore, “for the sake of example,” even bad laws “should be religiously observed.” As for the substantive issues involved, I’m was merely noting how each side invented a doctrine to excuse lawlessness. How one judges them will, of course, depend on one’s view of the justice of their cause.
April 13, 2010, 7:09 pmPerseus says:
Why not? Civil disobedience is the right of nullification universalized.
April 13, 2010, 7:49 pmMark Field says:
That’s a pretty cold-blooded way of putting it in this particular context.
No it isn’t. As I already pointed out, civil disobedients accept the punishment for violating the law. Nullifiers claim the right to disobey the law without consequence. While it’s not entirely clear how Lincoln would have viewed the doctrine of civil disobedience — he never had to address it — civil disobedience does at least meet the general standard of acknowledging the ultimate force of the law.
April 13, 2010, 8:01 pmMark Field says:
True. They involve consequences beyond the individual and beyond the particular law at issue.
April 13, 2010, 8:02 pmRicardo says:
It’s an overused term for sure. But Jerry Falwell and his followers certainly did make up a powerful interest group. His Liberty University managed to attract Republican candidates John McCain and Mike Huckabee as speakers. That’s a bit odd for a relatively obscure private university.
Then John McCain found himself backtracking on his previous criticism of Jerry Falwell when he was running for President. Nobody can enjoy that much deference and attention from mainstream political candidates without having a sizable interest group influence behind them.
April 13, 2010, 10:16 pmRicardo says:
Zarkov, even if liberals are in control of the university system, it’s though to see what practical consequence it has. In 2008, Obama won 53% of the votes of college graduates comapared to McCain’s 45%. If we break it apart by race, white college graduates slightly favored McCain at 51% compared to Obama’s 47%.
You have to agree that if liberals are trying to indoctrinate and brain-wash students, they are doing a pretty incompetent job of it.
Then there’s the case of Larry Summers — a Democrat who was praised by many prominent conservatives for daring to take on leftist professors at Harvard. It’s true he was ousted as Harvard President but then he got appointed to a top adviser role in the Obama Administration. The interest group made up of left-wing gender studies professors doesn’t wield any real power off campus.
It’s tough to imagine a conservative taking on people like Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed and then getting promoted within the conservative establishment. I ask again, why else would McCain feel the need to backtrack on his previous criticism of Jerry Falwell? The most likely explanation is that as a “maverick” Senator with a reputation for being a centrist, McCain could slam anyone on the right he wanted to. When he becomes the Republican candidate for President, though, it’s apparently a different story and he had to make amends for some of his loose talk.
April 13, 2010, 10:36 pmPeter Gerdes says:
Only in the same sense that the first ammendment grants you the right to ignore the law (bills congress passed) or that the implied self-defense exception does. Generally speaking fundamental legal principles which limit the power of government or govern it’s proper functioning aren’t understood as giving the right to ignore the law. Rather they determine what the law consists of.
Presumably, though incorrect IMO, the nullification and seccession supporters would claim that congress could no more pass a law requiring compliance in the face of official state nullification or bar states from leaving the union than they could pass a law mandating catholicism as the state religion. These theories simply hold that the constitution is fundamentally a volountary, non-compulsory understanding between sovereign states and they retain the right to withdraw just as the US government retains the right to withdraw from many treaties and international organizations.
April 13, 2010, 11:44 pmMark Field says:
I understood this from your first post. However, it doesn’t address my original point: that civil disobedients ultimately submit to the law (by going to jail), while nullifiers don’t. That’s an important distinction which makes it inapt to say, as Perseus did, that the two are identical.
April 13, 2010, 11:54 pmPerseus says:
Any doctrine promulgated generally that allows one to violate the law is liable to result in disobedience pure and simple, which is why Lincoln insisted on religious observance of even bad laws. Moreover, King’s argument is not exactly clear why you should accept the punishment if it’s possible to break the law while still respecting it.
There is a difference (though I would argue that a more important one is that civil disobedience is far less political–indeed anti-political–because it does not necessarily involve collective deliberation and action), but it’s not one that is critical to the issue of lawlessness, which the Democratic Strategist memo likewise recognizes when it refers to the “extremist philosophy” of those rascally Republicans who seek “to establish the right of individuals or states to ignore and disobey any laws that they happen to interpret as impinging on their freedom or natural rights.”
April 14, 2010, 12:04 amRicardo says:
“When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.” — George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
April 14, 2010, 3:10 amRicardo says:
That’s quite a non sequitur and an implicit strawman. Nobody ever said the Christian right was an all-powerful force in American politics. It’s an influential interest group. And it’s hardly a coincidence that Ralph Reed — former head of the Christian Coalition — was a long-time friend and former roommate of uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The irony here is that neoconservative intellectual Irving Kristol was quite explicit in encouraging conservatives to make common cause with evangelical Christians in 1984. Now, we’re supposed to believe that evangelical Christians wield no significant political influence and that people like Kristol and many top political strategists within the Republican Party simply do not know what they are talking about when they discuss trying to woo evangelical Christian voters.
April 14, 2010, 5:58 amA. Zarkov says:
What’s the baseline for your comparison? What was the non-college white vote for Obama? I don’t know the number offhand, but I would guess it was in the high 30s or low 40s. A link to the data source would be helpful. However what we really need is data on freshman versus seniors since many factors are at play here.
My daughter went to an Ivy League school as an undergraduate, and then a top law school. She went to kind of places where the future leadership of the U.S. comes from, and she tells me that the vast majority of the professors are staunch liberals. Even in high school the bias towards liberal ideas was starkly evident. For example we had to correct the false data being fed to the students about acid rain. She told me that at they never had a conservative speaker in middle and high school. I would be just as concerned if the situation were turned around because I think students need to get all points of view.
The Larry Summers imbroglio at Harvard confirms my hypothesis. He dared to get slightly out of line, and got slapped down for it by the faculty. Being a shameless coward, he then caved in completely, but got fired anyway. His appointment as director of the White House National Economic Council simply demonstrates the power of Wall Street. The investment banks were big contributors to Obama’s campaign.
April 14, 2010, 6:22 amSarcastro says:
Here is the rule. All libs will be bent on indoctrinating and lying and using whatever means to make their side win. Any libs caught being balanced were never libs at all.
Conservatives in positions of power, on the other hand, don’t abuse it. They are super-unbiased folks. And any Cons caught abusing their power are bad apples and not Cons at all. Or are at least acting for the greater good.
April 14, 2010, 10:00 amMark Field says:
I’m skeptical of this. It’s one of those statements that nobody should accept as a matter of logic, only as a matter of fact.
I don’t think this matters. The important point was that he remained willing to abide by the consequences, something which can’t be said of nullifiers or secessionists.
In the case of someone like Thoreau, that’s right. In King’s case, of course, the opposite was true.
It’s a little hard to know how to interpret this passage, especially since it’s not intended as philosophy but as partisan spin. If they’re saying that individuals shouldn’t be permitted to ignore and disobey laws without consequence, then I don’t see the problem. If anyone is claiming the right to disobey laws they don’t agree without suffering any consequence, then that is indeed a formula for anarchy.
April 14, 2010, 10:23 amAndy Rozell says:
I’m not saying nobody tried. I’m saying the attempt failed. I’m saying the movement never really took hold in the churches – with the exception of a few congregations led by t.v. preachers that attracted the kind of people who were already likely to get wound up in politics.
I’m saying that if you go to your average, run of the mill evangelical protestant type church, you’re not going to find a bunch of political activists. These folks don’t march in parades, don’t sign petitions, don’t go to protests and quite often don’t even vote.
April 14, 2010, 11:44 amPerseus says:
And my point was that both advocated violating the law. That King believed it was possible to promulgate a moral doctrine that allowed one to violate and to respect the law simultaneously is secondary.
April 14, 2010, 11:52 amMark Field says:
I don’t agree. As Peter has noted, nullifiers and secessionists believe that they aren’t “violating” the law, they believe they are “trumping” the law with a higher one.
King, in contrast, admitted he was violating the law, but did so in order to call attention to the law’s injustice.
This distinction isn’t “secondary”, nor is it “secondary” that King, by admitting he broke the law and suffering the punishment, demonstrated a respect for the law which nullifiers and secessionists lacked (either from ignorance or from malice).
April 14, 2010, 12:53 pm