Monday, April 25, 2005

Liberals and the Constitution

Found this article linked at GeekWithA.45.

Some interesting information from John Hindraker of Powerline on a conference at Yale Law school. Definitely some thing to be worried about. Get these things that they want forced into the constitution, but by using the judiciary to interpret into the constitution.
From Sunstein:

* With growth and change, political rights enshrined in Constitution are inadequate.

* Need economic bill of rights. Ingredients of Second Bill of Rights--Only with these rights will we have security.

* Long tradition of American political thought--states owe to every citizen a degree of subsistence. Second Bill of Rights made possible by attack on distinction between negative and positive rights. Effort to separate them is unfit for the American legal framework.

* Roosevelt . . . did not favor return to narrowly construed judgments of those who drafted the Constitution.

* By 2020, it's going to be about time for the Second Bill of Rights to be reclaimed. . . . Beauty of Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights is its concreteness--right to education, etc.

From Ackerman:

* Task of every generation is to create institutional structures which express fundamental liberal commitments.

* [We need to] add "citizenship agenda" to Roosevelt's vision.

* Economic citizenship--stakeholder society in which every young adult gets a form of citizenship inheritance of $80,000, funded by a wealth tax . . .

* Vision here is a citizenship agenda . . . preliminary to rehabilitation of privileges of 14th Amendment which have never been redeemed.

* Idea of a national citizenship is powerful and underdeveloped legal resource . . . .concept that national citizenship has privileges--we need to make this a reality--cure disenfranchisement for felons.
So if they have their way, I don't need to do anything any more. I should just expect a good job and money from the government. No need to earn it.

Go read the rest yourself.

1 comment:

Granted said...

Basically, we're going to be fighting the idea that France works, despite every fact to the contrary. It really comes down to, at the root, the idea that being nice and being fair is more important than providing opportunity and rewards for excellence.

It's the kind of crap I've run into so much on the job, it doesn't matter sometimes how well you do the work that you're tasked with, if you hurt peoples feelings along the way. Hell, I've had bosses that prefer things get done incorrectly by incompetents so that they can feel good about their contributions rather than have the job done right the first time and hurt the poor sensibilities of the mentally challenged.