The dire state of our politics is evident on the pages of the New York Times every day.
The front page of the Sunday Review section carried a third-hand accusation of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh. The piece omitted that the source was a Democratic operative and that the alleged victim has no memory of an assault. It was a total abandonment of journalistic standards in pursuit of an agenda.
Two days later, the New York Times’ opinion section parlayed the anger ginned up by its own irresponsible attack into a piece calling on Democrats to pack the Supreme Court. “Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed last September under clouds of suspicion that stemmed from accusations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct,” columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote, as if the accusations had not been demolished by months of investigations that found no corroboration. Then, Bouie concluded that Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and that of Neil Gorsuch, “cry out for Democratic hardball.”
Why do they need to play hardball?
Bouie explains, “It’s entirely possible that a future Democratic agenda would be circumscribed and unraveled by” the Supreme Court. In other words, when Democrats try to do things that the Constitution doesn’t allow, they could be derailed if there are judges on the court who believe the Constitution limits what majorities can do.
And we don’t have to guess what they will try to do.
“Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15s,” presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke declared to many cheers at the most recent Democratic debate and no resistance from other Democrats on the stage. When Joe Biden in that same debate noted that the Constitution doesn’t allow the executive to simply implement whatever gun control it wants, ruthless prosecutor Kamala Harris laughed and declared, “Yes, we can!”
Fittingly, the New York Times on Wednesday ran an op-ed defending O’Rourke’s gun confiscation plan and attacking the Bill of Rights for subordinating majority opinion to the “political preferences of a shrinking minority of citizens.”
The writer said of gun owners, “They think democracy’s coming for their power, and they’re right.”
The pattern here is clear: All rules and restraints need to go out the window in pursuit of the Left’s aims. Journalistic standards interfere with the ability to smear conservative justices, which must be done in order to justify packing the court, which must be done in order to shelve the Constitution, which, after all, stands in the way of what the Left imagines the majority wants. Got that?
The Left, believing it has the majority of the country behind it, wants to mow down all obstacles to majority rule. And further, it wants to impose what it sees as the majority morality on those it views as the retrograde minority.
Gun owners may not continue to be gun owners. Christian cake bakers may not continue to be Christian cake bakers. Catholic nuns must play by the rules that the Times wants them to play by. The small spheres of personal freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are obstacles to the supposed majority enforcing its will on the minority.
Even stipulating for the sake of argument that the Left and the Times are correct about what the majority believes, the Left and the Times are dead wrong about what the federal government ought to do.
First, the United States is founded on the idea of individual liberty, an idea the Left preaches half the time, but not when it comes to political speech, the exercise of religion, or the right to bear arms. They demand diversity of all types except diversity of opinion.
Second, the Bill of Rights is by its nature anti-majoritarian. At times, most Americans have wanted to ban blasphemy, communist ideas, or other unpopular speech. The First Amendment tells most Americans in such cases to shove it. At times, most Americans have wanted to suspend the rights of suspected terrorists or criminals. The Bill of Rights doesn’t allow the majority to have its way.
Normally, the American Left argues that minorities need protection. Now that they think they’re becoming the majority, they want to clear out obstacles to majoritarian rule.
