What American Exceptionalism Actually Means
Negative rights do not come from government. They come from nature. They exist independent of government. They would continue to exist even if the government were to evaporate out of existence. The government’s job is to protect these natural rights, not to bestow them.
Of course, not everyone around the world views liberty in this manner. The South African Constitution provides “positive rights” like the “right to housing,” prompting Cass Sunstein — White House legal scholar and regulations czar — to call it “the most admirable constitution in the history of the world.” But suppose a South African citizen doesn’t have a home. They can claim a constitutional right to one. Therefore, the South African government can claim the authority to compel a South African homeowner to house the homeless. This not only destroys the homeowner’s rights, but it also destroys civil society in that it compels men and women, through the threat of government force, to lend a helping hand to one another. There should be no compulsion in brotherhood. It should be organic. A “positive rights” society undermines this aspect of human solidarity.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once tried to create a Second Bill of Rights, full of positive rights: the right to a “decent home,” the right to a “decent living,” the right to “adequate food,” and so forth. A decent home, a decent living, and adequate food are all good things; things we should be free to pursue (what we Americans call “the pursuit of happiness”).
But all of these things, if guaranteed to us by the government as a positive right, would require the violation of someone else’s liberty. Who is to determine what is and isn’t a decent living? Who is to determine what is and isn’t adequate food? Employees would tell their bosses — consumers would tell providers — what they were getting wasn’t “decent” and “adequate” enough. They want more for free, they would say, and standing behind them would be armed “enforcers of rights” from the government. Such a society would devolve into a Hobbesian dystopia within months. It’d look a lot like Africa.
For instance, should a doctor be forced to perform surgery for free? Maybe he should do so of his own volition (and many doctors do, in fact, work pro bono for people without insurance). But if the doctor is compelled to work for free, he may go somewhere else. In short, the government cannot create anything; it can only allocate or “redistribute” it.
We are seeing the same debate today with the contraception controversy. The issue is not contraception but the forced financing of contraception. The government is violating a negative right (the religious freedom of Catholics) and imposing a positive right (mandated subsidization of contraception). These two violations of liberty are equal in consequence. Should the government force kosher delis to offer non-kosher ham on their menu? Of course not. Non-kosher customers have no positive right to ham sandwiches. As Sheldon Richman explains, “the fulfillment of positive rights requires that other people act affirmatively even if they don’t want to… if one person’s freedom depends on the infringement of someone else’s freedom, the first claim is illegitimate.” To contend otherwise is to oppose the principle of equality.
Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th century French philosopher, once wrote of negative and positive rights like so: “These two functions of the law contradict each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free….It is quite impossible for me to conceive of fraternity as legally enforced, without liberty being legally destroyed, and justice being legally trampled underfoot.”
Positive rights aren’t “progressive.” They’re regressive. They’re the oldest idea in legal history. The negative liberties of the Founders — the intellectual revolution of 1776 — was real progress, an exceptional diversion from the normal trajectory of political theory. Our adherence to these principles, when and where we do adhere, is progressive and exceptional.
The Constitution does not enslave us to 18th century ethics. It does not forbid the future. The Constitution is a dictionary with which we should define, a prism through which we may view, individual liberty, and protect it, come what the future may bring. That the future may bring indefinite detention of American citizens and 30,000 surveillance drones over American skies only underscores the importance of the Constitution.
This is how American leaders ought to speak to the world. The world would appreciate such honesty, not recoil from it. Our exceptionalism is not genetic. We are an imperfect country. But our birth song, the Constitution, and our founding principles define liberty much differently than all other democratic republics throughout human history.
Our “birth song” is the Declaration of Independence. It is our founding document and is at least as important, if not more, than the Constitution, because it provides the basis for the legitimacy of the Constitution (and any document like it). Why these rights defended here should be called negative is beyond me. They are NATURAL rights. That is (as the Declaration says) they are given to us by Nature’s God, or they arise from Nature, however you prefer it. Eg.: every animal on the face of the earth knows it has the right to defend itself, and it has some means of doing so: with the exception of some exceptionally irrational homo sapiens. That’s just the way it is. There is no argument possible against it. The same is true of all of the natural rights.
Having said this; I agree wholeheartedly with the essay.
The concept of “negative rights” was actually a driving force behind the “Bill of Rights.” The Bill of Rights was a compromise between those who desired the limits of government to be explicitedly articulated, and those who believed there were ample safeguards in the body of the document. It would seem the conservatives were right even back then. The framers of the US Constitution considered Congress as the seat of government power. The wording of the first ten ammendments are negative to the rights of Congress and by extension to the rights government.
“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution,” Ginsburg said.’
Is there no definition of the word Treason?
Is there no process for removal of a Supreme Court Justice?
Of course there is. It’s called impeachment, the same as for the President or any other sitting federal judge.
Let me say a word in defense of Justice Ginsburg. It may be that she had in mind the difficulty we had in Iraq and are now having in Afghanistan engrafting western concepts of governance and individual rights on pre-medieval cultures.
Maybe.
Well, it could be.
Whether that was on her mind or not, I certainly have been convinced that it takes an electorate with a western political heritage, or at least politically sophisticated, to make a republic work. Now before everybody says “Japan” in unison, remember they had a crash course in western civics and were sophisticated enough to absorb at least enough of it.
Off topic, but Japan is a great model for a lot of things folks in this world can learn.
Did a more visceral hatred ever exist between opposing warriors, than ours and theirs? And they got over it. My fathers generation nuked them, and his sons are now allies with theirs. No generation after generation of hatred for their “conquerors”, no perpetual lust for revenge driving their culture.
We fought a horrible, ugly angry war, and we were able to forgive and move forward, TOGETHER.
Its amazing when you think of it.
Someone, please, have the Japanese scold the Muslims?
Get over it Mohammad…grow the f#&k up already…
WE DID.
I understand the concept. I was objecting to the word usage. I think it does a disservice to the idea. Better to call them natural rights, inalienable rights, Divine rights. The point is WE have rights. When it comes to governments WE are the creators; the government has no rights. We conver on it powers, if and for so long as it uses those powers to protect those rights – which is the only purpose of the government. All of this is in the Declaration.
I’m not sure which side of the controversy of Bill of Rights/no bill of rights I fall on. I’ll play Devil’s advocate: The natural rights are not exhaustively listed or represented in the Bill of Rights and probably couldn’t be. The Constitution is already clear on one point which SHOULD make the Bill unnecessary: that is that the government has no powers except those specifically given to it. So then: if you did not give the government the power to disarm the populace, why would you have to say, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”? Well: of course not! We never said otherwise, and that’s the status quo! But as it is you have laws everywhere infringing on this power and DEFENDED by the Second Ammendment: “Well that’s just for a militia.” Etc. And more insidiously you create a mindset which may not have otherwise existed: that without the Second Amendment we would have no right to arm ourselves. You create the idea that the GOVERNMENT is conferring the rights. But that is not so. We HAVE rights. Already. Before government existed. They’re just there. Period. Now: we create government, primarily to PRESERVE those rights. IT DOES NOT CONFER THEM. But the Second Amendment, et.al., create the impression that it does. This is the problem. Also, there is this: as was already mentioned, the Constitution already said the government has no powers exept those given it (by We the Creators). Either this is going to be respected or it is not, amendments or no amendments. Right now it is not respected. Justice Ginsburg and her friends care nothing for it. So the amendments might hurt us, but they can’t help us.
The Founders drafted the Constitution with the expressed purpose to limit government powers because they realized that a government without limits would inevitably become authoritarian. History informs that many governments begin with the claim of explicit intent to do its best for its citizens and end up as totalitarian regimes which do its best for members of the government: Soviet Union, Communist China, Nazi Germany, etc.
Canadian “Human Rights” Council. Current U.S. Administration, a good portion of Current and recent past U.S. congresses.
Further evidence in the case of science fiction predicting the future (sort of): Leigh Brackett’s romping “planetary romance” The Ginger Star gives us the world of Skaith, whose sun is in decline, threatening famine. The Lords Protector – the government of the planet’s primary nation – declare that no one will be left hungry or homeless during the crisis. The near-immediate result? Over half of said nation’s population quit work and become Farers, bands of hippie-types “living in the moment” and wandering from town to town, on which they descend like locusts upon the remaining, struggling working people and devour their substance, enforced by a brutal police presence. The workers are desperate to emigrate to other planets, but the Lords Protector have closed the spaceport, because if anyone productive is permitted to leave, the Farers WOULD starve… and our story begins. Written in 1974. Ms. Brackett saw the future, all right.
Our exceptionalism is not genetic? To tell you the truth I don’t know the answer to that one and most Americans dislike the idea, myself included.
However look at history and tell me the Aztecs were a people simply caught out at the wrong time and that they would’ve eventually put men on the moon or dominated the culture of the world if they’d been left to themselves long enough. Of course hypotheticals are of limited use in this manner and yet it is this type of hypothetical which drives our laws and political correctness in the last 30 years and more.
The idea behind affirmative action, asking Muslims into space, “white privilege” and a multitude of other views is that all people would occupy the same first place status that the United States has occupied for the last 2 centuries if given the “chance.”
“Chance” is the tricky word as is the idea that all people are in fact members of a first place team. There is nothing under the sun that prevented South America from becoming as influential and successful as America and Africa has had the benefit the U.S. and Europe did not have, a blueprint on how to do everything under the sun rather than having to invent and build from scratch.
Anyone who’s ever traveled throughout the Third World knows they are a group of countries that do just enough to get by culturally right across the board; Americans on the other hand culturally dot I’s and cross T’s
The fact of the matter is that other cultures have had an interaction with Europe and America for a very long time and if a thing was going to be done it would have been. The Left believes it will and it’s just a matter of more time and more help.
This is the source of Obama’s view of the world and America, the view that those used to failure and who identify with it embrace. A loser will always tell you how things cannot be done and a winner how they can be done. A loser mentality, which is the real definition of the Rainbow Coalition, embraces props, crutches, extra-legal laws and a plethora of clever excuse-making to get people to that place of equality based on the now tired idea that all success is based on access and networking.
Equality defines itself and needs no props and bandages and you can’t keep a good man down. What you are seeing between Conservatives and Liberals is the idea of a Meritocracy versus an ant colony. Horatio Alger, pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps and water finding it’s own level are ideas loved and hated depending on political affiliation. One is a socialist dream and the other the antithesis of that.
One very large problem is that we have 300 million people in America today and more coming at a fantastic rate and from failed societies. They have been inculcated with the Liberal viewpoint and are exploiting it whether they truly believe in it or not; it’s simply a matter of exploiting our politically correct weaknesses and basically turning the keys of America over to the Third World based on Liberal faith that nothing we see in the world is real but rather a world of woulda, coulda and shoulda that Liberals will straighten out. Give a Haitian or Egyptian a chance and enough time and they will build space stations and invent the next superconductor that will free America and the world from oil.
In this sense we have extended out our Constitution to embrace the Third World and conspicuous failure as an act of faith rather than simply believing in history and our own eyes. America has become a giant social experiment where the Liberals have essentially won the argument and the demographic change of America is far advanced but without any noticeable osmosis transforming campesinos into scientists or Somalians into Jeffersonians. Rome imported failure and collapsed and it doesn’t take faith to see this but merely access to books.
Fail Burton, this is a superb comment. Please change your handle; it doesn’t fit you.
“The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth,”
Nor should they. I still believe in the Constitution and it doesn’t say anything about taking money AWAY from one group of people and giving to another group of people. But there was one nation that did have that law. Oh yes, there was one. It was called the Soviet Union, and where are those people now?
The Constitution has served us well for many years. Leave it alone. Or, better, yet, how about we start paying more attention to it from now on. That would be a refreshing change, change we could really belive in.
You’ve got two camps: One believes that the citizens grant power to those who govern, the other believes that those who govern grant rights to the citizens. One group supports “the consent of the governed” while the other endorses “the consent of the governors”. One group believes that politicians are Public Servants, the other believes they’re Rulers.
The founding fathers understood the equation “Government = Corruption”, they understood that the only way to limit Federal corruption was to limit the scope of the Federal Government. They understood that it’s much harder to steal from your neighbor than it is from somebody 1000 miles away because sooner rather than later you’ll ask “Why does half of my paycheck go to Bob? He’s perfectly healthy and instead of working he spends his time at the lake on his new boat. Why am I paying for that?”
If you understand the equation “Government = Corruption” then you understand why politicians hate Conservatives. Federal spending has doubled in the last 10 years… has your quality of life also doubled? It did if you benefited from the associated corruption. That’s why politicians get so angry when we talk about shrinking government, we’re talking about reducing their opportunity for graft. How dare you interfere with the “Divine Right of Kings” to plunder the kingdom?
‘“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution,” Ginsburg said.’
She’s never paid it any attention in the past, so her statement surprised me not at all.
Luckily, throughout its history, the SCOTUS has been pretty much of a bad joke when it comes to abiding by the United States Constitution, so she really doesn’t stand out as being particularly incompetent or stupid.
I’ve never used the term “American Exceptionalism” but would argue that, in the history of how humans have organized themselves on the planet, the notion of all power resting with “the people” is a highly exceptional way to envision the foundations of a country.
Though I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out Ginsburg, as best I can determine, she would consider an enlightened Constitution one that specifically enshrined basic human “rights”, which rights are apparently defined by her as things like a right to healthcare, to education, even to a right to travel.
The fact that Europe has been trying that stuff for decades and is now going bankrupt because the arrangements are financially untenable and unsustainable, doesn’t seem to bother Ruthie et al.
But that isn’t even the real point in what I find suffocatingly paternalistic and killing of the human spirit in the attitude of Ginsburg and her fellow liberals, on and off the Supreme Court.
She should move to South Africa so she can be up close and personal to its Constitution, just Like Michael Moore who so admires Cuba and its alleged “healthcare” should move there.
But damn they won’t budge.
Positive rights come about because government has already interfered in people’s lives to the point that they have become dependent upon government for more and more. However if the government stays out of people’s lives except for providing for the common defense and maintance of law & order, the need for further government intervention is considerably reduced. For example, without prescription laws, drug laws, laws forbidding you to import medicine for your own use from whatever supplier you wish to use, that is, giving you the right to take care of your own health as you see fit, there would be far less need for government intervention in the health care system to start with. So in many cases we have an example of government fouling things up, then stepping in and saying, “See, you need government to take care of this for you…” Whereas if government had kept its long nose out of people’s affairs, there would be far less need for government intervention of any kind. Of all the people now running for President, only Ron Paul understands this simple fact that government first creates a problem, then attempts to convince us that we need government to “fix” the problem that government first created!
Liberals find the Constitution an impediment to their grand ideas of the role of government in peoples’ lives.
Barack called it a litany of negative liberties, particularly the first 10 amendments, putting constraints on federal power. He has acknowledged that, since Congress post 2010 election is no longer his personal rubber stamp, he will use every trick of the Executive at his disposal to rule without the sanction of the legislature.
Subversive, at best.
The idiot at the WaPo Ezra Klein said of the Constitution…”That old thing is over 100 years old and nobody knows what it means”. (paraphrased)
Sometimes, when under pressure, Leftards spill the beans…
Check out Rep. Kathy Hochul
It all started with Plato’s “Republic” where the better types, the “Philosopher Kings” rule. This idea that some few are inherently better than the rest of us and therefore should direct society.
The next landmark on the road to serfdom was the French Revolution where the Philosopher Kings targeted an entire class of people as unfit to exist alongside the masses. The guillotine was their fate.
Then Karl Marx updated Plato with his “Manifesto” which again called for the elite to take charge for the “betterment” of all lesser souls.
This led to the two great socialist movements of the 20Th Century — the fascists and the communists. This conjunction of the two rails of socialism where the “natural leaders” rule, resulted in the bloodiest century in the history of man.
Now we have Obamism, the logical result of 100 years of the American movement dubbed “Progressivism”. The Progressives waged a brilliant war against the exceptionalism of America. Ever so slowly they began to erode the Constitution with a little change here, a little change there. A few, like Barry Goldwater and then Ronald Reagan, saw what was happening and gave this effort the somewhat quaint title of “creeping socialism.”
Throughout it all, the Progressives quietly, but surely, infiltrated all of the nation’s institutions of change: the schools, the courts, the news media and the entertainment industry, until they came to dominate our lives. As teir power and influence grew, most of us slept through this invasion until now, it is perhaps, too late.
As they amassed power, they first created the “Nanny” phase where they used “political correctness” to “nudge” us toward their desired goal of controlling us by allowing us to slip the ring of serfdom over our own necks.
Now we are entering the final phase of “Big Brother” where the Progressives no longer feel the need to “nudge”, but now use all of the institutions they’ve infested to order us to bend to their will. The hard work of persuasion no longer needs to be entertained. Now we are to be moved by the force of law (Obama care, Executive Orders, etc.) To assure compliance, now the Progressive Big Gopvernment will use the force of the gun.
We who revere the words of the Declaration and the rule of the Constitution have one last chance. The election of 2012 will either spell the death of the American Experiment, or will reinvigorate it. We have but one more chance. Will we take it? Or will we consign our children to the dark night of serfdom?
It is up to us.
But but…central planners and self-proclaimed élites throughout history have been and are, collectively and individually, such creeps. (playwright GB Shaw put forth an idea about getting those he deemed lesser, the hoi polloi, to drink some kind of friendly poison)
How could they have made such inroads into America, except for a distracted and self-indulgent population, largely ignorant of its responsibilities to maintain freedom (intentionally dumbed down, thanks to the efforts of public education) ?
The Illustrated Road to Serfdom
Twenty years ago I’d have laughed at the thought of getting a ticket for not wearing a seat belt. The same for cameras pointed at nearly every intersection in every benign neighborhood in America. I can’t laugh now, it’s here.
Each of these intrusions into our lives came at the loss of some liberty, or free will. Some ‘mastermind’ argued in favor of ‘collective’ rights trumping individual liberty based on a cost to society. Stupid, greedy, people bent on enriching themselves comes at a cost the ‘rest of us’ shouldn’t have to incur.
Since the ‘costs the rest of us need not bear’ is without limit, intrusions into every facet of our lives is game. By embracing this, the Left must accept responsibility for what will inevitably result: American un-exceptionalism.
For some reason, young people will not listen to their elders (except in some cultures). And, for some reason the Left refuses to listen to conservatives and in fact, does their level best to do anything but, whatever they suggest. Yet, they can be amusing (Colbert, Stewart, Maher, etc.). Let’s face it folks, the children are in-charge and have been for some time. Mom and Dad left the room long ago. They weren’t “cool”.
Our experiment with America-does-Animal House cannot end well. 2012 might put a dent in it if enough Adults vote. Our teenage tyrants have been banging their Birkenstocks on the podium to inform us that their might makes right. But, their ponytails are getting grayer and their strides less strident. Years of unexceptionalism has a way of taking it’s toll. Educated but unemployed? Come to daddy! Ah heck, move in with mom and dad.
Moms and Dads need to get back into the room and vote to end this teenage nightmare. It’s gone on long enough. We can no longer afford all the parties. Obama’s obsession with the golf course, numerous vacations, and perennial campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime are too reminiscent of a Weekend at Bernies. Chicago’s Axelrod and Friends obviously missed this angle. Look, Bernie is the Economy or Bernie is Middle East Policy, but either way, he’s dead and yet the party goes on. Sometime before Summer, Hillary comes busting out of a cake and Dad finally trips the 100 amp breakers at the main panel. Party over. Can you blame him? That’s 2012, folks. In a Tea bag.
Yes, that does seem to be THE weakness in the Idea of the Founding Fathers: the People. To imagine that people are and want to be self-governing THE major flaw in foundations they built to protect their progeny from government We see, and have seen, and are individually guilty of declining to be self-governing by constant vigilant activity in moniroring our elected representatives to assure they do the job according to the contract of employment/service: their freely sworn/affirmed oath to Uphold and Defend the Constitution of the USA..
Instead we accept and require ever increasing the “pork”, the bribes they provide for continued election. Talk of lberty, freedom, pride, individual responsibility and duty are sound-bites at election time.
We hear them speak of fairness, compassion and social justice. While they continue, without effective protest from the People, to Change, to abrogate the foundation of the LAW of We The People. THE Constitution which they, representatives in Legislature, Judiciary AND Executive as guardians of the Rights of the People do not apparently know that fairness, compassion and social justice are embedded in the Constitution as Equality in Law of Each citizen.
A truly excellent article. Thank you.
Ruth always was an asshole – look at her DC Circuit Court opinions. She, Breyer and Kagan will kill the Constitution. and why does it have to be the Jews? As a Jew, I am ashamed of these idiots – I apologize for them.
I have, in the past, used the “shipwrecked” rule to explain rights vs demands to Leftists, and it has actually worked.
If you (or anyone) were to be stranded on an island, and we had to work out our own arrangements, you would have the right to say what you want, believe what you want, eat what you want, make things and keep them for yourself, and pretty much do what you want.
You would not have a guarantee of medical care, housing or food- but you would have the right to provide things for yourself. You would have the right to make and keep a weapon, too, if you wished.
Assume you were a fierce liberal type- even then it would be obvious, you have no “right” to a house, or any other good or service, because no one is there to provide it for you.
Assume then, I swam ashore the next day. Do you suddenly now assert that you have a right to housing, and order me to start work on it? And then feed you and treat your injury, because you have a right to food and medical care?
Obviously not. You can ask me for these things, and we may come to some agreement.
Assume, then, over time, more people arrive, one at a time. At what point did your “positive” rights emerge? When the 10th survivor arrived? The 100th?
Or is it more accurate to say: It never did, nor will it, regardless of how many people arrive on the island. It was a wish, a demand, it might even be a need, but never a right.
It’s worth noting that the US Constitution does in fact appear to allow a positive right You have the right to counsel in a trial, and specifically, the government is obligated to provide. But that can be seen as a further restriction on government. It is no so much that you have the right to counsel (you cannot simply walk into a courthouse and demand free legal advice), as much as the government does not have the right to try you without making it available. So paradoxically, you cannot walk into a courthouse and demand free legal advice, but you can walk into a courthouse, commit a crime, get arrested, and demand free legal advice. It’s complicated, but it is actually a negative right disguised as a positive one.
I don’t think it fits into either category (negative or positive right (anyway, I reject the entire framework)); it is simply a limit on government power. It works this way: because we are granting the government the power to determine who is and who is not guilty of a crime, we have the right to limit that power also, and say that the government cannot do so unless the person has a qualified advocate. Okay. Now: the government can either provide an advocate for those who cannot do so themselves, OR: it can decline to try them. If you think about it they do the latter quite often.
I agree fully with your interpretation, but a restriction on government is by definition a negative right. It is telling the people “You will be free from…”
In this case, “being tried under a legal system you don’t have access to competent knowledge of”. To prevent government from using people’s ignorance against them. Ignorance is no defense, but in our system it can’t the prosecution. Hence, it’s a negative right, disguised.
Mr. Guariglia,
Great essay, PJ Media needs more articles like this. In the context of human civilization, the concept of negative liberties is still a new idea.
Readers might wish to compare our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights with the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Here lies the difference between most of us and the statists. Also, one might compare the political structure of France during the ‘ancien regime’ to the present. There and then and now, the centralised State is supreme, Pretty much the same in Britain now.
“Redistribution” is a polite word for kleptocracy. And after thousands of years, we all know how that always ends for the citizenry. The Radical Whig philosophy of the Founders was utterly opposed to this. Fro excellent historical reasons.
Well if Barack Obama says that “…it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes,” all I can say is: WHEW!!
Good article, but the “liberty teeth” quote from Washington is bogus. I’ve spent a lot of time searching all of his writings for it. It is nowhere to be found.
Is the American constitution much different than Canada’s Charter of Freedoms and Rights?
Not really. They both list negative rights which differ in detail but not in spirit. Neither guarantee “positive rights”, save for due process within the justice system.
The greatest difference is that Canada’s charter hedges it bets. It lets government override personal freedoms under certain circumstances. In a way this is just common sense that the American courts have already recognized – freedom of expression must have some limits. But in Canada, it’s perhaps a little to easy to circumvent individual rights.
How come none of you has asked what she was doing in Egypt in the first place? I’ll bet the taxpayers paid for the trip. How would you like to see the justification on the travel voucher for a SCOTUS member traveling to a country in the middle of an Islamic revolution? Especially one that used to be Jewish. Did the Egyptians pay for her to be a source for their new constitution? Was she trying to get some extra money for her 401K?
Ginsburg needs to go.
Her time is past and her views are not American, and not what is expected of a member of the highest court of the land.
If she doesn’t believe in the American system, she doesn’t belong on the bench.
End of discussion.
“If she doesn’t believe in the American system, she doesn’t belong on the
bench.”
Bingo! As with most progressives they do not belong anywhere in government or in our society. They are worse than the plague. They hate America and I could care less what twisted psychological reasons they harbor for their beliefs.
This will not end well.
The Founding Fathers knew from their reading in history and behaviours of men with unbounded power, e.g. kings/emperors/tsars ruling with divine right that NO government can be trusted. Hence, despite disagreements of form, the Constitution of the USA to embody in Law the thesis spelled out in the Declaration of Independence limiting the powers of government. Surprising that Ruth Ginsburg and B. Obama, graduates in Law from elite/prestigious academies do not apparently apprehend these foundations of enterprise USA. Perhaps less a measure of their education than their clear contempt for the progeny, American citizens, of the Founding Fathers they “represent”.
The socialist/communist empires/”European Union” of recent design, disciples Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt in the USA as Founding Fathers of the NEW Age as Messiah B. Obama, are built on the template of earlier empires lost with the Guns of August. Return of which Camelot ever a “dream from the fathers”
“Established” de haut en bas by “Europeans” to assuage their envy and hatred of that USA which its “commoner” peoples developed, without direction from the sophisticates, the most successful social enterprise known to man. Example for common people of “Europe” and other lands to dream even today of attaining.
Switzerland, Western European nation, Independent “Union”, not only encourages, but requires, citizens to bear arms, and regularly evidence ability to manaage them responsibly as duty in law of their citizenship. Odd that R. Ginsburg considers South Africa and NOT Switzerland or the USA as constitutional model. Is it necessary to comment on B.Obama’s fundamental misreading of the Constitution of the USA to which he swore fealty in internationally recorded television on accepting the highest office in the gift of American citizens. As immediate witness to that oath the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the USA.
Actually, if you recall, he bungled the televised version of the swearing-in so badly that he had to do it over later. What an idiot! If that clip is not used by SOMEONE over and over again during the national election to showcase what a complete boob he is I’ll conclude the fix has been in from the beginning.
“Negative rights” is a poor term because most people will never see past the word negative. “Natural rights” is more useful term in debate and argument.
The key point to keep hammering on is that government has no rights except those granted (provisionally) to it by citizens. The Bill of Rights is shorthand for the most important and salient of these natural rights.
And Amendment 10, though widely trampled on, should also be emphasized.