George Will: 'Progressives Are Wrong About The Essence of The Constitution'

Source:The Washington Post- Conservative columnist George Will.

“In his latest column for The Washington Post, George Will praises Timothy Sandefur’s superb new book The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty. As Will explains, the book addresses perhaps the most fundamental debate in American politics: namely, the battle between what Sandefur calls “the individual’s right to freedom” and “the power of the majority to govern.” Sandefur, a principle attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, comes down squarely on the side of the individual. Here’s a snippet from Will’s review:

Sandefur says progressivism “inverts America’s constitutional foundations” by holding that the Constitution is “about” democracy, which rejects the framers’ premise that majority rule is legitimate “only within the boundaries” of the individual’s natural rights. These include — indeed, are mostly — unenumerated rights whose existence and importance are affirmed by the Ninth Amendment.

Many conservatives should be discomfited by Sandefur’s analysis, which entails this conclusion: Their indiscriminate denunciations of “judicial activism” inadvertently serve progressivism. The protection of rights, those constitutionally enumerated and others, requires a judiciary actively engaged in enforcing what the Constitution is “basically about,” which is making majority power respect individuals’ rights.

In 2013, Reason TV interviewed Sandefur about the ongoing legal challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Watch that interview below.”

From Reason Magazine 

The more I hear from today’s, so-called, Progressives, (Democratic Socialists, in actuality) the more I believe that they are from a different country or, at least, have lived a long time in another country. They don’t seem to see the U.S. Constitution for what it is.  They say: “Look, this is how other countries do it and it works there so we should do the same thing here.”  They seem to be ignorant of the Constitution’s constraints on the Federal Government.

These people are really Social Democrats.  They believe that the United States should be ruled by majority rule.  If we ever let the will of the majority decide everything without that annoying document that keeps interposing the Federal court system,  we could build the socialist utopia that they’ve always wanted and take care of everyone.

The Social Democrats, in the absence of the Constitution, would move to a parliamentary social democracy where Congress, actually just the House of Representatives, would pick our President for us.

As George Will said in his column today, the U.S. Constitution is not about protecting American democracy but  protecting the constitutional rights of individual Americans.  Government at all levels is prohibited from infringing these rights even if certain of them become unpopular and a popular will emerges to limit these.  The U.S. Constitution protects Americans from big government even if an overweening big government becomes popular.  

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