Here's the thing: some of us start from the point of view that the Constitution might be bad. I know it's sacrilegious. But from there, all sorts of rulings seem like improvements on a baroque 18th century piece of paper. If you DO uphold the Constitution as being "the greatest legal document ever made" (faith-based view) then yeah all these conservative SCOTUS put-downs seem logical to restoring the US source code. It's just a piece of paper though being stretched to apply to situations unimaginable to their originators and badly need of updates.
The constitution may be bad. We've had a number of amendments, most of which improved in in very critical ways.
The point is that we should live under legislation that is agreed upon via democratic means. Congress has pretty broad powers to create laws. Where those powers are circumscribed, such as with gun control, we have prescribed mechanisms for amending the constitution and making it less bad.
I'm highly critical of the court legislating from the bench, whichever direction it does it from. I'm _extremely_ frustrated and dismayed that our legislative branch punts so many contentious issues to the courts. If the court is now less willing to play that game, maybe we'll go back to deciding things in the legislature, where we can have a debate that is values-based, and not just based on the reading of a baroque 18th century document.
For what it's worth, I favor broad government action to address climate change and excessive CO2 emissions, but it's going to be better for everyone if there's some horse-trading here and we get some broad buy-in instead of having it be imposed by unelected government appointees that are not operating under a broad mandate.
If we can't get broad buy-in, I guess that means we can't deal with climate change democratically. Maybe then one wants to advocate for non-democratic measures, but then we should just be honest about that.
It's exactly this kind of attitude that the Constitution was designed as it was. Too many people are willing to circumvent normal legislative actions because "we're doing the right thing". What they end up forgetting is if they can do it, so can their opponents. "Those who are willing to give up freedom in exchange for <x> deserve neither.
The Founding Fathers seems smarter and smarter the more you dig into it.
reply