From MSNBC Condemns 'Talk About The Constitution' In SCOTUS Draft Opinion by Alex Christy.
Because the Supreme Court has “court” in its name, most people understand that it is an institution tasked with addressing legal issues, but MSNBC’s Ali Velshi and The New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolhatkar are not most people. On Velshi’s Saturday show, they condemned the Court for “talking about the Constitution” and “the right to life” while ignoring economic statistics.[snip]Kolhatkar then condemned the draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, “You know, they spend 98 pages of their draft opinion talking about the Constitution, they talk about conception, and the right to life but there's almost nothing about what this will look like in society other than a very cursory throwaway line about how there is widespread access to childcare, contraception, and paid family leave.”After condemning the Court for doing its job and putting life before money, Kolhatkar added, “And, of course, those, as we know, are simply false assertions.”
Small authoritarian and totalitarian minds trying to grasp the complexity of life and governance. It's like a two dimensional being trying to grasp the third dimension.
All of which nonsense reminds me of the instance back twelve years ago when then-wunderkind Ezra Klein, a few years before he founded the young adult news site Vox, opined that
The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.
This was widely mocked in the right-leaning media as Klein believing that the Constitution was only 100 years old. His point wasn't quite that mistaken but silly none-the-less.
The Constitution was a model of clarity and brevity when written and remains so today. Anyone who has studied the arcane, turgid multi-hundred page constitutions of more recently organized countries can only marvel at how clear, accessible and sensible was that document written 235 years ago.
The Constitution is no less clear or accessible than it was in 1787. We now apply its straight-forward words to a far larger population which is far more varied, and far more demanding than 235 years ago. Which I think was ultimately Klein's point though he never articulated it quite that way.
I think Klein's original comment was offered verbally in a news show. He later refined his claim more narrowly.
My friends on the right don’t like to hear this, but the Constitution is not a clear document. Written 100 years ago, when America had thirteen states and very different problems, it rarely speaks directly to the questions we ask it.
A somewhat more sustainable argument but still not particularly strong. It suggests that fundamental truths about humanity and governance are so capricious that any constitution must be subject to being rewritten every hundred years to remain relevant.
More fatally to Klein's seeming position, the Constitution has very explicit mechanisms (more than one) for the people to evolve the Constitution to better suit their needs. There have been tens and hundreds of thousands of calls for changes to the Constitution since it was originally ratified. In all that time, amongst all those calls for change, the people have availed themselves of those means of changing the Constitution a sum of twenty-seven times in 235 years (33 amendments proposed by Congress, 27 of which were ratified by the States.)
Later in the day, Klein wrote a column in the Washington Post clarifying his position still further. From Yes, the Constitution is binding by Ezra Klein.
But when a lot of people misunderstand you at once, the fault is usually yours. So if I was unclear: Yes, the Constitution is binding. No, it’s not clear which interpretation of the Constitution the Supreme Court will declare binding at any given moment.
A far more defensible position but having little to do with what was originally said. The original claim was that the Constitution was too old to be understood.
Ultimately, the issue is relatively obvious. The problem is not with the age of the Constitution nor with the Constitution at all. The problem is that there are societal disagreements around a range of issues which are not easily or quickly resolved. Some issues require time. Others require compromise. Some require respect for others. Usually all three elements are needed but are in short supply.
Fifty years ago we short-circuited the political process where the abortion debate needed to be resolved. The Supreme Court conjured a right out of nowhere and put it beyond easy reach. A right not then yet acknowledged by the public.
Because the political process was circumvented, there was no easy mechanism to evolve the public discussion and reach some sort of societal point of agreement passed through the people's representatives in the legislative process.
The Alito opinion, should it come to pass, merely yanks the abortion debate back out of the Constitution where it never belonged and back into the social debate and legislative process.
All the ridiculous extremist positions are already on display from no-limits-abortion-on-demand to no-abortion-allowed. Neither of these extremes being representative, as far as I can tell, of the great majority of citizens.
My hope is that through this debate we will quickly arrive at something similar to that seen in other constitutional republics. Abortion, sometimes limited in some degree, through the first trimester. After the first-trimester, no abortion except in cases of threat to the mother's life.
We'll see. But for now, the airwaves and the computer screens are filled with the opinions of ignoramuses with little knowledge of history or governance or other people's views, with authoritarian and totalitarian mindsets, and with a taste for hysterical extremism.
We are the oldest constitutional republic in the world. We have seen it and weathered it all before. The childishness of the chattering class will be as dust in the wind. Irritating but not consequential.
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