Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Marco Rubio on Judges and the Constitution

Most people do not seem to understand what is wrong with President Obama's judicial appointments, including his two Supreme Court appointments, or the problem with Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade. They do not understand that modern progressivism is undermining the freedom of the people and the principles of the American Founding. The very survival of constitutional, representative democracy is at stake in the debate between those who respect the US constitution and those who invent clever myths and dreamy theories of how it can be twisted to mean anything those in power want it to mean.

When Marco Rubio speaks on any subject, it is easy to understand what he means to say. This is not because he is simplistic, but because he is clear and has principles that are coherent. Here he is explaining the role of judges in the US political system.



The issue at stake here actually is similar to the problem of biblical interpretation. In both cases a party of people who are over-impressed by modernity and its naive, superstitious faith in the power of human reason want to hang on to the founding document of our culture without letting it place limits on the Utopian aspirations of human reason. So they create ingenious theories of how to make it (the US constitution or the Bible as the case may be) say whatever the elites of today wish it to say.

In both cases those who use elementary logic and who are motivated by a healthy skepticism about the infallibility of human reason are routinely mocked as out-of-date and unsophisticated. They are told that they are not "modern" enough and that there is no going back to the past. And then they undo the great Western experiment with limited government and proceed to race back to the past totalitarian, statist forms of government which preceded the rise of the West on the world stage.

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