The American Crisis 2024: Courts of law
I started a series recently about the major problems we somehow neglect. Since the first observation—see the post below—concerned a social problem with legal roots, I’d like to turn to a political problem with social roots next: The Supreme Court & the court system more broadly.
I’ve been thinking for a few days how to introduce this problem most persuasively—that the American constitutional arrangement is in great danger from the elites. Then the zombie president amended the Constitution by declaration:
The similarly unqualified vice-president quickly made a statement in support.
This is madness. I wonder whether it is not also a crime of some kind. At least one hysterical Senator has declared, this is now the Constitution. Major politicians making a travesty of politics on social media should give us pause. It largely doesn’t because we have abdicated politics to our elites; what happens, however, when they in turn abdicate it?
But as I said, the outgoing president is almost braindead. It’s not reasonable to blame him. Who is to blame then? We can speak only in generalities—the elites. For short, they are. More specifically, in this case, look to the American Bar Association. Last August, they made a show of pretending the ERA, whose statutory period of ratification expired in 1983, is alive & ready to be ratified by president Biden. The New York City Bar on Christmas Eve declared that Biden should indeed amend the Constitution before he leaves office. Our legal elites are mad. We should take this seriously. It’s not one old guy. It’s not a few Progressive or radical people. The problem is widespread, institutional, at elite level. The legal profession is dangerous for our freedom, yet freedom without the law is as dubious of enduring as it is that it is worth the having.
Finally, that this complete breach of the Constitution should focus on the ERA is not an accident—this is what in the ‘70s was quaintly called feminism. I recommend we call it more honestly & more truthfully as gynaikocracy. It’s the world we’re living in.
Jonathan Turley has a nice title for this story: "I see dead amendments!" https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/18/i-see-dead-amendments-president-biden-issues-otherworldly-era-declaration/
It's so bizarre a story that I initially thought it must be some kind of conservative-media-bubble hoax or foul-up. Titus is right to ask who it was (maybe the "constitutional experts" mentioned in Turley's piece?) who prodded zombie Joe to do this. Disturbingly, we know that Laurence Tribe backs Biden on this, so he was probably one.
And yet, even if you step into the most aggressive living constitutionalist legal-eagle's mindset and think about this, what's weird about this is: why would you try it? How in the world could it remotely serve your strategic interests? Particularly at this moment?
This ain't gynaikocracy, but lunatocracy. Whoever can out-insane the other toadies wins the prize. Thank God it ends--at least within the central part of the exec branch--tomorrow.