By Morgan Marietta, University of Texas at Arlington
The first Monday in October, the traditional date for the beginning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s term, is almost here: On Oct. 2, 2023, the court will meet after the summer recess, with the biggest case of the term focused on the limits of individual gun rights.
The other core issue for the coming year is a broad reassessment of the power of the administrative state.
Both issues reflect a court that has announced revolutionary changes in doctrine and must now grapple with how far the new principles will reach.
Two years ago, the court began what many consider to be a constitutional revolution.
The new supermajority of six conservative justices rapidly introduced new doctrines across a range of controversies including abortion, guns, religion and race.
When the court announces a new principle – for example, a limit on the powers of a specific part of government – citizens and lawyers are not sure of the full ramifications of the new rule. How far will it go? What other areas of law will come under the same umbrella?
In a revolutionary period, aggressive litigants will push the boundaries of the new doctrine, attempting to stretch it to their advantage. After a period of uncertainty, a case that defines the limits on the new rule is likely to emerge.
Focus on guns
U.S. v. Rahimi may be the limiting case for gun rights, identifying the stopping point of the recent changes in Second Amendment doctrine.
Zackey Rahimi is a convicted drug dealer and violent criminal who also had a restraining order in place after assaulting his girlfriend. The court will decide whether the federal law prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order violates the Second Amendment.
In the 2022 case of New York Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen, the court announced a new understanding of the Second Amendment. The amendment had long been understood to recognize a limited right to bear arms. Under the Bruen ruling, the amendment instead describes an individual right to carry a gun for self-protection in most places in society, expanding its range to the level of other constitutional rights such as freedom of religion or speech, which apply in public spaces.
However, the court’s conservative justices also tend to argue that constitutional rights are balanced by responsibilities to promote a functional society, a concept known as “ordered liberty.” The practical question is how to know the proper balance between liberty and order. If the right to carry a gun can be regulated but not eradicated, limited but not eliminated, where is the line?
The court’s answer in Bruen is history – a current law does not have to match a specific historical one exactly, but it has to be similar in form and purpose. Whatever gun regulations Americans allowed during the early Republic – the critical period from around the 1780s to around the 1860s at the time of the Civil War – are allowable now, with the exception of any that would violate racial equality under the 14th Amendment.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the Bruen ruling, described it this way: The government must “identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin.” Thomas argued in Bruen that no such historical analogue existed for the limits New York imposed, invalidating the state’s ban on concealed carry permits.
The Rahimi case will provide a critical test of this historical approach to the boundaries of constitutional rights.
Historians have presented evidence that there were widespread laws and practices during the early Republic limiting gun possession by individuals, like Rahimi, who were judged to be dangerous. However, those dangers did not include domestic violence, which was not deemed the same important concern then that it is now.
The court may consider the laws prevalent in the early Republic, which regulated those who “go armed offensively” or “to the fear and terror of any person,” to be analogous to contemporary laws restraining those under a domestic violence restraining order. If so, the ruling will likely uphold Rahimi’s conviction and limit gun rights.
On the other hand, if the court reads those historical standards as more narrow and specific than the contemporary ban on gun possession while under a restraining order, those limits will be struck down.
The power of the administrative state
The founders expected a permanent battle for power between the Congress and the presidency. What they did not anticipate was the expansion of the federal bureaucracy.
With the growth in the number, funding and power of federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and many others, the debate over who controls them and how much power they wield has grown as well.
The court’s conservatives tend to see the actions of federal agencies as violating the constitutional principle of limited government. This view argues that government powers are specific and constrained, not flexible and expansive. They fear that the federal government is likely to use its vast power abusively if it is unconstrained. In this view, the expansion of the administrative state allowed an end-run around the Constitution’s limits on government power.
The constitutional question is whether bureaucrats have broad regulatory powers over economic and social questions, or only elected officials do.
Conservatives tend to think that liberals put the bureaucrats in charge because they don’t have a majority in Congress to pass the same laws.
The liberals tend to think that conservatives are blocking necessary regulations while ignoring the flexible nature of the Constitution’s provisions to adapt to the needs of modern society.
This is a core dispute between the two judicial camps.
In the last few years, the court has emphasized new doctrines limiting the power of federal agencies.
One of those doctrines is the Unitary Executive Theory, which limits the independence of administrative agencies. In this view, if the Constitution envisions executive branch agencies as controlled by voters through the selection and removal of the president, then the president must be able to control the decision-makers within those agencies.
One case before the court this term challenges the constitutionality of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, which regulates the stock market, on the grounds that the agency operates outside the boundaries set by the Constitution in several ways. One possible violation is that its judges cannot be removed by the president, violating the Unitary Executive Theory.
Another potential constitutional violation is the SEC’s practice of imposing monetary penalties without a finding by a civil jury. The court will decide if this violates the Seventh Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial.
Another case challenges the constitutionality of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau on the grounds that the agency’s funding mechanism – through fees charged to the Federal Reserve rather than through normal congressional appropriations – violates how the Constitution allows the government to spend money. If Congress does not control the agency’s budget, this may put the agency outside of the control of the legislative branch that created it.
Perhaps the most far-reaching case could overturn a long-standing precedent known as Chevron deference, which allows agencies to determine the meaning of disputed terms in federal laws. Overruling this precedent would strip power from administrative agencies and reallocate decisions to Congress or to courts.
In these two core areas of constitutional conflict – gun rights and administrative powers – the court will determine this term whether its revolutionary doctrines will continue to expand or come to a resolution.
Morgan Marietta, Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Arlington
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
“The [Second] amendment had long been understood to recognize a limited right to bear arms. Under the Bruen ruling, the amendment instead describes an individual right to carry a gun for self-protection in most places in society, expanding its range to the level of other constitutional rights such as freedom of religion or speech, which apply in public spaces.”
Utter HOGWASH. Let me rewrite this paragraph CORRECTLY:
The Second amendment has always guaranteed an individual right to keep and bear arma, even though that right had been widely ignored by legislatures and courts since the early to mid 1900s. Starting with Heller (2008) and now Bruen (2022) the Supreme Court has finally reaffirmed that right, and set clear guidelines on how legislation must respect that right in the future. The Second Amendment was never intended to be a “second class right.” Heller and Bruen have finally restored it to equal status with other Constitutional rights.
RE: “Whatever gun regulations Americans allowed during the early Republic – the critical period from around the 1780s to around the 1860s at the time of the Civil War – are allowable now, with the exception of any that would violate racial equality under the 14th Amendment.”
Whatever? Exception? The question is, What Gun Regulation between around 1780 to the 1860s was not infected by racist, bigoted based oppressive discrimination? NONE OF IT. Therefore every molecule of yesterday’s and today’s Gun Control is Rooted in Racism and Genocide.
Bottom line…Gun Control like its sidekick Slavery should have already been Abolished.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZFEz3Bt9hCw&feature=shared
Constitutional Rights are balanced by individual responsibilities and actions. Not by judges in robes. The judges come into play when criminality is the issue resulting from a citizen abusing the rights of others.
Absolutely! I play the thought experiment with my children. Do laws stop people from doing bad things? If they don’t then why do we have them? The spontaneous organization of billions of people, did it come from laws or the desire to succeed from our postive action and avoid consequences for our negative actions? A murderer will murder until it is stopped by someone with a gun. In the absence or presence of a law the same end result occurs.
🇺🇸🥰Freedom555
You’d think the fewer the words the easier it’d be to understand but even here they just don’t get it.
“You’d think the fewer the words the easier it’d be to understand but even here they just don’t get it.”
Precisely why the Anti-Federalist insisted on the BOR.
They get it. They just don’t like it.
“In the 2022 case of New York Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen, the court announced a new understanding of the Second Amendment.”
No, not a “new understanding of the Second Amendment”. What SCOTUS did with Bruen was simply dig out the understanding that was there all along from under the heaps of a government-serving and created unconstitutional ‘interest balancing’, dust it off, and basically say “The Second Amendment is a right too as equal as the others, just like it was intended to be when the founders put it in the Bill of Rights. And no where in the constitution is the government permitted to treat it as though it is a lesser right or not a right they can have authority over to do with as they please and neither may the government decide to ‘grant’ or not ‘grant’ back to the people a right that was theirs to begin with.”
“The amendment had long been understood to recognize a limited right to bear arms.”
Pure BS. It was “understood to recognize a limited right to bear arms” by an unconstitutional contrived government-serving ‘interest balancing’ test – it has never actually been “understood to recognize a limited right to bear arms” by other than those who want control over constitutional rights to relegate them to ‘privileges’ they control or remove them.
The “understood to recognize a limited right to bear arms” IS the unconstitutional ‘interest balancing’ test – that the government has an interest in limiting the ‘right to bear arms’ anyway it chooses including denying its exercise totally if they wish. It is pretty clear from the founders that the government was never to have that control over any constitutional right and in fact even made it clear the only and primary role of government in relation to rights is to secure these unalienable rights of which the 2A is one. No where in the constitution does it say the rights of the people, those unalienable rights, can be infringed or decided by government especially by a contrived ‘interest balancing’ scheme that’s designed to favor the government.
“Under the Bruen ruling, the amendment instead describes an individual right to carry a gun for self-protection in most places in society, expanding its range to the level of other constitutional rights such as freedom of religion or speech, which apply in public spaces.”
No, not under the Bruen ruling. All Brien did was basically say what was already there encompassed in the right, it did not re-describe it or re-define it. Bruen did not expand its range “to the level of other constitutional rights such as freedom of religion or speech, which apply in public spaces.” as it was always at that level of the other rights and was always intended to be at that level, all of the first 10 were suppose to be on the same level.
This is pure left wing ‘control’ rubbish, their concept of “We get to choose which rights can and can not be” is expressed in this – you don’t get a choice to decide for others which ones are on the same ‘level’ or not, all of the first 10 are all on the same level and all are inherent unalienable and the only choice you get is if you personally choose to exercise them or not. I suggest you explore what the words ‘unalienable rights’ means.
“All Brien…”
duh
suppose to be “All Bruen…”
“However, the court’s conservative justices also tend to argue that constitutional rights are balanced by responsibilities to promote a functional society, a concept known as “ordered liberty.””
No. This is pure rubbish and false. Its the ‘world citizen’ concept the United Nations is promoting where one does not have individual unalienable rights but rather a ‘responsibility’ to the world citizen society as decided by the ‘state’ – or in other words an “ordered liberty” as decided by a ‘ruling class’ (the ‘state’).
“ordered liberty” is: That fundamental constitutional rights are not absolute but are determined by a balancing of the public (societal) welfare against individual (personal) rights. Or in other words, the ‘interest balancing test’ as decided by the ‘state’.
“ordered liberty” and ‘interest balancing’ are synonymous, they are the same thing just using different names.
The “court’s conservative justices” absolutely for a fact did not tend to argue FOR an “ordered liberty” but rather in their ‘arguments’ included the concept to explore the conflict created and danger to the constitutional rights if the ‘state’ could control them as ‘permissions’ and in fact threw out the “ordered liberty” concept by throwing out ‘interest balancing’.
They did not “tend to argue that constitutional rights are balanced by responsibilities to promote a functional society”.
They argued that the exercise of these unalienable rights are a foundation block of a “functional free society”. And indeed, basically, this is what the founders also wrote of and explained fully and expected government to fulfill its required role to secure these unalienable rights and remove from society those which would abuse/use them for ‘evil’. purposes.
“ordered liberty” is: That fundamental constitutional rights are not absolute but are determined by a balancing of the public (societal) welfare against individual (personal) rights. Or in other words, the ‘interest balancing test’ as decided by the ‘state’.
It should be noted that Joe Biden has claimed and stated that ‘no right is absolute’ just as, for example, that New Mexico governor and all blue state governors and all anti-gun organizations have claimed. This is the “ordered liberty” concept, or in other words, the ‘interest balancing’ as decided by the ‘state’. The founders called this concept (not with this exact name in wording, but the concept) ‘tyranny’, it is the exact opposite of the anti-tyranny structure and intent of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the other name for it, overall in relation to the Constitution and unalienable rights, is ‘totalitarianism’.
“Thomas argued in Bruen that no such historical analogue existed for the limits New York imposed, invalidating the state’s ban on concealed carry permits.”
Thomas was correct, there is no such ‘analogue’ under the text-history-tradition which is basically, as it was at the founding era when the second amendment was ratified, not just history. And everything ‘denying broadly’ established after that was established by Democrats with a ‘racial bias’ purpose in some manner to deny the exercise of the 2A right, for example, NY’s ‘sullivan law’ was originally established to keep immigrants from possessing firearms and ‘Jim Crow’ era firearms laws forbid blacks from possessing firearms.
“Conservatives tend to think that liberals put the bureaucrats in charge because they don’t have a majority in Congress to pass the same laws.”
No, they don’t think that but rather they know that because its actually happening.
“Perhaps the most far-reaching case could overturn a long-standing precedent known as Chevron deference, which allows agencies to determine the meaning of disputed terms in federal laws. Overruling this precedent would strip power from administrative agencies and reallocate decisions to Congress or to courts.”
“strip power from administrative agencies”, a power they never constitutionally had and it needs to be stripped away – it has basically helped create a ‘fourth branch’ of government able to bypass the will of congress. Congress makes laws, its always been, constitutionally, that congress define what ‘terms’ mean in the laws it passes and an ‘agency’ is suppose to abide by that and is limited to carrying out the will of congress in applying laws and not their own will by being able to re-define and bypass the will of congress to suit them.
“In this view, the expansion of the administrative state allowed an end-run around the Constitution’s limits on government power.”
Its not a view, its an acknowledgement of what is actually happening. Biden rules by fiat with his ‘executive orders’ to do exactly this to basically create law (through his agencies) by purposely by-pasing congress, and agencies enact policy and changes and rules to do exactly this (e.g. ATF) and basically create law by purposely bypassing congress.
Describing Bruen as a new understanding clearly establishes the writer as failing to understand the clearly written phrase “shall not be infringed.” This is common on the part of Leftists since simple terms like man and woman upset them to the point they have to find a “safe space.”
“The other core issue for the coming year is a broad reassessment of the power of the administrative state.”
This ‘existing today’ power of the “administrative state” doesn’t constitutionally exist to begin with. That ‘power’ was ‘created’ by the government granting powers unto its self. The only powers the government was to have were those outlined in the constitution and those were suppose to be under control of the people and allowed to government to exercise them.
Today, the government exercises power it does not constitutionally have and they do it free of the will of the people in actuality and most times in direct violation of the constitution. The founders warned of this happening, they called it tyranny.
When a government becomes so powerful, and beyond control of the people, that the president can bypass congress to basically create law with the stroke of a pen, and un-elected bureaucrats can create law and turn people into felons with the stroke of a pen – yeah, its time for a very serious ‘reassessment of the power’ government has and its also time to remove that government.
“The constitutional question is whether bureaucrats have broad regulatory powers over economic and social questions, or only elected officials do.”
No, that’s not the question. There is no constitutional authority for unelected bureaucrats to have any regulatory authority. Regulatory authority lies with congress as a body and not an individual and constitutionally unelected bureaucrats are only suppose to carry out the will of congress as defined in law and not their own ‘authority to regulate’. The question really is, why have unelected bureaucrats seized power unto them selves to regulate and create law as they see fit?
“The court’s answer in Bruen is history – a current law does not have to match a specific historical one exactly, but it has to be similar in form and purpose. Whatever gun regulations Americans allowed during the early Republic – the critical period from around the 1780s to around the 1860s at the time of the Civil War – are allowable now, with the exception of any that would violate racial equality under the 14th Amendment.”
NO! Absolutely false. Basically, without explaining the whole thing to you…..The SCOTUS Bruen decision is to use text-history-tradition, basically, as it was at the founding era when the second amendment was ratified, not just history.
Why are you even writing about Bruen. You clearly missed a lot about it and don’t understand it at all. Go back and read, this time without the confirmation bias.
This just dropped :
“Trump Receives Cheers From CA Crowd After Arguing In Favor Of Shooting Looters”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-receives-cheers-ca-crowd-after-arguing-favor-shooting-looters
damn it…Trump stole my idea.
When bad actors have pushed the limits so far and gotten away with it the simple act of arresting a few is not enough to cause the limit to retract.
The longer things go unchecked the more extreme the action needed to restore normalcy.
The “climate change” crowd states this all the time. The sooner we take action the less drastic it will need to be. The longer we wait the more extreme it will need to be.
True to form the climate crowd overlaps with the defund the police crowd almost 1:1 but refuses to see the similarities.
Shooting looters now would be the nicest way to restore order. Soon enough we’ll need heads on pikes in the Walmart parking lot to stop the madness.
This sort of thing is exactly what everyone should be worried about, as I’ve said for years.
When you abandon principles (or never have them, as is actually true of most so-called Conservatives) and refuse to study a system, don’t be surprised when it’s turned on you and shoved directly up your ass.
And, as I’ve pointed out before, this is part of the “dialectic”. These people say things like “Your real action is your enemy’s reaction”.
The enemy is you/Trump, in this case.
They’re baiting you with chaos, hoping that you will be suckered into giving .gov infinitely more power. Many people will take that bait. Don’t take the bait and don’t let your friends take it either. That bait will, in the words of Patrick Henry, “prove a snare to your feet”.
Fuck drunk driving, friends don’t let friends support Commies.
The general formula is, for the umpteenth time, this: Create Problem –> Let Fester –> People beg for solution –> Enact solution that expands your power.
This is a standard Marxist/Marxist-adjacent tactic for 150 years.
If you empower government to simply shoot looters (or let you do it outside rare cases), regardless of how abhorrent looters might be, how long is it before you’re fair game for incoming gunfire at the hands of a government that has decided that it doesn’t like you and has zero mechanisms to restrain its behavior?
Keep in mind, they’re just looting for some understandably needed reparations. You OTOH, are a self-admitted fascist with bigoted, racist and misogynistic desires deeply rooted in hundreds or thousands of years of cis-normative patriarchal oppression which you benefit from to the disadvantage of others. If you deny this you only prove it to be true.
Or, in short, you’re a “Not_Z”. Far worse than a looter. You’re a “threat to Democracy” FFS! And, given these irrefutable facts as dispensed by that unassailable purveyor of truth that is [insert preference here], there is no denying that YOU are infinitely more deserving of death in a hail of unexpected gunfire than those poor, oppressed minorities.
You are now the modern American version of a “Kulak” or a “wrecker”. Go look at what happened to the people declared as such in the USSR.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, if you think this is some sort of exaggeration or hyperbole, you’re a fucking idiot who actually deserves a firing squad because they’ve been openly telling you that this is part of their plan to eliminate you for well over 100 years, you are therefore ASKING for it. Forgive me if I’m not too broken up about it if you get what you’re asking for.
I’ll just say it plainly, in case it’s not clear: If you actually think that playing their game without studying it is a good idea, or you cannot tell when you are doing this yet insist on advocating poorly thought out courses of action because you’ve been emotionally baited to do so, then do everyone a favor and unalive yourself immediately because you’re not an asset to anyone other than the other side.
I don’t care how old you are, or how educated or “wise” you think yourself to be. If this is a path you want to travel you’re functionally a kindergartener being led around with the promise of candy. You’re the very threat you want to defend against. So, do it, defend the Republic and suck-start a firearm immediately.
Mixing in the re33it and zoomer translation on that one? No idea if that is the best way to convey that particular section but correct if a bit brutal with the fuck your feelings aspect. Probably needed to shock the thoughtful but comfortable and ultimately probably cannot get the thoughtless roused from their comfort anyway. Guessing you are on the puppets everywhere re next election such as it is?
I would ask for clarification of your last sentence (the question) before responding to it.
As for the rest, I’m attempting to tread close to, but trying not to cross, the line between “provoking” and “enrages rather than engages” for the statistical majority.
The reality, if we’re actually being “brutal with the fuck your feelings aspect”, is that the people who really need a severe beating with the reality-stick are what the folks on Twitter refer to as “Boomercons”.
Such a necessity is not because “Boomercons” are wrong, per se, but because they’re right but don’t know why and therefore are actually less productive than if they were just wrong. They have a tendency to be right in the macro and completely r – tarded in the micro. A disconnect that is both annoying and extremely counter productive, by design. This is a common feature across nearly all domains, strongly suggesting that it’s an artifact of a very long and very complicated process.
Which it is, this is the result of decades of attempting to address complicated issues with simple binary solutions. It has destroyed critical thinking capacity of the vast majority with regard to complexity. The truth is that they’re not better at this kind of thing than Zoomers or Millennials. They just think they are because of the history and economics of the past 40 years or so and certain media properties go out of their way to reinforce that thinking while going to the other side to do the same. Divide and conquer.
Sheep the slaughter, as it were. And, again, not a “conspiracy theory”. The Lefties have been very, very open about how retirees are basically “useless eaters” for well over a century. They’ve simply been trying to figure out exactly how to dispose of them in the West in a manner that draws applause rather than revolution.
In gaslighting, propaganda and factually-true-but-misleading statements they found a way to get the tip of the wedge in. A way where a great many of the sheep assist in their own extermination too, all while thinking they’re “owning the kids” because the “nudge” folks are really quite good at playing on long-standing habit mixed with a historical myopia as a base for altering behavior.
Last line is just the (probably well founded) concern that every candidate including trump is a puppet to the same general group seeking division and population reduction. And myopia is all around just for different focal points but I do think your focus group is a bit more monolith than most in their type of myopia (same channels and shows for decades and all) so not a bad balance for your initial target.
Last line is just the (probably well founded) concern that every candidate including trump is a puppet to the same general group seeking division and population reduction.
Hrm… I’d say this applies to the vast majority of politicians, but probably not to all.
It’s hard to tell though because the ones it doesn’t apply to can be attacked quite convincingly over nothing by a concentrated media/political apparatus that easily raises doubts on subjects where the accusation does the work of truth.
Take Matt Gaetz for example: Is he a guy just fighting the good fight because he has principles and under bullshit attack? Or is he a drug and booze addled sex fiend and fraudster?
Neither would really surprise me in D.C. So… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“‘Cause once in a while you get shown in the light/
In the strangest of places if you look at it right” comes to mind.
What are the options?
Heavy-handed enforcement = increased animosity and increased police state power
Shuttering the stores = increased animosity and blaming the “colonizers”
State operated stores = they just loot the state stores and/or state stores implement harsh punishments the “colonizers” continue to be blamed
Do nothing and hope eventually normies in these areas come to their senses and stop supporting this nonsense.
Disassemble the government apparatus that gives their methods so much power = creating a vacuum who knows what will fill
Adopt their methods to turn the tide = an academic theory always trotted out as a grand strategy with no actionable plan.
The morlocks win in the end no matter what so get with people you like or can at least tolerate and build a giant wall.
Remove the state from the equation and do not involve the law where it abandoned the citizens in riot/looting conditions? Don’t know a good solution just taking a guess.
An option is to let them have their S-hole utopias. Strengthen red and flip purple states. Show the normal people that there’s another way to live, and they’ll eventually follow. There will still be a few s-hole cities inside of solid red states like Memphis. Well run states can offer a level of protection from the federal insanity.
The next step is to educate right wingers on how to use power when they have it. That’s how you begin undoing the federal monstrosity. Taking the Paul Ryan approach of focusing on lowering taxes while avoiding the culture war is one of the reasons we’re in this mess.
They’re welcome to live however they want to in their own states. We have to end federal funding to the states. Let the individual states fund themselves.
I see you’ve fallen into a decision dilemma, as designed.
https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/put-your-target-in-a-decision-dilemma
There’s only one way out. You must find a third way.
I’d start by carefully examining the dilemma from the starting point that both “horns” are false as is the dichotomy they pretend to present.
“Adopt their methods to turn the tide” isn’t just an academic theory with no actionable plan.
The concept works on pretty much any of their “dilemmas”. Here’s the general concept:
1. Recognize that they’re offering you 100% pure bullshit from every angle. Reject it.
2. Focus on the actual problem and define it.
3. Recognize which sacred cows in society would have to be slaughtered to ACTUALLY fix this problem. They will exist on both ideological sides of the aisle.
4. Slaughter all those cows. You’re left with the skeleton of reality.
5. Fill in the gaps by thinking logically and seriously researching any areas you don’t understand. Go super deep on the areas you THINK you understand.
You now have a real solution. All you need is the PR to sell it in bite-sized chunks the way that they sell their grand plans.
/solved.
In this case, you want to steal a page from their book and ACTUALLY “reimagine policing” in a much more broad context than they present. This is easily possible. I laid out a quite expansive and detailed plan to do this as part of fixing bad areas years ago.
And I was promptly shat upon by the ideological here (who mostly no longer comment for one reason or another) because that plan necessarily slaughters the Left’s cows (to great applause) and several of the Right’s (to screams that I’m a Leftist).
But the truth is that an ideology, by definition, cannot solve real-world problems. It might come close occasionally but it cannot offer real solutions because by definition an ideology tries to make reality conform to the ideology rather than allowing thinking to change to match observable reality.
{Trump fires up his base by suggesting looters be shot}
“This sort of thing is exactly what everyone should be worried about, as I’ve said for years.”
You and I know what’s really happening there – he’s tossing red meat at the feet of his base. Salena Zeto figured that out in 2015, with her precedent ‘Take Trump seriously, but not literally’ article :
“The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally”. It’s worth the read.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-makes-his-case-in-pittsburgh/501335/
I wasn’t suggesting the government shoot looters, but business owners in a riot city have every right to defend their livelihood with lethal force if a flash mob descends on their business.
Zero difference than if you or I are defending our homes against a home invasion robbery. I happen to think it’s a good idea if thug makes the association that their violent actions might get themselves killed if they pull a stunt like like that.
“The Lefties have been very, very open about how retirees are basically “useless eaters” for well over a century. They’ve simply been trying to figure out exactly how to dispose of them in the West in a manner that draws applause rather than revolution.”
I have a feeling that’s about to go down in China in about 3 years, with their invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese realize how badly they fucked themselves with Mao’s ‘One Child’ policy that has them facing a massive elderly population, with no one to care for them. So, an invasion of Taiwan fits the bill nicely to solve that problem. The rest of the world will give China the sanctions treatment (like no more fertilizer inputs) Russia is now getting, and there’s the answer to their problem, mass starvation of their elderly useless eaters. China has a history of not caring if millions die ‘for the cause’. Xi has told his military to be ready in 2027, their centennial celebration.
It seems we are living the Chinese curse of ‘interesting times’…
I’m not commenting on what you or I or any other particular person, including Trump, might actually believe.
I’m commenting on how political reality works. When you offer the powermad in government a new power they will work very, very, very hard to take it.
When you offer the Left the ultimate power they’ve desired for 150 years, you damn well better have a plan to rug-pull them on it. We both know Trump doesn’t have that plan.
Therefore, it’s a very risky gambit to even bring it up because there are a hell of a lot of apparatchiks who’ve been salivating over this power for a long time.
One does not casually walk into a bar and wave around The Ring of Power and expect good results.
While the intricacies of much of this issue escaped me a decade+ ago I noticed very quickly in the army that despite being involved in Iraq/Afghanistan re counterinsurgency/training police units damn near all the training I ever had for Military Police was riot duty paired with supervision of resettlement/refugee/prison camps. The focus was unsettling then and entirely clear now.
@Safe:
You can see the same thing with pretty much all our policies and actions in Africa.
One could be forgiven for thinking that they’re designed not to work but rather to create obvious outcomes that would necessitate further action which would be really rather predictable.
strych took me a while to catch on to that and mostly because I didn’t want to believe we were supporting such policies or how many companies profit and direct such actions.
“Both issues reflect a court that has announced revolutionary changes in doctrine and must now grapple with how far the new principles will reach.”
No government court should ever consider the implications of a decision. The purpose is to adjudicate matters of law, not political fallout. When a court determines something, it is up to the legislatures to either act to mitigate fallout, or refuse to act.
When a court decides something, based on fallout, it is no longer adjudicating; it is legislating.
When courts decide no provision of the Constitution is absolute, they declare that their decisions/opinions are not absolute either. Reality is, however, the courts are all too eager to accept the transfer of legislative powers to the judiciary.
Absolutely! I play the thought experiment with my children. Do laws stop people from doing bad things? If they don’t then why do we have them? The spontaneous organization of billions of people, did it come from laws or the desire to succeed from our postive action and avoid consequences for our negative actions? A murderer will murder until it is stopped by someone with a gun. In the absence or presence of a law the same end result occurs.
@strych9
Boomer/Boomercon lesson learned long, long ago:
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
– H. L. Mencken
Are you suggesting that this is a lesson learned by the Boomer generation?
That is, quite clearly, false for the vast majority of Conservative Boomers.
“That is, quite clearly, false for the vast majority of Conservative Boomers.”
Spent early years in school in ‘Bama and the Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila y Tejas
We were quite acquainted with Mencken and his homilies (insightful, sarcastic, and often humorous and ironic). One of our favorite cautions was “Ciu Bono”, an almost 100% explanation for any human action, especially regarding crime and politics (sorry for the redundancy).
I’ve always thought that the statement should be something more along the lines of Quis hoc sibi bonum credit?.
Who believes [that] they (themself) benefit?
I’m a little confused on the Rahimi case/restraining order.
It looks like the restraining order was put in place by a judge after a hearing in which evidence was presented and the defendant had the opportunity to provide a counter-argument and face his accuser. It seems like it was a restriction placed as the result of due process. That’s clearly constitutional.
So I must be missing something on this case. What is it?
Possibly the is it due process without a conviction by jury of peers issue. Not really the top case I have read into honesty so not sure.
I thought that too, but he was convicted by a jury of at least one violent crime. I thought the restraining order was a condition of his sentence. Is that mistaken?
The issue the Fifth Circuit had is Rahimi being disarmed without ever having been convicted of a crime. They ruled that there’s no history or tradition of depriving an individual of a civil right (guns, voting, whatever) without having been convicted of a crime.
He’d been arrested and charged in a number of crimes in the past, but hadn’t yet been convicted.
Thank you saved an hour or two of reading after work but still looks like a good one to review when time permits.
@Dude
“The next step is to educate right wingers on how to use power when they have it.”
Of the two consequential political parties, one wants unlimited power over the population; the other wants to be well thought of, and be invited to all the cool get-togethers.
@strych9
“Who believes [that] they (themself) benefit?”
I like that one.
It’s a “razor” I find covers far more territory but is slightly more difficult to use.
How about, “How esy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” – Autobiographical dictation, 2 December 1906. Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)
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