6 Comments

Roger,

Are the links on ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ *deliberately* switched …?

Please ech-splain …

Maybe he meant to.

I’m an old leftie myself who has been called a rightwing reactionary warmonger more times than I can remember simply because I’ve been writing about — and warning about — the Islamic fundamentalists for 20-plus years.

So who knows anymore what those labels mean, at least when used simplistically to put a jacket on someone rather than truly figure out what they’re saying?

Hehe, so Roger is a “conservative” now. Welcome to the dark side, Roger!

Roger:

Labels are shorthand and sometimes they are very limiting. When Hitchens call’s himself a Jeffersonian Marxist it seems a bit absurd but the more you read about Jefferson you can say that although I doubt he would ever fully adopt Marxism his presidency shows that he had no problem using the Power of the State against the private individual that seemed to contradict his small government writings. People from the left like Hitchens and Roger I call thinking leftists or liberals. I disagree strongly with many of their idea’s but they are not so dogmatic and party driven that they automatically line up on the left without examining the possibilities that their own side of the fence has got it wrong. Calling them leftists may have a bit of truth in the tag but it doesn’t prevent having a civil discussion or that their dogma is so ingrained that their minds can’t be changed or that they can’t join hands with political opposites that agree on an important issue. They also tend to keep faith with their core principles, no matter what side of the political fence their ideals place them.

There are still many that can be called leftist’s who sole purpose is power and opposition against anyone who doesn’t follow their lead and bow down to them and their dogma. Those who don’t follow them are not just wrong, they are evil and must be destroyed, not just defeated. As a recovering leftist I think I can safely say that sometimes those labels fit and one can predict the response to any issue because they will parrot the party line. Non=thinking, reactionary.

Snce we’re talking liberal and conservative, and since I’ve aired my dissent about Judge Roberts appointment earlier – against Roger’s easy acceptance – to the Supremes, I’d like to point out that Glenn Reynolds had identified and substantiated my angst.

During his hearing, Roberts affirmed endorsement of the revolutionary and expansive interpretation of the commerce clause that’s overturned the founders vision for contemporary socialism/fascism. THIS makes Roberts the enemy to me.

Here’s his exhange with Senator Schumer:

“SCHUMER: OK. Let me ask you, then, this hypothetical: And that is that it came to our attention, Congress’, through a relatively and inexpensive, simple process, individuals were now able to clone certain species of animals, maybe an arroyo toad. Didn’t pass over state lines; you could somehow do it without doing any of that. Under the commerce clause, can Congress pass a law banning even noncommercial cloning?

“ROBERTS: I appreciate it’s a hypothetical, and you will as well, so I don’t mean to be giving bindings opinions. But it would seem to me that Congress can make a determination that this is an activity, if allowed to be pursued, that is going to have effects on interstate commerce. Obviously if you were successful in cloning an animal, that’s not going to be simply a local phenomenon. That’s going to be something people are going to…

“SCHUMER: We can leave it at that. That’s a good answer, as far as I am concerned.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/politics/politicsspecial1/15text-roberts.html?pagewanted=print

[Prof Reynolds comments:]

Under this analysis, everything is subject to regulation under the commerce power. That it’s a good answer as far as Schumer is concerned doesn’t surprise me, but that it’s the answer of a Bush nominee to the Supreme Court is damning, if not terribly surprising — for the Bush Administration. Fair-weather Federalism, indeed.

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UPDATE: . . .Roberts seems to be saying that anything can be aggregated to find an impact on interstate commerce, and that Congress can even nip it in the bud by outlawing it in advance to ensure that there never will be such an impact. This seems rather extreme to me, perhaps even going beyond Raich.

____________________________

Reynold’s calls this exchange “damning.” I’d say it seals my case that we ought to expect Roberts to be much like O’Conner: a “conservative” only in the willow-the-wisp sense. Or rather a “conservative” in the worst sense of preserving the statist status quo where government can do almost whatever it wants and the judiciary is not a real check against overweening state power.

Thus, Roger is wrong and the objections from the likes of Ann Coulter appear to be correct: that we are being rolled by yet another “stealth” candidate without any conservative orientation, ie, a constitutional judicial philosophy, are once again – like too many times before – getting taken for a ride. This simply sucks.

Roger-

Thank you for bringing the work of Davd Kline to our attention. He’s been doing some very interesting writting, all right. This reader will shortly remedy that neglect.