Below is my column in Fox.com on the recent decision of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to join the ranks of Democrats calling for packing the Supreme Court. It is a disappointing moment for many of us who hoped that Shapiro could offer a moderate voice in the upcoming elections, resisting the rise of socialists and communists in his party. Instead, he proved to be just another politician thinking of the next election rather than the next generation.
Here is the column:
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D. Pa.) has finally reached his Terry Malloy moment. In the classic movie, On the Waterfront, the character tells his brother of losing it all; his shot to be a champion and a person of respect: “You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.”
Shapiro decided to deliver his defining moment on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” when he abandoned all principle and decided to join other Democratic establishment leaders in offering up the Supreme Court to the radical left. Shapiro used the common coded reference to court packing, calling for “radical reform of the Court.” The only “radical” reform being seriously discussed is packing the institution with an immediate liberal majority to reverse a series of recent decisions and to greenlight an equally radical agenda for changes to our political system.
What is so disappointing is that Shapiro could have truly been a contender, an alternative to the cringing, accommodating politicians who are yielding to the demands of the mob. Figures from Kamala Harris to Pete Buttigieg have recently embraced the scheme to show their bona fides to a rising socialist and radical movement in the Democratic Party.
Shapiro could have been different. He could have offered the country moderation and pushed back on the radical elements of his party. Shapiro was reportedly rejected as a vice presidential candidate due to being Jewish and is a member of a party that is careening toward open anti-Semitism. He could have been that mature voice in his party cautioning restraint before destroying one of our core institutions.
Instead, he chose to just be another bum in American politics.
Shapiro told MS NOW:
“I think we need radical reform that’s actually going to ensure that the voices of the people are heard from, that the voices of the people are represented in the three branches of government. We don’t have that right now.”
The comment echoes the remarks of other court-packers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who insisted the court was illegitimate for rendering decisions against “widely held public opinion.”
The Supreme Court was never designed to be the “voice of the people.” On the contrary, it was meant to be a countermajoritarian check on the people’s impulse. It is that body that is designed to stand against the majority to protect minority interests and to maintain a constitutional system meant to blunt popular impulse.
In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss how the Framers sought to avoid a direct democratic system, which had failed repeatedly in history. These systems (based on channeling public demands) became what Benjamin Rush called a “mobocracy.” The Supreme Court plays a vital part in preventing our Republic from destroying itself.
For years, professors and pundits have quietly urged a hostile takeover of the Court to remove the barrier to fundamentally changing our system. Now, on the 250th anniversary of our Republic, they are close to getting their way.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”
James Carville declared, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
Now Shapiro has joined these ignoble ranks.
Shapiro and others are demanding the radical reforms despite the current Court repeatedly ruling against the Trump Administration, including most recently on birthright citizenship. Without acknowledging that the decision again showed the Court’s independence, Shapiro griped, “this case should have taken a nanosecond to decide and it should have been nine nothing.”
What does that mean? Should the courts not have heard arguments, or should the Supreme Court have issued an immediate ruling from the bench during oral arguments?
Nevertheless, that is enough for Shapiro to toss the Court to the mob. It is transparent and frankly pathetic.
Shapiro added that too much power was being given to the Executive Branch. This is a court that just ruled against the President on issues from citizenship to tariffs. It has drawn sharp rebukes from President Trump for curtailing his powers.
Now Shapiro appears ready to repeat his controversial move against his neighbor and exercise a type of adverse possession against the Court. However, he lacks the courage (as do figures like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries) to come out and call it court packing. They simply refer to “radical” changes.
It is part of conditioning voters to the type of structural changes contemplated by the left to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” Most voters still oppose court packing. You have to wait until voters are angry enough to take a hammer to a system that remains the oldest, most stable democracy in history.
The Court could well fall in the coming years to this mad frenzy, but it will be preceded by the fall of figures like Josh Shapiro. He and his establishment colleagues are deluding themselves into believing that they will be spared in this mobocracy that they are making.
Refusing to have his state participate in the 250th celebration on the Mall and offering up the Supreme Court will not appease an increasingly violent and anti-Semitic far-left movement.
Despite his own pandering to the mob, the socialists recently chanted “you’re next” when they saw Jeffries’ image on a screen at a New York victory party.
Yesterday’s armchair revolutionaries like Josh Shapiro will soon be treated as today’s reactionaries by the very mob that they are trying to enlist. What will be left is a lament of what Shapiro could have been at this moment in our history. As Terry Malloy said, he “coulda had class. [He] coulda been a contender. [He] could’ve been somebody.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Madison lays it out plain in Federalist 39:
The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican. It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government. If the plan of the convention, therefore, be found to depart from the republican character, its advocates must abandon it as no longer defensible.
Read that last line again. Madison is not asking us to trust the paperwork. He is telling New York flat out, if this thing does not rest on the capacity of regular people to govern themselves, scrap it. That is the whole bet the founding generation made. Not a hope. A bet.
238 years on, the form is still sitting there on paper. Still republican. Still calls itself self-government. The question nobody wants to ask is whether the capacity Madison bet on is still under it, or whether we have been running on the name of the thing long after the substance thinned out.
That is the question I built my whole project around. Not “is the Constitution still republican.” It is. The harder question is whether we still are.
AI Overview
The U.S. Founders intended for an educated, property-owning elite to govern a republic with restricted voting rights, viewing public virtue and property ownership as essential filters against political instability.
Core Intentions of the Founders
Restricted Suffrage: Most Framers believed voting should be tied to property ownership, arguing that individuals without economic independence could be easily manipulated.
Fear of “Mob Rule”: The architects of the Constitution were highly skeptical of pure democracy. They designed mechanisms like the Electoral College and an appointed Senate to buffer government from direct popular passion.
Concept of Virtue: The “good men” or “natural aristocracy” they envisioned were expected to practice civic virtue, putting the common good above personal interest.
While this system explicitly marginalized women, enslaved people, and non-landowners, it also established a constitutional framework that eventually allowed for the expansion of democratic rights to all citizens.
____________________________________
The Founders expected that universal suffrage and unrestricted democracy would trigger a rapid collapse into economic chaos, mob rule (ochlocracy), and ultimate tyranny. Because they viewed the expansion of democratic rights to all citizens as an invitation to political ruin, they calculated that mass participation would inevitably produce the following outcomes:
1. The Legal Theft of Property
The Framers, particularly James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, believed that a majority composed of non-landowners would naturally vote to equalize wealth. They expected the masses to use their voting power to cancel debts, redistribute land, inflate currency, and tax property owners out of existence.
2. The Rise of Demagogues
The Founders feared that uneducated voters would be easily manipulated by charismatic, self-serving politicians. In Federalist No. 63, Madison warned that demagogues would exploit the “passions” and “artful misrepresentations” of the public to secure power, transforming a deliberate republic into an unstable emotional democracy.
3. Hyper-Factionalism and Civil Strife
Without property ownership as a stabilizing filter, the Founders predicted that the electorate would splinter into volatile, warring factions. They believed these divisions would paralyze the government and cause intense geographical or class-based civil conflict.
4. Regression Into Monarchy or Dictatorship
Relying on historical precedents like ancient Athens and Rome, the Founders operated under the political theory that “pure” democracies always destroy themselves. They expected that the resulting chaos of mob rule would leave the public desperate for order, paving the way for a tyrant or military dictator to seize absolute control.
“People are rewarded based on the amount of work they perform.”
This sounds like rugged individualism.
That’s free-market capitalism. The opposite of socialism. There is a free market for labor, where people get paid for the value of the work they perform.
Perhaps the pro-socialist commenter you responded to was using a nuance on the word “amount.” So, maybe she was saying that with socialism, the value of one’s work doesn’t matter, just the number of hours. In that event, a person who shows up to an excavation site with a back hoe and works three hours gets paid the same as a shovel handler who works three hours, even though the former gave the employer a great deal of value while the latter barely scratched the surface.
The guy with the backhoe cut a gas line which lead to several houses being blown to smithereens and rendering a half-dozen more uninhabitable. The backhoe guy also hit a main optical fiber cable, cutting 5,000 people off from the internet.
The reason is the backhoe operator isn’t paid as much as the effort to remove that amount of dirt with a shovel so he doesn’t care what happens. One would think he’d be very well paid because the effort was more rapid, but that’s not the case.
Jeez
The business of construction is production. That boils down to how much material can I move to do my work and get paid for what is installed. A crew with shovels cannot move enough material to get anywhere near the production of a backhoe. They also are required by law to perform utility locates so they don’t damage utilities. Yes accidents happen, call a lawyer.
The biggest employer in the US is the government at 22 million employees. “The people” are the biggest employer. 😂. Those employees make such head-scratching decisions that “the people” just can’t manage. Clem, should men be in women’s gym showers? Waste of money.
That’s NOT employment, that’s servitude funded at the taxpayers expense. It should be limited to the essential workers.
Your labor belongs to you and you can sell it! Under communism your labor belongs to the collective and you get what they give you.
Republicans packed the SCOTUS with Federalist Society radicals who lied to get into office by promising to honor stare decisis, and then doing whatever Trump and Republicans want. After Scalia died suddenly, Obama was entitled to a nomination, which Mitch McConnell denied him by refusing to bring the nomination before the Senate. The alleged reason was the proximity of the election, but when Ginsberg died, that rule was chucked and the election was even closer. That’s how we got Barrett. When Kavanaugh was nominated and Dr. Ford testified about his wild ways, there were 25 more witnesses who begged to be heard, but Republicans cut them off and pushed through a vote. The result has been chaotic. The SCOTUS has never scored lower in public opinion polling. Most Americans did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned. The SCOTUS has never before overturned precedent that found a Constitutional right.
So, are the majority of us supposed to be stuck with these people until they die off or decide to retire? Where does it say in the Constitution that additional justices cannot be added? It doesn’t, and there have been varying numbers on the Court over the years. Why shouldn’t the American people have a voice in SCOTUS judges, instead of waiting for radicals like Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett to either die or retire? Their views are inconsistent with the views, values and desires of most Americans. Thomas is so conflicted it isn’t even funny. He should be indicted. By adding justices, Democrats are responding to the will of the American people who are rejecting the ultra right-wing bias that the SCOTUS has demonstrated. Most Americans oppose the increase in presidential power and the “get out of jail free” ruling that lets Trump do whatever he wants. And, he is taking advantage of it–from opening accepting a flying palace in exchange for selling our most-sophisticated AI chips after a multi million dollar purchase of his worthless crypto chips, and the outrageous leveraging of the presidency to line his pockets and those of his sons.
Turley is paid to defend Republican court packing, to attack Democrats, and also to try to sell his book but in a democracy, the voice of the people should prevail. Turley tries to defend the ultra right wing leaning SCOTUS by trying to argue that the SCOTUS serves as “…countermajoritarian check on the people’s impulse. It is that body that is designed to stand against the majority to protect minority interests and to maintain a constitutional system meant to blunt popular impulse.” Is it popular impulse to expect the Court to honor the plan wording of the Fourteenth Amendment that persons born on US soil are US citizens? That should have been a no-brainer, but Trump’s Executive Order, written by the architects of Project 2025 that he denied knowing anything about, barely squeaked by, and Kavanaugh wrote a widely-criticized opinion that seemed to imply that Congress could simply pass a statute to bypass the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. In fact, that’s the MAGA media message. That’s just one example of how radical the current makeup of the SCOTUS is. It’s not a “radical reform” for there to be more Justices who are not ultra right-wing. That’s just a MAGA spin that Turley is paid to put out there.
No ojne promised that Stare Decisis was absolute – no one left or right ever will.
no one lied.
You cannot prove they told the truth – that they had respect for stare decisis and, at the time of the hearings they did not already intend to overturn Roe v. Wade and were only waiting for the barest excuse of a case to do so.
They could have simply ignored the case based on established decision and a lack of any pressing change that demanded their review. Instead they knew what their decision would be, a decision that they lied and say they had not already made.
It is inconceivable that a nominee for the Supreme Court would not have done significant research into the matter prior to the nomination, looking for flaws in the original argument and establishing exactly the reasoning they would use if a case arrived on a silver platter.
“Republicans packed the SCOTUS with Federalist Society…”
I remember, it was awesome!
Perhaps the surprise isn’t that Shapiro is a standard Dem, but rather that it took so long for the carefully curated moderate image to disappear.
According to the anti-forever-war president, the United States can fight forever.
What egregious thing must Trump do to lose your support of him?
President Donald J. Trump is precluding war with “tough love,” Einstein!
Are we in a forever war ? Peace keeping troops are landing in Gaza right now – Hamas has said they will tun over their heavy weapons.
Hezbollah is being mopped up and Lebanon is cooperating. Record numbers of ships have been transiting the Straits.
It likely will be some weeks – maybe even months before all fighting comes to an end.
There were japanese soldiers who held out for years after Japan surrendered.
But sane people beleive that peace has come to the mideast – and that peace in Ukraine is not far behind.
It was pointed out to me recently that there is still a rare flare up of violence in northern island – but no one claims that Ireland is not essentially at peace.
Why do people support Trump ? Because Iran is NOT the same as Iran and Afghanistan. Because after 90 days of conflict Iran is no longer able to disrupt the peace and stablity of the mideast.
No longer able to supply Russia with 45% of its munitions.
Peace is breaking out all over – socialist and totalitarian regimes are failing all over.
John Say asks if we are in a forever war.
Maybe not one war, but since the end of WWII in 1945, the US has been involved in some sort of armed conflict for 76 of those 81 years, or 94% of the time.
Certainly not evidence of a peace loving nation.
And all of that was Trump’s fault, right? Everything from 1945 until now is Trump’s fault.
Not debating every conflict the US has been in. Not even this one.
The claim repeated numerous ways is that Trump promised no wars as president – he did not. No president will.
He did promise no forever wars. No one thinks that means wars lasting hundreds of years.
They and Trump meant no wars without clear objectives that go on and on and on.
Each of us is free to have our own views regarding Iran. I have offered numerous defenses of the conflict with Iran.
Everything I have said is true. But you are STILL free to beleive it was a bad idea – just do not lie about what the conflict is, and what has and has not been accomplished.
I strongly suspect that if I was president – I would have done as Trump did and bombed Fordow last year.
But I would not have taken Iran on this spring. But the fact that I would not have done this – does not mean it is all bad,
nor does the fact that it occured mean it is all good.
I would not have started this conflict with Iran. But I do beleive that it has turned out significantly net positive.
A great deal of that is because of Trump. Trump made the major choices – to start the conflict, and how to conduct it, and how to end it. I think thus far he has made very good choices.
Many – mostly on the left fixate on Trump’s every shifting remarks. I do not have a problem with that.
Trump is a negotiator, and deal maker. He threatens things he is not likely to do.
At the same time a threat the other side does not beleive is no threat at all.
Trump is constantly telling the world if he does not get what he wants he will do everything short of nuke iran.
While at the same time saying he wont. He MUST convincingly persuade the Iranian leaders he will stop at nothing to get them to reach an agreement. he in fact depends on the press and the left wing nuts to convince the Iranian leaders he is serious and seriously nuts. Trump’s negotiations are a matter of some bluff and some force.
I can not do that. Most of us can’t – it is even scary. But it is also effective.
But I do beleive that it has turned out significantly net positive.
That is true. People do not seem to realize that taking out Ali Khamenei is quite literally the equivalent of if the Allies had been able to take out Hitler mid-way through WWII. That is not an exaggeration, and that alone outweighs any downside to this latest phase of the conflict.
Ali Khamenei was neither chief strategist nor dictatorial leader. He was the elected head of a heavily meshed organization that can clearly operate without him. Killing him left the US without anyone in the position to negotiate and so negotiation is not possible. Anyone who looks able to negotiate has also been killed. It’s like trying to stop Catholicism by killing the Pope and a bunch of bishops.
“He did promise no forever wars. ”
He also promised no wars. Trump makes promise on promise on promise so that of the hundred things he says that are lies one might be the truth.
Trump rarely used the term “forever wars” and usually used the unqualified, absolute, “no wars.”
Iran is much appreciated target practice.
“Record numbers of ships have been transiting the Straits.”
That is clearly untrue.
Such is John Say from the Ministry of Truth.
Though I thought Josh Shapiro was a righteous and religious man, his recent surrender forces me to rethink what I believed before. Instead, his announced moral compass as an observant Jew should have led him to refuse to surrender and submit to Torah, Talmudic, and common sense guidance.
Deuteronomy 16:19 states:
“You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.”
Though many do not believe in religion, they should nonetheless adhere to ethical and moral principles. Josh Shapiro failed in that regard, and his stature fell in proportion to the pressure from his party. This is a severe failure of his constitutional stewardship; an independent judiciary created by the Constitution was meant to be an anchor of the American public, insulating personal desires from the drift of transient popular majorities. If this were a true majority and not transient, it would not require intimidating those who did not join that opinion.
Meyer, no righteous, religious man wants anything to do with Donald Trump. Trump destroys everything he touches!
No, Trump restores everything he touches from the destruction brought about by the “Joe Biden” administration. For example, the border. Biden destroyed it, Trump restored it. Domestic energy production. Biden destroyed it, Trump restored it. The list goes on. Sanity in women’s sports. Freedom of speech (think: Biden’s ministry of truth and the government-social-media censorship complex). Anti-semitism on college campuses. American power in the world. And on and on and on.
Trump sold Trumpcoin to his followers. They lost at least 90% of the value of that investment.
You stand on weak legs, having no moral compass. You don’t even have a name.
And you are completely unable to stand at all on your own dysfunctional legs.
You can only stand with the help of the crutches of your non-thinking adherence to the dogmatic cults of MAGA and aberrant religiosity.
You have absolutely no internal moral compass, because you have relinquished any semblance of humanity and morality that you may have been born with to the cults to which you now belong. You have completely subjugated yourself in supplication to false gods in the form of your invisible friend in the sky, and the orange cult leader that you worship with equal fervor.
You are a completely lost soul, bereft of any humanity, drifting aimlessly in a morass of fantasy and delusion.
As I said, you are a weakling. You rely on my words to try to build yourself up from your own vapid insults, but you fail. Weakling..
S. Meyer,
See my comment here, https://jonathanturley.org/2026/07/06/the-fall-of-josh-shapiro-pennsylvania-governor-collapses-on-the-political-waterfront/comment-page-2/#comment-2649688
” In order to stay relevant “
Our leaders are elected to LEAD, not to preserve their relevance. American soldiers have sacrificed their lives since 1776 to maintain the nation’s integrity and purpose. Shapiro sacrificed his honor and his allegiance. He has made himself inconsequential.
Of course, Deuteronomy 21:18–21 also states that it is permissible to kill a rebellious son by stoning.
18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
And of course, Deuteronomy 22:11 states: “You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, such as wool and linen mixed together”.
So if you are making moral decisions based on ancient nonsense written for semi-literate peasants thousands of years ago, then you are in absolutely no position to judge Shapiro.
Whether one believes the Bible or not, no reasonable person would dispute that it is one of the most influential books in world history, and the most influential book in the history of Western Civilization. So I can imagine that before you dismiss its contents as “nonsense” you spent years in a seminary studying its contents and becoming familiary with them and with why it has been so influential. In those years you spent in seminary, you surely learned about the different types of laws in the Old Testiment, such as the civil law, the ceremonial law, and the moral law, and are able to distinguish their purpose and their continuing applicability, right?
Or is it just your rank ignorance that makes you so arrogant? My money is on the latter.
What is the continuing applicability of the law that a rebellious must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18–21)
What is the continuing applicability of the law that if a man refuses to marry his deceased brother’s widow to continue the family line, the widow must publicly confront him before the town elders, strip off one of his sandals, spit directly in his face, and brand his lineage forever as “The Family of the Unsandaled” (Deuteronomy 25:5–10)
What is the continuing applicability of the law that anyone born out of wedlock—and their descendants down to the tenth generation—is completely banned from entering the assembly of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:2)
What is the continuing applicability of the law that if a family member or close friend secretly suggests worshipping another god, the text dictates that you must not show pity. You must stone them to death, and your hand must be the first one to throw the stone (Deuteronomy 13:6–10)
What is the continuing applicability of the law that anyone who curses their mother or father must automatically be put to death (Leviticus 20:9)
That’s the whole point, genius, they don’t apply any more. Your homework assignment: tell my why. You may use google and its AI feature if you wish. In fact you will have to, since it’s clear you have never studied the matter, yet in your arrogance you seem to think you know enough to dismiss the Bible as “nonsense.”
Ahhhh!!!
So the bible is basically a cafeteria menu where you can pick and choose what to believe based on your own opinions and prejudices.
And then you have the right to express self-righteous indignation when the choice of others is different from what you choose to pick out and believe.
Doesn’t sound like the immutable and infallible word of god to me.
The bible sounds more like a motley collection of myths and fantasies written to terrify ignorant and illiterate neolithic era peasants into submission to a ruling class of pagan con-men.
And apparently, even modern, weak-minded, non-thinking people can still be terrified into submission by this nonsense.
The fact that you so easily fall into the cult of religion explains why you are so attracted to the MAGA cult.
“The Art of War” is likely more influential, at least to the effect that it has usable actionable information.
A bible should tell the followers, in plain language, what is expected from them and not require even a single day of expert led religious education. Since it is an amalgam of various people making up arcane rules to keep control of their followers, it is in as jumbled a state as possible.
Read the Book of Mormon for a parallel book.
The Bible is in plain language and explained in the Torah and later by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah. It is based on logic and a clear legal code accessible to all. The Torah does not stand alone; it is carefully explained in the Mishnah and then analyzed by the detailed discussions in the Gemara. This is followed by generations of subsequent scholarly work.
You can compare this to the American Constitution, which has an abbreviated framework and is followed by a massive federal code and case law containing thousands of volumes that span 250 years. The legal system of the Bible operates functionally the same, spanning 3,000 years.
You may call it a jumbled mess, but that can only be said by someone who fails to recognize the brilliance of this jurisprudence. You prefer to remain obdurate, willfully blind, and ignorant.
Re 21:18–21 The killing of a rebellious child.
Intelligent people first ask why such a law would exist. To understand the law, one must recognize that it was common in ancient societies for rebellious children to be killed by their parents without legal consequence. The law did not exist to mandate the execution of a child, but rather to halt such executions by removing the parents from the decision and placing it with neutral elders. The legal requirements for such a death were so strict that, in the subsequent centuries, there is no documentation of any child ever being killed under the statute, despite legal proceedings being heavily recorded.
No!
Intelligent people would look at this nonsense and realize that this was nothing more than a means to terrify illiterate, neolithic era peasants into submission to a cult led by a scheming ruling class of confidence tricksters intent on preying upon weak-minded people.
And if you choose to rationalize this nonsense from the Neolithic period, then you too have been terrified into submission to a cult, which explains why you are attracted to the MAGA cult.
In your attempt to demean others, you screwed up by conflating historical eras by thousands of years without recognizing that Deuteronomy is from the Iron Age and not a product of the Neolithic period.
Then you screw up again, missing the fundamental mechanics of statutory evolution. Do you think laws were codified to enforce tribal terrors? That would be stupid, and you aren’t stupid, right? By creating a system of complex evidence, power was removed from the head of the household, functionally prohibiting the killing you criticize.
Most importantly, you failed to recognize the abundant evidence existing to prove you dead wrong.
I have absolutely no idea what this nonsensical comment is supposed to mean.
Apparently you are still trying to rationalize the nonsensical myths and fantasies that were written thousands of years ago to terrify an illiterate population into submission, and as such your comments are just as nonsensical as the original fairy tales that you are trying to rationalize.
You are trapped in a circular argument of nonsense where you try to rationalize the nonsense of the bible with equally nonsensical explanations.
There is a complete absence of intellectual open-mindedness, that forces you to accept without question the dogma that to any reasonably intelligent person is completely absurd.
You confirm that any semblance of factual argument has disappeared, leaving you with insults that never depart their gate. So it is with the ignorati who talk while knowing nothing. I responded directly to your critique on Deuteronomy 21:18–21, but did you have a rebuttal? No. You were silent. I answered your challenges regarding the legal framework, and the shock of Aristotelian logic left you completely mute. You have nothing of value to say. You are worthless
Meyer, Meyer, Meyer
Come now, you are capable of much more biting personal insults. You need to put in a lot more effort than this pathetic attempt to insult me.
It is fascinating how you always resort to personal insults when you realize that you are cornered and defeated, and have nothing further to say that is of any relevance.
By the way, Sigmund sends his regards, and wants to remind you to make an appointment for a consultation with him so that he can help with your myriad psychiatric disorders and delusions.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!
Welcome back Siggy. We haven’t heard from you in a while.
Good to see you play the moronic Meyer once again for the sucker and fool and loser that he really is.
Well played sir, well played !!!!
Sigmund the Fraud wants us to know that this is him; his undesired grandiloquence is diminishing, and he has nothing to say but insults stolen from others. It’s obvious from the previous discussion that Sigmund the Fraud hides himself behind an anonymous name, knowing that on more than one occasion, he acted like such a fool that it was hard for his brethren not to recognize him.
I answered his spurious question directly and correctly on Deuteronomy 21:18–21, regarding the execution of a rebellious child. Does he respond with any intelligent thought? No. Instead, his talk is more of a cathartic to remove the shite from his brain in an attempt to cure his sickness.
Final Grade: Illiterate Bible-Basher, Anonymity Addict, and Fraudulent Stylist.
Why do you think that I have even the slightest interest in your answers to my comments?
I have no interest in your answers, or indeed anything you have to say about any other topic. Nothing you ever say makes sense to any rational, independent thinker.
But you may be able to help me to make an important decision. I have been wrestling with a decision as to how to address you. As you know, I coined the appellation “Meyer the Liar”. It has a certain rhyming appeal, wouldn’t you agree.
The other thought that crossed my mind is “Meyer the Moron”, which has a certain alliterative appeal, rather than rhyming.
Do you have a particular preference?
Sigmund the Fraud, you claim not to have an interest in what I say, but you constantly find me; I don’t bother looking for you. I am easy to find since I have a name. Your obsession makes you search the blog to find me and comment. I don’t have such a luxury since you have hidden yourself among almost 50% of the blog posts under the name anonymous; a scared retreat from a discussion list. I don’t have that luxury, as I carry an easy-to-find name. Did I mention you are a coward?
Yes, you have proven your obsession. I own you and your head, while all you can do is whine and cry. You’re too frightened to have an intellectual discussion.
What happened to your comments about Deuteronomy and the killing of a rebellious child? You were made to look ignorant, so you retreated to poorly created insults. Come on, spice it up; you have become a big bore.
Final Grade: Obsessive Bore, Failed Commenter, and Fraudulent Stylist.
One wishes for presidential candidates that approach politics the way Bill Clinton did when he triangulated with Newt Gingrich. One may not agree with Bill Clinton’s politics (or Newt Gingrich’s for that matter) but one still can admire President Clinton’s political skills and mastery at framing any debate. Gov. Shapiro seemed to have the right tool set but clearly not that frame of mind.
Actually, some of the people who wanted to move the Democrat Party to a centrist footing founded the Democrat Leadership Counsil in the mid ’80s. During and after Clinton’s presidency, many Clinton loyalists who supported his centrist ideological shift became active in the DLC. They sought to recruit Democrat centrists to run for office and govern the way Clinton had done.
Bernie Sanders (and Geroge Soros) opposed centrism. Bernie had the intellectual honesty to not run for office as a Democrat because he considered the Democrat Party too centrist for him. In the early ’90s, he persuaded five people elected as Democrats in the two houses of Congress to found the far left Progressive Congressional Caucus. (Soviet communists often referred to themselves as “progressive”.)
Today, the centrist Democrat Leadership Counsil no longer exists. While the Progressive Caucus Bernie created is composed almost entirely of elected Democrats and now has about 100 members.
Bernie did change his party affiliation to “Democrat” to try to use their apparatus to aid in his two failed presidential campaigns. His party affiliation is independent again. I interpret that to mean that while he successfully moved the Democrat Party far left, it is still not leftist enough for him to be a Democrat.
This blog is like the Jerry Springer Show.
Only for you.
Actually more like the Three Stooges meet the Marx brothers.
Although that combination of talent would be a far cut above the daily nonsense here.
If my neighbor keeps shooting me, is the burden on me to find a new neighbor, or should the burden be on him not to shoot me?
If your neighbor keeps shooting you, plural, more than once, then either you live in a Democrat ran city where the police are not allowed to arrest criminals or DA will not prosecute criminals, you have no common sense to move or both.
And if you are a Democrat, you likely voted for the mess you are in.
AI Overview
Vladimir Lenin famously stated that “the goal of Socialism is Communism.” In his view, socialism is not the final state of society, but rather the transitional phase between capitalism and communism.
Here is how Lenin, drawing on Karl Marx, broke down the two stages:
Socialism (The “Lower” Stage): Society has overthrown capitalism. The means of production are owned collectively, but the economy still operates on the principle of “to each according to their contribution.” People are rewarded based on the amount of work they perform.
Communism (The “Higher” Stage): The state withers away, and classes disappear entirely. Abundance is achieved, and the economy operates on the principle of “to each according to their needs.”
“Collectivist Hallucinations”
Communism is unconstitutional.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then, and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
The right to private property—the bane of communism—is absolute, as are the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
– Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto
_______________________________________
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Article 6
“All Judicial Officers of the United States shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”
Can court packing be done with the consent of the governed, and without the consent of Jonathan Turley?
Trump beat you to it! 6-3
OT, does anyone else besides me think that the names Sebastian and Poindexter belong in the same category?
How about the names Farnsworth, Puddington, Chauncy, and Ogilvie? How about Henry, Charles, and James? Or Harvey, Marvin, and Sydney?
And do other people cringe when they hear the word “impactful”? I’m not sure why, but I can’t stand that word. I don’t even think it’s a real word, but that’s just my opinion.
He was always that way. He was just hiding it.
The Founders established a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy. They intended the people to have a voice in government, but they deliberately limited direct majority rule through constitutional structures, representative institutions, and checks and balances. Public officials were entrusted with exercising only the powers delegated by the Constitution and were expected to preserve and uphold it, not govern by unlimited popular will. Ultimately, the Constitution and the rule of law—not transient majorities or government officials—were intended to be the supreme authority of American government.
Authoritarian rule by the majority—a “dictatorship of the majority”—creates politicized institutions (including the courts). When that power is combined with widespread rage, it can break down the rule of law and legitimize extra-legal violence, leading to anarchy and mob violence.
When power is settled mainly by force and mass coercion rather than enforceable rules, violence tends to escalate, institutions become tools of the dominant faction, and ordinary people usually end up worse off.
Our form of government was created by a generation formed for it. We still call it a constitutional republic. Three branches, elections, federalism. But look at how most people actually experience government now. Over time it has drifted in function, depending on how citizens were formed. Today, we have rules from agencies nobody voted for. Decisions made by people they will never meet. Participation shrunk down to voting every couple years and posting online in between.
So here’s the question I keep asking. What form of government has this generation actually been formed for?
Administrative oligarchy?
If Democrats are as bad as you claim, then should Democrat-led states be much worse off, as the Fox propaganda claims?
Been to California lately?
Dem-run cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia . . . now look like third-world nations.
Says someone who has never been in a third-world nation.
I felt safer in Afghanistan than I did in Chicago or Philadelphia.
Afghanistan was cleaner.
You are wrong. I have lived in third-world nations.
Don’t have to go there to know what they are like. I’ll never voluntarily visit ANY of those cities again.
Estovir, you’ve never been to any of those cities.
^ The moron who thinks everyone else is named Estovir ^
Americans left once-great California a long time ago. I remember a bumper sticker from the late 70s:
“Will the last one out please take down the flag.”
And this from Florida:
“Will the last American to leave Miami, please bring the flag?”
If you love NY, please stay there.
Who loves N.Y. other than the parasites that are eating it.
Today’s blue states were red states not all that long ago. The prosperity that is being destroyed today was built when they were controlled by conservatives
Conversely today’s poor red states were blue states not very long ago – they were $hitholes for most of two centuries. The are booming today – but it takes time to go from abject poverty to to of the country prosperity.
I can not think of a single time in US history where prosperity and wealth BUILDING was not a feature of conservative states.
I can not think of a time in US history when the destruction of wealth and prosperity was not a feature of “progressive” states.
Nixon was a senator from California before he was president. Reagan was a governor from California before he was president. George HW Bush was from Massachusetts.
Coolidge was from Vermont.
In the 1932 FDR landslide the only states in New England that voted for FDR were Massachusetts and Rhode Island – All the rest of New England as well as PA and DE voted against FDR. Maine and Vermont Never voted for FDR. In 1948 nearly all of new England and all mid Atlantic states voted Republican, in 1952 only the south voted democrat.
The same in 1956 in 1972 Nixon won every state except Massachusetts. In 1980 Reagan won nearly every state – including Massachusetts. in 1984 Reagan won every state except Minnesota. in 1988 Bush won most of the country and all of new England – except again – Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 1992 is the first year since FDR that California voted Democrat.
The fallacy you answered was that the anonymous commenter judged by a snapshot. You were pointing out movement, which is much more meaningful. Wealth has been moving from Blue to Red states in massive amounts lately. None of that is by accident or based on neutral features such as weather – indeed California has the best weather in the country. It is all based on the state’s economic policies.
Worse off,you mean like California?
President Donald Trump’s massive Fourth of July fireworks show fouled the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, choked Washington with record air pollution, and sent dozens to hospitals.
Trump’s nonprofit Freedom 250 launched nearly 850,000 fireworks shells from 10 sites on the National Mall, including the Reflecting Pool itself.
The morning after, workers were wading waist-deep in the pool to scoop out burned debris floating across the murky green water.
Scorched fireworks casings and netting were piled along the walkway.
The cleanup continued into Monday, when photos showed a large amount of trash in the Reflecting Pool.
“Shooting off fireworks next to the Reflecting Pool was a spectacularly stupid idea,” D.C. photojournalist Joe Flood wrote on X. “This is the result.”
Washington briefly became the city with the worst air quality on earth after the 40-minute show. Officials issued a Code Red alert, warning the air was “unhealthy for seniors, kids, people with medical conditions.”
Emergency responders recorded 96 patient contacts and 40 hospital transports from the National Mall.
So the Reflecting Pool is now full of trash from the burned out fireworks.
A clear case of vandalism perpetrated by Trump himself.
I presume criminal charges will be forthcoming.
I ‘d say the Trump administration foresaw this, and left repairs and refill scheduled for after the 4th. Which is why they did not drain the pool, a dry pool clearly a fire hazard given the trash and extreme heat.
I’d say the Trump administration foresaw the potential for bad actors to wreak havoc.
I’d say the Trump administration did a smart thing, and it was a spectacular show.
You have to face two more years of Trump(!) kicking liberal ass!
Too stupid to compose your own original comments so you copy/pasta content from rawstory, most of their content is written by frustrated homo John K Byrne who’s greatest accomplishment was graduating from Oberlin College
you’re pathetic or……John Byrne herself!
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-fireworks-reflecting-pool/
Not to worry.
After the Constitutional Republic of the Founders is Reclaimed—The Nation, The Law, The Population—that reprehensible lincoln nightmare will be razed.
It’s all good.
I will let Reason TV tell you how big a fool you are
If the reflecting pool is only 30 inches deep at the center, 18 inches at the edges, how tall were the workers to be in waist deep water?
Once there was great beauty here, but something crept across the land and blighted it.
Quality of life is improved when employers and landlords are not mistreating their employees and tenants.
If your employer is mistreating you – find another job or start your own business
if your landlord is mistreating you find another apartment or buy your own home.
If you are unhappy with McDonalds – do you continue to buy burgers there ? Do you have no other choice ?
Quality of life improves when YOU make good choices with your own life.
If you are blaming others – it is crystal clear the PROBLEM is with you – not them.
It is YOUR life – not your bosses, not your landlords.
It is YOUR job to make the choices that make you happy.
Myriads of people LOVE to work at places that I could not stand to work.
I am not entitled to tell them they should not be happy.
They are not entitled to tel me what job makes me happy.
John Say,
Good points.
I have worked jobs that had some good bosses and some not so good bosses. If I did not like the working for the not so good boss, I could always quit and find another job.
Marine Corps was the exception to that.
Having a good crew to work with definitely helps.
Same could be said about apartments.
For some reason, some people think others lack free will.
The American thesis is freedom and self-reliance.
Get a new job and move.
The Constitution affords you freedom, not employment, room, and board.