Below is my column in The Hill on the latest spin from the left to convince Americans to abandon core constitutional institutions and values as part of a radical agenda in the upcoming elections. Those who defend our traditions, on the 250th anniversary of our Republic, are now being accused of being “nostalgic” rather than progressive. It is a nostalgia that will take on a truly tragic element if professors, pundits and politicians are successful in this effort.
Here is the column:
It appears that the Madisonian democracy has joined shackets and combat boots as embarrassingly outdated for many on the left. In calling for radical changes to our constitutional system, leading Democrats are now calling the lingering loyalty to our traditions as mere “nostalgia.” To be nostalgic in today’s parlance is to be a dupe of the oligarchs and an enemy to reform.
“Nostalgia” has become the new coded term for reactionaries among Democratic figures, who are trying to convince Americans to accept radical changes to our republic after 250 years.
Kamala Harris recently insisted that opposition to ideas like packing the Supreme Court is mere “nostalgia” for a system that is no longer working. “I would caution us against talking about rebuilding with any sense of nostalgia about how things work, because even before, they weren’t working so well for a lot of folks,” she said. That “nostalgia,” according to Harris, is preventing us from doing things like packing the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last week also declared that “nostalgia is not working” and, while refusing to embrace socialism, added that “capitalism as we know it doesn’t work.”
Morris Katz, a political strategist for Zohran Mamdani, spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash about looking beyond the label of democratic socialism and instead simply to accept that “our government does not work.” They are joining socialists who have long promised revolutionary changes without “introspection, nostalgia or regret.”
For the Democratic Socialist of America organization, nostalgia stands in the way of getting rid of the Senate, presidency, and the Supreme Court to fundamentally change the republic.
The effort is to condition Americans to adopt radical changes to our core institutions that professors and pundits say will guarantee Democrats never lose power again.
That is not an easy task for a people who have benefited from the oldest and most prosperous democracy for 250 years. They have to be very angry or very afraid to take such a radical course.
The Soviets understood that about the U.S. After Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent working in the media, defected in 1970, he revealed the four stages by which the Soviets hoped to bring about revolutionary change in the U.S. It began with undermining our institutions and values, with the help of journalists and academics.
With establishment figures lining up behind radical changes, including packing the Supreme Court, the public is hearing a constant drumbeat of how our system is broken.
Even Democratic judges are joining the chorus. Indeed, some appear to be auditioning for the slots promised by Democratic leaders to take over the court with a reliable liberal majority.
This week, the Hawaii Supreme Court issued an unhinged diatribe against the U.S. Supreme Court that abandoned any semblance of judicial restraint or decorum. It declared the majority as effectively racists, saying that “The Roberts Court sees only white.” It portrayed the court as a rogue institution that “overrides what Congress passed. It overrides what the people chose. All to serve its own ends.”
It is an opinion that would make an MS NOW host blush. But it follows a pattern on the left to get people to turn against our institutions and even against the Constitution itself.
Others are telling the public that they are being repressed by the Constitution, which must be scrapped. In a New York Times op-ed — “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed” — law professors Ryan Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
In yet another New York Times editorial, Jennifer Szalai denounced “Constitution worship” and claimed that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky insists that it is time to trash the Constitution in favor of “radical changes.”
These voices are seeking to remove all of the moderating elements of our system —the safety features that have produced the world’s most successful and stable republic. They are the very constitutional elements protecting us from the tyranny of the majority, protecting us from ourselves.
Without those protections, we will unleash the self-destructive forces that have been tearing apart other democratic systems since Athens. It is our constitution that spared us from that fate. As James Madison observed, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”
Of course, history has shown that such radical proposals ultimately produce not democracy, but what the Framers called mobocracy. If we let that happen, many Americans will indeed look back at the last 250 years with a tragic sense of nostalgia.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times bestselling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“
The Progressive Democrats have so much to recommend their product. There is New York City, The state of New York, The state of California, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago to name but a few. I could go on. Each of those states and cities were once thriving and Mecca’s for advancement, technological change, wealth production and opportunity. But now people flee those states and cities. Not just billionaires and millionaires but just regular people. All are taxpayers. New cities and states gain population and wealth and move forward as old centers die, mainly because of their own actions or inactions. The Movie industry has basically left LA, Finance is rapidly leaving NY, Chicago moves closer to a war zone in some areas. All of them have one thing in common. Long term Democratic or Progressive control.
The people are not stupid. They know where opportunity resides and seek it. And it is not in Progressive centers.
The only way the Democratic / Progressives can spread their pestilence is to destroy the Constitution and thereby eliminate the only thing that restrains them. No Constitution and then they have access to unbridled power. Somehow I just have no confidence in their ability to govern without restraint.
They are worried, however. In 4 years there will be a reshuffling of representative and electoral votes to the ascending south and midwest. That would likely bring down the curtain on the Progressives and their only option would be widespread violence. I hope not but fear it may come.
@GEB
Excellent, and those have been my thoughts as well. I personally think communism, oligarchy, fascism – these are contrary to human nature, and people will absolutely flee if they can, and indeed, resources of all kinds go with them. When violence is the only remaining option, I fear the modern left will take it, in a penultimate temper tantrum. Even if leftist elders finally saw their folly (unlikely, but ‘if’) – it’s clear they’ve already lost control of the monster they’ve created.
“When violence is the only remaining option, I fear the modern left will take it, in a penultimate temper tantrum.”
If they choose to sow that seed, they will reap a crop of rebounding violence of tenfold magnitude (at minimum). I personally will not start anything, and I fervently hope such behavior avoids me, but I will defend my self, my family, and my property with as much force as is required to repel any attack, and I would feel absolutely no guilt or remorse whatsoever over any attacker who might get hurt (or worse) in the process. Some realities cannot and will not be evaded. That is something they should keep in the forefront of their minds (as if).
“Nostalgia” dictionary definition: “A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” Not only do they want to take away the Bill Of Rights … they want to take away happy personal associations too.
None of this is new. Packing the court. Getting rid of the Senate. Open borders. Defund the police. These ideas have been sitting on the fringe for decades. What changed is not the ideas. What changed is that people are actually listening now.
That’s the tell. A citizen formed for self government doesn’t sit and weigh whether to gut his own Constitution. He shuts it down on sight. No debate needed. So when proposals like this start getting a hearing instead of a laugh, that tells you something broke. Not in the ideas. In the people.
We let this happen. Not one party. Not one platform. We stopped forming citizens for the country we inherited, and this is what fills the gap.
@OLLY
Yes, we did, despite many, many warnings from many different quarters, not just ‘the right’, that have been dismissed over the years. We can undo it, but it will require wide awake participation that was not present during the entirety of the creation of this mess.
You’re right, James. What it takes is people wide awake, saying it straight, and not stopping. This didn’t happen overnight and it won’t get fixed overnight either. Foot stays on the gas.
And it can’t be one side doing the pushing. We can disagree with each other, Democrat and Republican both, same as we always have. But a republic can’t run on one team alone deciding it’s worth saving. That part has to be everybody’s job.
OLLY, James,
Great comments.
I would like to think the only ones who do not think the republic is worth saving is the far leftists/DSA, and the sane moderate Democrats would want to save the republic.
Unfortunately it seems there are those who in their lust for power, would be willing to destroy it all.
Upstate, I certainly agree with your power angle. I was thinking about what Slotkin said recently, that the SAVE Act would rig our democracy so that it would be hard for any Democrat in any state to win any election. That statement’s been getting picked apart on the wrong grounds. Slotkin’s defenders keep arguing fraud is rare, so why bother. That’s the wrong argument to be having. The question isn’t how often noncitizen voting happens. The question is whether we’re willing to build a system that verifies every voter, every time. If the honest objection is that verifying 3,000 counties is a real logistical lift, fine, fund it and build it. That’s a different conversation than “it’s rare so don’t worry about it.” One is an engineering problem. The other is an excuse.
“Getting rid of the Senate.”
The Senate, as it was envisioned by the Founders, was gotten rid of long ago. The 17th Amendment transformed it into nothing but another version of the House, with less frequent elections.
Don, that’s a real point. The Seventeenth Amendment severed the formal constitutional link between state governments and federal representation. Before it, senators answered to state legislatures, which meant states as states had a direct seat at the federal table. That’s what the Tenth Amendment was supposed to protect, and direct election took that specific check away. Once senators answered to the same voters as the House, just on a longer clock, the states lost their institutional voice in Washington. That’s not nothing. It’s one of the clearest examples of a formal constitutional change that weakened federalism instead of just eroding it through practice.
“Those who defend our traditions [. . .] are now being accused of being ‘nostalgic’ . . .” (JT)
If nostalgia means this: “A republic, if you can keep it” — color me a proud nostalgic.
This video is a succint description of the Leftist point of view.
https://rumble.com/v7czjf4-heres-why-debating-leftists-feels-like-banging-your-head-against-a-wall.html?mref=1t8q76&mc=5gu6n
It probably describes people you know, even family.
That’s good. Thanks.
Ah yes, once again the wolf attempts to convince the sheep the sheepdog is the enemy. And once the sheepdog is removed, the wolf will devour the misguided sheep.
This whole business, that of nostalgia and sentimentality remind be of my teenage years so long ago. At that time I just knew my politics were right. There were no particular objective reasons; I was just plain right. So, I made up reasons, much like the media today, and they became correct because I was right. This is proving you’re right because you’re right. Circular reasoning! To see judges and the high referees of our nation doing this same is frightening.
Any elected official who was required to take an oath to defend the US Constitution before assuming office (that would be most of them) who makes any decision, or who voices or writes any comment, that contradicts or is detrimental to a textual interpretation if that Constitution should be summarily impeached and removed from that office.
“if that Constitution”
“OF that Constitution” … it’s early yet
It’s strange that the Democrats say our government doesn’t work. That’s what Republicans have been saying for years. The difference seems to be that the Democrats want to solve this problem by making our non-working government bigger, while the Republicans want to reduce the size of it.
@Tippy
I beg to differ: they USED to want to make government bigger; now the left want to eliminate our system of government, indeed, our country as we know it, altogether. And they are serious. The days of this being simple policy dispute are long gone.
Yes, it seems that they do want to eliminate it. But the way they talk these days, they want to replace it with a communist form of government. That type of government would dwarf the size of our current government.
But to be more clear about the point I was trying to make in my previous comment, at least the Democrats are willing to admit that our current government doesn’t work.
Tippy and James, I believe you both are making valid points. But it’s worth separating these two things clearly. Function has drifted hard from the original form, that part isn’t in dispute. Agencies write and enforce their own rules, Congress has outsourced most of its actual job, courts get treated as policy makers.
The real question is what you do about that gap. Fixing function means pulling things back inside the form the framers built, Congress legislating, courts restrained, borders enforced, the Senate doing its job of slowing things down. Changing form means reshaping the structure itself, packing the court, gutting the Senate, so it stops restraining whatever function you’ve already decided you want. Those aren’t the same kind of reform. One tries to restore the original design. The other tries to rewrite it to fit where we’ve already drifted.
The government was designed in the Enlightenment era with Enlightenment principles paramount. Protecting individual liberty was the absolute highest value. To preserve liberty means it must be very hard to expand government power. To do so much be extremely difficult. A vast overwhelming majority must agree. So they system they created was, by design, very hard to change.
It all went off the rails with the invention of the pseudo-socialist bureaucratic welfare state. The Constitution never anticipated and was not designed for a collectivist, redistributionist, hyper regulatory system.
For the past century we’ve all been pretending the collectivist system can be shoe-horned into the Constitutional framework designed for protecting individual liberty. It can’t. The lawyers, judges, academics, politicians, and high status influencers can write a bunch of flowery rationalizations to try to make you believe the collectivist system that’s been created is consistent with the Constitution that was ratified in Philadelphia, but deep down they all know they are feeding you a pile of horse manure. A lie.
It’s no different than using female pronouns for some dude just because he puts on a dress and makeup. Everyone knows he’s not a woman, but half the country lies to themselves and others that he is a woman. Same thing with the system of government we have. We all know the Constitutional order that was ratified is not consistent with a collectivist ideology. But we are expected to lie to ourselves. We have intellectual wordsmiths write fancy rationalizations to pretend all that’s been done for the past century is consistent with the ratified Constitution. But deep down they know its just a shell game. They are BSing you.
You’re pointing at something real. The Constitution made expanding government hard on purpose. That difficulty was the protection. It forces broad agreement before power grows.
What changed isn’t the document. It’s a hundred years of bureaucracy piled on top of a system built to resist exactly that. Instead of amending the Constitution the hard way, like the framers intended, we got legal rationalization instead. Reinterpret it. Stretch it. Call the growth consistent with the original design when it isn’t.
You can’t have it both ways. A system built to make expansion hard, and a government that’s expanded for a century straight, don’t add up. Something’s gotta give. Right now it’s honesty about which one actually won.
Thank you. It seems you and I are very much in agreement, when it comes to big government.
Talk about left-wing fools losing what little minds they have WA state.
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A woman was arrested at the Bellingham, WA, Fisherman’s Memorial after losing her mind over the depiction of a mooring line that she thought was actually a noose. She was so freaked out, she started spitting on a police officer.
Professor, I dismiss the Lying Thieving MARXocrats traditions as “nostalgia”. Right back at them. America Is Back! AMERICA FIRST!
Demoncrats
I guess I should be thankful that I’m in the last quarter of life. and hopefully, will not live long enough to see what the so-called “Progressives” come up with to replace the Constitution. So arrogant are they to believe that they, the wokest of the woke, have finally come up with the solution to cure all problems. I guess nobody told them that THEY are the problem.
I’m also at that stage in life. Recently a seven year old niece told my sister is responsible for global warming. Her parents and grandparents are feeding a seven year old this propaganda and we wonder why young people are turning to socialism and communism
Told my sister Trump, was typing too fast
Over 100 last day, prophecies have already been fulfilled. Here is a summary of where it leads and 3 of the prophecies in 3 screenshots. This has nothing to do with religion. It is an upcoming once in human History event That everyone will be rewarded for what they do to spread. The news globally(Revelation 22:12-13)! https://postimg.cc/gallery/975VfsG
If you build it they will come mentality.
The hypocrisy is stunning give. Turley supports MAGA which is shitting on the Constitution.
Sally, the depths of your narcissistic ugly partisanship is quite impressive.
haha sally, you are insincere or you would have left some details or made a point! In fact your screed exposes the fact that YOU have incurable narcissitic Trump! Derangement Syndrome! What I’d like you to do is take a really deep breath and while you breath out, contemplate on your massive cultural and political losses and screech louder. MAGA won’t be going away anytime, did you notice how MAGA got stronger with the leftward shift in the dumbocrats? My heart leaps as their screeching is hitting operatic proportions!
Nice try, Grandma.
Sally,
Your comments make me think that you have a similar ideology and attitude as a college student in Florida I just read about. He threw a tantrum because police were in a college building he was in. He started jumping up and down while screaming at the police that they were upsetting him. When they misgendered (he instead of she) him he really went off. He was arrested after being tased for attacking the police.
Perhaps you could take note that your little temper tantrums turn people off to any positive thoughts or comments you may have.
Hopefully, the “student in Florida” has been taken to an insane asylum and started on meds.
It is a luxury afforded far-left Fascists who want to eliminate the system of checks and balances built into American democracy to live within that very system they seek to tear down. They enjoy all the fruits of Capitalism–including their social media and electronics, their unlimited food choices, their boundless creature comforts–while calling for the system that handed all of those things to them to be cast aside. It’s easy to make promises of free stuff to vast numbers of greedy ignorant envious voters, always paid for by those “other people”. Actually delivering on those promises never happens.
Another way of understanding their ideology, they want to streamline government, get rid of waste, make it easier for citizens et al. to live a life unencumbered by overbearing bureaucrats and tyrants. It’s that simple. That’s what MAGA is doing right? So ideologically you’re simpatico.
@Moronymous
That should be self-explanatory
To be denied access to America’s free enterprise and the opportunity of untold riches is not to “live a life unencumbered by overbearing bureaucrats and tyrants.”
Stop calling the Democrat Party and its adherents “progressive.” Their philosophy and goals hark back to the 19th century screeds of Marx, Engles, Lenin, and Trotsky, and later pf Mao. They are REGRESSIVE. Stop using the positive-sounding adjective. The low information voter, hearing the inaccurate name, thinks these communists would be good choices.
Whew! Your life must be a living hell. Those demons in your head are living rent free I think.
“Low information voter”? So, in others words, you’re smarter and people should listen to you while you parse facts to fit your ideology?
The word “mobocracy” that appears many times in “Rage and the Republic” is the perfect moniker for where we are headed. Some parts of the country have already arrived. But America is not the only one on a path to Marxism. Europe, through the EU’s, as-usual, ill-conceived and executed open-door policy, doesn’t provide an off ramp for conservatives. When we see Muslim immigrants rioting in Bergen, Norway, and Palestinians murdering the girlfriend in Killarney, Ireland, we know the end of a (relatively) “peaceful” era will soon arrive.
Where we are headed? What makes you say that? So you name two examples of violence and now we’re all in danger? That makes no sense. If you had millions of such examples… but you don’t . Statistically its less a blip on a radar screen. In fact its nothing. Just your aged brain unable to differentiate reality.
Check out the rape statistics in England, Germany, Sweden and other open border states.
You are so very wrong and misguided. Check yourself. oh anonymous one.
The hubris is just breathtaking. The modern left really do think they can shame or embarrass people into submission, not realizing that as the aristocracy, they themselves are the unwanted anachronisms. Pathetic, but not unexpected. Kamala’s or Hillary’s star studded, expensive train wreck campaigns should be all the evidence needed. Most of us are done bending knees or bending over, you would *have* to be a young, privileged nitwit or have the self-esteem of a flea to fall for any of this nonsense.
“The modern left really do think they can shame or embarrass people into submission?” Where did you come up with that nonsense?
The woke left have been successful at shaming opponents into submission for quite some time. Using people’s sense of decency against them by perverting language and reason.
The technique is failing rapidly. The slumbering giant is awakening. We will be behind every blade of grass. We will not comply. The Left is doomed.
Francis Fukuyama was completely wrong when he called the demise of the Soviet Union, “The end of History.” It was just the most recent failure of socialism. The current historical illiteracy of the very poorly educated and the slavish purely political reaction of the Washington gerontocracy to that ignorant classes’ stupidity will pass, not without some pain, as the current cycle of deglobalization and financialization pass on to a rightful oblivion. Watch carefully as Socialism with Chinese characteristics morphs into capitalism.
“very poorly educated and the slavish purely political reaction of the Washington gerontocracy to that ignorant classes’ stupidity will pass, not without ” Ha ha.. What a heap of nonsense Jack. Where do you come up with that stuff? AI? Ah, but you’re the only very highly educated MAGAot out there, only you can know it all, the rabble is irredeemable, descending into mobs and eat their own.
You sound like Hillary Clinton.
ano
descending into mobs and eat their own.
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Are you living in a cave? Just look at the mess in LA & NY. MAGA has nothing to do with this mess.