And it's possible to regard abortion as falling short of being a human right, but still argue that it restricting it at the state level is an impermissible attack on personal autonomy. Again, however you define autonomy, it makes no sense to arbitrarily center it on individual states or communities, while giving short shrift to individuals on the one hand and national interest on the other. If localism is to mean anything at all, the individual should have at least as much autonomy as the community.
Of course the anti abortion people would certainly argue that the aborted fetus IS a life and that abortion is an attack on its person. Even a social libertarian like myself could make a pretty good argument around the harm principle at some point.
What this new justice means as a practical matter:
Gerrymandering, so obvious an attack on the concept of individual franchise, will continue and get worse. The effective end of individual voting.
The concepts expressed in Citizens United will be strengthened virtually ending the concept of one-person-one-vote.
Abortion may not end entirely. Perhaps the SCOTUS will allow Roe V. Wade to stand. Later term abortions are over. Take that to the bank. State restrictions on abortion designed to make it more difficult by traumatizing the mother will stand.
Ironically, while taking away the voting power of individuals, the new SCOTUS will increase individual rights to extreme religious beliefs.
The fourth amendment will better constrain the police.
I will be interested to see what happens with privacy laws. Clearly, in some states, only the SCOTUS offers any hope to maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy.
My personal opinion is that if the SCOTUS does become even more strictly constructionist there will be some advantages. Pushing more power down to the states will have some advantages and increase local control. Sure some gays in Georgia may take a hit but freedom of expression in California will be enhanced.
Patriarchy, monogamy and the traditional family have been the most successful ways of building and sustaining countries. Democrats aren't about that. Rather, they seem to be mostly interested in hedonism.
While I might object to the term "hedonism" as being off the mark, I agree with the sentiment. I believe we have replaced the patriarchy not with men and women as equal coreligionists (for the lack of a better term) but with the notion that work defines the individual and left children living in a very permissive environment. I believe that reestablishing a more autocratic family, led by an empowered and more importantly responsible leader will have benefit. We really do need to get a handle on feral kids. The self-centered, career first notion of family today has fucked a whole generation or two of kids pretty badly.
To be more explicit, the federal government is to maintain human rights that the Constitution recognizes and grants it the authority to maintain. Any rights not so granted are left to the states to maintain or not, as they choose and understand those rights to be. After all, over a hundred million Americans don’t recognize abortion as a human right, and that number constitutes the majority of who knows how many states.
This is absolutely correct. We have somehow come to distrust the individual states to govern themselves. We have "naturally" assumed that just about any human proclivity constitutes "protected speech or attaches one to a protected minority. As a social libertarian and fiscal conservative I tend to respect personal right over government control. But I remember that in our system of strict local control and states rights (in which I ardently believe) it is the responsibility of anyone wishing to acquire "rights" or privileges to make the case to the people.
This works pretty well in Arizona where we have an initiative process. Example. The legislature wanted to ban medical marijuana so we just put it on the ballot by collecting sufficient signatures and forced them to accept it. The initiative process is the very definition of democracy at work. So I am not terrified by a more strictly more constructionist SCOTUS. In fact, many conservatives will be disappointed with what they get. Abortion may be banned in Mississippi but it also may be enshrined as a constitutional right in New York.
The progressives already did that early in the 20th Century. The founders envisioned actual equality in terms of taxes. That is, uniform excise taxes like those on gasoline or booze, and capitations like annual franchise taxes on corporations. You can fund all government operations on them with the exception of wealth redistribution systems.
You are mostly right. This is what they imagined. You could, however, fund massive social programs from just about any form of taxation; even one designed to be more "fair". For example a VAT. Remember that just last week the SCOTUS strongly affirmed a states right to tax, even in interstate commerce. This is a big deal. The constitution says little to nothing about how states and the federal government may choose to spend this money. You may wish to recall that even at the birth of this nation several states had pretty robust publicly funded social welfare programs. (Pattered after England's poor laws.) The founders were no stranger to these things so it is unreasonable to believe they wanted them stopped.
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