For lovers of liberty, 2016 had already become a consequential and concerning year. With the sudden and unexpected death of Justice Scalia, it has become ten-fold so. We were already looking with dismay at an election season in which an avowed socialist is threatening to best the more leftist and vicious of the Clintons, while she seeks desperately to demonstrate that she’s just as “progressive” as he is. In which a flawed contingent of GOP candidates is led by a bombastic, anti-intellectual demagogue with no particular political philosophy or principles.
If President Obama is able to appoint yet another Kagan or Sotomayor, the First and Second Amendments are likely to become dead letters. Property rights, already seriously weakened, could be much further eroded. The Supreme Court’s stay of the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” just this week will be merely a temporary delay in that lawless agency’s “complete restructuring of the energy sector.” Obama’s preference for “positive rights” (the unlimited power of government to bestow goods, services, and preferential treatment on some at the expense of others) over “negative rights” (limits on the power of government) will likely be enshrined for a generation. The left’s “living Constitution” (infinitely malleable by five collectivist justices) will rule this nation.
If you feel confident the the McConnell-led Senate Republicans will prevent that, I respectfully suggest that you haven’t been paying attention for the past seven years.
I fear for my country. I fear for our Constitution. I fear for our liberties.
Costa Rica looks nice.