The Leftist View Of The Constitution

It is both perverse, and inverse:

The Left generally sees a vast sea federal power limited by islands of protections for various rights. From that perspective, the relevant question is whether there is something in the Constitution (or its principles) that defeats federal legislation. Many on the Right start from a different premise: The Constitution authorizes islands of federal power in what is otherwise a sea of questions reserved to states or the people. These characterizations are broad generalizations, to be sure, but I think they capture a real divide in conceptions of federal power.

From the Right’s perspective, the question is not whether some specific provision in the Constitution invalidates Section 4 of the VRA, but whether it is expressly authorized — whether it fits on one of these islands of federal power. The argument for the Shelby County majority is that the extraordinary nature of the federal authority exercised through the VRA (as authorized by the 15th Amendment) can only be justified by extraordinary conditions. This is because the 15th Amendment only authorizes Congress to “enforce” its protections through “appropriate legislation.” Therefore, Congress has to be careful about imposing limitations on states that are not constitutionally required. In the majority’s view, justifying limits on states in 2006 based on conduct from the 1960s and early 1970s fails this test — it does more than “enforce” the 15th Amendment’s guarantees, and therefore exceeds the scope of federal power. Although the majority never says so explicitly (perhaps intentionally), this imposes limits on the 15th Amendment’s enforcement power similar to those imposed Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. the enforcement power.

Yes, that’s what limited government was supposed to be about. The Left thinks that anything that’s not explicitly unconstitutional is constitutional, whereas the Founders specifically enumerated the powers of the federal government. That was the idea of the Ninth and Tenth amendments, which have largely become dead letters, but which some, such as Justice Thomas, are trying to revive.

Limits To Growth

The authors of the report were wrong about everything:

The Limits of Growth got it so wrong because its authors overlooked the greatest resource of all: our own resourcefulness. Population growth has been slowing since the late 1960s. Food supply has not collapsed (1.5 billion hectares of arable land are being used, but another 2.7 billion hectares are in reserve). Malnourishment has dropped by more than half, from 35 percent of the world’s population to under 16 percent.

Nor are we choking on pollution. Whereas the Club of Rome imagined an idyllic past with no particulate air pollution and happy farmers, and a future strangled by belching smokestacks, reality is entirely the reverse.

In 1900, when the global human population was 1.5 billion, almost 3 million people – roughly one in 500 — died each year from air pollution, mostly from wretched indoor air. Today, the risk has receded to one death per 2,000 people. While pollution still kills more people than malaria does, the mortality rate is falling, not rising.

Nonetheless, the mindset nurtured by The Limits to Growth continues to shape popular and elite thinking.

Because it gives them an excuse to run our lives for us.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I agree with Glenn: “Personally, I’ll be more impressed if we’re ever warned of a pending doom whose aversion won’t require giving a lot of power to bureaucrats, technocrats, and other hangers-on while being left poorer and more constrained ourselves. Because no matter what the crisis being propounded, the remedy always seems to be the same…”

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!