The Not So Glorious Fourth

Not feeling especially Glorious Fourth-y this year. Things aren't good. We're in trouble. Big trouble. Thus, today I'm flying the flag upside down: the international sign of distress. 

Don't take my word for it. Max Boot is no one's idea of a raging lefty. Here's the link to his recent column on the tyranny of the minority. Read it and weep. And if you can't get behind the paywall to read it and weep, here's how he begins:

Everyone knows that the Founders were afraid of the tyranny of the majority. That’s why they built so many checks and balances into the Constitution. What’s less well known is that they were also afraid of the tyranny of the minority. That’s why they scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which required agreement from 9 of 13 states to pass any laws, and enacted a Constitution with much stronger executive authority.

In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton warned that giving small states like Rhode Island or Delaware “equal weight in the scale of power” with large states like “Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York” violated the precepts of “justice” and “common-sense.” “The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller,” he predicted, arguing that such a system contradicts “the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.”

So here we are, with the will of the overwhelming majority on issues like abortion rights and gun laws being thwarted by a SCOTUS dominated by hardline ideologues nominated (for a lifetime) by presidents who didn't win the popular vote, and confirmed by senators who represent the minority of the population. Swell.

Here's how Max Boot ends his piece:

Public faith in the Supreme Court is down to a historic low of 25 percent, and there’s a good reason why it keeps eroding. We are experiencing what the Founders feared: a crisis of governmental legitimacy brought about by minoritarian tyranny. And it could soon get a whole lot worse. In his concurring opinion in the abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas called on the court to overturn popular precedents upholding a right to contraception, same-sex relationships and marriage equality. So much for Hamilton’s hope that “the sense of the majority should prevail.”

 Cry the beloved country.