We’ve been cataloging how the left has taken to labeling every candidate it doesn’t like and every policy it opposes a “threat to democracy.” But even we were surprised to see the U.S. Constitution itself added to the list of these threats.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said over the weekend that: “The Constitution has some profoundly anti-democratic, which is to say anti-democracy components, like the Electoral College and the two senators per state, for example.”
Mind you, this aired on Sept. 15, just two days before Constitution Day, which this year marked the 236th anniversary of its signing.
O’Donnell was talking to Jamelle Bouie, a New York Timers columnist, who after nodding his head in agreement with O’Donnell, added that “I think we’ve witnessed over the last couple years especially with the attempt to overturn the election, the ways that the constitution, its rules, can actually be used against what Americans think identify as a Democracy.”
Bouie (and others on the left) has been singing this song for a while. Last year, at a conference sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy (named after NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent), Bouie said “The threat to U.S. democracy is coming from inside the house. The Constitution itself is the problem.”
Meanwhile, over the weekend at CNN, as Jim Acosta was interviewing a couple of Harvard professors about a new “very important” book they’ve written bashing the Constitution, the chyron at the bottom of the screen blared “Scholars warn outdated Constitution has put democracy at risk.”
“The country lags dangerously behind other modern democracies,” Acosta said in introducing the authors, “because it hasn’t taken any steps to eliminate minority rule that they say has allowed a minority to thwart the will of American voters.”
The Harvard “scholars” go on to bash the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, saying that “this set of institutions allows minorities to systematically thwart and even govern over majorities.”
So, the way to restore “democracy” is to do away with the Senate, do away with the states, gut the Supreme Court, and do away with the Electoral College? So that … what? We can end up in a socialist hellhole like Venezuela?
Unlike today’s pundits and “scholars,” the architects of the Constitution knew enough about the inherent dangers of democracy to avoid creating one.
“So, they constructed something more lasting: a republic. Something with checks and balances. A system of government carefully balanced to safeguard the rights of both the majority and the minority,” explained Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner.
A little civics refresher: The Senate helps prevent smaller states from getting steamrolled by larger states. The Electoral College forces national candidates to appeal to the entire nation – not just a handful of densely populated states. At the same time, political power is dispersed, with states empowered to experiment with how they run things. And the Framers created a Constitution that can be amended as times change, which ours has been 27 times.
It’s a political system that has managed to survive and thrive for only 236 years. It’s one that has allowed liberty to flourish and shared prosperity to reach once-unimaginable levels.
So why these increasing broadsides from the left against the Constitution itself?
The latest attacks all stem from the fact that conservatives won a few victories in the past several years. Trump, who won by virtue of the Electoral College in 2016, was able to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who now hold a majority of seats. Some states are cleaning up their election systems and fighting against the woke mob.
And in response to these minor setbacks, the left’s first instinct is to shred the Constitution and destroy the stable, liberty-enhancing, republican form of government it established?
Tell us again who the radicals are?
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
