{"id":1315798,"date":"2019-10-17T23:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/will-column-progressives-are-all-too-willing-to-cut-constitutional-corners\/"},"modified":"2019-10-17T23:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T05:24:00","slug":"will-column-progressives-are-all-too-willing-to-cut-constitutional-corners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/will-column-progressives-are-all-too-willing-to-cut-constitutional-corners\/","title":{"rendered":"Will column: Progressives are all too willing to cut constitutional corners"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 Presidential aspirant Beto O\u2019Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O\u2019Rourke\u2019s suggestion, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren\u2019s plan to tax the \u201cexcessive\u201d exercise of a First Amendment right, and the NBA\u2019s painful lesson about the perils of moral grandstanding illustrate how progressivism has become a compound of self-satisfied moral preening and a thirst for coercion.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Rourke is innocent of originality: Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet recommends a \u201chard line\u201d against people who deviate from progressivism: \u201cTrying to be nice to the losers didn\u2019t work well after the Civil War\u201d and \u201ctaking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945.\u201d Apparently it is progressive to regard unprogressive Americans as akin to enemies vanquished in wars. No Churchillian nonsense about \u201cin victory, magnanimity.\u201d<\/p>\n

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh notes that in 1952 California voters used a progressive device, a referendum, to amend the state\u2019s constitution to deny tax exemptions to certain people despised by the majority \u2014 people who advocated the unlawful overthrow of the U.S. government. Fortunately, in 1958, in another case from California (concerning denial of property tax exemptions to veterans who refused to swear an oath not to advocate the unlawful overthrow of the government), the U.S. Supreme Court did its counter-majoritarian duty to protect minority rights, striking down this measure: \u201cTo deny an exemption to claimants who engage in certain forms of speech is \u2026 the same as if the state were to fine them for this speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren, a policy polymath, has a plan for everything, including for taxing speech that annoys her. The pesky First Amendment (in 2014, 54 Democratic senators voted to amend it to empower Congress to regulate spending that disseminates political speech about Congress) says Congress shall make no law \u2026 abridging the right of the people \u201cto petition the government for a redress of grievances.\u201d One name for such petitioning is lobbying. Warren proposes steep taxes (up to 75%) on \u201cexcessive\u201d lobbying expenditures, as though the amendment says Congress can forbid \u201cexcessive\u201d petitioning. Lobbyists are unpopular, and her entire agenda depends on what the amendment was written to prevent \u2014 arousing majority passions against an unpopular minority (the wealthy). Warren, who like O\u2019Rourke is operatic when denouncing Donald Trump\u2019s ignorance of, or hostility to, constitutional norms, might not be a plausible person to make the case against him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn defeat, defiance\u201d was Churchill\u2019s recommendation. The NBA\u2019s is: When tyrants snarl, grovel. Beijing\u2019s tantrum \u2014 great powers do not resemble frustrated toddlers \u2014 was detonated by a Houston Rockets employee who tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters. Commissioner Adam Silver, who represents the teams\u2019 owners \u2014<\/p>\n

Sorry. Forgive the insensitivity. The NBA has been so insufferable in its virtue signaling, so relentless in its progressive preening, that this past summer it announced that it has \u201cmoved away\u201d from calling those who own teams \u201cowners.\u201d The term supposedly carries connotations of slavery.<\/p>\n

But back to Silver. He took the 2017 All-Star Game away from Charlotte, so horrified was the NBA by a North Carolina law requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms according to the sex on their birth certificates. The NBA\u2019s decision expressed its \u201clong-standing core values,\u201d which are, however, compatible with the NBA having its China training camp in Xinjiang province, where Chinese citizens are in concentration camps that facilitate \u201cre-education.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is strong evidence (from an independent tribunal that met in London) that China, which has many more people in concentration camps \u2014 perhaps 1.5 million in Xinjiang alone \u2014 than Hitler had during the 1936 Olympics, is still harvesting organs, including hearts, from prisoners, some while still alive, for Chinese and foreign purchasers. Silver, however, is ostentatiously sensitive about \u201cowners,\u201d so Beijing should avoid that word, or else. The NBA should have done what a congressional letter recommends: suspend activities in China until \u201cgovernment-controlled broadcasters and government-controlled commercial sponsors end their boycott of NBA activities and the selective treatment of the Houston Rockets.\u201d This would have caused Beijing\u2019s infantilism to become a national embarrassment \u2014 a weak nation\u2019s idea of national strength.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, however, O\u2019Rourke, Warren and Silver demonstrate the tendency of too many progressives to cut constitutional corners, to despise and bully adversaries, and to practice theatrical but selective indignation about attacks on fundamental American principles, some of which they themselves traduce. Just what we did not need in our dispiriting civic life \u2014 additional evidence that there really is no such thing as rock bottom.<\/p>\n

George Will\u2019s email address is georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Presidential aspirant Beto O\u2019Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O\u2019Rourke\u2019s suggestion, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren\u2019s plan to tax the \u201cexcessive\u201d exercise of a First Amendment right, and the NBA\u2019s painful lesson about the perils […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 17:52:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}