Posted on 07/20/2006 10:13:56 AM PDT by SmithL
I hope you never complain about nanny-statists because that would be hypocritical.
LAWS ARE GREAT! THE MORE THE BETTER! (/nanny statist)
So much for a Free Republic.
activist judges are destroying the moral fibre of this country.
It's real simple, and takes up a lot less space than what you posted.
Rights are granted by God, not government, and the power to restrict those rights are granted to the government by the governed.
That's it.
Why don't you find a Nanny stater Republic to hang out at?
This is FREE Republic.
Excuse me?
Sounds like you belong to the school of Stephanie Coontz, one of the academics who try to trash marriage by demonstrating that male-female relationships down through the ages have taken so many different forms that just about anything would be (a) perfectly normal and (b) very much OK...
I'm not trying to trash the idea of marriage. But I am saying that it has changed over the years for practical reasons. Children, for instance, were once expected to add economic value to the family. And women were directly involved in the management of the "business" (farm) via manual labor that extended beyond the home.
What I am saying is that things, including family structures, change for reasons that have nothing to do with whim and everything to do with economics or technology.
Aren't all the sexually libertine countries Nanny States?
Ask yourself this question: Why do Nanny State liberals invariably support sexual libertinism? Didn't Chuck Schumer & Howard Dean applaud the Lawrence sodomy ruling? Don't all the liberal women in the Senate (Hillary, Murray, Boxer, Feinstein...) applaud Roe vs. Wade? Isn't the gay agenda wildly popular in Nanny enclaves such as Sweden, San Francisco, Massachusetts, and Canada?
Who do so many Nanny Staters support all this crap? Is it because they believe in freedom, liberty, and limited government? Is that why Schumer & Dean & Hillary & Ted Kennedy & Russ Feingold & Nancy Pelosi, etc. etc. etc. all support sexual "liberation"?
Ummmm, NO!
They all support this crap because they understand that the net result of a society awash in such things is......a massive NANNY STATE. Once the family starts breaking up, cries go up for the Nanny State to replace all those missing daddies and mommies. Once people start fixating on sex as the focus of rights, they forget about such non-libido matters as free speech, free press, property rights, gun rights, and so forth. A society awash in such cliches as "if it feels good, do it" or "it was right for me at the time" or "keep your laws out of my bedroom" won't pay much attention to government intrusion into other areas.
So a good rule of thumb is this: A society that's libertarian on sex (and you can probably add in drugs) will be viciously anti-libertarian on everything else. Liberals are the useful idiots of the communists, and libertarians are the useful idiots of the liberals. Nanny Staters look at one another, smirk, and high five one another every time a libertarian applauds a ruling such as Lawrence.
And so as the Western world has grown more sexually libertine since the sixties, it's governments have grown exponentially, it's Nannies have grown more powerful, all consuming, and self-defining. The more sexually libertine a region is, the more Nannyish it is. Scandinavia & the Low Countries? They're dreamlands for Larry Flynt-types, and the West's most Nannyish lands. As Britain, France, and other countries have lost their Christian character, a Nanny State has replaced it. Spain? Why not ask yourself why the Socialists there are pushing homosexual liberation and abortion. Canada? Trudeau built modern Canada as a socialist, gun controlled, Nanny state where all forms of sexual diversity are welcomed. Or maybe you could visit Cindy Sheehan's Nanny pal Hugo Chavez in Caracas, which Chavez has declared a sodomy-friendly place.
And how about within the borders of America? Are Lawrence, Roe, and gay "marriage" popular in the rugged individualist, limited government states? Nope. They're popular in the states that supported Nanny John Kerry, or in the case of gay "marriage", less unpopular. Do you seriously think San Francisco could ever be anything OTHER than a Nanny State?
BTW, these sexually libertine areas also become soft on national security, border enforcement, and other such virtues of strength. Can you imagine a sexually conservative area trying to impeach President Bush for fighting the Muslims? Can you imagine Canada or Sweden becoming forces to be reckoned with in the war against terror?
Think again.
TYPOS: Please forgive all my uses of IT'S when it should have been ITS. :-)
It's 5 AM!
People need to use common sense when interpreting the Constitution. There would be no 15th or 19th Amendments if the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause is what the liberals say it is. Likewise, if the 9th Amendment is what the libertarians say it is, it would contradict the rest of the Bill of Rights and would, in fact, undo the Federalist system the very authors of the 9th Amendment gave us.
So, I take it that you support the state when it oulaws smoking in parks and in one's own home if there are children present. I further understand that you would support the state if it began to require certain height and weight standards for citizens because the health of the citizens also contributes to stable relationships and healthy environments within which to raise children.
The state has no business telling adults whom they can live with. None whatsoever. Ever.
And no, I'm not "shacking up" with anyone.
People have become so accustomed to federal judges getting rid of laws they don't like, that they no longer care about proper jurisdiction. But there simply are things that are not in the federal government's jurisdiction. If someone doesn't like their state's sodomy or fornication law, then they should seek repeal of that law by the legislature.
Is it any wonder that judges such as Kennedy, O'Connor, and Ginzburg are now expanding into foreign law as basis for their rulings? Once proper jurisdiction is breached, what's to stop them? There probably are people here who would applaud if the United Nations sent troops into a county in Nebraska to overturn a local ordinance against strip clubs. After all, if federal courts can intervene, why not the UN? Neither one has any jurisdiction, but so what? All that matters is getting rid of the law against strip clubs. And so a judge like Anthony Kennedy, after violating jurisdiction repeatedly to promote the gay agenda, feels it's not much of an additional stretch to start quoting the EU Constitution or some other internationalist document.
Actually, when the laws start coming down to regulate diet and smoking, the liberal judges will uphold them. You see, liberals don't think there's a "compelling state interest" in prohibiting fornication, but they'll agree that there is such an interest in banning smoking or bad eating habits.
Liberal judges can turn on a dime on these things, and always do. They ban racial discrimination, but uphold affirmative action, which is "politically correct" discrimination. They banned assigning kids to schools based on race in Brown, but then said kids have to be assigned to schools based on race in their busing decisions. Last year, Judge Souter explained to us why it's okay for the Ten Commandments to be posted in the U.S. Supreme Court building but not okay in a county courthouse.
There's no rhyme or reason to these rulings. They're simply the personal opinion of liberal judges. "Compelling State Interest" is simply another way of saying "An interest liberals agree with".
Because we've let judicial activism get out of hand, we now live in a world where we simply defer to judges. President Bush signed McCain-Feingold because he wanted the judges to decide it, and they couldn't until it became law. Governor Arnold has been quoted as saying he thinks the courts should decide the gay "marriage" issue. But when the New York court, in a rare example of restraint, said it was up to the legislature to define marriage, many people acted like the court had "failed". We're so accustomed now to being dictated to by judges that we're sort of stunned when they don't do it.
The best way to stop laws such as those you fear is for the people to be non-apathetic and independent. But judicial activism promotes opposite values. Someday, we'll probably see a bill to regulate our diet introduced in some legislature. The people won't pay much attention to it. They're used to the courts passing our laws, not the legislature. So the bill will pass. The Republican governor will sign it, so that the courts can have their say in the matter. Of course, he'll assure his more conservative backers that surely the court will strike the law down, just as they did with the laws against sodomy and fornication. Ah, but those were laws liberals didn't like. There was no "compelling" interest for those laws. But a law regulating diet? Suffice it to say, it'll be McCain-Feingold all over again.
The law that banned cohabitation is apace with the laws that ban smoking in ones's home or mandate helmet use by motorcyclists. It's the nanny state that is trying to regulate your life. The fact that banning cohabitation is consistent with the ten commandments will et some here to agree with it as a law but they fail to see the intrusion by the state into our lives.
If the state mandated adherence to Leviticus some here would applaud it
Good. I like a small government and not a nanny state. I'm glad my state has moved out of the 18th century.
A great post and we agree very much. I especially find your last two lines to be well put.
"Perhaps they understand that true liberty means free choices, which at times will be the wrong choices. But that is the basis of freedom...the freedom to make a bad choice."
Apparently we have an unalienable right to fornication. Who knew?
It's not about the good of society, it's all about ME!
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