Too many people have accepted the harassment and control of people by the power of the state and the use of modern technology in the name of the “common good”. The protections of the Constitution? In NJ , Democratic Governor Murphy is fond of saying that the constitution is not a suicide pact.
I think what happens is that the tree of liberty gets watered again.
The left is mostly kids. They are like puppies “pretending to be tough” and not really hurting anybody (much) with their actions. They protest and then go home, smoke a joint and get laid by the person they met at the protest.
If the right gets violent, people die. If a single stray shot had been fired at the bundy ranch standoff, this country could have been changed forever. And no small number of people think it would have been for the better.
The Kenyanesian Usurpation happens.
Bkmk
In 1994 the Warren Court - by unanimous vote - issued a diktat which overturned all prior American jurisprudence - the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision. The effect of Sullivan has been to drastically curtail the journalism cartel’s fear of libel suits by conservative politicians. This has led to the “fake news” “media” that we now know and loathe.All jurisprudence prior to Sullivan held that libel law - exactly like pornography law - was not touched by the First Amendment. This is easily understood by reference to the word “the” preceding “freedom . . . of the press.”
“The” freedom of the press was freedom as it existed, and as it was limited in 1788.”
The reason for that is the fact that not only did the Federalists consider a bill of rights unnecessary (since the Constitution had nothing to say about Common Law, and thus did not overrule it), they understood that assaying to codify all the rights embedded in Common Law was a fool’s errand. They were not trying to modify the rights of the people - at all - when they passed the Bill of Rights. The entire motivation of the Bill of Rights project was to suppress - not court - controversy over rights and the effect of the Constitution on rights.
In effect the Federalists considered that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments should have been unnecessary but certainly were sufficient to cover that. But to assure the suppression of controversy over rights, the first eight Amendments “enumerated” (as the Ninth Amendment puts it) those rights which had historically been denied by tyrants. But those eight amendments were crafted not to touch any other rights such as the right not to be libeled (or, to make an extreme comparison to the Second Amendment, shot).
Justice Brennan’s justification for overturning that obvious original intent
". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”is, from an original intent perspective, fatuous.
Sadly America has been becoming a country that can’t tell it’s right hand from its left for decades.