Leonid Brezhnev Lives

WSJ ^ | 30 Mar 2012 | JAMES TARANTO

[shove_it]

The American left vows to defend the spoils of its revolutions..

Readers of a certain age will remember the Soviet Union and its grim-visaged leader from 1964 through 1982, Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet Union was born in a revolution in 1917, but by the time Brezhnev came along it was no longer a revolutionary power. Communism had manifestly failed to deliver its promised utopia, so that the Soviet state was devoted to its own preservation and the expansion of its power world-wide.

Toward that end, in 1968 Brezhnev put forward an eponymous doctrine: "When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries." The Soviet Union would intervene militarily to keep any communist country communist, as it had done earlier that year in Czechoslovakia and in 1956 in Hungary. Communism was a Roach Motel. Countries check in, but they don't check out.

We got to thinking about the Brezhnev Doctrine in connection with our two favorite subjects: sex and constitutional law. Start with the latter. During the 20th century, the American left undertook two revolutions in constitutional jurisprudence: the New Deal revolution, which expanded the power of Congress to control economic life beyond anything the Constitution's authors had envisaged, and the rights revolution, which expanded individual liberties, sometimes by interpreting the Bill of Rights more generously, sometimes by just making new rights up.

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[Hootch]

Great piece. James Taranto has established himself as an excellent conservative columnist.

[foreverfree]

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