In the final analysis, the Court’s judicial “activism” has been terribly misguided. Instead of creating constitutional “penumbras” in Griswold, the Court should have upheld the limits on corporate expenditures in Citizens United. Instead of inventing a right to abortion in Roe, the Court should have upheld aggregate limits on individual contributions in McCutcheon. Instead of defining “liberty” in the most broad and unworkable terms in Planned Parenthood, the Court should have held that the Presentment Clause was ambiguous and therefore upheld the Line Item Veto Act in Clinton. This type of “activism” by the Court would have strengthened democracy, promoted bottom-up lawmaking, made elected officials more accountable to the people, and enabled government to work for the people, not simply the powerful. DEMOCRACY IS UNSUSTAINABLE
Democracy while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
John Adams
The above statement has merit if one assumes that democracy is destined to devolve into a society where greed, corruption, and inequality trump compassion, fairness, and equal opportunity. It should not be surprising that, when the vast majority of wealth and power in a democracy is concentrated in a very small percentage of the population, citizens become disillusioned with their government. They have no voice, no power, and no influence in how the policy issues are decided. But this state of affairs is not inevitable. One vote the other way and Citizens United and McCutcheon would have been decided differently. Indeed, these decisions give new meaning to the concept of “one person, one vote.” Wealth-based inequality also leads to injustice of the most undemocratic—and intolerable—kind. Low-income citizens lack the same educational opportunities as affluent citizens, and many lack access to basic health care services. In addition, many low-income citizens, particularly members of minority groups, are not treated fairly in the criminal justice system because of, among other things, a failure to obtain high-quality legal representation or because law enforcement practices target impoverished neighborhoods to fill prisons and increase revenue. Unfortunately, when economic and social inequality is pervasive, the government has a moral obligation to intervene and supply basic services to its citizens. In the United States, for example, the government provides low-income citizens with health care, unemployment and disability compensation, and money to purchase food. Additionally, all citizens are eligible to receive loans to fund the cost of higher education, and upon retirement citizens receive a monthly social security payment. Put simply, the path to socialism-based welfare state begins with structural inequality which can be traced to four causes: the accumulation of wealth by a small percentage of the population, the political marginalization of citizens, the lack of equal opportunity, and the unfulfilled promise of upward mobility. Thus, John Adam’s statement is correct—not because democracy is inherently defective, but because, as history shows, the vicissitudes of human existence all too often favor greed and power over shared responsibility and egalitarianism. …show more content…
The devolution of democracy is not inevitable if government embraces a commitment to the principles on which it is founded. Unfortunately, the Court’s jurisprudence has done the opposite, sanctioning the use of money to gain undue influence over and unfair access to elected officials, allowing states to condition the quality of education on wealth, and permitting de facto segregation to endure. Until the causes of inequality are remedied, the United States will continue to prove John Adams correct—perhaps permanently. DEMOCRACY CAUSES SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. Benito Mussolini Admittedly, democracy vests power with majorities and provides little to no protections for the minority. Assume that every citizen in the United States had an equal voice in deciding whether to ban same-sex marriage, and that a ban on same-sex marriage was passed by a margin of 51%-49%. Thus, equalizing speech may make a country more democratic in the sense that it enhances the voting process, but it does not necessarily, or even minimally, guarantee substantive equality. Indeed equalizing speech does no more to protect minority rights than the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education solved
Democracy while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
John Adams
The above statement has merit if one assumes that democracy is destined to devolve into a society where greed, corruption, and inequality trump compassion, fairness, and equal opportunity. It should not be surprising that, when the vast majority of wealth and power in a democracy is concentrated in a very small percentage of the population, citizens become disillusioned with their government. They have no voice, no power, and no influence in how the policy issues are decided. But this state of affairs is not inevitable. One vote the other way and Citizens United and McCutcheon would have been decided differently. Indeed, these decisions give new meaning to the concept of “one person, one vote.” Wealth-based inequality also leads to injustice of the most undemocratic—and intolerable—kind. Low-income citizens lack the same educational opportunities as affluent citizens, and many lack access to basic health care services. In addition, many low-income citizens, particularly members of minority groups, are not treated fairly in the criminal justice system because of, among other things, a failure to obtain high-quality legal representation or because law enforcement practices target impoverished neighborhoods to fill prisons and increase revenue. Unfortunately, when economic and social inequality is pervasive, the government has a moral obligation to intervene and supply basic services to its citizens. In the United States, for example, the government provides low-income citizens with health care, unemployment and disability compensation, and money to purchase food. Additionally, all citizens are eligible to receive loans to fund the cost of higher education, and upon retirement citizens receive a monthly social security payment. Put simply, the path to socialism-based welfare state begins with structural inequality which can be traced to four causes: the accumulation of wealth by a small percentage of the population, the political marginalization of citizens, the lack of equal opportunity, and the unfulfilled promise of upward mobility. Thus, John Adam’s statement is correct—not because democracy is inherently defective, but because, as history shows, the vicissitudes of human existence all too often favor greed and power over shared responsibility and egalitarianism. …show more content…
The devolution of democracy is not inevitable if government embraces a commitment to the principles on which it is founded. Unfortunately, the Court’s jurisprudence has done the opposite, sanctioning the use of money to gain undue influence over and unfair access to elected officials, allowing states to condition the quality of education on wealth, and permitting de facto segregation to endure. Until the causes of inequality are remedied, the United States will continue to prove John Adams correct—perhaps permanently. DEMOCRACY CAUSES SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. Benito Mussolini Admittedly, democracy vests power with majorities and provides little to no protections for the minority. Assume that every citizen in the United States had an equal voice in deciding whether to ban same-sex marriage, and that a ban on same-sex marriage was passed by a margin of 51%-49%. Thus, equalizing speech may make a country more democratic in the sense that it enhances the voting process, but it does not necessarily, or even minimally, guarantee substantive equality. Indeed equalizing speech does no more to protect minority rights than the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education solved