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Bricker** is highly intelligent and has a sense of humor, so there are two important ways in which he doesn’t at all resemble Trump. I think that his philosophy of Constitutional interpretation is horseshit, but he does at least have a coherent philosophy which he has maintained over a period of many years, which again isn’t something Trump would be capable of or even see the value of. I disagree with Bricker about almost everything, but would have him switch jobs with Trump in a heartbeat if it were within my power to do so.
OTOH, I agree that he is often unnecessarily condescending , snarky and just plain mean, and frequently misrepresents the arguments of his opponents. He often seems like he is much more interested in “scoring points” than in engaging in constructive discussion. Those are Trumpian characteristics, but I don’t see that he has gotten any worse in these areas lately.
septimus, however, is a very good and worthwhile poster and those who have said otherwise are wrong.
Why choose either of them when we could have you and get repugnant positions implemented incompetently? Everybody wins! Until you have a bad day, that is.
To the specific issue of the OP, I feel pretty casually confident in saying it’s bullshit. An aspect of your time here that I will never hesitate to describe positively is the information you have written about interpretations of the 14th Amendment, particularly the levels of scrutiny. A straight reading of the 14th in isolation suggests any number of laws were and are obviously unconstitutional, except that they obviously weren’t obviously so since laws based on race and gender (among other traits) persisted for decades after ratification. The U.S. Constitution is a “broad strokes” document, and rather than cite it, a debater would be better served citing a relevant court case, which would follow:
A legisature passing a law.
A court upholding that law or striking it down, which will serve to establish that this is how the courts will interpret the constitution on this issue.
Thing is, the courts don’t simply rule “yes/no, up/down”. Standards are created for future challenges, including the aforementioned standards of scrutiny for “equal protection” cases, as well as the Lemon test for 1st Amendment “establishment clause” cases, for example. I gather without these standards, a legislature could see one of its laws struck down, change the wording slightly and pass a virtually identical law the next day. For this edification, I offer Bricker suitable respect in a way I cannot imagine ever extending to word-salading bullshit-spewing Trump.
That said, I remain personally unclear what bright line, if any, exists where this crosses into “judicial activism” or “legislating from the bench”. My layman’s understanding of Dred Scot v. Sandford suggests that if judicial activism exists (in the sense of SCOTUS deciding to ignore laws it just doesn’t like, on the basis of politics or morality or other non-legal reasons), it surely exists in this case. The ruling goes out of its way to declare that blacks could not be American citizens, when in the free states, blacks had already been enjoying citizenship and voting right rights for decades. If someone is declaring that Dred Scott is a reasonable application of judicial power but, say, Roe is activism based on fiction, then I think it fair to question that person’s commitment to consistency.
Even more fun to have been an asshole. Look back and savor petty vengeance and ruthless conniving with pious disdain. Repentance is fun too if you are regretting something really juicy.
