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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Maybe I'm overly black pilled, but what law?

Virtually the only aspect of the bill rights in tact is the provision against quartering troops in people's homes. We've discovered in the last decade mass government surveillance, illegal search and seizure (civil forfeiture), a cabal of misleadingly named NGOs funded by the government trying to end run around the 1st amendment, the federal government in naked dereliction of duty enforcing it's obligation to protect our borders, local and state governments in collaboration with school systems to systematically violate parental rights, etc. Literally not one of the rights I'm supposed to be lucky to have because I live in America that I learned about in middle school actually exist anymore.

None of those things were a "constitutional crisis", despite the Bill of Rights being part of the constitution. And yet Trump unilaterally firing many of the people responsible for those violations of the constitution somehow is. Because of some process minutia lawyers are arguing over.

I simply cannot possibly be made to care anymore. When it comes to my rights as outlined in the constitution and the Bill of Rights, nothing seems to be a "constitutional crisis". When it comes to arguing over who exactly has the authority to illegally surveil me (or other unconstitutional abuse of my personal rights), suddenly it matters exactly how congress delegated this illegal authority, and the separation of powers that has haphazardly allowed said illegal authority to continue, and Trump can't just shut down illegal programs or terminate state actors that have systematically abused my civil liberties! They have rights!

And my god, think of what would happen if Trump was able to abuse all the programs they had been abusing over the last several decades? What if he spied on his political opponents, and then used parallel construction or process crimes to disqualify them from office? Only we are supposed to be able to do that, because we're special!

It's pretty well known trans kid is the topic I'm most radicalized over. In my state we voted as hard as we could to stop it. It just doesn't matter. No matter how hard we vote, the schools refuse to stop. No matter what judges say, the schools refuse to stop. Now we have the president telling them to stop... and they refuse to stop. They tax the fuck out of us, and then use that money to fight us in court forever until they run the clock out and a different administration drops the cases or changes policy. This has been radicalizing for me beyond belief. Voting nor the law is solving this life or death issue.

And while that is going on in my state, in my county, I'm supposed to care that Trump might illegally be taking a fire axe to the DOE and lawfaring said schools? That those actions are the bridge too far and a constitutional crisis?

I just can't possibly be made to care anymore. Trump could wipe his ass with the shreds of the Constitution his predecessors have left behind. Most of it's down the toilet already. Just because Trump uses the last of the roll doesn't mean he's chiefly responsible for using it all. He's only responsible for replacing it.

Virtually the only aspect of the bill rights in tact is the provision against quartering troops in people's homes.

They violated that too with Covid rent moratorium.

Of the bill of rights, the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th remain more or less intact. The first is a mixed bag and I don't actually think anyone knows what the ninth is about. That's almost exactly half.

The 1st amendment is interpreted more expansively now than it was when the Constitution was adopted. Likewise the 6th.

I don't recall the founding fathers threatening printing press and paper manufacturers to make sure they only allow people with the right opinions to publish ideas. But maybe that's just me.

In fact, wasn't this precisely the sort of thing that the anti-federalists were getting assurances against?

Isn't that exactly what the federalists did with the sedition act, like the second they got hold of power?

Yeah, and it caused a massive constitutional and political crisis that contributed to the total end of the Federalist Party as a going concern because Jefferson and Madison could present Adams as a tyrant while unilaterally claiming the power of nullification for the states, with public support. It never reached the Supreme Court, but the Sedition Act absolutely precipitated the first major constitutional crisis of the country; in relevant terms to today, people convicted under the Sedition Act were pardoned by Jefferson when he became president. A comparison to the COVID restrictions appears completely apt to me.

In a sense. 1a has always had war as a sticking point.

But since I'm here referring to social media censorship (in peace times, ostensibly), that would rather fall under prior restraint or licensure, which the federalist argued 1a forbade in that first major debate, as opposed to seditious libel.

Although I suppose a counterargument would be that those nice letters the feds sent to twitter on who shouldn't have an account were sometimes motivated by national security under the reasoning that we live in a world where mere journalism is warfare in the information theater.

So perhaps getting banned for saying the Russians aren't so bad has more common law backing than for misgendering people. I'm not sure where it would fall on Covid.

Of course bending the rules to make them say nothing that stops you is a long and storied tradition.

Takings has been partially rejuvenated but largely deadwood (eg regulatory takings can be so extreme that my property could lose a massive percentage of value but have no recourse).

It isn’t just that though I agree with it. The OP seems fundamentally to have bought into a notion that the bureaucrats function as part of the separated of powers. But if the bureaucrats exercised power with zero real oversight of the bureaucrats, then of course there is no separation of powers but really a concentration of power within the bureaucrats.

Rather than tearing down separation of powers Trump is invigorated it by removing the previously unaccountable bureaucracy. The district judges are in my mind lawless traitors.

Right. After "my side" of the gun rights issue winning in the Supreme Court not once but twice (Heller and Bruen) and finding I still cannot legally purchase a firearm in any state in the union, "oh noes he's not obeying the district courts" is not particularly convincing to me. Particularly not when all obeying the courts (in Obergefell; there was one post-decision dissenter and she was crushed quickly) did is lead to all the transing-the-kids stuff.