Old Trooper sent us a link to an opinion piece by Adam Liptak, the New York Time’s Supreme Court correspondent, who laments that the US Constitution is outdated and no longer befitting the shining city on the hill. Of course, his entire premise is based on the opinions of morons;
In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court seemed to agree. “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.
If Ginsburg isn’t a moron, I don’t know morons. It was the Canadian Charter of Rights that allowed the Canadian government to attempt to prosecute Mark Steyn for publicly expressing his opinion, so that’s a real model, isn’t it? It was under the European Convention of Human Rights that Bridgette Bardot was prosecuted five times for expressing her opinion in public.
Of course, the new York Times has a gripe mostly with the Second Amendment;
It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms.
And the heartless Founders didn’t include entitlements in the Constitution;
Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.
Since when do natural human rights include an entitlement to food, education and healthcare? I’ve noticed that the South African Bill of Rights has it listed in number 27 of their 32 rights. I wonder how that’s working out for them?
I don’t know it looks like the line for sick call on the day Headquarters Company schedules their quarterly 12 mile road march.
The Times continues;
“America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.
I don’t understand the fascination with the opinions of other countries. Our Constitution was written to protect the people from overarching government, most of the rest of the world depends on their governments to protect them from the consequences of their bad choices. They depend on government for their rights, whereas, we recognize the need to be protected from our government’s excesses.
And, oh, Ruth Bader Ginsberg should be impeached for that statement. And as TSO said in an email, the NY Times should become the Montreal Times if they’re so in love with Canada. The Constitution doesn’t begin “We, the New York Times…”
