Late to the party. Sorry.
One of the things we have to keep in mind about the Heritage Foundation and similar conservative legal networks is that their principal purpose is to promote the interests of oligarchy and hobble what they call the regulatory state. In other words, they really don’t like democracy very much to begin with. Like …
One of the things we have to keep in mind about the Heritage Foundation and similar conservative legal networks is that their principal purpose is to promote the interests of oligarchy and hobble what they call the regulatory state. In other words, they really don’t like democracy very much to begin with. Like the planters of old, they want to have complete sovereignty over all things which they own (even humans back then), or lease (such as unenslaved labor). For them that is the only liberty that counts. Of course, by itself that is not a position that can muster enough votes to control a representative democracy. The alternative, Civil War, was attempted and found wanting. Thus, those who align themselves with oligarchy, because they think it equates with liberty, have to find something else to allow them to obtain control. They have hit upon “culture wars,“ that mix of racism and fundamentalism, as TC defines it, that motivates dispossessed whites and those who prefer by their nature to delegate personal agency to others, to vote as they are told. The culture wars not only attracts a particular kind of voter, but it also attracts law students who either share that limited conception of liberty, or who harbor racial hatred in their hearts, or who want the big man in the sky to be in control of stuff rather than have to noodle it out themselves. It is those law students the Heritage Foundation recruits to become our judges. Those law students are nurtured in a culture war bubble, directed to the right clerkships and law firms to maintain their indoctrination and thus they ultimately take the bench convinced that they are duty bound to advance “liberty” and right thinking.
Roe is not the end of it. Movement conservatives need to keep the base agitated in order to keep their hand maidens in power to serve the interests of oligarchy. Thus, national bans on abortion, contraception, gay rights, same-sex marriage, trans rights, etc. etc., and any rights recognized via the 14th Amendment, will be a permanent part of our political discourse, and judges, like Alito, will be more than willing to go along. The reasoning in those future cases will be just as specious as that in Alito’s leaked draft overturning Roe, but that is just a mere distraction. It is not about the reasoning. It is not about the religion. Ultimately, it is about the money.
Late to the party. Sorry.
One of the things we have to keep in mind about the Heritage Foundation and similar conservative legal networks is that their principal purpose is to promote the interests of oligarchy and hobble what they call the regulatory state. In other words, they really don’t like democracy very much to begin with. Like the planters of old, they want to have complete sovereignty over all things which they own (even humans back then), or lease (such as unenslaved labor). For them that is the only liberty that counts. Of course, by itself that is not a position that can muster enough votes to control a representative democracy. The alternative, Civil War, was attempted and found wanting. Thus, those who align themselves with oligarchy, because they think it equates with liberty, have to find something else to allow them to obtain control. They have hit upon “culture wars,“ that mix of racism and fundamentalism, as TC defines it, that motivates dispossessed whites and those who prefer by their nature to delegate personal agency to others, to vote as they are told. The culture wars not only attracts a particular kind of voter, but it also attracts law students who either share that limited conception of liberty, or who harbor racial hatred in their hearts, or who want the big man in the sky to be in control of stuff rather than have to noodle it out themselves. It is those law students the Heritage Foundation recruits to become our judges. Those law students are nurtured in a culture war bubble, directed to the right clerkships and law firms to maintain their indoctrination and thus they ultimately take the bench convinced that they are duty bound to advance “liberty” and right thinking.
Roe is not the end of it. Movement conservatives need to keep the base agitated in order to keep their hand maidens in power to serve the interests of oligarchy. Thus, national bans on abortion, contraception, gay rights, same-sex marriage, trans rights, etc. etc., and any rights recognized via the 14th Amendment, will be a permanent part of our political discourse, and judges, like Alito, will be more than willing to go along. The reasoning in those future cases will be just as specious as that in Alito’s leaked draft overturning Roe, but that is just a mere distraction. It is not about the reasoning. It is not about the religion. Ultimately, it is about the money.
Really excellent analysis - thanks!