Judge Posner does his part
With the retirement of Judge Richard Posner, the country continues to move in the right direction. This judge recently said: "I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation[.] ... Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century."
Criticizing the Constitution for not foreseeing the technology of the 21st century is like criticizing a toaster because it won't print your document. The Constitution is not a Buck Rogers science fiction narrative, but a plan for a people to govern themselves. Thus, it attempts not to foresee technological developments, but rather to set up a system of government that deals with human nature. The Founders foresaw the greed, ambition, dishonesty, and corruption of today's politicians and power elite, including the arrogance and elitism of Judge Posner – for which reasons they designed a system of government with discrete centers of power that balance and offset each other, not only within the federal government, but between the federal government and the states, between the federal government and the people, and between the people and the states. Thus, the judge is wrong as a matter of fact. The Founders did foresee the future.
The wisdom and foresight of the Founders are evident in current events. Rarely, if ever, has our constitutional system of government suffered such a prolonged, systematic, and coordinated attack as it has over the past twenty-five years. The Democratic Party, the RINO contingent, the "mainstream" media, the entertainment "industry," and monolithic academia have been resolute and relentless in their assault on constitutional government. It is too early to say that the Constitution will survive this assault (for example, the national debt and unfunded entitlements may yet cause the Republic to fail), but there is reason for optimism. The system the Founders established has proved itself robust, even if not invulnerable.
Further, the Constitution has several mechanisms by which it can be amended to keep up with the times. These mechanisms have been used many times, most recently in the ratification of the 27th Amendment on May 5, 1992. Judge Posner is impatient with and offended by the amendment process and the necessity of consulting deplorables about changing the Constitution. By saying the Constitution is worthless, he denigrates the amendment process as it has been used, and as it may be used in the future.
On September 1, 2017, Judge Posner did his part to make America great again. He increased the Seventh Circuit bench's fidelity to the law...by resigning from it.
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