[lbo-talk] Re: Democracy and Constitutional Rights

[Shane Mage]

There is an essential difference, as the Eleatic Guest in Plato's
*Politicos* made clear, between law-governed democracy, a good
political system, and lawless democracy, a bad (but not as bad as
oligarchy or tyranny) system.

In the USA, the Constitution is the *supreme* law of the land.  To
say that judges are obliged to interpret the "law" but to take
no account of the conflict between the supreme law and a 
state-or-federally enacted statute is to say that, as a matter of
principle, they should violate their oath of office.

To say, as Miles Jackson does, that "If people in a community
somewhere didn't want to live according to the U. S. Bill of Rights,
should they be compelled to?" is to deny the humanity of those
*people* whose legal rights are violated under laws enacted by a
putative majority of the people in that community.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not
consent to be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos