The “pro-democracy,” “anti-authoritarian” crowd are now calling for “six…justices” to “be impeached and removed” from the Supreme Court, if the Democrats win in November. That decimation of the Supreme Court will keep it from ruling against a progressive president when he oversteps his powers. The six justices they want to remove from the Supreme Court voted against Biden when he overstepped his powers by illegally giving away hundreds of billions of dollars through a student loan bailout. The three progressive Supreme Court justices they want to keep on the Court all voted to let Biden get away with illegally giving away those hundreds of billions of dollars. Biden promptly circumvented the Supreme Court’s ruling by issuing new student loan bailouts based on a different rationales, some of which lower court judges have temporarily blocked. But if these Democrats get their wish and remove the Supreme Court’s conservative and moderate justices, the Supreme Court will uphold what Biden is doing, and Biden will be able to get away with illegally giving away hundreds of billions of dollars more.
This proposal to decimate the Supreme Court is made in the publication Liberal Currents, populated by writers who all favor a Democratic victory in November. Although Liberal Currents is a Democratic publication, it is also often cited by left-libertarians who hate conservatives and deride what they call “reactionary centrists” and the “center white-wing” — centrists that the left-libertarians deem guilty of “both-sidesing” by pointing out that the left, not just the right, violates civil-liberties and exhibits intolerance.
As Liberal Currents‘ Paul Crider puts it:
Critics kvetch and moan about Democrats having no positive vision. Well, here is one…www.liberalcurrents.com/
The call by Liberal Currents to abolish state constitutional provisions they don’t like using federal power is very dangerous, and would defeat the whole purpose of having states and the benefits of competitive federalism. Progressives have frequently complained about state constitutional tax limits, like two-thirds vote requirements for raising taxes in some states, and requiring voter approval for certain local tax increases in other states. If Congress is “empowered” to enforce against states the same rules it enforces at the federal level, many useful checks and balances against oppressive and expensive government contained in state law will no longer exist.
The call by Liberal Currents to abolish the “Senate filibuster” — which promotes bipartisanship — is also of dubious merit. As progressive law professor David Super concedes, “the bipartisanship that the filibuster compels actually serves legitimate purposes. Among the first concessions each side makes when they sit down to negotiate are the dumb provisions influential Members in their caucus insisted on including in their bills. Their own party leadership often knows these are bad ideas – unworkable, too extreme for most of the electorate, wasteful, etc. – but often lacks the political capital to remove them. Bipartisanship allows considerable worthwhile pruning, even in these polarized times.”
When people on social media call themselves “pro-democracy,” it usually just means they want the Democrats to win by any means, fair or foul. And when they claim to be “anti-authoritarian,” it usually means they want the government to have more power to manage the economy and alter existing “power relations” in their favor. They view you living your life without extensive government interference as an oppressive social hierarchy in which you fail to share your wealth with others, such as “marginalized peoples.” That’s why self-styled “anti-authoritarian” “anti-fascists” like professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat denounced a Supreme Court ruling that blocked executive branch overreaching, and curbed deference to federal officials who overstep their authority by doing things like forcing small businesses to hire agency employees out of their own pocket, without any explicit authorization from Congress for imposing such burdens.
When such people call you “authoritarian”, it usually means you are the opposite of authoritarian: It means that you support things like freedom of contract, freedom of speech, and property rights even when those things don’t lead to progressive outcomes that they view as being mandated by social or economic equality. If you criticize campus speech codes that violate the First Amendment, they will tell you that you suffer from “authoritarian personality disorder” and “cultural insecurities” and just want to uphold the status quo by keeping the campus from being a safe space for LGBTQ people and people of color.
After the Supreme Court ruled last year that Biden’s attempt to cancel $500 billion in student loan debt was illegal, Biden canceled some of the same debt using new excuses, writing off billions more in student loans. In April, 17 states sued the Biden administration over its new plans to cancel student loans, arguing that Biden’s new plan was illegal, too.
Canceling student loans is a bad idea. It encourages colleges to jack up tuition, by making it more attractive to take out big loans to cover college tuition. When students are willing to borrow more to go to college, colleges respond by raising tuition. The Daily Caller notes that “each additional dollar in government financial aid translated to a tuition hike of about 65 cents,” according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Canceling student loan debt is “regressive and unfair,” says Katherine Abraham, a former adviser to Obama who served as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the Clinton administration. As Greg Price points out, “Only 37% of Americans have a 4-yr college degree, only 13% have graduate degrees, and a full 56% of student loan debt is held by people who went to grad school. Biden’s plan to cancel it would be like taking money from a plumber to pay the debt of a lawyer.” Even the liberal Washington Post called Biden’s student-loan bailout “a regressive, expensive mistake.”
Student loan forgiveness also is inflationary. Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, called Biden’s plan to cancel student loans “reckless.” Furman said, “Pouring roughly half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless.” Biden’s student loan forgiveness will increase inflation, inequality, tuition, and the national debt.
The Wall Street Journal criticized Biden’s new plan to write off student loans after the Supreme Court ruled against his old plan, arguing that the new plan “will encourage colleges to raise costs, especially in graduate programs for which there are no federal loan limits. Who cares if students can’t repay? They will be forgiven one way or another.”
The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against Biden’s earlier loan-forgiveness plan was expected by most observers. Some of them accused Biden of currying favor with young voters by promising student loan forgiveness that he knew was illegal and would be struck down, thus giving them false hope. Biden sought to deny this, saying “I didn’t give any false hope. The Republicans snatched away the hope that they were given.”
But that was dishonest on Biden’s part. Earlier, he himself had admitted he lacked the power to forgive student loans en masse. The president said of student loan cancellation during a 2021 CNN town hall, “I don’t think I have the authority to do it by signing with a pen.”
Other Democratic Party leaders used to admit that Biden lacks the power to forgive student loans, the very ones denouncing today’s Supreme Court decision. On July 28, 2021, “then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained: ‘People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”
As journalist Charles Cooke noted in 2023, “Biden knew this was illegal. Everyone knew this was illegal. That he tried to do it anyway, in violation of his oath of office, remains a monumental disgrace.”
Like many Democrats, Liberal Currents’ Paul Crider is a big fan of Ibram Kendi, his revered “Dr. Ibram.” Ibram Kendi says that “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” in his best-selling book, How to Be An Antiracist. That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate.
The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist is that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” writes Kendi in that book. Kendi is a leading “critical race theorist.”
“When I see racial disparities, I see racism,” says Ibram Kendi, in language trumpeted as if it were a sacred truth by the liberal New York Times. This is not true, legally speaking: for example, a federal appeals court ruled in 2001 that a racial “disparity” in discipline rates does not “constitute discrimination,” if a school’s discipline policy is applied in a race-neutral way — even if most suspended students are black.
Contrary to “anti-racist” dogma, many racial disparities obviously are not due to racism: Hispanics live longer than whites, on average, even though doctors don’t discriminate in their favor. Asians make more money than whites, on average. And while blacks make less money than whites, on average, African immigrants to America make more money than whites. Racial disparities exist everywhere in society and the world, often for reasons unrelated to racism, notes the black economist Thomas Sowell in his book Discrimination and Disparities. Because racial disparities are everywhere, the only way to get rid of racial “disparities” would be for the government to wield totalitarian power, notes black economist Glenn Loury.
Colleges are busy teaching Kendi’s trendy racist doctrine falsely labeled as “anti-racism” — many college officials have urged the reading of How to Be An Antiracist. That is true even in universities in Republican-run states like Tennessee. The University of Tennessee’s chancellor, Donde Plowman, urged people “to read How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.” Even in red states, education officials are often Democrats.
In 2015, under former Governor Terry McAuliffe (D), Virginia’s Department of Education instructed public schools to “embrace critical race theory” in order to “re-engineer attitudes and belief systems.’” Under his successor, Governor Northam, Virginia’s official “Roadmap to Equity” published by its Department of Education in 2020 promoted the work of Ibram Kendi, who has advocated illegal discrimination against whites.
