The Left Loves Federalism! (Sorta)
Jonah Goldberg looks at the Left's strange zig-zags with regard to Federal intervention in health and others matters.
I'm disgusted with the faux moral outrage from liberals who are stunned by the idea that the federal government might get involved in issues like this. This is the party which danced a jig over the Violence Against Women Act and which has defined a vast swath of its political raison d'etre around the idea that the federal government should jealously guard the right to abortion and the right to appeal a death sentence in federal courts. And it is now scandalized that the Republican Party is trying to prevent a state court from killing a woman.I, unfortunately, get it.
It's okay for Washington to meddle when a husband slaps his wife, but it's outrageous when Washington tries to stop a husband from killing his wife? It's mandatory that a federal judge make sure a minority isn't passed-over for a promotion, but it's a rejection of the rule of law for a federal judge to make sure that a woman isn't wrongfully starved to death? Thanks to the hard work of Democrats states can't set their own drinking age or voting age, but suddenly state judges should be The Word of God when it comes to slowly killing citizens. I don't get it.
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I'd like you to explain it to me then.
This seems like rather willful misrepresentation of the case. This isn't "Democrats want to let a man murder his wife!" This is... "She's completely brain dead and never coming back and he, as her husband, says that what she wanted was to be taken off the machines." How you could confuse the two is beyond me.
But here, I'll make it easy... Democrats believe in a free and fair society and that sometimes the Government must use its extraordinary powers to enforce that. This means sometimes instituting affirmative action and hate crime laws. It also means letting gay people get married and women get abortions. It's about using the Government's power for good and keeping them out of your bedroom at the same time. Free and fair. In fact, if you want to you can think of every single one of those policies as protecting a minority or low power group from the majority/the powerful. Why? Because they're the ones who need protection and assistance.
But Terry Schiavo isn't powerless because, presumably, she told her husband what she wanted in this event. And even if she didn't we have a perfectly rational and standard system in place which puts that decision in the hands of the spouse (remember the sanctity of marriage?) under subject of judicial review, which this case has recieved more than its share of.
Speaking of which, if you want to talk hypocrisy, really let's talk the GOP. They adore Marriage so much that gays aren't allowed to have it, but in this instance, when a man tries to exercise his rights as a husband, they want the Fed to step in and stop him?
And when, by the way, did the Right completely abandon any pretension of liking Federalism? Right around 2000, it seems. From legislating gay marriage into the constitution to this appalling breach of separation of powers I don't see how the Right can claim any love for Federalism.
In fact, just fiscal responsibility, the Right has dumped it just as the Left has started to appreciate it. Thank you Howard Dean, for pitching all of this last year.
So please, explain to me how it is the Left who is being somehow hypocritical or political, and not the Right?
I'm too tired to come up with a cogent reply (other than "Democrats are stuuuuuuuupid" wait...that's not cogent.)
Know this: I don't agree with Goldberg's "Democrats want her to die" comment. (Clearly they don't -- as evidenced by the broad support those resolutions won.)
I'll come right out and say it myself, though: I want her to die.
What I do enjoy posting is Goldberg's laundry list (whether you agree with them or not) of perceived Democratic Party hypocrises with regard to the Feds intervening into a state health matters.
Really, this posting of mine wasn't intended to eviscerate the Right's departure from Federalist principles (I've pointed this out on my own blog several times, recently), but rather to illustrate my equal frustration with the Democratic Party's hypocritical and blatantly opportunistic arguments with regard to this matter.
It's not that I'm against something like the Violence Against Women Act, or arguing RvW at SCOTUS, it's just that I'm against the Left going ape-shit over Schiavo when this sort of thing seems pretty much in the same judicial/moral ballpark as those issues.
It's also the Left's knee-jerk, manufactured contrarianism to this issue -- "Well, hell, Christian Conservativs want to save this woman, so their case is wrong and stupid" -- that drives me up the wall.
I just see hypocrites everywhere when it comes to these life and death matters (really the only people who aren't hypocrites are life-lifers) and I wish everyone were more like, well, me and was consistent on everything.
That is to say: Pro-Death.
And looking at the particulars of this case, what bothers many non-religious people about it is that SHE HAD NO LIVING WILL, it all comes down to what the spouse thinks she would want, or what he claims she said twenty-odd years ago. Personally, I don't have a problem with this (sanctity of marriage, bitches!), but like I said: many people do see a problem, and if you believe this, I think it's perfectly reasonable to then believe Schiavo is a person who can't protect herself and needs the government's help.
(This post is such a mess. If you made it this far, thank you.)
I think maybe one thing that also separates this is that this isn't a case where the GOP felt deeply about this issue and was trying to legislate it, or where, as in the case of Roe v. Wade, it worked its way through the proper channels of government and a decision, however controversial was reached.
This is the Republicans seizing an opportunistic moment to showboat with this singular case.
I think that if you want to talk about Democratic hypocrisy and opportunism here then you have to acknowledge that. A lot of the Democratic opposition is not to exactly what the Republicans are trying to do, but HOW they are going about it.
You watched it and I just read about it, but what I recall from the coverage of the C-SPAN stuff last night is that quite a few Dems were referring to this as a "power grab."
I don't understand how this can be a power grab considering the GOP already has grabbed power several times over. If anything, this is just incredibly brash, disgusting pandering to a small segment of the U.S. population.
Jonah is completely off-base. To me, this isn't about the Democrats suddenly turning into states-righters overnight. This isn't about hypocrisy, either. I think Barney Frank summed it up best when he said that Congress, as an institution, was incompetent to interfere in a matter that has been thoroughly litigated in the state courts.
I would personally have no problem if Congress, through a proper hearing and deliberation, wanted to pass a law requiring cases like this, where a family is in conflict and the patient's wishes are not clear, to have a final review in federal court. But that's not the case here. They have passed a bill directed at interfering with the judicial process on behalf of one person. If we allow Congress to have that kind of power over individual cases, where does it stop?
BTW, I find your posts to be well-reasoned and interesting. I appreciate your soul-searching approach and your unwillingness to take either "side" at face value.
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