"The Little Guy" v. The Constitution

Jonah Goldberg has a good article today at Townhall.com entitled Empathy and the Supreme Court in which he exposes the myth of the Progressives/Marxists take on the purposes of the Supreme Court. A quote:

For instance, liberals who like Stevens' rulings insist he understands the plight of the downtrodden, despite the fact that the nearly 90-year-old justice was born rich and has served on the court for almost 35 years, becoming more liberal as he has become more distant from life as lived by the little guys.

Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas was born dirt poor and black in rural Georgia and spends his vacations exploring America in an RV. But those same liberals insist he doesn't understand poverty and race the way Stevens does. How do they know? Because they don't like his rulings.

In other words, the empathy-for-the-little-guy standard is simply a Trojan horse for an approach just as abstract as any endorsed by the right. In fact, I would say it's more abstract because at least there's a text conservatives invoke -- the Constitution -- rather than the indefinable feeling of "empathy."

Meanwhile, David Harsanyi has even more sharp words for the Democratic majority in the Senate in today's Townhall.com entitled Senate v. The Constitution. Harsanyi says that the Progressive/Marxist Democrats plan to turn the confirmation hearings into a plan to turn Senate hearings into a referendum on "corporations vs. the common man."

To further quote:

But I wonder whether the average American believes, like Justice Stevens, that an unelected federal agency, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, should bypass Congress and, by fiat, regulate carbon dioxide, a chemical compound that permeates everything, without any consideration for cost or imposition or the electorate?

Do most average Americans, like Justice Stevens -- who dissented on the landmark Second Amendment case of District of Columbia v. Heller -- believe that once a judge deems something dangerous enough, that judge should empower government to ban it, even though that something happens to be explicitly protected by a constitutional amendment?...


Do they believe, like Justice Stevens, that local government should be permitted to throw American citizens off their own property and out of their homes? Do they concur that government should then be able to hand that property over to other private citizens simply because they can pay more taxes? Because, in Kelo v. City of New London, Stevens, writing for the majority, radically expanded the idea of property as "public use."

As usual, Republicans do not have the votes to stop the Progressives/Marxists from putting their man or woman on the Supreme Court. But they can derail more of Obama's agenda, and they can force a debate on the merits of sticking to the original meaning of the Constitution as best it can be determined. That would be a worthwhile endeavor. Are the Republicrats up for it? Interestingly enough, I think the Constitution was written with "The Little Guy" in mind, to protect his rights against powerful interests. Too bad the Progressives/Marxists don't see that, or do they?