{"id":6071,"date":"2005-12-13T12:22:05","date_gmt":"2005-12-13T17:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6071"},"modified":"2005-12-13T12:22:05","modified_gmt":"2005-12-13T17:22:05","slug":"bushs-liberal-legal-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-liberal-legal-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s liberal legal philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing we know about the president’s philosophy about the Constitution, it’s that he loves<\/i> strict constructionists. None of that “the law evolves” stuff for Bush; the president, like all good conservatives, claim that “originalism” — the Constitution should be interpreted as the Founding Fathers intended — is the only way to go.<\/p>\n

The opposite of this belief, of course, is the notion of a “living Constitution” that develops and changes with society over time. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick recently joked<\/a> that conservatives view this approach as “judges swinging like monkeys from the constitutional chandeliers, making up whatever they want, whenever they want.” Indeed, Jonah Goldberg wrote<\/a> earlier this year, “A ‘living Constitution’ denies us our voice in this regard because it basically holds that whatever decisions we make — including the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments — can be thrown out by any five dyspeptic justices on the Supreme Court.”<\/p>\n

That’s why it came as something of a surprise when the president shared his thoughts<\/a> with NBC’s Brian Williams yesterday on constitutional philosophy.<\/p>\n

Williams: Have you ever entertained the thought, Mr. President, that Iraq’s natural state may be three separate pieces, three separate nations?<\/p>\n

President Bush: No, I haven’t. I think — I know it will be united based upon, you know, kind of universal principles, the ones I outlined in the speech, freedom to worship, rule of law, private property, marketplace, all bound by a constitution which the Iraqis approved, and which the Iraqis will improve upon. And, you know, we improved on our own Constitution. In other words, it’s a living document<\/b>. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In context, it seems Bush was probably referring to the Iraqi constitution, which raises a different question: the president thinks Iraq should get a living constitution but we shouldn’t?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing we know about the president’s philosophy about the Constitution, it’s that he loves strict constructionists. None of that “the law evolves” stuff for Bush; the president, like all good conservatives, claim that “originalism” — the Constitution should be interpreted as the Founding Fathers intended — is the only way to go. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}