E-Pluribus | August 6, 2024
Supreme Court term limits; home school rising; 'shock-activism' on the left and right
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
John O. McGinnis: Unraveling the Court
Image by Joe Ravi via Wikipedia
Last week, the Biden Administration advanced several bold Supreme Court reforms, including retroactive 18-year term limits for the Justices. The proposals are meant to promote accountability, the Administration claims. John O. McGinnis at City Journal isn’t buying it:
“Biden’s proposals are the third significant presidential attack on the Supreme Court’s integrity. The first two, by Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt, failed. This latest attempt is more politically potent because ‘term limits’ and ‘ethics’ poll well in the abstract. Moreover, the plan would be especially damaging to conservatives. In the two earlier eras, our intellectual culture was not so dominated by left liberalism as it is today. The Supreme Court is now the most powerful reasoning institution not controlled by the Left.
The president made his recommendation while criticizing various recent rulings, removing any ambiguity that these proposals are motivated by anything other than hostility to the current Court. They are also unconstitutional. Justices enjoy their offices during “good behavior,” long interpreted as giving them life tenure, unless impeached. The term-limits bill tries to address this protection by allowing the term-limited justices to retain the title of justice and sit on original jurisdiction cases, such as those that adjudicate water rights between the states.
This shifting of duties is a transparent evasion. The justices were commissioned as justices with full authority and cannot be made into junior varsity justices against their will. The minor duties left to them would demonstrate that they had been effectively removed. The Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice has traditionally held that Congress cannot strip core duties even from executive branch officials, because doing so represents an end-run around impeachment.
Besides its unconstitutionality, the bill would invite retaliation, if ever implemented. Republicans could make terms even shorter to knock off Democratic-appointed justices if that helped their political objectives. And they could restore the justices who had been demoted to full status.”
JD Tuccille: Homeschooling Grows as an Escape from Failing Schools and Curriculum Fights
Recent estimates suggest that the number of home-school students has doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic. Families were clearly fleeing the controversial public health measures instituted in response to the virus, though JD Tuccille at Reason says there’s more to the story:
“But before the pandemic, the folks at the Homeschool Hub remind us, "homeschooled students between the ages of 5 and 17 made up 2.8% of the total student population in the United States in 2019." That means that, while a lot of families that took to homeschooling out of necessity returned to familiar public schools when they could, enough stuck with it to more than double the number of homeschooled kids. With COVID-19 and intrusive public health policies largely a bad memory, homeschooling continues as an increasingly popular practice as a matter of choice.
Fleeing Public Schools…
In a June article about declining public school enrollment in EducationWeek, Mark Lieberman explained that about half of the loss can be attributed to population changes as the number of kids declines, but about 20 percent fled to private alternatives and another 20 percent turned to homeschooling. (Another 10 percent are unaccounted for, though some probably skipped kindergarten and others may be in DIY arrangements such as homeschooling and microschools, but unreported.)
Lieberman delved into the school choice programs that let education funds follow students to the options of their choice rather than being assigned to brick-and-mortar public schools. But he didn't examine what might drive families to abandon the familiar for education alternatives the require greater dedication and commitment.
Disappointment with schools' pandemic responses clearly played a role in driving many families to try educating their own kids—and many liked the experience. But so do endless battles over how kids are taught and, especially, what is incorporated in the lessons presented to them by often deeply politicized schools. To please one faction of parents with spin that they like is to inherently alienate others.
…To Escape Pointless Conflicts
"‘Schools in many parts of the U.S. have become a battleground and parental involvement is one of the topics at the center,’ ABC News reported last September. ‘Fights in school board meetings, including in Chester County, [Pennsylvania] have erupted over how race, sexual orientation, gender and other topics are brought up, or taught, in the classroom.’”
Gurwinder Bhogal: The scourge of Neotoddler protestors: The Left and Right now rely on shock activism
Around the world, both left- and right-wing political movements are increasingly turning to rioting as a means of achieving their goals. Gurwinder Bhogal at Unherd says this phenomenon is driven by neotoddlerism, an ideology that appeals to overemotional people:
“Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which mosques and other buildings were set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange paint in the world’s second-busiest airport, Heathrow. The week before, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, pro-Palestine activists rioted in Columbus Square, vandalising memorials and releasing a swarm of maggots and worms in his Washington hotel.
These are just the latest examples of a growing trend of shock-activism that combines political protest and public nuisance. Ostensibly, they are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as immigration, the environment, or Palestine. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism.
This movement has its roots in the digital revolution of 2009, when use of smartphones and social media reached a critical mass, allowing strangers to easily unite and mobilise around shared views. But protests didn’t just become bigger and more frequent; they also became more outrageous.
In infants, the chief causes of outrageous behaviour — impulsivity, attention-seeking, and a sense of entitlement — are considered normal, but in adults they’re key symptoms of the “cluster-B” personality disorders. All four such traits — narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial and borderline — are associated with heavy social media use, most likely because such platforms offer cluster-B types a stage for their theatrics. Social media is thus the perfect meeting place for society’s most overemotional people.”
Around Twitter (X)
FIRE challenges hypocritical speech restrictions in Colorado, where some political statements are apparently less offensive than others:
Megan McArdle has a theory about Kamala Harris’s choice of running mate:
Finally, Wesley Yang rarely minces words, and this tweet is no exception: