For me, this was a very troubling poll -- and I think it should be troubling to everyone who believes in the sanctity of the Constitution. It shows that 33% of Americans now think that the individual states should be able to ignore Supreme Court decisions -- and for Republicans and conservatives that percentage rises to 50%.
I'm sure this comes from recent decisions that some people disagree with (like the same-sex marriage decision for evangelicals, the Obamacare subsidy decision for teabaggers, and the Citizens United decision for liberals and Democrats). But they're obviously not thinking through what they're saying.
They Supreme Court is the governmental body that defines the Constitution. That is their primary purpose. If a state is able to pick and choose what decisions they will follow, then that means they are able to pick the parts of the Constitution they will follow and the parts they won't follow. It would make the Constitution a useless piece of paper, and it would rip this country apart -- because the law and citizen's rights would be different from state to state.
We tried something like this before -- the Articles of Confederation. And it didn't work. We found very quickly that we needed a strong Constitution, and every state must be required to abide by that Constitution.
Their will always be decisions of the Supreme Court that people don't like. But those decisions must be the law of the land. If they are wrong, then we have a method to change them -- amend the Constitution. That's not an easy process, and it shouldn't be -- but it works. And until the Constitution is amended, all states must obey Supreme Court decisions.
The chart above was made from a new Rasmussen Poll -- done on June 30th and July 1st of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, with a margin of error of 3 points.
I've run into this a lot in California -- especially after the court overturned Prop 8. People have this natural tendency to think that if the majority want something, that should settle it -- as if 51% voting to enslave the other 49% would be just fine. You are right: they don't think it through. I know Rasmussen says this is up 9 percentage points from February, but I doubt it is a trend. In my experience, roughly 30% of the people are just crazy. If asked if all gay men should be stoned to death, I would expect about 30% to say yes. Space aliens impregnating Montana cattle: 30%, yes. Whatever.
ReplyDeleteI do think Americans are surprisingly ignorant of how our system of government is supposed to work. I remember having this stuff crammed down my throat when I was a kid. But I guess some people are better ignoring information streams than others are.
just really really pisses me off.
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