Read on Twitter
Looks like @ryanlcooper wrote the piece I was planning to write. Anyway, it's crazy how deeply Americans have confused "the rule of law" with a form of strong judicial review that is relatively rare and an unconstitutional fabrication of a self-aggrandizing judiciary. https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1308396535458279425
A good system that works is to allow the elected branches of government pass legislation that most citizens want with little fear of a veto by an unelected panel of oracles dominated by representatives of minority and corporate interests. Sounds crazy, I know.
Conservatives will try to persuade you that transitioning toward normal representative democracy means descending into authoritarian chaos. It doesn't. It means ascending to the possibility of approaching the realization our basic ideals of liberty and equality.
But the GOP as currently constituted represents a shrinking minority of the population (including rent-gobbling corporate fatcats). So it gets its panties in a raging twist if you deign to question the anti-majoritarian mechanisms that allow them to trample over the majority.
There's a strong motive there to cast majoritarian democracy as inconsistent with the "the rule of law" when majorities seem likely to produce law against the minority's interests. Preservation of the minority's supremacy is treated as a condition for the system's legitimacy.
We get tons of convoluted "republic not a democracy" arguments and fancy scholastic footwork arguing that it's good and right that the minority party should enjoy huge structural advantages, but it's all sophism more or less wittingly about maintaining unequal factional power.
It's simple in principle to say, "I worry I'd be worse off in an fair system, so let's just keep it unfair, please." But nobody likes to see themselves as self-interested defenders of unfairness or to admit to cashing in on injustice. Which leaves a lot of demand for apologetics.
