The author thinks it is bad 'to limit severely access to authentic democratic governance in the United States for generations to come.' However, the only reason people emigrated to the US or continued to flourish there, was because there was a legal, constitutional, limit to 'access to authentic democratic governance' such as that which very quickly blighted the French and Russian and (more recently) 'Ba'athist' or 'Bolivarian' Revolutions, which 'devoured their own children'.



It is a good thing, not a bad thing, if 'monied people' know that elected demagogues can't hold them to ransom because the Judiciary remains independent and can jail those same demagogues for corruption or extortion.



It is also a good thing if ordinary people- who face service provision discrimination by a monopolistic Police Cadre- can bear arms to defend their property or, if the thing is too dangerous, sell up and move somewhere they can pool their defensive capacity. No doubt, 'Tiebout sorting' is even more effective- and it is only local Government, not Federal institutions, which can render the American Dream merely wet rather than a sweaty nightmare.



The author says- 'The complex interplay between the three branches of the US federal government – the executive, the legislative, and the judicial – is at the heart of American democracy’s system of checks and balances'. He is wrong. A three body problem is indeed complex which is why it is useless as a 'system of checks and balances'. That is why you have only two body problems in any stable system. The Judiciary checks both the Legislature and the Executive in a simple, protocol bound, 'buck stopped' manner. There is no complexity to the dynamics unless Judges are 'activist' in a mischievous manner- one the Federalist Society seeks to curb. There is no reason to believe that this would impose an 'efficiency' cost on Social Choice because a purely alethic 'Law & Econ' approach can be accommodated within its chosen framework.



The Latin 'legitimus' was linked, in the time of Cicero, with Greek notions of 'oikos' (including legitimacy of birth) which became the subject matter of 'Economics'. Cicero respected the Epicurean, (we would say 'Utilitarian') Economics of Philodemus of Gadara. However, Cicero's method of ad hominem 'in Pisonem' argumentation- which this author brazenly follows- was counter productive. It is utterly stupid to attack a Public official for his table manners, or his birth, or which School he attended or subscribed to. Something more is needed. Alethic arguments that he or she suffers an inherent vice with respect to a particular set of liturgical duties.



What we have in this article isn't even 'dog whistling' it is a rabid, foaming at the mouth which is supposed to testify to the author's 'preference intensity' without showing any evidence that this savant is willing to do any actual cognitively costly 'work'. That is why it fails immediately- indeed, is counter productive. We assume that this man, and the side he represents, have no alethic arguments. For some corrupt reason- perhaps to extract rents for their own interessement mechanism- they are pretending to be so emotionally overwrought as to start arrant babbling nonsense. We dismiss them as lazy fellows who know no great cataclysm is imminent. They are merely crying wolf because no actual wolves are on the horizon and they enjoy getting a little attention.



Trump is lazy. Obama wasn't. The one or two good things about Trump are things that Obama's learnt on the job. If only Obama hadn't been damaged by his education at the hands of lazy, self-righteous, pedants, his Presidency could have been epoch making. From my (admittedly limited) perspective, African-Americans are better Economists and Jurists than their privileged White peers precisely because they aren't lazy, they don't virtue signal, and they actually care about lifting up working folk. But for their presence, the American Dream would have run out of steam in the mid Sixties. Yet, the existence of 'subaltern' Black people is an excuse for White liberals (at least in the opinion of Thomas Sowell) to unthinkingly screw up the life-chances of people who, more often than not, have a far longer American pedigree than they do themselves.



I wish there were a Nozickian 'experience machine' we could connect people like Weschler to. Then he would understand why people with darker skin and much lower wealth, income and life-chances desperately want the Rule of Law at the lowest possible price of access. This can only happen when Judges humble themselves before the Law, rather than second guess the Legislature or seek to usurp the Executive function.



If



This does not mean that