Articles by Kurt Schlichter in Townhall
The New Rules Bite Libs Right in the Uterus
You know, there was a time when I might have thought that the Texas legislature’s creative lawmaking that lets random people sue those facilitating abortions was against my principles. But that was before “principles” became nothing more than a cynical codeword designed to tie our hands as the libs pillaged through our society like a bunch of hopped-up Visigoths who just got into Hunter’s secret stash.
The new rule is that you use your power ruthlessly to defeat your opponent. And so, I’m totally comfortable with it. The Dems, not so much – this legislative suppository is shaped like a starfish and it ain’t going in easy.
Now, the best part about this whole imbroglio, besides that it might well close down the open season on babies that is a central sacrament of the pagan religion that is modern America liberalism, is how the Texas Solons shamelessly snagged it from the arsenal of anti-democratic tactics pioneered by the left. Here’s how governing should go, in the world that no longer exists that you learned about on Saturday morning TV’s Schoolhouse Rock. One of our elected legislators proposes a bill to do something, it gets debated, passed, signed by the chief executive and then challenged in court, where it should almost always be held constitutional. But that’s kind of a hassle, since a lot of the things Democrats want can’t get enough votes to pass. So, the democracy-loving Democrats eschewed democracy and decided they would sub-contract the dirty work to the courts. You know how people liked smoking, which they knew might well kill them? Why not use lawsuits to do indirectly what could not be done directly, i.e., properly? They kept at it until they found enough gullible jurors in gullible venues to shakedown the tobacco companies, mostly by pretending that puffers were shocked – shocked! – that smoking was sub-optimally healthy.
And then there’s guns. They can’t get a ban on guns through the Congress, so why not sue the gun makers, pretending that the company that built the rifle is the real criminal, not the Democrat-constituent criminal who used it to shoot someone who was deprived of the right to protect himself by those same Democrats? Maybe the gunmaker might win the lawsuit, but enough losing suits equals bankruptcy as surely as a few winning ones.
And in California, I spent a lot of time defending businesses in cases under the Unfair Competition Law. A law against unfair competition – why, who could be against that? Normal Californians, it turns out, who voted for a referendum reforming that miserable statute. It let anyone sue any business for any nebulous, amorphous wrong. You didn’t need to be hurt by the company, or even a customer. You just needed a filing fee and a plaintiff’s lawyer. Ka-ching!
So, if we are talking about principles, and there’s not much to talk about anymore, then the principle of assigning out political action to private lawyers has been well-established by the Dems. In the case of the Texas law, it also has the delightful attribute of being largely immune from an injunction, as we saw the other day when even Kavanaugh said, “Nah.” See, injunctions in this kind of case usually keep government officials from doing something, like prosecuting people under an unconstitutional law. Here, the law allows regular citizens to sue other citizens, making an injunction inappropriate (not that this would stop lib judges, but the argument would appeal to the conservative ones). So, it is kind of a problem for the liberals since this is the kind of thing they have been doing for a while. I’m not going to lie – it’s fun watching their tears as conservatives skip the formalities and go straight to the raw exercise of power.
Now, the liberals are wetting themselves, which is fun, and they double our fun when they start crying about how we’re not holding fast to the principles they treat like a Scat Francisco hobo treats a sidewalk. Texas conservatives were right to enact the law for many political and moral reasons, but none of them matter. What matters is that they could do it, and therefore they should do it.
Let’s cruise back to the Peloponnesian War, which was back before history commenced in 1619. Now, Athens and Sparta were fighting it out for dominance of the land of gyros and had been for a while. They each gathered up allies, in various states of willingness, to help them out. There was this one city-state called Melos, and it just wanted to not get involved. But, much like modern wokesters, the Athenians demanded the Melians get onboard and join in. The Athenians were strong, and the Melians were weak. There is a famous – among people who did not go to modern colleges – dialogue in which the Melians basically said, “Dudes, chill. Be cool. This is wrong. Leave us alone.” But the Athenians had the power to enforce their will so, they explained, they had a right to do it. The Melians did not give in so Athens, which was not woke to the whole gender fluidity rainbow, killed the men and sold the women into slavery – because they could. And this sent a message to every other polis in the Aegean region. Submit, or else.
And that’s why the libs use raw power unmoored from inconveniences like principles today.
So, when they ignore #science and demand your kid tie a rag around his mug, they are doing it because they can.
And when they tell you your First Baptist Church can’t sing hymns, but that Brandy can grind away on the pole to “Pour Some Sugar On Me” at the Speckled Bobcat, they are doing it because they can.
And when they let dudes with dangles into your teen daughter’s bathroom, they are doing it because they can.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
These are the new rules. Look, it’s not the rules I would have made, but I didn’t make them. In fact, I warned libs not to change the rules. I told them. And they didn’t listen. Maybe they’ll listen now.
