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" Somewhere, Bill Buckley is spinning. The flying monkeys were unleashed by Adam Liptak of the New York Times today with his nuanced \u2014 and quite interesting \u2014 piece on the declining influence of the U.S. Constitution on emerging democracies around the world. As Liptak points out, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also set some of the critters aloft by comparing our Constitution unfavorably to those that exist in Canada and South Africa. It&amp;#039;s important to note that this isn&amp;#039;t Liptak saying any of this. It&amp;#039;s a story about what appears to be a well-documented study by a couple of academics that will appear in the NYU Law Review in June. Liptak does posit some reasons why the Constitution is less influential around the world than it used to be, none of which would surprise anyone who&amp;#039;s been following events for the past two decades. I am less convinced than many people are that the Constitution should be abandoned simply because it&amp;#039;s old, and because parts of it are clumsily written and even more clumsily operated. (I also might point out that the influence of our Constitution has waned around the world because we so ostentatiously abandoned its principles in the decade after 9/11. I don&amp;#039;t think anyone who had a relative in Gitmo is too interested in hearing about our dedication to the rule of law any more.) At the same time, I certainly don&amp;#039;t want to hand the job of modernizing it over to the various fauna of the current political class because, let&amp;#039;s just say I&amp;#039;m not seeing a lot of Madisons out there these days and besides, well, wow. Let&amp;#039;s have a Constitutional Convention in the age of Citizens United. What could possibly go wrong there? Liptak makes quite clear throughout that he is talking about our Constitution only in its waning influence as a model overseas and, at the end, he gives Antonin Scalia the final word on Bills of Rights, and Scalia is damned funny and the best quote in the piece. I found it fascinating, and did not at all feel insulted by the fact the people in other lands would like to write their own constitutions, thank you very much. Of course, I don&amp;#039;t write at The Corner, where it was up anchor and away, all freak flags flying, give &amp;#039;em a broadside, men, and try to keep the propellers on your beanies spinning counter-clockwise! Things got off to a flying stop when some angry geezer checked in from the grandstand at the dogtrack: The basic message is that our post-American legal elites disdain the Constitution as archaic, too hard to change, and just too darn American. (The auld fella then goes on to criticize an Australian judge for not being sufficiently American. At that point, I guess, the third race went off.) And then the famous chickenhawk tree-farmer Victor Davis Gloriousus Tertullian Hanson got things up to roiling boil: What&amp;#039;s behind the sudden defiant push-back against traditional advocacy of the old self-reliant, arms-bearing citizen as championed by the Constitution? Give credit to Barack Obama and his supporters. They are seizing the moment in a fashion undreamed of by Bill Clinton in 1996 and framing his reelection as a referendum on the entire American system itself. (Jesus, I thought it was just about Romneycare. Does anyone besides this warmongering omadhaun believe that Barack super-PAC Obama is in this for a referendum &amp;quot;on the entire American system itself&amp;quot;? Just because some South Africans didn&amp;#039;t necessarily want an electoral college?) Then the junior member of the firm threw his two cents into the pot: The other main criticism seems to be that the Rest of The World Doesn&amp;#039;t Like It Anymore. Again, so what? America is an outlier on many issues. That&amp;#039;s why people move here. Instead of taking shots, the New York Times should be proud of this. America is the only nation in the world, for example, in which one can more or less say whatever one likes, and in which the individual&amp;#039;s right to free expression trumps all other concerns. (My point exactly, so why all the fuss? Unless, of course, you decide that to take your paranoia out for a morning stroll and imagine that The New York Times, which is truly not supposed to be a fanzine, printed this not as an examination of the world&amp;#039;s attitude toward our Constitution, but because the Times wanted to &amp;quot;take shots&amp;quot; at America. Can you pull in the Yankee games on those fillings?) But we didn&amp;#039;t get to the truly combustible mix of both missing-the-point and steaming ill-directed paranoid spittle until one Michael Walsh leaped to the keyboard. It&amp;#039;s really worth reading in full so you won&amp;#039;t miss the snotty little asides aimed at people like Ezra Klein, and the clumsy attempts to wedge Liptak into a culture-war argument as though the Constitution were Janet Jackson&amp;#039;s nipple, and the faux-tough guy assertions of America-fk-yeah! in which poor Orwell is exhumed once again and used as a club by people he&amp;#039;d spit on if he were alive. But of all the reactions to Liptak&amp;#039;s piece, this one paragraph takes the prize: But that&amp;#039;s not the the point of the story at all. The real editorial mission is the continuance of the Left&amp;#039;s steady campaign of demoralization, designed to de-legitimize the foundational principles of the United States, the better to effect the real &amp;quot;fundamental transformation&amp;quot; they hope to deliver beginning the night of November 6, if and when President Obama no longer has to face the ballot box.  (In other words, the New York Times is in league with the Obama administration in a campaign to eliminate the constitutional government of the United States as soon as Wolf Blitzer calls the election next November. How will this fundamental change be accomplished? Through the mighty powers Barack Obama has demonstrated throughout his first term? Through an army of Kenyan Muslims? Through the use of those FEMA camps that Glenn Beck used to talk about? Black helicopters? Disease-bearing honeybees? Whatever&amp;#039;s stored in Area 51? Walsh isn&amp;#039;t saying. He&amp;#039;s got the plotters nailed, though. He sees what&amp;#039;s coming. It used to be that you&amp;#039;d have to staple this stuff to lampposts to get anyone to read it. There is no difference any more between the wingnut fringe and mainstream conservatism. None at all.) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12682/modern-constitution-national-review-6652958/>