for linking to Tom West–always a good thing, to my mind.
The link follows this passage from Sullivan: “It’s been striking lately how the rhetoric of some conservatives has morphed into revolutionary tones. Bill Kristol, at heart an ally of religious radicalism, calls for a revolution against the independent judiciary we now have. Fox News’ John Gibson has argued that ‘the temple of the law is not so sacrosanct that an occasional chief executive cannot flaunt it once in a while.’ Bill Bennett has said that the courts are not the ultimate means to interpret law and the constitution, that the people, with rights vested in the Declaration of Independence, have a right to overturn the courts if judges violate natural law precepts such as the right to life. Beneath all this is a struggle between conservatives who place their faith in the formalities of constitutionalism and those who place their literal faith in the God-revealed truths they believe are enshrined in the Declaration, truths that alone give meaning, in their eyes, to America as a political project.”
I disagree with Gibson’s views and will therefore not try to defend them. Kristol and Bennett, meanwhile, are being caricatured. To argue (as Kristol does) that the courts have assumed too much power in American life over the last few decades and need to be divested of some of it is not necessarily to argue that their “independence” should be threatened. The discussion of Bennett is hopelessly confused. To affirm that the courts are not the ultimate interpreters of the Constitution is not to say that anyone may rightly ignore the Constitution (nor need anyone who thinks that there are occasions when the courts should be overruled on a point of constitutional interpretation feel obligated to confine those overrulings to occasions when the natural law is violated). Finally, the question of whether (and to what extent) the Constitution should be read in light of the Declaration of Independence doesn’t underlie any of this. It is perfectly possible to be skeptical of grandiose claims for the authoritativeness of the Declaration on legislators and courts while also believing that the courts don’t have a monopoly on constitutional interpretation. There are conservatives who believe both these things. (I’m one of them.)
Basically, Sullivan is tossing everything he dislikes about various conservatives into a bag, shaking it up, and pouring it out. This may be what happens to otherwise “sane, moderate, thoughtful people” who start trying to lead a “purge.”