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"This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative," said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked - even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."Steven Horwitz weighs in:Stephen Moore, a conservative advocate who is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, said: "I don't normally like to see the federal government intervening in a situation like this, which I think should be resolved ultimately by the family: I think states' rights should take precedence over federal intervention. A lot of conservatives are really struggling with this case." .. "The libertarian streak in me says, you know, people should have the right to die," Mr. Moore, of the Free Enterprise Fund, said. "But as so many conservatives, I'm also very pro-life. Those two philosophies are conflicting with each other."
Bob Levy, a fellow with the Cato Institute, argued that Democrats and Republicans alike were being "incredibly hypocritical" in this case: Democrats by suddenly embracing states' rights and Republicans by asserting the power of the federal government. "These questions are not the business of Congress," Mr. Levy said of the Schiavo dispute. "The Constitution does not give Congress the power to define life or death. The only role for the court is once the state legislature establishes what the rules are, the court can decide if the rules have been properly applied."
Whatever one thinks of the merits of the husband's case, the idea that our esteemed legislators are concocting a bill to save the life of one woman, and calculating the electoral benefits thereof in the process, is precisely what I dislike about democracy. This is just the kind of abuse of Congressional power that gives democracy a bad name. It is antithetical to any reasonable understanding of the rule of law .. And the notion of using the subpoena power to resolve a case of this sort is hardly what one thinks of when one thinks of the merits of democracy - at least not the type framed by a meaningful constitution.Sheldon Richman:
I am appalled by the assault on the rule of law launched by the U.S. Congress. The case went through the Florida courts and was reviewed many times. I don't like how the law is written, but it is a bald-faced lie to say, as one Republican representative said, that Terri Schiavo was deprived of due process of law. The precedent Congress has set — by decreeing that a particular person may file a state legal matter in the federal courts — will surely come back to haunt us. That this travesty is perpetrated by the party professing dedication to small government and federalism makes it all the more outrageous. This is a sad day in more ways than one.Earlier Sheldon wrote this making it clear that the constitutional issue is something different from the issue of what we should think of the law or ethics of this case.
If Congress itself can step in and declare that the guardianship that comes with marriage is null and void, then marriage really is the weak and threatened institution that the religious right says it is. The only trouble is, the religious right is the one doing all the attacking. Never mind the egregious abuse of federalism that the case represents; far more to the point, it is also an egregious abuse of the marriage bond.UPDATE: Charles Fried -- the case for Federalism. Stephen Bainbridge comments and has more on the topic here.
James Pinkerton on Federalism and the Evangelical / Conservative Catholic / Deep South coalition which dominates the GOP :
the Republicans have their victory, but now they must live with consequences of having made a state case into a federal case. Having intervened in this state issue in 2005, future Republicans will have a hard time urging federal restraint in the name of decentralization. Which is to say, whenever the Democrats retake power and resume their own ambitious national agenda, they will happily trample on "states' rights," citing the Schiavo legislation as their precedent. But maybe by then Republicans won't care as much, because the traditional conservative belief system, which grounded its politics in the original intent of the Founding Fathers, has been superseded - the Constitutional Right now being the Religious Right ..Mark Daniels:the Republicans will now bear greater responsibility for the rising cost of health care. That is, if the elephantine federal government has become so energetic - some might say paternalistic - that it reaches into local courtroom dramas in the name of preserving life, then that same GOP Establishment will have to deal with the cost of keeping such people alive. To be sure, in the Schiavo case, the parents have volunteered to bear all of the woman's expenses, but what of similar instances in the future where families have the will, but not the means, to preserve a life? Will Republicans dare say that their "culture of life" extends only to those who can pay?
Indeed, even before Schiavo, GOPers were blanching at the prospect of making even minimal health-care cuts, lest they appear to be "uncompassionate conservatives." Last week, seven Republican senators crossed the aisle to join with the Democrats in blocking the Bush administration's effort to cut Medicaid spending by a mere 1 percent over the next five years. If Republicans are so terminally afraid of seeming hard-hearted that they can't make even tiny nicks, is it likely that they'll deny funding for a new long-term health-care entitlement, an entitlement that was of the GOP's own making? Short answer: Of course not. Americans are now learning that the social-issue core of the newly energized, Southernized and Christianized Republican Party cares a lot more about its faith and its values than about the old verity of small government.
Seen in this way, the legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President this morning confirms what has been increasingly obvious in the past four years: Conservatism, as the core philosophy of the Republican Party, is now, if not dead, completely moribund ..Glenn Reynolds:Last night and this morning, the Republican executive and legislative branches emphatically and perhaps definitively, parted from their conservative past and decided to define the Republican Party in different terms than those used in previous generations. In taking jurisdiction over Terri Schiavo's case from the state courts, where conservative Republicans would have previously said it belonged, and handing it to federal judges, the Republican Party arrogated to the federal government breathtaking new powers that would have made Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan wince.
I'm not saying that this is bad or good. An argument is to be made that states are vestiges of the past, the appendices of the American body politic, remnants of the Colonial Era with which the Constitutional framers were forced to compromise in order to "form a more perfect union." In a nation as socially and legally integrated as America is today and in light of the receding importance of geography and place in the American mind, states may make little sense. Perhaps it's appropriate for the Republicans to be advocates of preeminent federal power over against states' rights and all the other things the party faithful are now advocating. Be that as it may, things are different now. The Republicans are not conservatives when it comes to politics, the courts, or foreign policy. Neither are the Democrats. In that sense, there is no conservative presence in American politics today. The conservatives voted themselves out of existence early this morning.
regardless of the merits [of the Terry Schiavo case], Congress's involvement in this case seems quite "unconservative" to me, at least if one believes in rules of general application. Florida has a general law, and it's been followed. That people don't like the result isn't a reason for unprecedented Congressional action, unless results are all that matter ..Andrew Sullivan:One may argue that libertarians and small-government conservatives aren't a big part of Bush's coalition, but his victory wasn't so huge that the Republicans can surrender very many votes and still expect to win ..
It's been a fascinating few days, watching today's Republicans grapple with their own internal contradictions. It's been clear now for a while that the religious right controls the base of the Republican party, and that fiscal [leftists] control its spending policy. That's how you develop a platform that supports massive increases in debt and amending the Constitution for religious right social policy objectives. But the Schiavo case is breaking new ground. For the religious right, states' rights are only valid if they do not contradict religious teaching .. Fred Barnes, a born-again Christian conservative makes the point succinctly here: "True, there is an arguable federalism issue: whether taking the issue out of a state's jurisdiction is constitutional. But it pales in comparison with the moral issue."Posted by Greg RansomYou can't have a clearer statement of the fact that religious right morality trumps constitutional due process. Of course it does. The religious right recognizes one ultimate authority: their view of God. The constitution is only valid in so far as it reflects His holy law ..
It is simply amazing to hear the advocates of the inviolability of the heterosexual civil marital bond deny Terri Schiavo's legal husband the right to decide his wife's fate, when she cannot decide it for herself. Again, the demands of the religious right pre-empt constitutionalism, federalism, and even the integrity of the family. When conservatism means breaking up the civil bond between a man and his wife, you know it has ceased to be conservative. But we have known that for a long time now. Conservatism is a philosophy without a party in America any more. It has been hijacked by zealots and statists ..
