Turns out that Lenin never listened to music because it made him too emotional. I had no idea I have something in common with Lenin, of all people.

In a Friday Times essay, two Ivy League professors declared the “broken” and “famously undemocratic” U.S. Constitution “stands in the way” of “real” freedom and democracy, while issuing a call to “radically alter the basic rules of the game” by no longer requiring us to “justify our politics by the Constitution.”

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/08/22/nyt-essay-claims-broken-constitution-stands-in-way-of-real-democracy-n615725

This is precisely why I can’t take seriously Continetti’s belief that the 1/6 riot represented a serious threat to the constitutional order. The protesters had absolutely no power to do anything but break a few windows. They have no champion, whether an individual politician or a political force, to stand up for them. Trump had two weeks to pardon them and didn’t. The NYTimes isn’t interested in publishing their opinions. They control no institutions and no media of mass communication. They don’t own any global corporations, the FBI doesn’t do their bidding, and nobody gets fired or cancelled for disagreeing with them. The two professors in the linked piece belong to a political movement that does have all of this. And that movement can’t shut up about how much it despises the US Constitution.

So who’s a real threat?

Many people on the Right confuse the constitutional order with rules of politeness. The 1/6 protesters were rude and uncouth. They provoke a class-based disgust but nobody dares to say that, so they invent imaginary threats to the constitutional order to avoid saying, “these people look icky.”

The new Arabic instructor from Bahrain was stunned to find out that I know what Bahrain is. This is quite insulting given that I chose her among all the candidates precisely because she’s from Bahrain. I’m a bit of a Bahrain groupie. The Bahraini instructor herself is an Israel groupie who has been learning Hebrew.

This is all quite fascinating.