Appalling Ignorance and the Fragility of Anti-Tyranny Barriers
"…49% [of voters] said they somewhat or strongly disapprove of the [Supreme Court’s decision on Roe] while 42% said they somewhat or strongly approved… Yet, when asked, “Should abortion laws be decided nationally or left to the states?” Just [sic] 40% said it should be decided nationally, 45% said it should be left to the states…"1
Both of these questions dealt with exactly the same issue, but many people apparently have no awareness of that at all. In fact, we would be willing to bet that most of those polled have no awareness at all of the real issue at stake.
The abortion question as dealt with by the SCOTUS was a question entirely about whether states have the right to decide on abortion for themselves—based on the will of the people as demonstrably voiced by how they vote—or whether a big, overarching federal government gets to dictate policy to the states. The Constitution—which seeks to limit the power of any one body, individual, or majority by spreading it out as broadly as possible—answers that question at least in part via the 10th amendment.
In other words, the SCOTUS ruling was in no way whatsoever a statement on abortion, but a statement on the limited power of the federal government as well as the Supreme Court itself.
The appalling ignorance of our population about our system of government is deeply, deeply troubling. Half of our country has no concept or awareness whatsoever of the principle of limited government—or the dynamics of a tyrannical government or a tyrannical majority, for that matter. By this we do not mean that they don’t realize tyrannical governments and tyrannical majorities have existed somewhere in the past. (In fact, they actually believe they’re living in one now—which we see in their misinformed reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision.) What we mean is that they have no idea historically about how tyrannical governments and majorities come about.
Even many of our own elected officials—who ought to know better given the fact that their careers are in legislation and they swear on oath to protect the Constitution—seem to have no idea of how our system of government is supposed to work. For example, they seem to be completely ignorant of the fact that the federal government cannot sidestep the legislative process by creating unelected boards that dictate policy to the states.
Instead, they are in favor of eliminating all the barriers that prevent them from ramrodding their agenda through with no sense of any of the aforementioned concepts or principles, with no thought to how things could go after they remove all the barriers to tyranny, and with no thought to how things could go once the wind starts blowing in the other direction.
And the reason they’re not concerned with that, of course, because the difference between them and everyone else who’s ever existed is that they know what they're doing.
Today, everyone in the United States has the lawful right—even if not always the social freedom—to criticize the government, the Supreme Court, or any law or official they like (or dislike). By contrast, people do not have that freedom in Cuba, Afghanistan (thanks to a certain sitting president), China, Russia, or dozens of other countries all over the world. If the American people do not re-lean and re-acquaint themselves with the system that gives them that freedom, it is only a matter of time before we find ourselves without it as well.