Cliven Bundy, Larry Klayman, And Absurd Lawsuits
Alexis De Tocqueville studied democracy in the early U.S. more closely than anyone except the slave-owners and morally compromised abolitionists who created it. There’s a pithy quote available from him on almost any aspect of our system, for any occasion. He’s the Hallmark cards of political science.
Among many trenchant insights, De Tocqueville observed that Americans turn politics into lawsuits. As he put it, “Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
As proof of that, look to Brown v. Board of Education on segregation, Roe v. Wade on abortion, and Bush v. Gore on whether the current season of “Veep” prematurely rips the scab off too many terrible memories.
It’s time to amend De Tocqueville, long past time to honor his work by giving his observation currency. Now, it should be, “Scarcely any conspiracy theory bubbles up from the right-wing fever swamp that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a lawsuit against Barack Obama.”
Today’s case in point: Bundy v. Navarro, Reid, Reid, and Obama.