Injustice System - Reason Magazine:
"Reason: You begin your book with the Declaration of Independence and end with the debate over ObamaCare, hitting almost every point in between. Has the government been lying to us all along?
Judge Andrew Napolitano: Yes, the government has been lying to us all along. Think about it. The very same generation—in many instances the same human beings—that wrote “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech” also wrote in the Alien and Sedition Acts just 10 years into the country that you can go to jail if we don’t like what you say...
Reason: You emphasize the role of crisis and war in government lying.
Napolitano: War is the health of the state. That is a self-evident truth. Because in wartime people unite behind whoever the commander in chief is. They part with their wealth more easily. They accept restrictions on their personal behavior. We now know—economists have demonstrated—that none of the rationing during World War II was necessary. That wasn’t done to have coffee or sugar or leather for the soldiers. That was done to keep people at bay, to give them a feeling that they were cooperating in the war effort. Any type of crisis is an opportunity for the government to take liberty and take property and turn those into power for itself.
Reason: You call for judges to be “constitutional activists.” That’s very different from a lot of conservatives, who advocate judicial restraint.
Napolitano: I am not a conservative, I am a libertarian. I believe in the primacy of the individual over the state. I believe in ironclad fidelity to the Constitution and I believe in the Natural Law, that there are areas of human behavior that are utterly and totally immune from government regulation. Just because the majority rules doesn’t mean the majority is right. That’s why we have an independent judiciary. It is to be the non-democratic or even anti-democratic branch of government. Otherwise there would be nothing to prevent the tyranny of the majority from taking our liberty or property just because they wanted it."
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