Supremes Trumped the Left’s Village

Last term a majority of Justices not only “Declared [the Sup Ct’s own] Independence” but their rulings on affirmative action, student loans & free speech “heralded a counterrevolution against the left’s domination of American institutions.”

So says the WSJ editors as they opined: “It is clear now that we are in the throes of a full-scale American cultural counterrevolution, propelled by rising popular opposition to the coercive orthodoxies of a hegemonic left & enforced by a string of impeccable decisions from a Supreme Court intent on reviving the spirit of 1776. Spectacular displays of pyrotechnics from an endangered establishment, increasingly hysterical at the dawning realization of its imminent overthrow, are as entertaining – & ultimately harmless – as any you will witness in the night skies this [or any other national] holiday.”

The High Court’s return to the nation’s founding principles & Rule of Law rather than mob opinion is, of course, long overdue. And, it’s a wonder it took so long. As the editors conceded, the “popular rebellion against the cultural left that has seized so many of the institutions of American life” has unfortunately “enjoyed mixed success at the political level.” Consider, e.g., Trump’s populist rise, fall & possible resurrection. But, as the WSJ waxed on, “since that [anti-constitutional leftist] hegemony was established in large part through half of century of grotesque judicial [as well as executive] overreach, it was likely to be truly overturned only by a judiciary that would finally move to substitute restraint for activism.” In other words, it took a string of decisions by a new conservative majority, made up of common sense & historically honest Justices, to Trump the Village.

Davd Soul