{"id":3318,"date":"2016-10-21T09:52:11","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T07:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3318"},"modified":"2016-10-21T09:55:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T07:55:34","slug":"legal-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/3318\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal Tyranny"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was taking the piss a bit with yesterday’s post on this idiocy<\/a>, and I think I ought to take it a bit more seriously. \u00a0Let’s consider this again:<\/p>\n

Dr David Adamson, one of the authors of the new standards, said \u201cIt puts a stake in the ground and says an individual\u2019s got a right to\u00a0 reproduce whether or not they have a partner. It\u2019s a big change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u00a0fundamentally alters who should be included in this group and who should\u00a0 have access to healthcare. It sets an international legal standard.\u00a0 Countries are bound by it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A supranational body has basically passed a law determining how taxpayers’ money must be spent without any consultation with the respective governments or citizenry. \u00a0Wars have started over less than this.<\/p>\n

And we have a doctor – who probably considers himself to be of unquestionable moral standing – stating this with the cold, bureaucratic arrogance of a Waffen SS officer informing a village of Belorussian peasants what’s going to happen to all males over twelve. \u00a0Things like this make me think, not for the first time,\u00a0that\u00a0Diderot’s quote<\/a> left off a line regarding doctors.<\/p>\n

But the bigger issue is that the last decade, or perhaps two or three, has seen social change being forced through societies not via the ballot box but top down through the courts. \u00a0More and more often\u00a0we are seeing\u00a0small but determined minorities bullying\u00a0governments into passing\u00a0laws, or interpreting existing ones, which compel the majority to adopt social attitudes with which they clearly don’t agree. \u00a0Governments and their supporters are simply bypassing the political process of obtaining popular support for their policies and simply writing them into law and arresting anyone who doesn’t comply. \u00a0If they can palm this off onto supranational organisations such as the WHO or UN – who have no democratic mandate and have no right\u00a0to pass legislation in any country – then so much the better: they can simply sit back and smugly say “it’s out of our hands, it’s the law”.<\/p>\n

Antonin Scalia’s dissent<\/a> of the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision contained a stark warning regarding this practice:<\/p>\n

Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views. Americans considered the arguments and put the question to a vote. The electorates of 11 States, either directly or through their representatives, chose to expand the traditional definition of marriage. Many more decided not to.1 Win or lose, advocates for both sides continued pressing their cases, secure in the knowledge that an electoral loss can be negated by a later electoral win. That is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative\u2014indeed, super-legislative\u2014power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices\u2019 \u201creasoned judgment.\u201d A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Few people heeded this warning, and we can expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing. \u00a0But sooner or later they are going to overstep the mark badly: one of the benefits of the democratic system, as opposed to a top-down legal tyranny, is that issues can be properly thrashed out and general acceptance obtained from the populace before people start being thrown in jail for non-compliance.<\/p>\n

This won’t end well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was taking the piss a bit with yesterday’s post on this idiocy, and I think I ought to take it a bit more seriously. \u00a0Let’s consider this again: Dr David Adamson, one of the authors of the new standards, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3318"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3321,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318\/revisions\/3321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}