Harvard Prof: COVID-19 is Excuse to Remove Free Speech, Property Rights from Constitution
i think a few of us here have stated this when the lockdowns started.
You know it's bad when Harvard Law professors are backing up exactly what we are saying! For once, I wish I was wrong!
Professor Adrian Vermeule believes that the coronavirus is being used as an excuse to implement marxist policies and remove thing like "free speech ideology" and "property rights" from the Constitution.
Adrian Vermeule, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, recently wrote a piece for
the Atlantic in which he argues that traditional interpretations of the U.S. constitution have “now outlived its utility,” and that it is now time for the government to take a more centralized role in people’s lives.
Vermeule argues that “circumstances have now changed” due to the Chinese virus pandemic, and that it is now possible to imagine “moral” constitutionalism, which he says is not “enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution,” and is also “liberated” from the narrative of “relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy.”
The professor is advocating for a new interpretation of the U.S. constitution, which he refers to as “common-good constitutionalism.”
“Such an approach,” Vermeule said, “should be based on the principles that government helps direct persons, associations, and society generally toward the common good, and that strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate.”
Vermeule also scrutinizes “the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology,” which he says is “forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech,” and therefore, should “fall under the ax.”
The law professor even goes as far as stating that “property rights and economic rights will also have to go,” because they “bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources.”
Vermeule claims that this “global pandemic” makes for the perfect opportunity to implement such strategies that grow government, insisting that “it has become clear that a just governing order must have ample power to cope with large-scale crises of public health and well-being.”
“Constitutional law will define in broad terms the authority of the state to protect the public’s health and well-being, protecting the weak from pandemics and scourges of many kinds,” he added.
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