Kevin Williamson of National Review Online highlights an important lesson from the demise of the Biden administration’s bloated spending plan.
The Left loves “the masses” — at least, in theory. As a matter of historical fact, leftist regimes around the world spent most of the 20th century putting “the masses” into camps or intentionally starving them to death or, from time to time, eating them … to make a political point, and they have not done a hell of a lot better in the 21st century. …
… But there are no “masses.”
Not in the United States, anyway. The American people are not an undifferentiated blob of interchangeable individuals or interchangeable communities. Time, mass media, and mobility have ensured that the states are not as different today as they were when the Constitution was drafted, but life in rural West Virginia really is quite different from life on the Upper West Side or life in Echo Park or life in Bountiful, Utah. …
… There is genuine diversity in American life, and the splendid array of American communities and their particular interests matter, irrespective of whether 50 percent plus 1 of the total American voting population says otherwise. Everybody understands this when it is his own interest on the line, and everybody pretends not to understand this when it is some rivalrous interest in question. …
… Protection for this diversity is written into our Constitution, and it informs the fundamental shape and organization of the federal government. No majority, no matter how large, gets to tell you what to teach in your church or what to publish in your newspaper. No majority gets to use the law to single you out because you are black or an immigrant. …
… Senator Manchin has been inundated with claims, many of them suspect, that BBB is overwhelmingly popular with the American people. It may be. But even if it were, it would still be a terrible piece of legislation
