On the flag-burning issue, we are hearing a lot about the fact that such laws are "unconstitutional."

Well, such laws became "unconstitutional" only when the Supreme Court decided in the 1980s that flag desecration laws were unconstitutional.  Believe it or not, but most people thought prior to that decision that such laws were constitutional, and, in fact, such laws were enforced.

While it is awesome to see liberals now embrace the value of stare decisis, that has not always been the case, i.e., 30 days ago.  Lest we forget that point, let us all reflect on noted liberal Constitutional Law Professor Mark Tushnet's rant from May of 2016, when he was licking his chops at the prospect of lining up social conservatives and shooting them in the back of the head:

" A jurisprudence of “wrong the day it was decided.” Liberals should be compiling lists of cases to be overruled at the first opportunity on the ground that they were wrong the day they were decided. My own list is Bakke (for rejecting all the rationales for affirmative action that really matter), Buckley v. Valeo (for ruling out the possibility that legislatures could develop reasonable campaign finance rules promoting small-r republicanism), Casey (for the “undue burden” test), and Shelby County. (I thought about including Washington v. Davis, but my third agenda item should be enough to deal with it.) Others will have their own candidates. What matters is that overruling key cases also means that a rather large body of doctrine will have to be built from the ground up. Thinking about what that doctrine should look like is important – more important than trying to maneuver to liberal goals through the narrow paths the bad precedents seem to leave open."

Now, as a result of our experience in dealing with liberal totalitarians of this sort, I have a greater appreciation for freedom of speech, but what do we do when the wheel turns and these kinds of people are back in power?  Do we simply apply our principles now and then let them apply theirs when they have power, and thereby experience the gradual ratcheting toward a left totalitarianism?

I never thought that the Republic would fall, or free speech would be substantively burdened by flag desecration laws. I always thought that Americans needed a symbol that was outside of politics to rally around.  I also have noted that in the last thirty years, the left elite has been fine with mocking the symbols of the average American while demanding that its own sacred things be off limits and shielded with safe spaces and speech codes.

I think tearing down the left's carefully constructed system of things that cannot be desecrated might be the best option, but listen to the screams when that happens.

This is the Catholic-Wedge Strategy that I described in the 2012 election.

The idea was to take a Catholic distinctive, i.e. contraception, and define it as an insane, anti-American position, such that Catholics would have to choose between being  (liberal) Americans or part of a ghettoized, stigmatized minority.

As a student of history, I recognize this as the same dynamic at work in Germany prior to and during the rise of National Socialism.

Infiltrating and splintering Catholicism with false fronts is equally a tool used by Totalitarians of all stripes.

This is absolutely antithetical to American tradition and democracy.

//WHEN RELIGIONS COLLIDE: Clinton campaign spokeswoman takes shots at Catholics, evangelicals in leaked email exchange.

Related: “To repeat, the head of Clinton’s campaign has been organizing to fracture a major religion. Clinton claims to be for all Americans… what if Podesta had created organizations to foment ‘Revolution’ among the American Muslim community? Would that be worthy of dismissal?… how much of his plans to fracture Catholics did Podesta share with Hillary as a campaign strategy? Does she agree with his strategy now?”

Thou shalt have no other gods before Progressivism.//

From the source cited in Instapundit: 

//The new Wikileaks dump from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta’s emails reveals that Podesta created a couple of activist groups for the sake of undermining the Catholic bishops and the Church’s authority.

In the 2011 e-mail chain, a progressive activist named Sanford “Sandy” Newman e-mailed Podesta to suggest collaboration on a way

There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.

Newman, who is Jewish, concedes that he doesn’t know much about the Catholic Church, but he sure does want somebody to undermine the hierarchy:

Even if the idea isn’t crazy, I don’t qualify to be involved and I have not thought at all about how one would ‘plant the seeds of the revolution,’ or who would plant them.”

Not to worry, said Podesta, who is Catholic, and who was at the time head of the Center For American Progress. They have progressive front organizations prepared to act when the time is right:

We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.//

Catholics have been complaining about Liberal Totalitarianism for at least four years.

Today, we have the smoking gun.

Because modern liberalism - the liberalism that is not about limiting government powers - is totalitarian, it does not have any limits in it quest to bring about equality in the elements of society that it defines as paramount.

The WSJ on the Civil Rights Commission's recent report:

//Mr. Castro’s contribution, by contrast, is so bad it’s good. For he confirms that the progressive argument is mostly about insulting Americans with differing views.

The commission report is called “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling nondiscrimination principles with civil liberties.” Its top finding is this: “Civil rights protections ensuring nondiscrimination, as embodied in the Constitution, laws, and policies, are of pre-eminent importance in American jurisprudence.”

Translation: Nuisances including the First Amendment’s “free exercise” of religion guarantee take a back seat to the rapidly multiplying non-discrimination causes such as the “right” to coerce any baker you want into baking the cake you want for your same-sex wedding.

In her own submission to the report, the commission’s Gail Heriot pinpoints the flaw in the finding. A University of San Diego law professor, Ms. Heriot says she could easily imagine a case for Mr. Castro’s position. But instead of an argument, she says, the commission offers a decree.

“By starting with an assertion that antidiscrimination laws are ‘pre-eminent,’ she writes, “the Commission’s analysis essentially begins with its conclusion. Why should anyone accept it? The Commission said so.”//

And:

//In Mr. Castro’s world, those who dissent from the prevailing pieties are deemed unfit for the public square . . . the judgment of federal agencies substitutes for Congress . . . and Justice Anthony Kennedy is free to take his own private mystery of the universe and impose it on the nation by unearthing constitutional rights unmentioned in the Constitution at the expense of the rights that are.

What does it mean for the election? Plainly Mrs. Clinton stands with Mr. Castro on this ahistoric and unconstitutional reading of rights. Even poor Gary Johnson, who embarrassed himself on television when he seemed to have no idea what Aleppo was, has come out against religious liberty—suggesting he understands even less about libertarianism than he does about Syria.

And Mr. Trump? No one would ever confuse Donald Trump with Reinhold Niebuhr. Yet even with his ambiguous stands on where gay rights begin and end, Mr. Trump seems unlikely to people his administration with Martin Castros bent on coercion.

In the meantime, we’re left with this: The melancholy spectacle of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issuing a report trashing the first civil right enumerated in the Bill of Rights.//