Human-rights victories must be fought for over and over again
Dare we hope?” That was the rather plaintive response of a man on Twitter when news broke that Kansas voters had rejected an attempt to remove the right to abortion from their state constitution. We are talking about a fire-engine-red state. It went for Donald Trump in 2016 and repeated the error in 2020. In fact, Kansas has supported only one Democratic presidential candidate — Lyndon Johnson — in over 80 years.
Yet, that same Kansas just voted to preserve abortion rights. And at 59% to 41%, it wasn’t even close.
“Dare we hope,” indeed. Dare those of us who think an ideological and illegitimate Supreme Court committed judicial malpractice when it overturned Roe v. Wade take the vote as a reason for optimism that women’s rights to control their own reproductive future might yet be preserved? You can’t blame people for being hesitant. This has been a brutal season for progressive values.
Voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, even contraceptive rights . . . somehow, it’s all once again up for grabs. And people who fought and won those fights are understandably exhausted at the idea of having to do it all over again. A recent poll by the Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University found that, while 65% of Americans disapprove of the court’s decision, supporters of abortion rights are far less likely than opponents to vote in this fall’s midterm elections.
Which underscores how deep and abiding is their fatigue.. Through its willingness to smash the rules, both written and unwritten, the Republican Party has managed to dispirit better than half the electorate. Like apartheid South Africa, they have made the majority seem politically irrelevant.
But if they really are irrelevant, then how do you explain Kansas?
The problem with progressives is that many have forgotten the need to fight for the long term. Consider that the right-wing battle to overturn Roe started almost 50 years ago and the battle to curb African-American voting rights took about as long. Yet progressives are disappointed because they turned out in record numbers in a single election two years ago and don’t yet have everything they wanted? Indeed, a few months ago, one talk-show host pleaded for liberals to show up at the polls, but apologetically compared hearing such appeals to eating ground-up glass.
Poor babies. Conservatives spent half a century not getting what they wanted on abortion rights. Yet, one struggles in vain to recall when anyone ever had to beg them to vote, much less apologetically. They seem to understand what progressives often don’t. Which is that human-rights battles — and reproductive freedom is certainly one of those — are not like baseball games where final victory comes with the last out. Humanrights victories must be safeguarded and preserved or else they are subject to being overturned. The good news is that the same goes for human-rights defeats.
For what it’s worth, the victors in Kansas say they won that battle by knocking on over 60,000 doors, making over 600,000 phone calls and raising over $6.5 million.
So, dare we hope their victory has meaning? Well, that depends on where we go from here.
If progressives knock on enough doors, make enough phone calls and raise enough money?
If we finally accept that rights are never fully won and must always be defended?
If we are resilient and tough over the long haul? If we vote?
Then, yes. We dare.
Popping up across Florida these days are T-shirts and hats celebrating the free state of Florida, suggesting “Make America Florida.”
Yet California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom has opposite notions. He wants to impose the California Way on all of America. He has run the almost comically tone-deaf ads here in Florida. If Newsom has his way, he would “Make America California.”
Former White House aide Michael Anton once described California as “the greatest middle-class paradise in the history of mankind.” California has since experienced a flood of economic and political refugees fleeing the growing challenges of sustaining businesses or finding affordable food and housing — or even safe drinking water.
In 2021 alone, 360,000 people participated in the “California Exodus” — not just to Texas and Arizona but, in the irony of all ironies, even to Mexico! Gas prices in California are close to $6 a gallon, running more than $1.50 a gallon above the national average. This fuel cost burden is on top of regular rolling blackouts despite massive energy resources. (California has America’s third highest oil reserves.)
DEMOCRATS IN CONTROL
California has been in Democratic control for nearly two decades (no Republican has been elected to a statewide office since 2006) and leftists have put in place a state driven, commandand-control economy. During that time, California turned from — in the words of Elon Musk, who moved Tesla headquarters to Texas — a “land of opportunity” to “the land of taxes, overregulation and litigation.”
The Pacific Research Institute notes California has the most regulatory restrictions — per George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, 396,000 of them — and the worst environment for litigation, according to American Tort Reform Foundation rankings, with more than 200,000 jobs lost to legal abuse per year by one reckoning.
There is an enduring image of California’s obtrusive COVID crackdowns, contrasted with Newsom’s unmasked feast with friends in a posh Napa eatery, all the while police were enforcing COVID restrictions by tackling a lone surfer far from shore. Personal liberty was surrendered and personal prosperity was lost in the name of safety and the good of the collective.
California demanded that its citizenry surrender individual freedoms for a centralized authority pursuing idealist (socialist) notions that would provide all citizens with (a false sense of) safety.
Instead, that surrender of personal liberty as well as the loss of personal fortune led inexorably to Winston Churchill’s definition of socialism: the equal sharing of misery.
The enticing waters of collectivism have led to crumbling infrastructure, exploding poverty, record homelessness and the deprivation of basic human rights and freedoms, including extreme challenges to personal safety in the face of increasing lawlessness, in a one-party state. California is following the downward path that South Floridians from Venezuela and also Cuba know all too well.
Beyond the Left Coast’s economic woes, the real irony of Newsom’s ad campaign is its attempt to compare Newsom’s California to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida. The California Way supports state-dictated indoctrination of school children as opposed to Florida honoring parental prerogative, particularly when lecturing 5-year-olds on racial privilege or sexual identity.
SCHOOLS CLOSED TOO LONG
California has kept schools closed so long getting students back to class has been challenging (a quarter of students in San Francisco are still chronically absent). Florida kept schools open and student achievement is quickly rebounding. California is now reducing educational choice for parents with excessive regulation resulting in an actual decrease in a once robust charter school movement. They have opted instead to give more power to state run school boards empowering bureaucrats. On the other hand, Florida continues to encourage educational options and empower parents.
While Florida has been ranked first among states to open a new business, California has seen businesses the likes of Walgreens and even Starbucks closed due to high, unprosecuted crime. Businesses thrive when basic freedoms are protected. There can be no freedom when it is impossible to walk safely, even during the day, in some neighborhoods. The streets of once-great cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles are now overrun by violent crime, theft and homeless tent cities, despoiled by needles and piles of human excrement.
While our state leadership in Florida is fully supportive of law enforcement, the California Way has created lax enforcement and soft prosecution leading to rampant crime. The effect is the loss of the most fundamental liberty, as once described by Justice William Douglas: the simple “freedom to walk, stroll…” through a city street after dark.
The choice is clear: the California Way or, as the slogan says, “Make America Florida.” At some point, the rest of America will undoubtedly join this debate.
Edward J. Pozzuoli is the president of the law firm Tripp Scott, based in Fort Lauderdale.