PBS’s Amanpour and Company This is so biased towards the left that, on Tuesday’s program, it was actually said that true conservatism involves opposing conservative policy and the new Dobbs decision.
Hari Sreenivasan was interviewed by Never Trumper Tom Nichols. Atlantic when he asked him to comment on a recent quote of his, “It says, ‘I will root for GOP defeats on policy even where I might otherwise agree with them. The institutional Republican Party must be weak enough so that it can’t carry out the larger project of undermining our elections and curtailing our rights as citizens.” Put that in some context for us.’
The list of sins the GOP has committed is not just related to Trump, “I don’t think they have any faith that they can make anybody else believe it either. And so, their answer is suppress the vote, put — make it harder to vote… And I think their goal is minority rule, less democracy, authoritarian measures that are meant to constrain individual freedom.”
Sreenivasan later turned to abortion. RoePlease see the following: Dobbs, “Well, you mentioned the courts. And you’ve written a long time ago that you thought that the Roe decision was at the hands of an activist court. Now, we speak not long after this. Dobbs decision. And you said that, essentially, now, we have another activist Court.”
Nichols is perhaps best-known as the professor who denounces the distrust in experts. He acknowledged that experts need to keep their tracks, which helped mitigate the lack of trust. However, the PBS expert on Russia/nuclear weapons made an objectively false denial of it on PBS. Dobbs decision.
It started out well enough, “even Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrestled with about the way Roe was decided, that a court in the ’70s said — the Supreme Court in the ’70s said, this somehow should be legal and we are going to figure out why it ought to be legal. And again, when you have even liberal justices saying, yeah, that probably wasn’t the best foundation for creating this right, you know, there is a problem.”
However, Nichols’ argument quickly derailed as he then claimed that Roe being wrong doesn’t matter and wanting to overturn a wrong decision apparently makes one an activist:
On the contrary, in 2022, there were at least three Court members who said that abortion was not something they liked and didn’t pay much attention to how it was decided. We just don’t think abortion should be — we want to give it back to the states knowing, of course, what exactly a lot of the states were going to do with it, and I don’t think that is any better of a reason, especially once you have instituted a right for 50 years that people have woven into kind of the set of rights in America, you know, to simply remove it because the majority now feels confident enough in their own beliefs to do that, I think is dangerous.
They knew that some states would ban abortion. So, what? They have the right. Nichols needs to follow his lead and keep his path.
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The transcript of the July 26th show is available here:
PBS Amanpour and Company
7/26/2022
11:00 PM ET
HARI SREENIVASAN – You’ve got a great quote you want me to look at. It says, “I will root for GOP defeats on policy even where I might otherwise agree with them. The institutional Republican Party must be weak enough so that it can’t carry out the larger project of undermining our elections and curtailing our rights as citizens.” Put that in some context for us.
TOM NICHOLS – I believe the Republican Party is losing its faith in its ability to persuade anyone it sells. The current Republican Party doesn’t stand for anything. Their platform for 2020 was nothing but what Donald Trump said. Their platform was not even written by them.
You know, it was really — if you think about how strikingly authoritarian and cultish that is, because I don’t think they really believe in what they’re selling and I don’t think they have any faith that they can make anybody else believe it either. So, they have a solution. Make it more difficult to vote. Put through laws like the one about to be sent to the Supreme Court. This will allow the legislature to decide who is elected to represent that state’s electoral vote. Their goal seems to be minority rule, less democracy and authoritarian measures intended to restrict individual freedom.
Back during the Cold War, Republicans believed in more freedom and less government than smaller and larger government. Because they understand that they would lose a majority if they had a fair national test, I believe they’re doing it. That’s why I believe they have given up. They’ve given up the hope of winning a majority. They are now going to manipulate voting rules and the courts to prolong this unnatural state of minority rule. That is not only anti-constitutional but also it isn’t democratic and it’s certainly un-American.
SREENIVASAN – You did mention the courts. And you’ve written a long time ago that you thought that the Roe decision was at the hands of an activist court. Now, we speak not long after this. Dobbs decision. As you stated, we now have an active Court. Please tell us how your thoughts on abortion are shaped by you.
NICHOLS : There are two components to this. One is the legal problem that even Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrestled with about the way Roe was decided, that a court in the ’70s said — the Supreme Court in the ’70s said, this somehow should be legal and we are going to figure out why it ought to be legal.
And again, when you have even liberal justices saying, yeah, that probably wasn’t the best foundation for creating this right, you know, there is a problem. However, the Court of 2022 was composed at most three justices who stated that they didn’t care much about the way things were decided.
We just don’t think abortion should be — we want to give it back to the states knowing, of course, what exactly a lot of the states were going to do with it, and I don’t think that is any better of a reason, especially once you have instituted a right for 50 years that people have woven into kind of the set of rights in America, you know, to simply remove it because the majority now feels confident enough in their own beliefs to do that, I think is dangerous.
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