Credentialed Nitwit Despises the Constitution (Part I)

An election day admonition from the intelligentsia: The terror is upon us -- you must vote against the fascist Trump.

Our educational establishment, from grade schools through reportedly “elite” universities are infected with left wing activists, whose brains have become so addled with hatred of Trump and all his supporters that they ignore the central reason for their jobs — the education of our most precious resource, our children. This manifests itself in multiple ways. Some are so unhinged by Trump Derangement Syndrome that they literally lose the ability to reason. Others attack and try to obliterate or reshape our history, core civilizational values, and fundamental institutions, among other things. These groups are, as Kamala Harris might put it, depicted by overlapping Venn diagrams.

This is the first of two articles in which I will focus on one highly credentialed “recognized expert on constitutional law.” He is Sanford Levinson, a professor at my law school alma mater, the University of Texas School of Law. As I shall demonstrate in these articles, his writings don’t just demonstrate a lack of analytical reasoning; they show that he despises the U.S. Constitution and wants to scrap it in favor of something more aligned with his modern “progressive” views.

Professor Levinson and his “elite” credentials

Much has been written about the decline of the educational system and its capture by socialists, communists, the DEI crowd, and their ilk. I recently saw examples of this in two articles published in University of Texas publications. The first, discussed below, was an election day screed in the UT Austin student newspaper, The Daily Texan. The second was published the day after the election in the UT Law School quarterly, Texas Law Magazine. Part II of this series will analyze that post-election article.

Levinson, who is the author of both articles, joined the UT law faculty in 1980. Born in 1941, Levinson obtained his undergraduate degree from Duke, his law degree from Stanford, and a PhD from Harvard. According to the UT website, he “has authored approximately 450 articles, book reviews, and commentaries in professional and popular journals.” His credentials include teaching stints at Princeton, Boston University, Georgetown, Harvard, New York University, and Yale law schools.

As you can see, Levinson must be a pretty bright fellow. It certainly sounds as though he is just as qualified as any number of officials filling the ranks of the Biden-Harris regime. So why do I call him a “credentialed nitwit?” Let’s take a look at his election articles to see if that appellation is justified.

Levinson’s election day call to arms in The Daily Texan

On Election Day Levinson sounded the alarm that Trump’s election would destroy democracy. His trumpet was the student newspaper for UT Austin, The Daily Texan. The Daily Texan has an audience equivalent to that in a mid-sized town. It is the newspaper for the entire UT Austin population, which includes 53,000 students. Its readership also includes over 16,000 staff and faculty members, and the families of all.

Terror is on the way

On election day The Daily Texan published Levinson’s “Democracy Is on the Ballot.” He led off with a warning that we all should be terrorized at the thought that Donald Trump might win:

There is one answer to the question of what issue is the most pressing this election cycle: Terror at the threat to what remains of the American democratic experiment should Donald Trump return to office. (All bolded emphasis is mine.)

“Terror” is on the way. Firing squads are sure to follow. Be afraid. Be very afraid. “Nitwit” seems to fit nicely here.

The lunatics in the Republican party (not including Liz Cheney, of course) are going to pack the Supreme Court.

As support for his “you must be terrorized” admonition, Levinson argued that “the entire Republican Party with the all-too-few exceptions of people like Liz Cheney and her father,” support “packing the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, with Trump surrogates”.

This is what now passes as rational analysis by an esteemed law professor.

I could write a lengthy article about the dishonesty in just that one paragraph. It is sufficient here to note that it is the Democrats, such as Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer, who have supported “packing” the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices to 13 or more to ensure a “progressive” majority for decades. They have a variety of reasons why they want to alter the nature of the court, such as their displeasure with the Court’s decision in Dobbs to return the question of abortion to the democratically elected representatives in each state. And “Trump surrogates?” Just who is he talking about and what is the basis for that statement? Is it Levinson’s position that Trump should appoint woke “progressives” or totalitarians such as the previously sainted Merrick Garland instead of justices more in line with Trump’s own thinking? And is he suggesting that if only Kamala Harris were elected, she would not appoint justices sharing her “progressive” views? Nonsense. Levinson cannot possibly believe that. Levinson just wants us to swallow this nonsense as if it is true, when everyone knows it is not.

So those, my friends, are just some of the reasons for fixing the label of “nitwit” on Levinson. He doesn’t believe what he is urging us to believe, and he hopes that we will not notice the dishonesty.

And don’t forget that Trump is a “fascist.”

And, of course, no article by any self-respecting “progressive” such as Levinson would be complete without a comparison to the nazis or fascists:

Donald Trump is in many ways a fascist, even if he is certainly not so bad as Adolf Hitler. But he has basically the same contempt for any semblance of truthful analysis or argument and the same commitment to a particular “volk” within the polity.

Levinson understands that Trump has not and will not put even a single Jew into the ovens. So he is forced to acknowledge that Trump doesn’t rise to the level of Hitler. But if Trump is not a nazi, Levinson is sure that he is a fascist. How much of a fascist? Well, “in many ways”!

And what’s with the “volk” reference? This is a clear attempt to compare Trump supporters to the German folk who supported Herr Hitler. So, Levinson’s oh-so-careful analysis is comparing Trump’s commitment to people who want to make America great again, to these volk:

Photo Credit: U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Scherl Bilderdienst

This is what passes for serious commentary by this esteemed constitutional scholar. Yes, “nitwit” seems appropriate.

Vote against the dictator, for God’s sake!

Levinson concluded by imploring the 53,000 members of the UT student body and the 16,000+ staff and faculty to “vote as if their futures depend on preventing the fascist takeover of the White House and the unrestrained exercise of the remarkable, even ‘dictatorial,’ powers.”

There he goes again. The fascists are coming! The fascists are coming! Levinson really, really means it. It is easy to toss around such insults, but does Levinson have any idea what fascism is or who might be a fascist? Nothing in his article suggests that he does.

“Fascism” defies a “black letter law definition,” but key markers include these:

• A synergistic or symbiotic relationship between a central government and corporations or businesses.

  Has Levinson considered the relationship between the Biden administration, including the DOJ and the FBI, and the various social media and tech companies? Who knows?

• Demonization of domestic enemies.

  Where to begin? Let’s start with calling political opponent fascists, nazis, and dictators. Does that qualify as demonization? If so, then Levinson’s article itself qualifies as fascist propaganda. And, to state some of the obvious examples, add the constant demonization and attempts to bankrupt and imprison former President and candidate Donald Trump. You could think of many other examples, including the pro-life religious demonstrators prosecuted under RICO as “organized crime” gangsters, grandmothers with no criminal history thrown in solitary confinement and held without trial because they wandered through the capitol on January 6, and on and on ….

• Promotion of disinformation and contempt for the truth.

  Gads! How many can you count? How about just these: The border is secure; the Afghanistan debacle was a great success; the false representations about the efficacy of Covid inoculations (if you get one you cannot either get or transmit Covid); the fraudulent “science” of mandated masking and social distancing; the made-up need to close businesses and separate families from dying loved ones; the fraudulent letter by 51 intelligence agents promoting the notion that Hunter’s laptop was a Russian plant; that inflation was just a temporary phenomenon; the repeated lie that the inflation rate was 9% when Biden came into office; Biden’s claim that “We have created a record 12 million new jobs;” the many times Biden said that he would not pardon Hunter, and on and on ….

As I wrote early in Biden’s and Harris’ term, if they will lie about Biden’s dog biting people, is there anything they won’t lie about? Obviously not.

Stay tuned.

In his election day article in The Daily Texan, Levinson also set up his next proposal that would be published the next day, warning everyone that “the Constitution itself is radically defective.” Stay tuned for it in Part II.