{"id":592179,"date":"2026-04-27T22:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T22:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=592179"},"modified":"2026-04-27T22:25:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T22:25:00","slug":"lets-get-ruthless-bulwarks-bill-kristol-suggests-illiberal-means-are-needed-to-save-liberal-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=592179","title":{"rendered":"“Let’s Get Ruthless”: Bulwark’s Bill Kristol Suggests Illiberal Means Are Needed To Save Liberal Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Let’s Get Ruthless”: Bulwark’s Bill Kristol Suggests Illiberal Means Are Needed To Save Liberal Democracy<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jonathan Turley,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s get ruthless.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Those words are, unfortunately, nothing new in this\u00a0age of rage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In just the last few weeks, various liberal pundits and politicians have been calling for radical and even violent action.<\/p>\n

Even comedian Margaret Cho publicly\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0this week that \u201cwe need a feral, bloodthirsty, violent Democrat.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0these words were reposted by<\/a>\u00a0Bill Kristol, the founder of the Weekly Standard and the current editor-in-chief of The Bulwark.\u00a0<\/em>Kristol was a leading conservative figure in the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

Kristol left the Republican Party and is now a vehemently anti-Trump writer.<\/strong> There are certainly good-faith reasons why some conservatives have broken with Trump on a variety of issues.<\/p>\n

However, the original column was\u00a0endorsing<\/a>\u00a0the Democratic plan to pack the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority to force through a slew of political changes in the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Various Democrats have been pledging to not only impeach Trump (and a long list of other figures), but to pack the Supreme Court as soon as they regain power.<\/p>\n

James Carville declared, \u201cIf the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should\u00a0expand the Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0to 13. F\u2014 it. Eat our dust. Don\u2019t run on it. Don\u2019t talk about it. Just do it.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This Nike School of\u00a0Constitutional Law<\/a>\u00a0is catching on with a wide array of pundits and professors. Just do it.<\/p>\n

Years ago<\/a>, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans \u201cwill never win another election.\u201d However, he warned that \u201cthe Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.\u201d Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.<\/p>\n

Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has\u00a0put packing<\/a>\u00a0the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, \u201c[We\u2019re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years ago, I wrote an academic piece on the possible\u00a0expansion of the Supreme Court<\/a>, but there is a world of difference between that and a court-packing plan. Under my proposal, the court\u2019s expansion would take almost two decades to ensure that no president could pack the court.<\/p>\n

It was not just the company that Kristol is keeping on the issue, or his endorsement of the long-anathema concept of court packing, but also his rationale for the move. Kristol cited the successful Democratic gerrymandering efforts in\u00a0California<\/a>\u00a0and Virginia as triumphs that should now propel the left to pack the Court.<\/p>\n

Kristol\u00a0reposted\u00a0<\/a>the\u00a0call<\/a>\u00a0for court packing from his colleague Jonathan Last: \u201cExpanding the Supreme Court is no different from redistricting in California and Virginia,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>he said. \u201cIt is a proportionate response to Republican attempts to degrade liberal democracy and move America toward a post-liberal order.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Praising governors\u00a0Gavin Newsom<\/a>\u00a0and Abigail Spanberger for their \u201cruthless\u201d leadership in response to Republican gerrymandering, Kristol insisted that Democrats must meet \u201cforce with force\u201d and must now pack the Supreme Court. Being ruthless, he argues, is the \u201conly road to preserving liberal democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is, of course, a considerable difference between altering political districts and packing the courts. Political gerrymandering has been around since the earliest days of the Republic.<\/p>\n

The courts are not the same political fungible units. Indeed, the favorite term on the left is\u00a0\u201cilliberal democracy\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to refer to democratic systems used to curtail rights and weaken checks and balances. Yet this illiberal means is being cited by Kristol as essential to save liberal democracy.<\/p>\n

Liberal justices have spoken out against these calls for court packing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it would\u00a0destroy the continuity and cohesion of the court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cIf anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that \u2014 one side saying, \u2018When we\u2019re in power, we\u2019re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The political districts are precisely that: political. They are part of the two political branches in a tripartite system.\u00a0It is the courts that keep these political branches within their proper constitutional orbits.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was, of course, no movement to pack the court when a series of liberal majorities rewrote major areas of constitutional law in the 1960s and 1970s. These demands from figures like Sen.\u00a0Elizabeth Warren<\/a>\u00a0were only heard when the court began to rule against their chosen outcomes.<\/p>\n

Warren explained that the court had to be packed to bring its rulings in line with \u201cwidely held public opinion<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, Article III was designed precisely to blunt such pressures to rule according to \u201cwidely held public opinion.\u201d The Supreme Court is a counter-majoritarian body that was created to protect rights against the passions or demands of the majority.<\/p>\n

As I discuss in my book, \u201cRage and the Republic<\/a>,\u201d the founders sought to avoid \u201cdemocratic despotism\u201d and \u201cmobocracy\u201d by creating barriers to direct democratic powers. The Supreme Court is essential as a bulwark against such impulse politics. Those pushing for an instant liberal majority would convert the court into the type of partisan judicial bodies seen in states like Wisconsin where jurists are selected to robotically vote for party priorities.<\/p>\n

There is a reason why \u201cruthless\u201d was not an attribute cited by anyone in the\u00a0constitutional convention<\/a>\u00a0to be fostered in our Republic. <\/strong>On the contrary, the system is designed to temper ruthless passions for reasoned debate.<\/p>\n

The court itself may be the ultimate test of the lingering capacity for reason among our citizens. Of course, we can be ruthless and\u00a0tear down our institutions<\/a>\u00a0on the 250th anniversary of our Republic.<\/p>\n

No democratic system is ever immune from self-inflicted wounds. <\/strong>That is why Benjamin Franklin reminded us that this remains our Republic if we can keep it. <\/strong>This year, we can celebrate that Republic, or we can ruthlessly destroy it in a fit of\u00a0blind rage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of \u201c<\/em>Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nMon, 04\/27\/2026 – 18:25<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Let’s Get Ruthless”: Bulwark’s Bill Kristol Suggests Illiberal Means Are Needed To Save Liberal Democracy Authored by Jonathan Turley, \u201cLet\u2019s get ruthless.\u201d Those words are, unfortunately, nothing new in this\u00a0age of rage. In just the last few weeks, various liberal pundits and politicians have been calling for radical and even violent action. Even comedian Margaret… Continue reading “Let’s Get Ruthless”: Bulwark’s Bill Kristol Suggests Illiberal Means Are Needed To Save Liberal Democracy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":592180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-border-security","category-immigration","category-immigration-reform","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=592179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/592180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=592179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=592179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=592179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}