Stop right there. I wanna know right now, before we go any fur­ther. Do you love me? Will you love me forever?

The coun­try is in cri­sis. Faced by the worst eco­nomic dis­as­ter in two gen­er­a­tions, a new Pres­i­dent with a clear man­date for change rams through a set of con­tro­ver­sial eco­nomic reforms.

Many Amer­i­cans oppose the changes. Fear­ful of change, call­ing the Pres­i­dent a Social­ist or Com­mu­nist or worse, they sue. The first of the eco­nomic reform bills make their way to a Supreme Court that is much more con­ser­v­a­tive than the Pres­i­dent. Just months after a tri­umphant inau­gu­ra­tion, still in his first term, the President’s plans are in dis­ar­ray, thanks to a series of adverse Supreme Court rulings.

The Pres­i­dent lashes out, tak­ing what mea­sures he feels are nec­es­sary to save his key­stone eco­nomic pro­grams. He openly crit­i­cizes the Court, and the imme­di­ate push­back ignites a polit­i­cal firestorm. A polit­i­cal observer, Jeff Shesol, notes: “He didn’t think there was any­thing in the Con­sti­tu­tion that pre­vented him from doing what he needed to do. The prob­lem as he saw it was not the Con­sti­tu­tion; it was the con­ser­v­a­tives on that par­tic­u­lar Supreme Court.”

As George San­tayana, much beloved of con­ser­v­a­tives, famously said, “Those who can­not remem­ber the past are con­demned to repeat it.” The above events are not cur­rent — and yet they are. (more…)