Michael Kinsley Quotes

The 'takings' clause of the Fifth Amendment is for conservatives what the equal protection clause of the 14th is for liberals.

The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.

It's very easy for liberals and conservatives to agree upon liberty, but it is harder for them to agree upon equality.

Segregation is a very simple constitutional question for me: No classification on the basis of race can be made.

The Constitution requires that Congress treat similarly situated persons similarly

How did the progressive Republican Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower become the reactionary party of Ronald Reagan, the tea party and Paul Ryan? There is nothing random about these ideological shifts. They reflect the party’s — and the nation’s — central unresolved problem: the tension between equality of opportunity and protection of private property.

Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

The Constitution does not demand that you or I buy anything.

The Left has taken over the universities and, increasingly, high schools and elementary schools. It dominates the news and entertainment media. And many judges and courts are leftist - meaning that their decisions are guided by leftism more than by the law or the Constitution.

There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause.

FDR's justices were allies while he was alive, but after he died, they developed four totally different theories of what the Constitution is, two of which are considered conservative and two of which are considered liberal.

I think Democrats often hold the unconstrained vision, and Republicans focus more on the Rule of Law.

Republican presidents talk about freedom. Democratic presidents talk about equality.

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.

... to teach the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property as fundamental to every form of government...to teach the duty of government, to encourage and protect individual and group initiative and enterprise, to foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property, and to preserve the ownership and lawful use of property when acquired.

There are not many countries where a non-citizen with a fourth—grade education can sue the President. That is our great gift to the world. We’re strong enough to say our system can handle it.

That there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities ... on account of race ... but the inhabitants of every race ... shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, and shall be subject to like punishment ... and no other

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental rights of private property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

Our aim is a totally new and just constitutional dispension in which every inhabitant will enjoy equal rights, treatment and opportunity in every sphere of endeavour—constitutional, social and economic.

I am a conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a radical to remove all that is bad.

When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law.

Wherever there are men, there will be parties; and wherever there are free men they will make themselves heard. Those of firm health and spirits are unwilling to cede more of their liberty than is necessary to preserve order; those of feeble constitutions will wish to see one strong arm able to protect them from the many. These are the Whigs and Tories of nature…

The foundation on which all our State constitutions are built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth

No State without its consent shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.