Klein isn’t alone. Others, like Harvard’s Ian Samuels, are more straightforwardly partisan, proposing that the next Democrat candidate promise to add six justices to the Supreme Court to neutralize the power of the textualists and create a progressive court. He’s not alone. Although the Constitution doesn’t stipulate the number of justices needed, and Democrats are free to make such promises if they like, you’d think liberals would have learned their lesson during the Obama years.

The real anxiety driving liberals is the reality of President Trump getting another Supreme Court justice, the kind of nominee any conservative president would likely have picked. This person will presumably help constrain progressive policies because many of those policies rely on coercion and unconstitutional intrusions into personal freedom. Maybe it’s not the system that’s broken, but rather rather the Left’s agenda.

The arrogance of the age — maybe every age — is that intellectuals believe, by default, that they’re smarter, more moral, and more evolved than those who came before them.