Daily Inspiration Quote by Michael Kinsley

Kinsley’s line is a neat piece of ideological jujitsu: it recasts constitutional devotion as something like a partisan tell. Conservatives, in this framing, don’t just “believe in property rights”; they have a favorite clause, a doctrinal home base that lets them translate moral intuition (don’t let the state steal) into legal necessity. Liberals, likewise, are portrayed as reliably reaching for equal protection to turn a moral intuition (don’t let the state discriminate) into a constitutional command. The joke isn’t that either clause is illegitimate. It’s that both sides can become clause-literalists when a particular part of the Constitution flatters their politics.

The subtext is a critique of selective originalism and selective empathy. Kinsley implies that what passes for principled constitutionalism often looks, under bright light, like a well-lawyered version of “my values, but with citations.” The takings clause becomes a vehicle for skepticism toward regulation, zoning, environmental rules, and redistributive policy; equal protection becomes a vehicle for civil rights expansion and suspicion of majoritarian exclusions. Each can be elevated from one important protection among many into a master key.

Context matters: Kinsley came up in an era when the right’s legal movement was professionalizing and liberals were litigating equality through courts with increasing sophistication. His comparison lands because it’s symmetrical and slightly insulting to everyone. It invites readers to ask not only which outcomes they want, but which constitutional language they’re willing to treat as sacred when it stops being convenient.