U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:

There is nothing that I more deprecate than the use of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond the absolute compulsion of its words to prevent the making of social experiments that an important part of the community desires…even though the experiments may seem futile or even noxious to me and to those whose judgment I most respect. [source]

And again:

If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job. [source]

Perhaps these quotes could be paraded out to counter the claims by the radical right that the constitution must be amended to prevent civilization from being dragged "to Hell" by the "noxious…experiment" of homosexual marriage. There is a troubling consequence, however, to the claim that government should permit it's citizens to "go to Hell", as it were. After all, it's quite a convenient way to slough off any responsibility for certain programs which are cancerous to society, like the lottery. People who say the lottery is a "tax on people who can't do math" also argue that it's not society's fault if some poor sucker wants to forgo long-term investments and spend his money on liquor and the lotto, and in the process transform both his body and his neighborhood into blighted eyesores. Like Justice Holmes, we can all just shrug our shoulders and say it's not up to us…that's what freedom is all about. While this rings true on an individual level, it isn't quite as clear cut as that when it comes to public policy. For example, the proceeds from state lotteries usually go directly into the educational system. If the schools didn't get this money from the lottery, they'd get it from another source of revenue: probably property taxes. In other words, property owners (who spend an average of $1 per month on the lottery) avoid having tax hikes by soaking the poor (who spend anywhere between $60 and $90 per month on the lottery). Which brings me to my point. It's primary day in Illinois and the only statewide referendum on the ballot is an initiative to raise taxes on the top 2% for the purposes of funding education. Sounds fine, if such a measure would lessen the economic burden that programs such as the lottery are currently placing on the poor. But will that happen? Of course not. If the government gets more money, it will spend it. The solution, I believe, is in constructing ballot initiatives that deliberately shift the burden of social injustice from one group to another (which is all that progressive politics ultimately does anyway), rather than simply constrict or loosen the flow of cash from government to the people, or vica-versa.

UPDATE: The holy grail - a source of tax revenue that rises when the economy collapses.