The U.S. and its government are founded on a handful of premises that were understood by (nearly) all as positive statements of principle: equality, individual rights including especially the right to vote, the idea of the fairness of representative government, and many others we could name. Really though, we were always aware that these premises were objectives to be striven for, but not fully realized in the original Constitution. For where is the equality in counting blacks as less than whole people, and how complete is the concept of "popular vote" when those same blacks, as well as women, were not permitted to exercise it, or while the people's representatives to the Senate were not popularly elected at all?
Luckily, provision was made for amendment of the Constitution, and as the nation progressed, we gradually, subject always to retrogressive political pressures, progressed, fixing some of the worst political compromises the "framers" left us with.
This truth puts paid to the judicial idea of "originalism," which purports to read in the Constitution exactly what is written there. In what logical world would we seek to reverse course? Or in more contemporary terms, does it really make sense to start undoing rights and freedoms previously recognized as Constitutional?
NO, it does not. Yet the Supreme Court, with its decision on abortion rights, has jumped feet first into a rabbit hole, a leap that could easily lead to the erosion of other recognized rights, even taking us back to the "good old days" when Blacks knew their place and women couldn't vote. Is this what the radical right wing of the current Court wants? Apparently it is. "Originalism" leads to an Alice-In-Wonderland world where the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are perverted from a list of positive rights that a government guarantees, or hopes to secure, for its citizens (as do most constitutions in free countries) into a list of shalt-nots. It's all very biblical, isn't it? That is the problem. The court's right wing has much in common with radical Islamic mullahs.
With this decision, it became clear that the Supreme Court is broken. (Some of us thought that back in 2000.) As NBC news commentator Chuck Todd observed, from now on, everyone is going to see those justices robed in red or blue, not black. And despite the very limited "success" of the gun bill the Senate approved yesterday, the broader picture on the political scene is that Congress is broken too. And the Executive branch? Aah, the executive. It's limping along on crutches under Joe Biden, after having all its legs and arms broken and its skull crushed by Donald Trump. Yep, it's broken too.
It's hard to see what this means for average Americans. Who or what can save the nation some of us still hope to preserve? Those few of us who don't own guns could go out and get one, and we could have a war, but I don't see that happening. More likely we're in for a period of anarchy, when people just do what they want or can, lives their lives, and mainly just ignore politicians and their minions on the Supreme Court. The only thing that may stand now between us and chaos is that much-maligned group known as "bureaucrats," i.e., dedicated civil servants, ranging from mid-grade Justice Department officials to dedicated state- and county-level officers like Arizona's House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who speak the truth to overweening egos. But beware as you vote this fall, the would-be Constitutionoclasts are going full steam to try to replace such people.
Comments