Kentucky Clerk of Courts Kim Davis has gone to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses, because to do so for same sex couples would violate her religious conscience. There are many on the Right that have said she is wrong to expect to keep her job while choosing to not perform this one aspect of her position. The argument from many on the Right is, "Well it is the law and she must obey it or resign her elected position." They also employ the worn and to oft used platitude, "We are a nation of laws, not men."
Primarily I am in agreement with the ideal expressed in the latter statement above. However, if we claim to be a nation of laws, the most sacred of which is the constitution of the United States, then the "law" that Ms. Davis has violated is opinion and not law. The constitution is very clear that the sole legislative ability in the United States of America is vested in the bicameral body known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. And since those august bodies have passed no legislation which was signed into law by the president respective of same sex marriage, what law then is Ms. Davis violating?
The idea of judicial review breathed to life by Marbury vs. Madison was in the opinion of the defendant in that case (and primary father of our constitution) not in keeping with his understanding of this nation's guiding principle. How much more dismayed would Mr. Madison be today if he could see the representative republic he helped to originate imprisoning one of its citizens for practicing her religious freedom of conscience guaranteed by the very document he helped frame? There is nothing to suggest, even by judicial review, that a Supreme Court decision in one case could bypass the constitutional legislative mandate given to congress in favor of law by fiat.
Think about the tyranny of a government that only needs the opinion of 5 justices to impose their will on a nation. It is a concept that is completely antithetical to the principles of our republic which were so torturously brought into being by the Founders. The whole concept of Supreme Court decisions having the weight of law corrupts the foundations of self-government in which the Founders believed so mightily. And if the deliberative process of congress is bypassed in such a manner, how much easier the road has been paved for tyranny.
If a government is given the awesome authority to impose, not law but opinion, on its citizens, whether elected or appointed official or ordinary citizen, then the nation is no longer a republic but has crossed the line into oligarchy. And if that same government, lead by five lawyers in robes, is given domain over millennia-old institutions of civilized society and the prerogative of God, then we as a nation have certainly left Liberty's stage and are waiting in the wings of oppression and tyranny.
Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Friday, September 4, 2015
Monday, June 29, 2015
The Supreme Court's Overlooked Decision
Lost in the ruckus over the Supreme Court's two major decisions last week, first on continuing ObamaCare subsidies for those who reside in states that did not setup state exchanges, and then changing the millennia-old definition of marriage, a smaller but still relevant decision has been overlooked. The case to which I allude is The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v The Inclusive Communities Project. This case was a blip in some of the Right-Wing media, and you may have heard something about it.
The case stems from tax credits given to developers by the federal government for building low income housing. In Texas these credits are distributed by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. The suit brought against the department by the non-profit, Inclusive Communities Project, alleged that a disproportionate number of the tax credits in question were being given to developers to build low income housing in predominantly black neighborhoods. This, according to the "non-profit," is a form of racism called disparate impact.
Disparate impact, according to Justice Kennedy who wrote the majority opinion in this case, is a form of unconscious prejudice because low-income people (read:minorities) are being kept out of certain neighborhoods by the practice of issuing credits for low income housing only in poor neighborhoods. This of course, in the new twisted world of the Lefts social justice Utopia, is unacceptable. Why should some Americans have access to better neighborhoods simply based on the status of wealth?
This decision by the Supreme Court is another step in the Lefts equality staircase onto which they intend to herd all Americans as a means of transporting them into the cellar of despair and poverty that these kinds of policies produce. Individual Liberty is an enemy to the Left because in their opinion it produces unfair outcomes. Why should some live in better neighborhoods than others, or have more material wealth than others, simply because, in the Lefts opinion, some have won the great lottery of life based on where and to whom they were born?
As a result of this decision by an activist and out-of-control Supreme Court, those who have worked and made good decisions in their lives will be forced to live next door to those who have not. And of course if they move because the value of their property has plummeted and the crime rate has sky rocketed, they will be labeled as racists and bigots. This is the new America of the Left, where the citizenry is equally poor and miserable and ruled by an elite class who spend their days manufacturing rights for disparate groups of "victims" and extracting retribution from hard working Americans, of which the ruling class takes their cut by creating ever bigger government programs.
The case stems from tax credits given to developers by the federal government for building low income housing. In Texas these credits are distributed by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. The suit brought against the department by the non-profit, Inclusive Communities Project, alleged that a disproportionate number of the tax credits in question were being given to developers to build low income housing in predominantly black neighborhoods. This, according to the "non-profit," is a form of racism called disparate impact.
Disparate impact, according to Justice Kennedy who wrote the majority opinion in this case, is a form of unconscious prejudice because low-income people (read:minorities) are being kept out of certain neighborhoods by the practice of issuing credits for low income housing only in poor neighborhoods. This of course, in the new twisted world of the Lefts social justice Utopia, is unacceptable. Why should some Americans have access to better neighborhoods simply based on the status of wealth?
This decision by the Supreme Court is another step in the Lefts equality staircase onto which they intend to herd all Americans as a means of transporting them into the cellar of despair and poverty that these kinds of policies produce. Individual Liberty is an enemy to the Left because in their opinion it produces unfair outcomes. Why should some live in better neighborhoods than others, or have more material wealth than others, simply because, in the Lefts opinion, some have won the great lottery of life based on where and to whom they were born?
As a result of this decision by an activist and out-of-control Supreme Court, those who have worked and made good decisions in their lives will be forced to live next door to those who have not. And of course if they move because the value of their property has plummeted and the crime rate has sky rocketed, they will be labeled as racists and bigots. This is the new America of the Left, where the citizenry is equally poor and miserable and ruled by an elite class who spend their days manufacturing rights for disparate groups of "victims" and extracting retribution from hard working Americans, of which the ruling class takes their cut by creating ever bigger government programs.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
The Downward Slope Of The Gay Marriage Decision
I suppose that somewhere in the hereafter Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Louis Brandies, et al, are smiling at the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage across the country. Not because any of those men were necessarily supporters of two men or two women (or one now supposes any combination of humans) marrying each other, but because they were champions of the progressive agenda. And the progressive agenda informs all its votaries that it is a centralized government that is best endowed to make these decisions for everyone.
The majority opinion of the Supreme Court on the gay marriage decision, written by Justice Kennedy, is long in soaring rhetoric about Liberties and freedom of expressions that are ostensibly guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the United States constitution, and short on any real legal reasoning. As Justice Scalia said in his dissenting opinion, "The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie."
With all due respect to the fortune cookie writers, the pithy and sometimes insightful statements written on thin pieces of paper and crammed into funny looking cookies eaten at the end of a Chinese meal, are a pathetic substitute for the brilliance of the U.S. constitution. And as Justice Scalia rightly pointed out, the 5 justices that ruled in favor of gay marriage being a constitutional right using their twisted and bastardized interpretation of the 14th Amendment assumes that they are wiser and more insightful than all the great legal minds that have existed in this country since that amendment was ratified just after the Civil War.
If we could speak to the dead and poll them, those who wrote the 14th Amendment, and those who supported it, and those who voted to make it a part of this country's great repository of freedom set forth in the constitution, would to a man, woman, and child, without hesitation, say it gave equal protection under the law for blacks in this country. One would be hard pressed to find a single person alive during that period that would agree with these 5 lawyers in black robes who changed the definition of marriage at the behest of a mere 1% of the population.
The forces of tyranny and oppression aligned against this great republic have existed from the beginning. And Abraham Lincoln rightly said that the United States of America could only be destroyed from within. The legalizing of gay marriage, and the slippery slope it greases (a slope that could lead to legalized polygamy, incest, and pedophilia) is just one more thread ripped from the fabric of our greatness. A fabric stitched together with the traditional values of virtue, which is currently being torn asunder by the soulless, moral-less, and vice-ridden beast of modernity.
The majority opinion of the Supreme Court on the gay marriage decision, written by Justice Kennedy, is long in soaring rhetoric about Liberties and freedom of expressions that are ostensibly guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the United States constitution, and short on any real legal reasoning. As Justice Scalia said in his dissenting opinion, "The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie."
With all due respect to the fortune cookie writers, the pithy and sometimes insightful statements written on thin pieces of paper and crammed into funny looking cookies eaten at the end of a Chinese meal, are a pathetic substitute for the brilliance of the U.S. constitution. And as Justice Scalia rightly pointed out, the 5 justices that ruled in favor of gay marriage being a constitutional right using their twisted and bastardized interpretation of the 14th Amendment assumes that they are wiser and more insightful than all the great legal minds that have existed in this country since that amendment was ratified just after the Civil War.
If we could speak to the dead and poll them, those who wrote the 14th Amendment, and those who supported it, and those who voted to make it a part of this country's great repository of freedom set forth in the constitution, would to a man, woman, and child, without hesitation, say it gave equal protection under the law for blacks in this country. One would be hard pressed to find a single person alive during that period that would agree with these 5 lawyers in black robes who changed the definition of marriage at the behest of a mere 1% of the population.
The forces of tyranny and oppression aligned against this great republic have existed from the beginning. And Abraham Lincoln rightly said that the United States of America could only be destroyed from within. The legalizing of gay marriage, and the slippery slope it greases (a slope that could lead to legalized polygamy, incest, and pedophilia) is just one more thread ripped from the fabric of our greatness. A fabric stitched together with the traditional values of virtue, which is currently being torn asunder by the soulless, moral-less, and vice-ridden beast of modernity.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Supreme Court Makes Possible A Tyranny Of The Minority
Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States placed themselves above the law of man by ignoring words in the Affordable Care Act and deciding they did not mean what they clearly stated. Today the Supreme Court of the United States placed themselves above the law of God by finding the non-existent right to gay marriage in the United States constitution in opposition to millennia of culture and civilization, not to mention the laws of nature and God.
It is more than a little coincidental that yesterdays decision was arrived at in part because of the 6 million Americans getting federal subsidies under ObamaCare that may have been removed if the Justices ruled according to the law. In the gay marriage decision today 5 justices decided on their own to change the definition of marriage for everyone based on a potential pool of gay marriage participants that is at most 6 million. This considers that only 2% of the population is gay and that not all of them want to marry anyway.
When Justice Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion that this decision is a blow to democracy, he was not in any way engaging in hyperbole. I have read the constitution many times and have never seen marriage mentioned within its text, let alone gay marriage. The reason is simple; the Founders left those kinds of decisions to the purview of the states. But just like Roe v Wade, the Left could not accomplish its tyranny through legislative means and therefor did so through the court.
Not only has the Tenth Amendment been the casualty of the Supreme Court's decision today (the amendment that clearly states that any powers not specifically granted to the federal government or denied to the states, is to be considered within the authority of the states and the people) but the self-governance of the American people has been as well. When 5 lawyers in black robes can simply overturn the will of the people in one or more states, then our entire system is a fraud and the guiding principle of the American Revolution has been abandoned.
The very basis of our American values and principles being held hostage by a very slim minority is a tyranny just as evil as a tyranny committed by any misguided majority. The Founders of this great nation created the system they did so that the minority would not be oppressed and downtrodden by the majority. Never did they envision a time when less than 2% of the American population could not only put asunder the sacred principles outlined in our founding documents, but reverse the will and sanction of God.
It is more than a little coincidental that yesterdays decision was arrived at in part because of the 6 million Americans getting federal subsidies under ObamaCare that may have been removed if the Justices ruled according to the law. In the gay marriage decision today 5 justices decided on their own to change the definition of marriage for everyone based on a potential pool of gay marriage participants that is at most 6 million. This considers that only 2% of the population is gay and that not all of them want to marry anyway.
When Justice Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion that this decision is a blow to democracy, he was not in any way engaging in hyperbole. I have read the constitution many times and have never seen marriage mentioned within its text, let alone gay marriage. The reason is simple; the Founders left those kinds of decisions to the purview of the states. But just like Roe v Wade, the Left could not accomplish its tyranny through legislative means and therefor did so through the court.
Not only has the Tenth Amendment been the casualty of the Supreme Court's decision today (the amendment that clearly states that any powers not specifically granted to the federal government or denied to the states, is to be considered within the authority of the states and the people) but the self-governance of the American people has been as well. When 5 lawyers in black robes can simply overturn the will of the people in one or more states, then our entire system is a fraud and the guiding principle of the American Revolution has been abandoned.
The very basis of our American values and principles being held hostage by a very slim minority is a tyranny just as evil as a tyranny committed by any misguided majority. The Founders of this great nation created the system they did so that the minority would not be oppressed and downtrodden by the majority. Never did they envision a time when less than 2% of the American population could not only put asunder the sacred principles outlined in our founding documents, but reverse the will and sanction of God.
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