Judicial Despotism

Whenever we think that the left has already gone completely off the deep end and simply can’t get any more preposterous, they prove us wrong. According to Reuters, a San Francisco school has decided that the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional because it refers to God. But the San Francisco censors have missed a few other documents that also refer to God, and thus must also be banned:

• The Mayflower Compact;

• Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation;

• John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address (that speech, which includes “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, began by observing, “the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God”);

• Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech (no less than four references to “God”); and

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Seneca Falls Declaration” on women’s equality (seven references to “God” and the “Creator”).

And we can’t leave out the Constitution itself which, by San Francisco “logic”, is also unconstitutional, since it closes with the words, “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven…”.

But never fear – there remains one historical document that the San Francisco banners won’t have to censor, for it contains not a single reference to God, and thus it should be deemed entirely appropriate for educating the youth of California. After all, many of our schools already teach its principles, and many “liberal” parents endorse its ideology. That would be the Communist Manifesto.

Left-wing bigots have taken Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and State” to absurd levels. That isolated phrase is relentlessly misused to expunge any reference to religion whatsoever from America’s public square. It would probably shock those who rely on Jefferson for a complete “separation” to learn that Jefferson himself, in fact, expected no such thing. From a July, 2000, exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution called Religion and the Founding of the American Republic comes the following (documented by contemporary diaries):

“It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and of James Madison (1809-1817) the state became the church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives. [emphasis added] Madison followed Jefferson's example, although unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to church in the Capitol, Madison came in a coach and four. Worship services in the House – a practice that continued until after the Civil War – were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.) As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a ‘crowded audience.’ Throughout his administration Jefferson permitted church services in executive branch buildings. The Gospel was also preached in the Supreme Court chambers. [emphasis added]

Jefferson's actions may seem surprising because his attitude toward the relation between religion and government is usually thought to have been embodied in his recommendation that there exist ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ In that statement, Jefferson was apparently declaring his opposition, as Madison had done in introducing the Bill of Rights, to a ‘national’ religion. In attending church services on public property, Jefferson and Madison consciously and deliberately were offering symbolic support to religion as a prop for republican government.” [emphasis added]

To which our modern left-wing extremists would probably say, “Those red-state ignoramuses (Jefferson and Madison were both from Virginia, after all) don’t know what the Constitution and Bill of Rights really mean”. Today’s brilliant left-wing academicians and jurists know better, of course. Madison is known as the ‘Father of the Constitution’, but what does he know about what he intended?

Compare the use of the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court chambers for prayer (endorsed by Jefferson, Madison, and every president “until after the Civil War”) to today’s ACLU lawsuits seeking to ban the use of public school buildings and military bases by the Boy Scouts because they believe in God, and to the ACLU’s (largely successful) attempts to expunge religious symbols from public parks and buildings, and it becomes abundantly clear what anti-constitutional extremists the left and the ACLU have become, and how much they have perverted the fundamentals of the founding of this nation. Consider the following words of a gentleman who would no doubt be labeled a right-wing extremist by today’s left – George Washington:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens. … Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the Oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure – reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. 'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

During the recent election and after, we saw a level of left-wing intolerance and bigotry that startled many people; because over the past roughly 40 years, liberals have worked hard to conceal the hard-left turn taken by their ideology. That ideology now hates this country and despises the ideas of liberty and individual rights, and that ideology has taken over the Democrat Party. Group-think seeking to destroy anyone who dares to think for himself, totalitarian collectivism in servitude to the almighty State – these are what motivates the left. But during this election and after, the left revealed their true character.

Similarly regarding religion, they can’t cover up the truth any longer. Contrary to their dissembling rhetoric, the left’s assault on religion is not about respect for the Constitution; it is an assault on the very principle of tolerance – “free exercise” – for all religion. Nor is it about that mythical “separation of church and state”. As other totalitarians before them recognized, religion presupposes an authority higher than the State; thus the very existence of religion itself poses a mortal threat to leftists who seek to elevate the State up as the highest authority.

As proof that the Constitution is irrelevant to the left, a former Appeals Court judge and professor of Constitutional law recently wrote that judges should “interpret the Constitution as a living document, subject to change”. If a judge doesn’t like what the Constitution says, no problem – he can simply change it to his own liking. So who needs the Constitution when we have judges prepared to substitute their own ideas? This sort of judicial arrogance isn’t new, of course. But it is long past time that we, as a free, self-governing people, decided to do something about it, as Thomas Jefferson recommended:

“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” – Thomas Jefferson (1820)

“[How] to check these unconstitutional invasions of... rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift.” – Thomas Jefferson (1821)

Just as it is time we recognize that we are in a war for survival against a deadly enemy, and begin to take seriously – and prosecute – acts of treason that give aid and comfort to the enemy; it is also time we took seriously the threat to self-government posed by judges who substitute their personal ideology for the Constitution and the will of the people. Following a strong warning by Congress, impeachment proceedings should be initiated against judges who overthrow the Constitution and “reinterpret” it as they please. It wouldn’t take more than a few judged removed from office before the rest of the judiciary gets the message that in this country, it is the people, not judges, who rule.

The above article is the property (copyright) of Kim Weissman, and is reprinted with his permission.
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