>>Valley Patriot>> |
The argument, in brief, is that, since the Supreme Court can decide and be the final arbiter of such issues as abortion rights, medical marijuana, and capital punishment, it wields power as great or possibly greater than the President and Congress. Certainly, this immense power justifies any tactics that senators might wish to invoke. Before examining this argument in detail, the reader might want to reflect on the likelihood that our Founding Fathers actually intended such concentration of power in the hands of a few unelected individuals. Did they construct our government with the idea that appointed Supreme Court justices would have greater power over our lives than a president who is elected through a broad democratic process, or than the combined power of several hundred congressmen, elected by large groups of citizens who together comprise the entire country? The answer is obvious: Of course not! What is ironic, is that those very people - yes, I’m referring to modern day liberals - who argue that the Constitution should be a living document, that it needs to be reinterpreted as the times change, and that it must be construed “liberally” to encompass the latest social fads and/or made-up rights, are the same people who are now arguing that the very monster their vision creates is a threat to our freedoms. How odd! Maybe, to render our freedoms more secure, they should reconsider their loosey-goosey view of the Constitution. Don’t hold your breath! What is remarkable is that liberals say they are fearful of appointees who are “strict constructionists” and that judges with this philosophy threaten their rights. But these are the very judges who want to uphold the Constitution and to invoke it as it was intended by our founding fathers. Do liberals think our Founding Fathers incorporated threats to their freedoms in our Constitution? Many – probably most — Americans have lost sight of the role of our Constitution and how it fits into our system of government. Others think its primary purpose was to enumerate our rights. That was not and is not its primary purpose. Still others think the Constitution merely outlines some things the government must do and lists a few things it can’t do … with Congress left to add government programs or new entitlements at will, as long as they don’t directly violate specific prohibitions outlined in the Constitution. Wrong again! If your concept of the Constitution bears any resemblance to any of the above, erase it and start over. Picture the federal government as non-existent prior to the creation and ratification of the Constitution. The government under consideration by the framers didn’t exist and it did not yet have any powers. None! That was the starting point. The Constitution is the mechanism, once ratified, through which the Founding Fathers structured our federal government and then granted to it specific powers. The Constitution is the federal government’s one and only source of power. Unless amended – via the procedure outlined in the Constitution itself – the powers outlined in the Constitution are the only powers it can exercise. It cannot legally or morally exercise any other powers. Any exercise of power by the federal government not granted in our Constitution is, ipso facto, a violation of the rights of the people. An activist Supreme Court ignores this and seeks to replace our carefully drawn Constitution – the model for our government that was agreed to by the people – with the whims of nine unelected justices. Everyone should find the prospect of such a vision of our Supreme Court terrifying. But this is not what terrifies liberal Democrats … it is the opposite that terrifies them. A Supreme Court that properly upholds the Constitution as it was ratified and subsequently amended terrifies Liberals. Why? Precisely because the Constitution’s basic model is: “The government has NO powers other than the following specific powers … .” While these enumerated powers are substantial, they proscribe any exercise of powers beyond those actually listed. When you boil it down, this terrifies the liberals because it limits their power to steal on behalf of their constituencies and to coerce those who don’t want to comply with their wishes. Their ace in the hole is to elevate judges to the Supreme Court who will ignore the plain English intent of the Constitution and interpret it as they wish. In addition to specifying the structure and powers of our federal government, the federal Constitution also does two other things. First, it outlines a set of core rights — the first eight amendments to the Constitution — that the government cannot infringe. One might reasonably ask: “If the federal government was not specifically given the power to infringe these rights, why did they need to be enumerated in the Bill of Rights?” Excellent question. The answer is: justified paranoia. Jefferson and others did not trust the government to stay within the boundaries specifically set out by the Constitution. They wanted, at least with respect to these core human rights, to be unambiguous. In essence they were saying, “Clearly, we never gave you the power to infringe these rights but, in case you get any silly ideas, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!” The debate over the Bill of Rights in the late 1780s centered, not on whether we had these rights, but on whether there was any justification for listing them. The biggest argument against the Bill of Rights was that by enumerating these specific rights – agreed to by all – that other rights, by implication, could be infringed. The purpose of the Ninth Amendment – part of the Bill of Rights – is to protect against this misinterpretation of the Bill of Rights. It says in simple unambiguous terms: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Retained because no power was granted to the government to infringe them … another reminder of the underlying premise of our Constitution. The second thing our Constitution does is make it clear who has dominion over everything else. The last amendment in the Bill of Rights – the Tenth Amendment — makes it unambiguous that everything else is either the prerogative of the states or is a right retained by the people. In other words, except for those powers specifically denied the states in the Constitution, they and the people are in charge … not the federal government. Interestingly, the Bill of Rights was initially thought to only restrict the actions of the federal government and not restrict the powers of state governments. This interpretation prevailed for the better part of 200 years. So, you might ask, if the states were not prohibited under our federal Constitution from violating even the rights outlined in the Bill of Rights, did we not have these rights? Well, of course we did. First of all, human rights are natural rights. They are ours by our very nature … some may say God gives them to us. In any case, they are not given to us by a legal document. The issue, when it comes to rights, is not if we have them, but are they recognized and will governments violate them. A better
question is: If the federal Constitution does not
prohibit the states from violating these rights, why
weren’t the framers concerned that the states might
trample them? They were not concerned, because all of the
existing thirteen colonies had state constitutions …
a few dating back to the mid 17th century; with most of
the rest ratified in 1776 or 1777. Invariably, these
incorporated a list of basic human rights — most
often in a section entitled “Declaration of Rights.”
Modern day liberals are believers in government power … not in real human rights. They want to invent fictitious “rights” that require increases in government power. These made-up “rights”, such as the right to medical care, abortion or housing, are inherently illogical because enforcing them demands that the rights of others be violated. Liberals want carte blanche to expropriate property from some citizens – thus violating one of the most basic of human rights, the right to property – to fulfill the “needs” of others. They want the ultimate power to define the “needs”, to determine who is robbed to satisfy them, and then to manage the resulting robbery and redistribution process. The Constitution is the only thing standing in their way. It is the only protection we have. If the Constitution means anything a judge wants it to mean, then we have no rights; we are at the mercy of unelected judges with lifetime tenure. We must insist that judges put their personal prejudices aside and that they apply the plain-language meaning of the Constitution’s text, resorting to historical documents of the period when necessary. If our courts respect the original intent of the Constitution, we will have the concentrated wisdom of hundreds of years to protect us. If not, we are at the mercy of nine fallible judges and their latest whims. Trust the real Constitution … not a pop-culture interpretation. Our freedoms and heritage are too important and deserve no less. Supreme Court
justices were intended to be and should be judges, not
rulers. *Dr. Ormsby is a member of the North Andover School Committee. He is a graduate of Cornell and has a doctorate from MIT. If you have any questions or comments, you can contact Dr. Ormsby via email: ccormsby@comcast.net *Send your questions
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The
confirmation battle surrounding Judge Roberts to the U.
S. Supreme Court has been elevated to the fever pitch
typically associated with a presidential election.
Exactly this comparison was made recently on a local talk
radio show in defense of any tactics liberal senators
might employ to derail Judge Roberts’ nomination.