With behavior that makes Chutzpah look like a wallflower, Liberals and other Democrats shriek that the current President is plotting to seat judicial activists on the federal courts. Can any honest person deny that this charge is both a lie and a blatant act of projection on the part of those who are the greatest lovers of that abomination called judicial activism?
“Abomination,” too strong a term? Actually, it’s not strong enough. Listen to what Washington says about constitutional democracy: “But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people [italics mine], is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”
“Obey the established government.” Now that’s a concept abhorrent to all who can’t stand democracy when it stands in their way. And let’s be clear; judicial activism is nothing more than another expression of the human capacity for dictatorial impulses, whose source Washington spoke of when he argued for strict separation of power among the branches of government, warning of “that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart.”
With Washington’s profound truth in mind, let us begin an analysis of the Liberal/Democratic lie with a definition of judicial activism. Simply put, judicial activism argues that a judge may rightly substitute his or her conscience (his or her “religion,” if you will) for the “Constitution which at any time exists.”
From that dictatorial assertion, logic dictates the following conclusions: Judicial activism denies that language can convey objective meaning. It rejects Washington’s idea that legitimate law is established only by an “explicit and authentic act of the whole people.” It rejects the constitutional principle of Federalism and the concept of Jeffersonian Democracy, thus denoting its adherents as regarding the “whole people” (Liberals and Friends, of course, excluded) as ignorant slobs.
With those ugly facts in mind, we return to the mindless assertion that people who believe there is such a thing as a “Constitution [and other law] which at any time exists” are themselves “activists.” Let’s examine this lie by taking a look at how Liberal judicial activism works at the level of the Supreme Court.
In the absence of “explicit and authentic” language in the Constitution and in contradiction to the actions of those who wrote and implemented that document, Liberal activist justices search their personal beliefs to “discover” numerous constitutional rights and prohibitions, for example, the “right” of a criminal, even one convicted of the most heinous of crimes, to be treated equally with other citizens in need of organ transplants or the “prohibition” against the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance because it violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. When judicial activists make such “discoveries,” choice is dead as their decision becomes law for the entire nation, law that can be changed only through the extremely difficult process of amending the Constitution.
But what happens when Supreme Court justices rule that when the Constitution does not speak explicitly about a topic, decisions regarding it are left to the states or “the People” as the Founders put it. What happens is that the People of the states can exercise choice regarding the issue by passing state-wide laws (including changes to the state constitution) or laws that allows citizens of the state’s municipalities to make their own choices.
Does this respect for the Founders’ intent constitute “activism” based upon a judge’s personal beliefs? How can it when it rejects the notion of the judge as a dictator and accepts the principle of Federalism, a principle explicitly expressed by the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Indeed, people who read the Constitution and who understand the tenets of judicial activism immediately grasp the profound difference between the judge who respects the rule of law and the “activist” dictator-judge.
“Dictator-judge”? Honest, truthful people will not quibble about the word “dictator” as the correct word to describe activist judges; for they are aware of the long, sordid history of the dictatorial impulse which impels some humans to use force to substitute their personal beliefs for legitimate law. They understand that this dictatorial impulse underlies the long list of Liberal activist judicial decisions which have shocked the nation for the past half century. They also understand that the same impulse drives Liberal activist judges to support some of their decisions by pointing to judicial decisions made by courts of other nations.
Robert Bork exposes this latest outrage perpetrated by Liberal activist judges in Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide View of Judges, a book in which Bork points out that as early as 1989 Justice William Brennan dissented in a capital punishment case, citing the rejection of capital punishment “throughout the world.” The book also reveals that current Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has written an opinion with references to “useful decisions” made by the Privy Council of Jamaica, the Supreme Court of India, and the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe.
Can this latest affront to the Constitution represent Liberal judicial activism’s last straw? The reality of human nature tells us that the question is merely rhetorical. But whether we regard one judicial activist straw or ten thousand, all of us who believe in constitutional democracy find the term “judicial activist justice” a rank oxymoron. That is why we ask our fellow Americans to join us in opposing Liberal judicial activism. We ask them to join us in rejecting the lie that judges who rule in accordance with the Constitution’s language are “activists.” Finally, we ask them to join us in condemning the very notion of judicial activism as a poison to American constitutional democracy for the following reasons:
We believe that individuals “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” one of which is the right of political equality, and therefore condemn judicial activism for its rejection of the idea of democracy as provided for in the Constitution.
We remain devoted to the integrity of the Constitution and its insistence upon separation of powers and therefore construe an act of judicial activism as an impeachable offense.
We view human nature honestly and maturely and therefore recognize that judicial activism, like any other dictatorial entity, possesses an appetite for power as insatiable as that of the wolf of Dante’s Inferno, who “after eating is hungrier than before.”
We strive to pass on the American Dream better than we received it and therefore join the battle to end the reign of terror promulgated by Liberal judicial activists, acknowledging the fight as the most important contest of the Culture War, a war on American society begun by Liberals half a century ago.
We humbly accept the idea that principle ought to rise above all else and therefore perceive activist judges as gluttons groveling for power and thus find them akin to the gluttons of Dante’s hell, all of whom spend eternity worshipping the materialism which sated their earthly appetites, condemned to lie prone in a “filthy mixture” of earth, above which shines no sun, glows no sky, sparkles no star, beckons no heaven.
Copyright by A.J. DiCintio
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