The conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) voided the 49-year-old Roe vs. Wade precedent on abortion this week, despite that fact that “a woman’s right to choose” is supported by most Americans (58 percent in favor, 28 percent against in the latest poll) and the anti-abortion campaign is basically a religious one.
Earlier in the week, the Court also determined that public funds can be used to support religious education, something that the Founding Fathers would be aghast at.
“Separation of church and state” was clearly the intent of the framers of the Constitution; however, this current Court seems Hell-bent to Christianize this Nation and everyone in it, despite the fact that most people do not go to church anymore and the proportion of “non-religious” families has risen three fold in the past thirty years.
The damning thing about the Roe vs. Wade reversal was that the most recent conservative appointees to the Court made it clear in their Senate confirmation hearings, when specifically confronted, that Roe was established precedent. As soon as they were confirmed, however, they quickly changed their tune. This “confirms” the reason why President Trump made these appointments: he needed to mollify his political base and these Supreme Court candidates agreed to do his bidding. The decisions this week were payback for their appointments.
SCOTUS has now taken the place of Congress as the de-facto legislative branch of the Federal government. Nine individuals, with lifetime appointments, are now set to do the work that 100 Senators and 548 Congressmen have failed to do for the past 50 years or so. These justices can now “interpret” anything they want to, for as long as they live, because they are not accountable to the citizens of the United States.
Our new SCOTUS leaders also decided this past week that a State cannot restrict the ability of a citizen to carry a gun.
Just when our country is attempting to heal from the latest mass killing by gunfire of innocent children in Texas, and Congress is attempting to gain some control over the “gun” problem, SCOTUS steps into the fray and gums it up with a clear victory for the National Rifle Association. It’s soon going to be necessary for every man Jack in our country to be strapped with a weapon just to protect himself from all the other nutjobs out there who will be packing heat. If we’ve learned anything in our Nation’s history it’s that the more weapons that are in people’s hands, the more they will be used. Industrialized nations with restrictive gun ownership laws see far less gun violence than we do, as do States like California and New York, which have (or had, up until this past week) the ability to regulate private gun use.
The Second Amendment right to bear arms had nothing to do with protection from common criminals: it had to do with hunting in those early times and the possibility that militias might need to be formed (again) to protect a family or community or State against aggressors (like the British). In 1783, there was no thought given to the eventual possibility that some village teenage idiot could possess an individual weapon (“arms”) that could kill scores of people in a matter of minutes.
It appears that the SCOTUS supermajority is more interested in parsing words than they are in saving American lives, more supportive of the gun lobby to make and sell killing weapons, and less interested in common sense. Supreme Court precedents over the past 240 years have made it clear that those rights we enjoy from our Constitution are not absolute. This particular bunch of conservative Justices seem to want to re-engineer this country back to the Colonial days.
The State of New York gun control law that SCOTUS gutted has been on the books there for 109 years. No previous Supreme Court found any issue with this safety measure. In fact, the supposed right of an individual to bear arms was unheard of prior to 2008, approximately 240 years after the Second Amendment language was adopted for the express purpose of protecting “a well-regulated State militia”. What has changed recently is that the Court has become politicized and the recent decision reflects the control that the NRA has on the Republican Party.
SCOTUS’ recent decisions are conflicting when it comes to conservative principles re: States’ rights. It appears that the Court majority wants States to be able to “do their own thing” when it comes to abortion and public funding of religious education but not be able to craft their own sensible gun regulations. The biggest problem in American society right now remains gun violence. Recent polls suggest that 65 percent of Americans want stricter gun controls while 28 percent don’t. SCOTUS is now saying that States have no power to do anything about the problem.
“What we have here is… failure to communicate!” was the famous quote in Cool Hand Luke. I think this relates completely to what we have going on right now: the “tyranny of the minority”, as writer Max Boot calls it. We have a Supreme Court supermajority that was made possible by the inordinate political power of smaller, Red States. For example, 42 Senators represent 21 States, all of whose population doesn’t exceed that of California, which only gets 2 Senators. Because the smaller Red States wield so much power, they determine who sits on the Supreme Court, even though most Americans don’t live in those States. It was a potential flaw in the Constitution that concerned the Framers back in the day and it has come to pass: a democracy in which the majority does not rule and the ruling minority doesn’t care to listen to the people.
What is going to happen now is fairly predictable: the political demarcation between Red (Republican) and Blue (Democratic) States is going to become even more sharply defined, with Red States being allowed to take draconian steps backward in time while Blue States will take necessary measure to support liberal laws which their citizens support. There will be more and more nasty politics, more domestic terrorism by enraged partisans, and there will eventually be civil strife that may make the BLM/George Floyd fracases seem tame in comparison.
As one comedienne noted this week, “Now guns have more rights than women.”
The SCOTUS decisions this week mark the end of this year’s judicial calendar. It would not surprise me at all to see decisions next year that expand on Red States’ abilities to restrict voting rights, possibly give cover to the responsible parties in the January 6th Capitol Riot, and begin the process of reducing protections for same-sex marriages.
A Supreme Court which is a law unto itself will not stand if most Americans do not agree with their decisions: there will be blood.
The remedy for this is a Congress that does what it is paid to do: listen to all citizens and legislate.
I’m not very hopeful on that score.