Democrat Scotus Agenda Defending Their Benefits - Road to the Middle Class

RADIO HOST extraordinaire Hugh Hewitt had a grand old time Wednesday making fun of Sen. Barbara Boxer´s (D-CA) remarks about the Roberts nomination. He likes to joke about her limited mental capacity. As a lawyer and a former White House aide, maybe he´s got the right to do so.

But let us be serious for a moment. The advantage of politicians that cannot keep too many thoughts in their heads is that they give us the straight scoop. And Senator Boxer tells us very clearly what she believes and what she fears in the slow conservative takeover of the court.

The first thing to notice is the expansive list of issues that Boxer feels that the Court is there to decide. Said Boxer:

Judge Roberts could go down the same independent, non-ideological road as Justice O´Connor, or he could join with the right-wing block on the Court which has consistently expressed the belief that a woman´s right to choose isn´t guaranteed, nor is the federal government´s ability to protect workers, the environment, and a family-friendly workplace.

Senator Boxer went on to complain that the President had made a “ground-breaking appointment, you know, of a woman, of a minority,” and went on to talk about how young girls used to ask her how they could get to where she was, how they could make it in a man´s world.

Senator Kerry, of course, is smoother. He felt that

the Senate must learn whether [Roberts] has clear consistent principles upholding Constitutional standards like civil rights and the right to privacy in Roe v. Wade.

We know what they want. They want the Supreme Court to defend the high tide of the liberal agenda, at all costs, whatever the American people think, and whatever the American people want.

Some of us believe that the job of the Supreme Court is to decide constitutional questions, and that the big problem with recent court jurisprudence is its appetite for getting involved in issues that are not strictly constitutional. By deciding issues on constitutional grounds it elevates them into constitutional issues, and removes them from the arena of normal legislative action.

Government is a blunt instrument, the agent of force and compulsion. The wise man resorts to government with hesitation. It has turned out that the Supreme Court has become the bluntest instrument in the tool cabinet. Its headline decisions on race, abortion, school prayer, and property rights over the past half century have not settled questions but created new political movements instead. A court decision that aims to make a big splash, especially when it conjures new constitutional principles out of thin air, reflects the decay of the aristocratic branch of government into mere oligarchy. It is not government by the best, but government by the few.

If you want to settle things, have an election.

Some of us believe that this habit of the Court to interfere in political questions is one of the driving forces in the culture war. Some of us also believe that this habit has been a boon to the conservative movement and the Republican Party as each liberal “social gain” decided by Supreme Court fiat has driven a new platoon of Democrats out of the party and eventually into the Republican Party.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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