A Crucial Constitutional Appointment

By

       M. Richard Maxson

      Many modern-day Americans have been duped by the Progressives into accepting a European-style march toward Socialism and because of decades and decades of statist propaganda in our primary schools and universities, in media, and directly from the government, younger Americans fail to appreciate the rich legacy of personal liberty that is everyone’s birthright and is expressly articulated in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The thing which defines what an American is – is an idea - liberty.

      We don't teach the basics of this great country anymore and by not doing that the foundation of our society is beginning to crumble. The fight over the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice is the latest battle between “originalists” - those who believe the Constitution is the greatest document ever produced by humanity and the “revisionists” who believe the Constitution is outdated and irrelevant and a hindrance to their goals of a liberal utopia which are, as Mr. Obama put it, “to fundamentally change America.”

     We have entered a new battlespace between left and right. This disgusting display put on by the Senate over the past few weeks is only the latest battle in this war. America had a Supreme Court made up of, to put it simply, of four “originalists” and four who believe in a “living Constitution,” one that, they believe, may be changed at the whim of the Judicial branch - which is in violation of that same Constitution. The late Justice Scalia argued that the Constitution means what it says; it says it is the supreme law of the land; and all American judges have taken a solemn oath to be subject to what it says. It is superior(not up to) to the jurists who interpret it. It is what it says, not as they might wish it say. Thus, all judges are bound by the text but some in power disagreed.

      We can trace the attack on the Constitution back to the time right after the Communist revolution. President Woodrow Wilson saw in their ideology, new possibilities to change the country. After the industrial revolution changed America and the world he thought that the Constitution and the rules of law in the United States should be amended for a new era. He saw Communist ideology as the partial path to the future but the term was abhorrent to the public at large, so a new term, one for America was coined - “Progressive.” These early Progressives did not seek to amend or to improve the Constitution — they sought to subvert it. Their main tool in this endeavor was the executive office itself.
President Woodrow Wilson and his Progressive allies in Congress understood the separation of powers built into the Constitution. They considered the separation of powers unnecessary in their own time—man had progressed beyond the founders’ fear of factions, and what he now needed was a strong, centralized symbol of authority. Wilson’s aim was to enlarge the power and scope of the national government by assigning to the president the power to supervise each branch. The Progressive philosophy of Wilson and other Democrats has become the standard of many on the Left in government today. They will do anything to achieve their means as we have seen over the past few weeks with the confirmation hearings of the Supreme Court Justice.

      It is no conspiratorial fantasy that enemies of the Constitution are seeking to replace it and Machiavellian bureaucrats and lawyers manipulate the law to achieve partisan ends? Law is used by those in power – often bureaucrats – to advance their ideological views through their power. The ideological view of Progressives is that the Constitution, as it was written, is a hindrance to their Liberal utopia. 
 
      Liberal justices who take a "living Constitution" approach to America's founding document, reading into the text "rights" that simply aren't there. Justice Gorsuch is critical of activist jurists. He wrote. “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education. This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary.”

      Judges must do more than merely consider the Constitution, Gorsuch has written. “They take an oath to uphold it. So any theory of judging must be measured against that foundational duty. Yet it seems to me those who would have judges behave like legislators, imposing their moral convictions and utility calculi on others, face an uphill battle when it comes to reconciling their judicial philosophy with our founding document.” That was from an essay in the Case Western Law Review, which Gorsuch wrote to acknowledge his great debt to Justice Scalia.

      Today, enemies of the Constitution are now hiding in plain sight. No longer do we have gentle disagreements about public policy. Instead, the Left has sought to criminalize many disagreements through the courts and has weaponized the law to attack their foes – both personally and substantively – and is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a multi-front war to transform the remaining institutions that they have not already transformed. That is why this weeks vote was so crucial for the good of our country, for the good of our society, for the prosperity of our children.