Restoring the Republic, One Originalist at a Time
With the recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Donald Trump has an opportunity to appoint his third Supreme Court justice. Naturally, the Democrats are crying foul due to the upcoming election. They claim that the Republicans set this precedent by blocking President Obama’s pick in the last year of his term. The difference of course is that this time around the GOP holds the presidency and the Senate and thanks to the Democrats killing the filibuster, they need only a simple majority to confirm Trump’s pick, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
When Judge Barrett becomes Justice Barrett the Supreme Court will have a solid 6-3 conservative majority. This terrifies many of those who identify as liberals. They see it as the end of Roe v. Wade, the end of Obamacare, the end of gay marriage… the end of their progress. I say to this, good riddance.
The foundation of the United States government is the US Constitution. That document was written with the express purpose of restraining the national government. It outlines which authorities the government is permitted. The 10th amendment leaves everything else to the states, and the people. So-called Progressives have built their big government empire on a foundation of judicial malpractice. Past and present Supreme Court justices who failed in their duty to interpret the supreme law of the land as it was written invented new meaning and conjured up justification for laws that would not have been permitted under the Constitution otherwise. Over the years a mountain of this corrupted case law has piled up and been the foundation for numerous progressive programs and government actions. Finally, the Supreme Court is poised to have a majority of jurists who will interpret the Constitution as the Founders intended it to be read – as a binding chain on government, not a blank check to do nearly anything it wishes.
The bottom line for the people who find themselves scared right now is that they have been cheating at the game of government by reinterpreting the rules to allow them to do as they please. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this. Now they are faced with a Supreme Court which may actually do what it was intended to do – enforce the rules as written. Want to make abortion a right? Do it at the state level, or pass a constitutional amendment. Want socialized healthcare? Do it at the state level, or pass a constitutional amendment. These are the rules. Do they make sweeping government actions difficult? Yes, and that’s the point. The federal government should be small. It should serve the states, and the people, not the other way around. That’s why its power is limited and amending the Constitution is difficult. If you want to have massive welfare for example, it requires a constitutional amendment. Anything not expressly permitted to the national government needs an amendment permitting it. And that doesn’t happen. Proponents of unconstitutional programs are happy to defend the outcome without regard for the means, and thus find themselves scared to death that the rules might actually be enforced. I feel no pity for them. They should have done it right the first time instead of building their house on sand and hoping it wouldn’t shift.
This country was envisioned as a collective of small nations united in the values of individual freedom – not as a uniform collective of 350 million people. We are too large and too diverse to be governed primarily by a centralized national bureaucracy. Our diversity as individuals should be mirrored in the diversity of our communities and our local and state institutions. The proper place for the vast majority of legal and policy decisions is at the state and local levels. We have 50 states, we should have 50 diverse choices in governance. Taking power back from the national government could allow more people to live as they wish. Hopefully a Supreme Court that will uphold the Constitution as written will help undo some of the damage and begin to restore our nation to the federalist republic it was designed to be.
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Based on a work at http://www.considerliberty.com.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.