The Supreme Court Repealing Democracy Everywhere
by James Leroy Wilson, LewRockwell.com, July 2, 2003

The Spring of 1999 saw some dark days. There was the Columbine massacre, in which two losers murdered and wounded several defenseless students and teachers at a government school. In Serbia, Slobodon Milosevic was forcibly removing Albanians from their provincial home of Kosovo. With jaw-dropping contempt of the obvious lessons of these events, new gun control legislation was proposed, and the gutless Republican organ called the National Rifle Association was willing to compromise with the Clinton administration.

I wanted to shout out to all friends of gun control, "But what if they come for YOU? Are we to be sitting ducks for the next mass-murderers? Are we to let government troops expel us from our homes, shoot our sons and molest our daughters?"

But if, in fact, these things did happen because of gun control, I could not sit back and say, "Ha, ha, you ignorant twits, I told you so!" Laughing at the suffering of others shows a lack of basic compassion properly understood, and a general lack of respect for human life.

Likewise, I wouldn’t fall off my chair laughing if a decent, conservative, conscientious, Republican-voting youth minister sees his car confiscated in the Drug War. It could happen; it may have already happened several times. The minister is driving a new attendee at youth group home. A marijuana joint slips out of the teen’s loose pants pocket as he is dropped off at his home, rests on the seat unnoticed by the driver, but is plainly seen by a cop during a routine traffic stop. Bye, bye, car. The Fifth Amendment has been repealed as far as the War on Drugs in concerned, and if you want your car back you must prove your innocence.

The libertarian could criticize the minister for being an ignorant supporter of the two-party junta and the massive attack on liberty that is the War on Drugs. But the libertarian can’t laugh at him, because he is still a victim of The State. The government shouldn’t just take our property from us without due process, and there shouldn’t be anything illegal about marijuana possession anyway. It is wrong for anyone to suffer at the hands of The State, and if libertarians celebrate the "poetic justice" of a gun control advocate being ethnically cleansed, or a Drug War supporter seeing his property confiscated, then we are as contemptuous of the individual as Republicans and Democrats are. We must be better than that.

Which leads me to say something I’d never think I’d say: Thank God for the Supreme Court!

Oh, sure, it’s easy to nit-pick about the Supreme Court making a new federal law last week barring the states of The State – excuse me – states of the Union from making and enforcing their own laws against sodomy. The Supreme Court is a judicial, not a legislative branch, and should interpret law under the Constitution, not make up new laws out of thin air. And yes, the Supreme Court violated the Constitution’s own Tenth Amendment by making such a law. Yes, yes, agreed and agreed.
Nevertheless, this could be a victimless usurpation of the Constitution, one in which both liberals and conservatives, the Politically Correct and the Fundamentalists, the do-gooders and the nationalists, the liberty-haters everywhere, all get their come-uppance. One which may get them all to scream and protest in outrage, yet allows me to just laugh and laugh and laugh.

Laws against prostitution? Unconstitutional. Hey, it’s about sex, and like the right to privacy in abortion, it’s also a business transaction. Regulation of any form of gambling between mutually consenting adults? Unconstitutional. To prohibit it is to impose one religious and moral viewpoint upon others, violating equal protection of the laws.

Drug Prohibition? Out. As with abortion, a person has the right to his or her own body. Drugs may also be used in religious activities, so we have equal protection and First Amendment issues there as well.

When you think about it, any transaction involving consenting adults must be legal, and any obstructive legislation unconstitutional. Libertarians used to say that something was unconstitutional if the Constitution didn’t authorize it, or specifically prohibited it. Now, we can say, hey, go with the flow. Let’s extend the logic of the (mythical) "privacy" right in the Constitution to render just about every law banning peaceful activity, that is, most laws on the books, unconstitutional.

Just as when Democrats screamed and howled when the Supreme Court voted for Bush in 2000, let all the leftists expose their hypocrisy when they protest against the Supreme Court advancing privacy and liberty by striking down federal gun laws and free trade. Let the right-wingers of every stripe scream and howl in favor of state’s rights, as they did in this sodomy case, but then also hear them when the Court repeals the Patriot Act, the War on Drugs, and other conservative attacks on state’s rights.

When all else fails on every other front, all the Statists resort to the federal courts and the Supreme Court to get their way. When politics fails them, they make the federal courts and the Supreme Court political. Perhaps Libertarians could do the same, since we’ve always failed in politics anyway, and maybe through the court we can expose these tyrannical, self-righteous dolts for their inconsistencies.

Do I really think the libertarian agenda can be advanced by the Supreme Court? Of course not. The anti-anti-sodomy decision was just another sanctimonious display of destroying state sovereignty even further under the illusion of advancing individual rights. Nothing good will come of the decision, only the further duping of Americans, providing them further "evidence" that this is the "land of the free" even while they are pummeled with Homeland Security, business regulations, an expensive military even though our neighbors can’t and won’t threaten us, the Income Tax, the costs of unconstitutional and undeclared wars, trade barriers, corporate welfare, agricultural subsidies, impoverishing deficits, all of the economic burdens of government spending, and the concentration of power in Washington, D.C.

But still, it is an amusing thought. To see the Supreme Court apply the very logic of the liberals to destroy the liberal agenda, and to apply the very logic of the conservatives to destroy the conservative agenda. I’m not saying this is the best way to advance libertarianism, but if it does happen this way, I will be quite amused to say the least

James Leroy Wilson [send him mail] writes the weekly "Notes From the Swamp" column appearing every Thursday at the Partial Observer (http://www.partialobserver.com/).

Justice Antonin Scalia declared the ruling "effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation" banning adultery, bigamy, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity as well as same-sex marriage.

"It is clear that the court has taken sides in the culture war," and "signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia said in an unusual reading of his dissent from the bench.

"The court today pretends . . . that we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada," Scalia said. "Do not believe it."

Scalia argued the ruling "dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition of marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is 'no legitimate state interest,' .

. . what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising 'the liberty protected by the Constitution?' "

Once again, Justice Antonin Scalia shows the wisdom and judgment that make him one of the top justices in US history.

The guy is brilliant.

He prevented the corrupt Gore Court (aka: Florida Supremes) from hijacking the last Presidential election.

And he has this latest ruling in correct focus.

It's a good thing that GW Bush will be in the office until 2008. That's enough time for some of the old liberal duds on the Supreme Court to die off or retire to be replaced (hopefully) by Antonin Scalia clones.

Two or three more top quality judges like Scalia and Clarence Thomas will get the problems with the court resolved.

Scalia, a member of the Federalists,a far far right wing organization of judges and lawyers, and Opus Dei,a secretive Catholic organization, once again shows the limited mentality and ideology of someone who shouldn't remain on the Supreme Court. Only someone who accepts a free speech award and won't allow the acceptance speech to be taped or recorded(which happened in the last month or so) could possibly think that what happens in someone's bedroom could make a difference in the future of this country is a fool.

Conservative judges intrepret the law and reder decisions based upon the reading of the Constitution.

Liberal judges legislate from the bench, making their personal agendas the precedent for their decisions.

We need intrepreters of the law, not activist judges.

State sovereignty?

Isn't that the same excuse used to defend Jim Crow laws?

And how can exercising hate be a libertarian value? The state should not be called upon to legally defend hate if you are a real libertarian.

Sorry, but state sovereignty does not give states the right to pick and choose which of us the Constitution applies to. It does not grant a right to enshrine hate into the legal system. People do not grant their consent to be hated, so there is no way the state should be prohibited from protecting the rights of minorities, whether of color, gender, or sexual preference. Your tortured logic is yet one more example of why the Supreme Court acted to enforce the Constitution for all citizens in this case.

Was abortion legalized because the people democratically voted to to make it a law, or because the an activist SupremeCourt made it a law?

There's a reason in 1973 that pro-abortion activists wanted the issue before the court and not left to the vote of the American people. Are you able to figure out why?

You say you believe that the Supreme Court is judicial, not legislative, and yet you still want to legislate who has personal freedom and the right to live a fulfilled life, and who doesn't.

Have you ever felt afraid just to have sex in the privacy of your own bedroom? Until you have, then you have no right to complain that some people want "special" rights.

And try to get some real opinions; don't just rant and rave.

Ranting and raving is all I have. I'm a conservative.

I understand. I am full of emotions. Logic has never entered my limited thought process. I am a liberal. I also like to fondle young boys (the 'fear' part I talked about) and to take large dicks up my ass while drinking down the luscious creme of a hot penis.

I heard this argument before, but isn't the purpose of the supreme court to make sure that laws don't violate individuals constitutional rights?

The Supreme Court didn't make a new law, they said that an existing law is unconstitutional. And they didn't stop the states from enacting laws, they blocked them from enacting laws that violate individual rights, which is what I thought they were supposed to do.

The notion that rulings on privacy issues are "creating laws out of thin air" seem to be based on the logically indefensible philosophy of strict constructionalism. The Ninth Amendment clearly states that rights are not limited to those enumerated in the Costitution as amended. There are what are known as "penumbra rights" which are needed to give the enumerated rights meaining and weight. How does a strict construcionalist justify his position in the face of the Ninth Amendment?

As to the notion that Gore tried to hijack the elections, the facts clearly show that Gore won the election in Florida and that Bush blocked the effort to see that.

Wilson, do you honestly believe that your rights are an illusion? Maybe you're a glutton for punishment, but the rest of us want to be treated as human beings.

Conservative judges intrepret the law and reder decisions based upon the reading of the Constitution.
Unsubstantiated Allegation

Liberal judges legislate from the bench, making their personal agendas the precedent for their decisions.
Unsubstantiated Allegation

For more on logic at your level, try reading "Logic for Dummies."

The activist community is dying!
Organize!
Organize!

We tried, but we haven't got a clue where to go from here. Oh well, let's go get stoned.