[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
[Note from TB: This post was written almost a month ago, but somehow slipped my mind so I didn't post it until now. I apologize for the delay.]
What Lincoln predicted in the aftermath of the Dred Scott decision came to pass in the 20th Century with a vengeance. State legislatures, school boards, county governments—none of which have political checks against the Supreme Court—all fell prey to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Laws against Pornography. Sorry, violates Freedom of Expression, says SCOTUS. Laws criminalizing abortion. No can do, infringes on the Right to Privacy. The death penalty. Nope, cruel and unusual punishment or violates due process or maybe it doesn't or maybe it does under certain (most) circumstances. Laws defining marriage between one man and one woman. Outta here, interferes with the Right to Define One's Own Concept of Existence and the Meaning of the Universe. No matter how long these laws had been on the books or how overwhelming the majorities were that passed them, SCOTUS swung its overruling scythe.
And for some reason Mrs. Kim Davis is accused of subverting the rule of law....
The candid citizen might ask whether all these state laws really violated the U.S. Constitution. The candid Justice would confess, "No, none of them violated the Constitution. They're just rooted in Christian morality and they protect the oppressed from the oppressor. That's not hip right now, so those laws had to go."
This might prompt the candid citizen to make his own confession: "I knew that, or at least suspected it. I'm too busy, though, amusing myself to hold my rulers accountable. Would you hit play and pass the popcorn?"
If he's feeling penitential, the candid civil magistrate adds: "When I prattle on about Kim Davis and the rule of law, I'm ducking for cover. I know the Supreme Court's record the last 40 years is one exercise of raw judicial power after another after another. I'm too afraid to appear insufficiently progressive. Kim Davis is doing what I should have done."
In SCOTUS you have one of history's most notorious examples of an unfaithful steward, whose betrayal is documented in thousands of pages of self-accusation called majority opinions, including its deformation of the God-ordained institution of marriage and trashing of state defense of marriage acts. Why aren't conservative public figures and pundits insisting the SCOTUS apparatchiks uphold the rule of law or resign? No, far easier to oppose a county clerk from Kentucky than a black-robed tyrant.
You wonder whether today's politicians and pundits would have condemned the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Wisconsin legislature of 1859. The federal government had convicted abolitionist Sherman Booth under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act for helping a runaway slave. The Wisconsin Supreme Court apparently took a dim view of Mr. Booth's conviction because it granted him a writ of habeas corpus, thus springing him from the federal pen. Maintaining the national government's prerogative, however, SCOTUS unanimously overruled Wisconsin's highest court. In response, the Wisconsin General Assembly shot back with a joint resolution, exposing the tyranny of SCOTUS with warnings that ring just as true today:
Resolved, The Senate concurring, That we regard the action of the Supreme Court of the United States, in assuming jurisdiction in the case before mentioned, as an arbitrary act of power, unauthorized by the Constitution, and virtually superseding the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus and prostrating the rights and liberties of the people at the foot of unlimited power.
Resolved, That this assumption of jurisdiction by the federal judiciary, in the said case, and without process, is an act of undelegated power, and therefore without authority, void, and of no force.
Resolved, That the government, formed by the Constitution of the United States was not the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
Resolved, That the principle and construction contended for by the party which now rules in the councils of the nation, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers; that the several states which formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a positive defiance of those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
Joint Resolution, relative to the decision of the United States supreme court, reversing decision of the supreme court of Wisconsin (1859) (emphases added)
The Supreme Court's subversion of the rule of law and the Constitution grow bolder by the day as its despotism further enslaves homosexuals. May God bless Mrs. Davis.
