Print
While the Democratic Presidential contenders continue their negative campaigns, something more important than this petty squabble is slipping away. If the Democrats blow their chances at the White House, it could alter American society for at least a generation.
Cass Gilbert would understand perfectly because he designed it even though a negative campaign almost ruined his career. Had that campaign succeeded, the third branch of our government might have looked quite different. Cass Gilbert had a thing about marble. Maybe it was because he was born one step removed from the frontier a year before Edmund Ruffin lit the cannon that fired on Fort Sumter. They almost ran him out of Minnesota because he insisted on using Georgia marble for the capitol of a state that revered its regiment’s heroic stand at Gettysburg.
When it came time to choose the stone for the Supreme Court Building exterior, the architect specified the cream-colored Vermont marble that also would be used for the Jefferson Memorial. In explaining his design Gilbert said:
This building is deigned to last for all time. [NY Times, May 18, 1934]
That Gilbert made the right choice is obvious to any tourist, for although it was the last of the three major government buildings to be built, it looks like it belongs with the White House and the Capitol dome. Gilbert died a year before they finished his building in 1935, but will always be with it since his likeness is one of six figures over the words “Equal Justice Under Law” that crown the main entrance.
The Republic endures and this is the symbol of its faith.
Said Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes at the 1932 ceremony for the laying of the building’s cornerstone. But some of the justices had different feelings:
What do they want to move us over there for? Everybody will forget about us. [NY Times, January 20, 1935]
It is noteworthy that Gilbert’s Supreme Court Building was completed almost exactly at the time when Franklin Roosevelt had become so frustrated with the rulings of justices nicknamed the “Four Horsemen” whose minds lay in the nineteenth century that he threatened to alter the Court. Shortly after the building’s dedication the New York Times wrote:
This magnificent new court house is sufficient answer to hostile murmurs being raised against this august tribunal in certain quarters. [October 9, 1935]
What people forget about FDR’s court-packing scheme is that it accomplished its mission, which was to send a message to the “Four Horsemen” that they better change their ways or risk a Constitutional crisis.
Today a new group of Four Horsemen threatens this country even more drastically than their original namesakes, whose nickname came in part because they rode to Court sessions in the same vehicle. If the Democratic Party loses the White House it will also lose the Supreme Court. The Four Horsemen will most likely become five, a majority that will accomplish the purpose of the Republican Counterrevolution which is to take this nation back to the days of William McKinley.
As the partners in the Counterrevolution appeared ready to tear themselves apart, America and the Democratic Party prematurely declared it dead. The candidacy of John McCain has brought it back from its near-death experience, bringing it life and hope, hope that for once and for all the GOP can lay to rest the ghost of Franklin Roosevelt and along with it the New Deal and Liberal America’s ideal of the level playing field. It would be one of history’s ironies if the vehicle for this should be the Supreme Court.
To illustrate how important this election has become, we need only recall some of the choice words and opinions of the new Four Horsemen: Justices Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Roberts, all appointed by Republican Presidents and all confirmed by a bipartisan vote.
JUSTICE SCALIA: But that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to have the Democratic Party represent me for all sorts of purposes. And these people can bring their own individual challenges. I mean, I’m not questioning their ability to do it. But, but why is the Democratic Party their representative? [Democratic Party v. Rokita]
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: County seats aren’t very far for people in Indiana. [Democratic Party v. Rokita]
JUSTICE SCALIA: 17 miles is 17 miles for the rich and the poor. [Democratic Party v. Rokita]
JUSTICE THOMAS: Racial imbalance is not segregation, and the mere incantation of terms like resegregation and remediation cannot make up the difference. [Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et. al.]
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society. [Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et. al.]
JUSTICE SCALIA: As I have previously expressed, claims of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering do not present a justiciable case or controversy. [Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et. al.]
JUSTICE SCALIA: Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited under the Constitution?
JUSTICE THOMAS: Today’s expansion of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause beyond all bounds of history and precedent is, I suspect, yet another manifestation of the pervasive view that the Federal Constitution must address all ills in our society. Abusive behavior by prison guards is deplorable conduct that properly evokes outrage and contempt. But that does not mean that it is invariably unconstitutional. The Eighth Amendment is not, and should not be turned into, a National Code of Prison Regulation. [Hudson v. McMillian]
JUSTICE THOMAS: The inclusion of religious schools makes sense given Ohio’s purpose of increasing educational performance and opportunities. Religious schools, like other private schools, achieve far better educational results than their public counterparts. [Zelman v. Simmons-Harris]
JUSTICE THOMAS: Until this Court replaces its existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence with a standard more consistent with the original understanding, we will continue to see Congress appropriating state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce. [United States v. Morrison]
JUSTICE THOMAS: But it seems to me that the power to regulate “commerce” can by no means encompass authority over mere gun possession, any more than it empowers the Federal Government to regulate marriage, littering, or cruelty to animals, throughout the 50 States. [United States v. Lopez]
JUSTICE SCALIA: If we embrace this unenumerated right [Parental rights], I think it obvious-whether we affirm or reverse the judgment here, or remand as Justice Stevens or Justice Kennedy would do-that we will be ushering in a new regime of judicially prescribed, and federally prescribed, family law. [Troxel v. Granville]
JUSTICE SCALIA: The Court has mistaken a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite. The constitutional amendment before us here is not the manifestation of a “’bare . . . desire to harm’” homosexuals, ante, at 13, but is rather a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws. [Romer v. Evans]
JUSTICE SCALIA: That is, quite simply, the issue in this case: not whether the power of a woman to abort her unborn child is a “liberty” in the absolute sense; or even whether it is a liberty of great importance to many women. Of course it is both. The issue is whether it is a liberty protected by the Constitution of the United States. I am sure it is not. [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey]
JUSTICE SCALIA: It is my view that the requirement of compelled integration (whether by student assignment, as in Green itself, or by elimination of nonintegrated options, as the Court today effectively decrees) does not apply to higher education. [United States v. Fordice]
JUSTICE SCALIA (as part of majority opionion): The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. [Bush v. Gore]
Right now, if the exit polls are even close to correct, as many as a quarter of the backers of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are threatening to sit out next November’s election. They apparently hate the rival candidate so much that they would rather not vote than cast their ballots for the candidate they have demonized. If even half of those voters sit out the Presidential election, you won’t need exit polls to tell you the winner because it won’t be a Democrat.
Those who believe Hillary Clinton is a “monster” will have elected a fifth horseman who will roll back the Civil Rights Movement. Those who believe Barack Obama is “unqualified” will have elected a fifth horseman who not only will roll back Roe v. Wade but also women’s rights. As for the Democratic Party officials who have allowed this bickering to continue, they also will have elected a fifth horseman who will end the American Century and its most important achievements.
The Voting Rights Act–overturned. Brown v. Board–overturned. The ability of government to protect the environment, regulate working conditions, oversee our health and safety, and legislate against the excesses of corporate power–overturned. Media concentration and “the marketplace of ideas”–overturned.
The New Freedom, the New Deal, the New Frontier–overturned. The rights of people of color, women, the disabled, creative artists, political dissidents, teachers, health care workers–all overturned. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of privacy–all overturned.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, their supporters and the Democratic Party better get it through their heads that THE number one issue this election is not about red phones or who voted for the Iraq War, it is about who gets to appoint the next justice of the United States Supreme Court. Right now the odds on favorite to perform that task is John McCain.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
