The Supreme Court and the State of the Nation
There are few things in life that we call supreme, but I
know that, when the Constitution established and described our court system, it
was not giving any court this name. It
was simply describing the relation between “one supreme Court” and “such
inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Now we don’t call our district and local
courts the ‘Inferior Courts,’ and I am not so sure we should call that other
court The Supreme Court.
The problem is that when you have three “equal” branches of
government and one has the word ‘supreme’ in its title, it tends to give that
one branch a little more equality. However,
I understand that President Obama wants to change the title of President to ‘Supreme
Ruler’ or ‘Supreme Being’ to better reflect his understanding of his role. Now if we were to just call Congress ‘the
Supreme Lawmakers,’ then maybe our three branches would again be a little
closer to being equal equal branches of government.
We are told that the reason this court is supreme is to
serve as a protection for minorities, and not just racial ones, since majority
rule isn’t always right or fair. The
fact that most people might want the same thing doesn’t mean that what they
want is right or fair to everybody else.
This is what is the called the tyranny of the majority. The majority can be filled with hate, and so we
would need the sensibility of an impartial court of justices with no political
agendas to counterbalance that and provide justice for those who otherwise
would be disenfranchised.
But then the expression ‘tyranny of the minority’ has also
been used for when the laws of a nation can be changed or nullified by a tiny
group of people or even one person. Our
current supreme court is a case in point, as it is generally considered to be divided
into two very different camps, liberal and conservative, with, I believe, one
considered a swing vote.
Now we can never predict the outcome of any one court case
with certainty, but the political landscape today is such that a lot of people
often feel safe in trying. Distinct
political philosophies are now seen as more determinative in court decisions than
any particular merits of a case.
We even have the situation where one justice is considering
retiring in the near future, because he wants to be sure that the current
President chooses his successor, as this would ensure that the new justice is
of the same political bent as he, so this would then ensure that future court
decisions are decided in a certain way.
In other words, the fate of certain laws and the overall
direction of our country, commonly called a democratic one, can now rest in the
hands of just one person. Something is
not right with this picture.
Of course, there have always been disagreements among
people. That just shows the uniqueness
of every human mind. But what has
changed are the very basic foundational views of life and government that give
direction to all of our decisions, such that any kind of compromise between
them has become next to impossible.
For example, if your spouse had maxed out all your credit
cards and you say this has to stop, what would a compromise look like? A new credit card with a lower spending
limit? The choice is either to continue
borrowing or to stop borrowing. There is
no middle ground.
Politically and culturally, our country has the same
problem. Two sides are going in opposite
directions, so a compromise means either nobody goes anywhere or you go in a
direction you don’t want to go. One side
spends money as the solution to every problem with no regard to whether the
money borrowed is paid off. The other
side sees this borrowed money as a drain on the economy and the human
spirit. Again, there is no middle
ground. You’re either still borrowing
money you never expect to pay off, or you stop.
So how did our country become so polarized?
Well, it was that court we call supreme.
It made a ruling in 1947 that changed everything. The case was about school buses and public
money, but the court felt it had to make a ruling on the bigger picture of the
relationship between government and religion, or, we could say, our public and
private lives.
"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First
Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can
set up a church. Neither can pass laws
which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another.
Neither can force nor influence a
person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to
profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for
entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church
attendance or non-attendance. No tax in
any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities
or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt
to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government
can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious
organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause
against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of
separation between Church and State.'" 330 U.S. 1, 15-16. [emphasis mine]
It redefined the most basic principles on which our country
had been founded and on which it had been running since its beginning and the
almost two hundred years leading up to our founding. It took one sentence out of the Constitution,
separated it from its historical context, and built a system of practices that
divided our nation in half, reminiscent of medieval Europe, where there was the
State and the Church, each with its respective sphere of influence. The establishment clause of the First
Amendment was for prohibiting the establishment of a national church like they
had in Europe. The first action of the new
Congress was to call for a Day of Prayer.
Religion is a worldview that governs far more than explicit
teachings about God. It involves our
entire moral code. When you remove religion
from a government, public life, our schools, you actually are replacing one
moral code for another.
So we have become a country of two basic moral codes:
Christianity (often referred to under the word ‘traditional’) and secularism,
which is another word for ‘making it up as we go along.’
Our country is polarized, because there are those who either
still remember how we used to be or know from their reading that our country is
not on the path set forth by our founders.
The other side is in a mad dash to reinvent our country through massive
government spending to acclimate more and more people to government help while
raising generations of children who only know the new rules about how to live,
rules made up to make everybody feel good, like children growing up without
parents, who eat what they want when they want, never disciplined or taught how
they should live apart from these barest of principles.
A state untouched by religious (read: Christian) influence
breeds corruption. There is just too
much power and money for the taking to be used however best serves one’s own
interests.
A government without God becomes God as it assumes
responsibility for the success of its people where previously this was
considered the individual’s responsibility.
Shouldn’t we assume that the people who wrote, debated, and
ratified the First Amendment would know what it meant? It should be noted that when the Constitution
was written, there was no plan to have a bill of rights or First Amendment in
the first place. Alexander Hamilton, who
worked on framing the Constitution and who wrote some of the Federalist Papers
that made the case for our Constitution, wrote the following:
I go further, and affirm
that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are
contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would
even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted;
and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than
were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no
power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press
shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be
imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating
power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a
plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of
reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of
providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the
provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear
implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was
intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen
of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive
powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights. Federalist
no. 84
In other words, he is saying that a bill of rights would
suggest that the government had power to restrict or grant rights in the first
place, which it didn’t. It had been also
noted previously in the those Papers that
[t]he
powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few
and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous
and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects,
as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of
taxation will, for the most part, be connected.
The
powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in
the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of
the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important
in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace
and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to
the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the
federal government. Federalist no. 45 James Madison
After
the Civil War, when Amendments to the Constitution were approved guaranteeing
blacks the same rights as others in all the states, that same court saw this to
mean as well that the Federal government could make laws regarding almost
anything that then could be applied equally to all the states. So amendments ratified to rectify matters
related to slavery ended up giving the federal government more and more power
over the daily lives of the people throughout the country. I think the people who ratified the 13th
– 15th Amendments would have done things a little differently if
they knew how this court applied them to many different unrelated issues.
Four
years prior to the ratification of the Constitution, the U.S. government
approved The
Northwest Ordinance, which outlined the rules for a number of pending new
states, which reads in part:
"Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to
good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of
education shall forever be encouraged.”
So what does public education have to do with religion and
morality? Schools were considered vital
in teaching young people about life and how to live. The First Congress of the United States, the
one that ratified the First Amendment, had Bibles printed to be used in all the
public schools. John Adams said that “we
have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions
unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry
would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a
net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is
wholly inadequate for any other.” And it
was the schools that did this, with the help, of course, of strong families.
But schools dealt with the life issues of truth, how to
live, and the foundations of Western Civilization. Let’s assume, hypothetically here, of course,
that there is a God. Shouldn’t this be
information that every human being should have?
This would change everything about how a person, or a country, lives its
life or conducts its affairs. How can
schools not talk about God or pretend that there is none? How can schools talk about human origins or
the value of human life without talking about whether there is a God who made
all this. Schools are the places you
should learn truth. How can you learn
truth if you already omit certain things. The conclusions one would reach would
be vastly different, yet we aren’t allowed to even have this debate in
school? And we call this education?
George Washington, in his farewell address, warned, "Let
us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without
religion... Reason and experience both forbid us to
expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
That court that likes to call itself supreme stripped our
country of the one thing that guaranteed our future as a nation. Essentially the court said that the
government could not have any connection with anything religious. Later rulings worked to remove any last
vestiges of religion. Certain practices
that have been around forever they have allowed because they are considered
only symbolic, like their recent ruling on prayer before public meetings. They don’t think anybody is praying because
they believe that Somebody is actually listening to this prayer and might
answer it. They think the prayer is said
only for our own psychological benefit, perhaps to calm the people before
discussing the issues at hand.
Religion is no longer considered as something that is true
or false. They don’t think it corresponds
to reality but is merely an expression of culture and personal taste. No one is asking the question of whether
there really is a God. The government
must act as if there is not. People who
work for the government, while they are “on the clock” must not show any
semblance of a religious faith, lest it may seem to somebody that the
government is somehow endorsing a particular belief about God. Anything religious, whether it’s talking
about God or doing something in His Name must be untouched by government money
or association.
This ruling actually created the establishment of a new
religion: secularism. A religion is a
system of beliefs about life. Yes, we
usually reserve that word for a belief system that includes (a) God, but when a
court tries to separate anything governmental from religion, it replaces a
system of beliefs about life that include God with a system of beliefs about
life that does not include God.
There are those who
believe the court’s action actually protects religion by keeping it from the
influence of government. But a
government uninfluenced by religion must create its own value system, and we
are seeing the fruits of it today in the massive government debt, corruption at
every level of government, the disvaluing of human life as seen in the number
of abortions and killings, the redefinition of societal norms contrary to our
entire previous history, the breakdown of the family to give the government
more control over the raising of our children, the shift from
self-responsibility to government dependency, and a nation that used to lead
the world by just about any standard used now becoming below average by most of
these same standards.
Where our society used to recognize The Ten Commandments,
now we have only three: equality, fairness, and tolerance. Love, honesty, integrity, faithfulness,
honor, responsibility, and self-sacrifice didn’t make the cut.
We began by noting that we have three equal branches of
government in our country, though actually in the beginning this court called
supreme was considered the weakest of the three. Now it has incorporated that word into its
name and rules over the other two branches.
It certainly doesn’t create its own cases to rule on, but there are so
many cases they are asked to rule on, they get to choose which ones.
Our country has lost its way. Nine men closed down the road our country was
on and told our country to forge a new way without the light and direction of
God. The nation that used to be the
world leader, a light to the nations, is hardly a leader in anything
anymore. We let nine men remove the
foundations on which our country was built, and the country is
floundering. They were wrong, and it is
time to say so.
We don’t have a formal procedure for correcting mistakes
like this. And too many people accept
the supreme decisions of that court as being the final word. For now, it starts with people saying
individually, no, the court was wrong.
There is a God. And He needs to
be at the center of life, my life, and the life of my country. We cannot go on longer living as a country thinking
that we don’t need God, His direction, His laws, His protection, His blessing, and
His mercy.
