Posted by
Philip Mella on Monday, May 04, 2009 3:27:24 PM
It's an article of liberal faith that race and gender are dispositive of values and principles, which is one reason so many Americans voted for an American of mixed African descent, a charismatic neophyte, who also happened to be a hard leftist. We're about to repeat that exercise as President Obama begins the process of vetting candidates to replace Supreme Court justice David Souter.
If you breeze through the lists of likely candidates they're invariably a racial minority, a female, but, most assuredly, they're well left of center and they subscribe to the activist approach to jurisprudence. In an informal discussion over the weekend with some attorney friends, a political mix from across the spectrum, the only area of agreement was that Mr. Obama will choose a stealth activist, someone who subscribes to the so-called "living" Constitution theory.
As you can guess, that line of reasoning uses a version of post-modernist legal theory to argue that the Founding Fathers' conceptualization of law is inherently archaic, mired in 18th century intellectual conventions and ideas. America in the 21st century, so they argue, is not merely different in degree but in jurisprudential genus, which is to say we've evolved to the point where a 'privacy right' can be divined in the Constitution to sanction the murder of the innocent unborn.
As Mark Levin persuasively argued in his book, Men in Black: How the Supreme court is Destroying America, judicial activism has undermined the vision of our Founding Fathers and eroded our Constitution's separation of powers construct, which is so vital to justice and the rule of law. So, when we hear Obama assure us there will be no litmus test for nominees we must suppress a chuckle because his blinkered endorsement of race and gender as indicative of values is wholly transparent.
The balkanazation of America in the past several decades demonstrates how the left conceptualizes our Republic, which is a nation with a multiplicity of visions, a rainbow of values, each of which is informed by a unique rendering of our Constitution. That leads to the wholesale justification for either ruling out or exploiting racial or gender variables, based on their ability to realize a desired outcome.
That's how we came to be saddled with racial quotas, which has seen such perverse outcomes as the son of a black orthopedic surgeon winning a scholarship over the son of a white bricklayer. The list is as lengthy as it is hostile to the common good as it makes presumptions of aptitude based on race, something the Rev. Martin Luther King fought against his entire life.
Add to this mix the internationalization of American law, which will surely be highlighted in the confirmation hearings, and you have the fundamentals in place to ensure the slow decay of our nation's sovereign authority, something no other nation would tolerate.
With the potential for choosing a total of three members of the court, Obama's imprint will likely have a powerful impact on the cases it hears for decades to come. That the left's arrogance is unbounded is unambiguous, which is why they're over-reaching so early in the game, both economically, and, in this instance, in fundamentally realigning the court to ensure its ability to legislate from the bench. It's a stunning abrogation of our Constitution, but one they justify for the tandem goals of power retention and transforming America into a socialist state.