The Problem With Lying: Sometimes you’ll forget and let it slip…
For decades the American left has claimed to stand for the rule of law – particularly as it related to The Supreme Court and nominees thereto. Of course by standing for “the rule of law” they mean adherence to the opinions of liberal majorities who’s more outrages precedents include the sudden discovery of the word “Privacy” in the Constitution - which clearly meant to prohibit states from writing laws restricting the freedom of Planned Parenthood… oh no sorry… to restrict states from writing laws which affect the “right” to abort an unborn child. More recently we have the Kelo vs. New London decision which, instead finding new language in the Constitution, Kelo declares that a 500 year old principal of law was wrongly understood (for all 500 years). In Kilo, by a 1 vote margin, the left claims that the purpose of the government’s right (yes this time it does exist) to take a person’s property under eminent domain extended beyond uses for public good (roads etc) to uses desired by big-time political contributors, err ah no actually… it was uses which will, or might, enhance “economic development” and thereby the tax base – regardless of how broad or narrow the potential public benefit. But adherence to the law has been the claim of the lefty-legal establishment as they marched the definition of the Constitution in a one-way ratchet to the left. Perish-the-thought, that the learned justices of the left were making decisions based on their political leanings and their hoped-for political outcomes. Why even liberals understand that if judges were to base decisions on political considerations that no consistency would be provided by the law and no one (well at least not some sore right-wing losers) would respect the law as an institution and they might not obey (rhymes with McVeigh). No, liberals were four-square behind the rule of law and they even have a name for their Constitutional “structure” – why it’s the “living Constitution” (as in; no dead-white-men need apply).
And so it happened that this past Friday a little something, a little tid-bit slipped out which was, in the opinion of the Washington Post, a mere detail – proof in fact of the Post’s in-depth, ahead-of-the-curve reporting. It seems that a post reported was snooping around in New Hampshire and discovered that someone had been confided-in by Justice David Souter. What Souter said was most likely thought of by the Post’s staff as simply a scoop as to timing. The Post reported that Souter had told a local words to the effect that; “If Obama wins, I’ll be the first one out of there…”. Well, what a scoop, dowdy David is going to vacate his life-time appointment and will make way for what now may be one of three Obama court picks (assuming that the Stevens and Ginsberg each have one foot in the grave). But the Post missed the shocking revelation because it wasn’t a revelation to the Post, or to the lefty-media/law/Washington establishment, not at all.
What the hell would Souter have done if McCain been elected? Souter’s not-so-innocent little comment betrayed Souter’s calculus of vacating the court as 100% political. The Post and the media would have leapt on a conservative’s cold, calculating, bone-chilling, ruthlessness, if one had abdicated to give a newly elected Conservative an appointment. But the 100% political calculus of Souter was not even noticed. I suppose it’s because the left has engaged in such an elaborate charade over their (and Souter’s) political neutrality, for so long, that they forgot to keep the pretense up. And perhaps that’s the effect of the domination of all of Washington by the left – they don’t need to pretend anymore. Not only does Souter’s openly political calculus lay bare his craven nature, it puts the complete lie to every defense of leftist “jurisprudence’ as having the slightest thing to do the rule of law. Now we (Americans, Conservatives) need no longer pretend that liberals are qualified to serve on any courts as plainly they never did and never will be motivated by anything other than power to (their) people. Let us a nation acknowledge what the Post inadvertently revealed, that the left has zero respect for the concept that laws mean anything – they simply cannot, as a matter of ideology, accept facts as fixed and laws as having a set meaning. Thus Americans should openly acknowledge that ideology should be the prime criteria on which to base the qualifications of judicial, and most significantly Supreme Court, nominees. After all, if your beliefs dictate that all truths are “culturally” relevant and that in the “dialectic of thought”, truth, like our Constitution, is constantly evolving, then how can any existing, written set of ideas, be anything other than “living”. And in that circumstance, wouldn’t a person who has “empathy”, be more important than one who simply knows the written words of the law? It’s Orwellian. This is how we get from a nation of laws to a nation of men – God help us.
