Not Tired of Winning Yet XLV
I have already counted the appointment of an originalist justice to the Supreme Court as a victory. But let us now count the side effects of this victory as additional victories. This last fortnight been remarkable.
Each case merits a column of its own, but here I must gather a summary of the triumphs. For each one, say a prayer of thanksgiving the Trump was elected, not Hillary. None of this were possible otherwise. If the mid-term elections are lost to the Dems, this gained ground is lost again. Be warned.
In an earlier column, I discussed the decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (Opinion here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111diff2_e1pf.pdf)
I did not list it as a victory, because it was decided on grounds that were too narrow, and incorrect.
It was treated as a free speech case, as if baking a cake, as a matter of artistic expression, were speech. The holding was that holding out an artistic service for public hire does not mean that an anti-discrimination law allows the state to compel you to use that service to promulgate a message or support a cause with which your deeply held beliefs disagree. The grounds of the decision were that the Colorado Commission on Anti-Christian Thought Policing, or whatever it is called, where mean and nasty in how they made their decision. Phooey and hooey, say I.
The case should have been a nine-zero holding that the Free Exercise clause means that the state cannot compel participation in a ceremony that desecrates a sacrament of your religion: baking a wedding cake, sewing a wedding dress, or renting a reception hall aids and abets the sacrilegious absurdity known as sodomite marriage. No matter what you or I might think of this absurdity, it is lawful in America, thanks to the unconstitutional and unconscionable overreach of a corrupt Supreme Court; but likewise, no matter what you or I might think of this absurdity, sodomy is forbidden by the canon law of the Christian religion, and as an article of faith, we hold this sexual practice to be an abomination. The law of the same United States which now makes sodomy marriage legal also protects Christians from being forced by the state to participate it in.
Nonetheless, the narrow ruling, such as it is, is a victory for another clause of the First Amendment, that protecting Free Speech. Logically, if a man cannot be silenced by the state from voicing his beliefs, he cannot be compelled to break his silence and ordered to voice support against his beliefs. However, the grounds of the decision were that the Commission abused its authority and was engages in anti-Christian bigotry. Since that is the sole point of the Commission’s activity, I am not sure how the Commission can be constitutional if its raison-d’etre is not.
When Caesar declares one of the ancient teachings of Christianity (and all other religions, just by the bye) to be bigotry, and further declares the himself as Caesar, has a due and proper role in wiping out bigotry, how does he wipe out Christian teaching while protecting all religions, Christianity included, from being wiped out?
This was a 7-2 decision.
Perhaps I was too pessimistic not to list this as a victory. Conservatives are like doctors. Doctors know death always wins in the end, but they never cease to battle against death, to hold him off for one more day. Likewise, conservatives know that empires fall, nations die, and liberty and equality end in corruption and socialism, totalitarianism, and anarchy. The Supreme Court fought back the arrogant yet red-eyed & loudmouthed crybaby forces of totalitarian antichristianity this day. Death is held at bay.
We remain free for one more day.
Carpenter v. United States (here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf) was a case where it was held that the police cannot, without a warrant, get records from a cell phone company tracking a robbery suspect’s movements over a period of 127 days (roughly a third of a year).
This was a 5-4 decision. In this case, the hesitation of the Court is understandable, since if you voluntarily carry a machine in your pocket that broadcasts your location to the phone company, records of your location are not private, and not expected to be private.
The legal theory holds that those who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers, and e-mail servers—have “no reasonable expectation of privacy” ergo the information is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Sinister international mega-corporations can track your motions without a warrant, but not Officer Friendly. Myself, since I never go anywhere, would be more than happy to let the cops know what Ma Bell knows about my movements, especially if it helps them catch robbers. However, this is a victory for privacy, so chalk it up as a win.
One more day.
Trump v. Hawaii (here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf) should have been an open and shut case decided 9-0 at the district court level. The fact that it made its way to Circuit Court, much less Federal Court, is a deep condemnation of our broken and corrupt legal system. It is an outrage that anyone with even one week of law school training could treat this soiled handkerchief of a legal argument as if it were anything more than a nasal emission.
In September 2017, the President issued Proclamation No. 9645, seeking to improve vetting procedures for foreign nationals traveling to the United States by identifying ongoing deficiencies in the information needed to assess whether nationals of particular countries present a security threat. The Proclamation placed entry restrictions on the nationals of eight foreign states whose systems for managing and sharing information about their nationals the President deemed inadequate.
Here is the law. 8 U. S. C. §1182 at paragraph (f) read as follows:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
No honest argument can be made that if the President (even if he is factually mistaken and is also motivated by dark, sadistic cruelty and a maniacal love of Satan) deems a foreign nation’s vetting processes to be inadequate, he lacks the authority granted by this provision to ban travel therefrom. No honest court of law in the world can claim the right to review the decision. As well sue a general in wartime for the decisions made on a battlefield.
The court said:
The Plaintiffs (Muslim Association of Hawaii, among others) allege that the primary purpose of the Proclamation was religious animus and that the President’s stated concerns about vetting protocols and national security were but pretexts for discriminating against Muslims. At the heart of their case is a series of statements by the President and his advisers both during the campaign and since the President assumed office.
The court went on to say:
The issue, however, is not whether to denounce the President’s statements, but the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.
Please note the Free Speech implications of the plaintiff’s argument, had it prevailed. If a Court of Law can scrutinize the speeches, campaign materials and private conversations of a citizen before, during, and after his election to office, and rule his official duties to be lawful or unlawful on the basis of the court’s speculation about the state of mind of that citizen while not under oath, then his speech is not free. Consider that in this case, the right given the Presidential office under Title 8 would be stripped from him because he said, “Islam hate us” rather than the more politically correct “Some Islamics hate us.”
So, depending on what you say in private while you are still a private citizen, or what you say in stump speeches or press interviews while running for office, the court has the power to forbid you from exercising the prerogatives of office? How is this not a clear prior restraint on the citizen’s freedom of speech at its core concern, which is free political speech?
The plaintiffs, in effect, are arguing that the Establishment Clause forbids freedom of speech on topics of public and political nature. They are arguing, in effect, that the First Amendment outlaws the First Amendment.
Please note the same pattern of insanity and wickedness here which is and continues to be the sole “argument” offered by any Leftist anywhere on any topic, no matter the topic: they pretend they can read minds like a Gray Lensman and search hearts like the God of Abraham, and see the secret bigotries that percolate in every heart but their own. The detection of said bigotries by these self-appointed witch-finders instantly reduces any man from human stature to the stature of a “Nazi”, that is, an unperson, who has no voice, no rights, and who must be torn to bits by the mob at once.
Such an accusation is never anything but an uncouth and barbaric attack not just against the idea of settling matters rationally, but of rationality itself. The accusation halts all reason for it banishes the possibility of mutual respect and mutual good faith.
News flash to Leftists: The US Constitution does not allow the Judiciary to assume the prerogatives and powers of the Executive merely because the President is sinister, cruel, crooked, loudmouthed or mean.
Woe that mine eyes should see the day when such childish and disgusting mockery of legal thinking would be elevated to the stature of an argument presented by clownish jackanapes before the highest court in the land. Woe and wellaway that four justices should agree with them!
Chief Justice Roberts, speaking for the majority, expressed an animadversion and astonishment similar to mine (albeit in more dignified language and restrained) for this this line of argument:
… far more problematic is the dissent’s assumption that courts should review immigration policies, diplomatic sanctions, and military actions under the de novo “reasonable observer” inquiry applicable to cases involving holiday displays and graduation ceremonies. The dissent criticizes application of a more constrained standard of review as “throw[ing] the Establishment Clause out the window.” But as the numerous precedents cited in this section make clear, such a circumscribed inquiry applies to any constitutional claim concerning the entry of foreign nationals.
The “Reasonable Observer” standard is used in cases where there is an arguable action by the state to promote or favor one religion or denomination over all others by something like a Christmas tree or creche display on public land at public expense, or prayer at a graduation ceremony. The standard in such cases is not based on what the official intended (for no one but The Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men) but by how a reasonable observer would view the display.
By “circumscribed inquiry” the Chief Justice is means that the Court of Law Is not supposed to jostle the elbow of the President when he is piloting the ship of state through narrow and ever-changing reefs and sandbars.
Upholding this ruling would have abolished the principle of deference. That is, all actions by legislature or executive, federal or local, would have been subject to arbitrary second-guessing and back-seat driving by unelected black-robed lawyers, which would have, in effect, ended republican forms of self-rule in this nation. Judges would have become mayors, governors, presidents, bureaucrats, senators, representatives, as well as consul, aedile, ephor, mantis, pontiff, emperor, tribune, god-king and commissioner of police all rolled up in one, suited by training and temperament for none of those tasks. It was simply and insolently an unrestricted power grab by the lower court and the vile Ninth Circuit, who arrogated to themselves the power of the Thought Police in Orwell’s dystopia, to rule on the political purity of elected officials. It was telling the voters to go pound sand.
Well, get on your knees and thank God that this horrible, unconscionable ruling by the lower court was overturned.
As said, it should have been a 9-0 decision, followed by excoriating the lower courts for their folly, and followed by a decree to punish the plaintiffs for abusing the legal process with frivolous lawsuits.
Instead the ruling was 5-4. One more day.
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. (Here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf)
This was an interesting case, long overdue, and a signal victory. Break out the paper hats and party favors, and shoot off the fireworks, because this case rectifies a long-lasting injustice, and gives hope that the corrupt fiscal incest between the Dems and the Union thugs might at last be scotched.
Illinois law permits public employees to unionize. If a majority of the employees in a bargaining unit vote to be represented by a union, that union is designated as the exclusive representative of all the employees, even those who do not join.
Only the union may engage in collective bargaining; individual employees may not be represented by another agent or negotiate directly with their employer. Nonmembers are required to pay what is generally called an “agency fee,” i.e., a percentage of the full union dues.
You all know or should know how so called “public sector unions” work. Groups of government employees are rounded up by commie union thugs, and forced into unions either by private intimidation or public law. The union thugs make demands on the taxpayer’s money; elected Dem officials cater to those demands, and shovel boatloads of money to the commie union thugs. The commie union thugs then kick back a healthy fraction of the money into the campaign coffers of the Dem officials as an open bribe. In return for the bribe, the Dem officials caters to the union thug demands on the taxpayer’s money.
Any taxpayer objecting to the open bribery and notorious corruption is dismissed by accusation: he is said to be stabbing the unions in the back, siding with the fat cats, and hating schoolteachers.
Naturally, the holding in this case, which should have been a 9-0 open and shut case, followed by jail time for the commie thugs, was that a man who did not join a union should not have money from his paycheck taken away and given to the thugs, to bribe Dems, and otherwise support causes and candidates and platforms he opposed.
Naturally, the Leftwing Fake News shrieked their wee little fact-free heads off, and said the High Court was stabbing the unions in the back, siding with the fat cats, and hated schoolteachers.
The court never reached the issue of union thuggery or Dem corruption. The decision was on the narrow but obvious ground that a man does not have to pay his own money into the coffers and campaigns that oppose his beliefs.
However, the implication that this is the beginning of the end of the clinging boa constrictor of corruption which has trampled the faces of the poor and fed the disgusting Dem corruption for decades is a delicious implication. Trump may well drain the swamp. Here is a good beginning.
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra. (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1140_5368.pdf) The California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act (FACT Act) violates the First Amendment, since it compels pro-life emergency pregnancy centers to advise mothers where and how infanticide murder factories are standing by, at taxpayer’s expense, to aid and abet her grisly and unlawful murder of her precious child, and harvest the organs for resale, whereupon the pliant flesh of the unborn baby could then be flayed and cured and made into cunning meat puppets for antic performances at Democrat fund-raising dinners, festive rites, and masquerades.
(I am kidding about the harvesting of baby organs and the Democrat meat puppets. The mothers are not informed of the fate of her baby’s body, nor is any wee corpse turned over for proper burial, not even in the case of nine-month late-term interventions, nor in cases where the baby is born live and “Gosnelled” (https://www.facebook.com/gosnellmovie/) by the doctor.)
The argument in favor of Moloch is that since abortion mills are required to tell mothers that not committing infanticide is a feasible medical procedure, therefore likewise those committing to preventing mothers from committing the crime of Medea should also be compelled by Caesar to tell her where and how to do it.
I do not think it requires much training in law or logic to see the flaw in this argument. Abortion pretends to be a medical procedure. Surgeons recommending surgery are obligated both in law and by common decency to inform a patient of all the feasible alternatives to any surgical operation. This is because the risks of surgery are high, and a threat to the life and health of the patient is always present. However, someone trying to help a nervous or underage or unwed mother to let nature take its course, and to avoid a ghastly medical procedure ending in the gruesome murder of her child, are not surgeons recommending surgery.
This was decided on strict First Amendment grounds: those opposed to the murder of children cannot be required by law to aid, abet, or advocate for it.
It was a narrow 5-4 vote. Ponder that with a chill in your heart. Four persons not only passed lawschool, but had full-fledged legal careers of highest repute, and yet have never read the Constitution, or never understood what they read. To these unworthy traitors we entrusted our sacred liberty and freedom.
One more day.
There have been many good days this last half a month, and the loss of liberty from the rapacious Left, whose malice slumbers never, not by night nor day, has been fended off again and again. The gossamer strand of gleipnir still binds the red maw of the ravening wolf.
Do you remember a time, not so very long ago, when every news story was bad news? I do. It was about five hundred days ago. I recall my elation at the Fall of the Berlin Wall, an event many readers are too young to recollect.
Ronald Reagan’s days were before I was old enough to follow politics: all I saw in my youth was the slow erosion of Reagan’s legacy under the first Bush administration, who was a squishy establishment RINO.
After that? With very, very few exceptions, every headline, every major world event, political or institutional change, every decision on matters of public import was either mildly bad news or terribly bad news. The rise of Newt Gingrich in the 90’s offered some promise, and despite the folly of President Clinton, a balanced budget was passed for once, and certain excesses of the welfare system were reformed. I suppose that was moderately good news. He was duly undone by the Powers That Be. The promise of Gingrich failed. Soon we were back at business as usual: the pigs running Animal Farm were the same as when the man ran it.
We then had year after year, decade after decade, of the political psychopathology known as political correctness, multiculturalism, and identity politics metastasizing, moving from triumph to triumph, a sight as ghastly as the seven-headed, ten-horned Beast of the Revelation rising from the sea, with the Whore of Babylon seated in victory on his back, flourishing a wine-goblet overflowing with abominations, and smiling her red-lipped, bloodstained smile.
Because of political correctness, the Press sided with the terrorists during the Jihad that the Fall of the Twin Towers brought to America. Surreptitiously at first, then with growing brazen hauteur, the stupid, incompetent, and vicious fools infesting our intellectual and media elites began, in the name of their alleged (but never observed) superiority in mind, accomplishment, and virtue, ever more loudly to side with each any every idea, movement, policy, or people opposed to truth, virtue, and beauty. Liberals became Leftists, socialists became social justice warriors, and everything from the NFL to STAR WARS was turned into a roaring dumpster fire. Do you recall a time when politicians did not use four-letter words in public? It was not so long ago.
The degeneration culminated with the Press crowbarring the incompetent and inexperienced Mr. Obama into office, whose only qualification for office was a mellifluous speaking voice and a melanin-rich skin.
Whether he corrupted the Press or they corrupted him is an open question. Their flattery basically allowed him to assume imperial prerogatives, ruling by means of pen and phone, that is, making unlawful executive orders, trampling First Amendment rights, and making unconstitutional treaties with hostile foreign powers, corrupting and weaponizing the IRS, DOJ and FBI against political opponents, assassinating America citizens overseas without due process of law.
But even what he lawfully did was sinful, even if it were legal, in gutting our military, undermining our allies, smothering the economy, encouraging sexual abominations, and collaborating with Russia.
It had reached a point where the corruption was so entrenched, and the pathogens of socialism and political correctness so deeply soaked into the wounds in the body politic, that the election of Hillary Clinton, and the triumph of the Press, would have surely meant the destruction of the Republic. The fall of America would have involved Europe in its fall, and the desolation of the West: a period of darkness and tyranny, poverty and wretchedness lasting a thousand years; a dark age with no Church to keep the lanterns lit, a collapse with no hope of renaissance.
Then came Trump.
In less than five hundred days, the national opinion has swung sharply against the press. Once, not long ago, I was the only person I knew who identified the press as the main and most dangerous foe of the West. Now, nearly everyone on the Right, the wide majority of Independents, and a healthy segment of the Left all admit that the Press routinely spreads falsehoods. Crowds at rallies routinely boo and heckle them. The Berlin Wall is falling once again.
We all now know, or at least have no excuse not to know, that the news is Fake News.
The “Resistance” grows more and more unhinged as they continue to resist a return to American prosperity, liberty, strength, and respect in world opinion. Their accusations grow more wild as their concocted non-controversies continue to unravel. There is no deep well of popular discontent for them to tap.
They call Trump a tyrant, but he continues to stay scrupulously within the bounds of the Constitutional limits of his office (something few GOP presidents, and no Dems, have ever done).
The banshees continue to scream, and the harpies continue to befoul the feast, but there is no substance to their wails.
The death camps do not exist. The horrors predicted in THE HANDMAID’S TALE continue to be conspicuously absent.
No one is even being oppressed. The worst that happens is that foulmouthed, loudmouthed, low-IQ film stars occasionally are getting gently mocked in Presidential twitter quips. Wake up, Punchy.
Even the threat from the Alt-Right, the empty-headed whites-only identitarians, is diminishing. Without the Left in position to trigger race riots and enflame race hatred, the Alt-Right recruitment drive for the coming race war is flagging. They ballyhooed the rise of Trump as their triumph; but he spells the end of them. No identitarians, white or black, can long endure the atmosphere of a nation where we all bleed the same red blood and all salute the same star-spangled banner of freedom, and all praise the same God.
Instead we see black unemployment dropping to historic lows, and famous black pop stars climb aboard the Trump train. More voices within the black community are raising the question of what the party of Jefferson Davis, Jim Crow, and unfettered immigration actually does in return for decades of unwavering Afro-American loyalty? What does the black community get in return? Chicago? Detroit?
The economy is roaring into high gear; the Fake News is unmasked; the Jihad is in sharp retreat; talks with North Korea promise peace for the first time in half a century on that peninsula; the NFL no longer let their athletes insult the flag. The full list of triumphs, at least as I have counted, now reaches 45. I would have voted for Trump merely if he had delivered on one.
His best, greatest, and most permanent victory is this:
Political Correctness has been punctured.
It is not dead. Political Correctness is still on its feet, and still has power to destroy life and livelihood in retaliation for an ill-timed jest or unwary wisecrack. It is still upheld by cowards, by Starbucks, and by establishment GOP types, Romney, McCain and other weak-sister RINOs.
But the illusion of invincibility is shattered. The bully is not to be feared any longer.
It is a wounding, roaring beast, and it shakes its ten terrible crowns atop the ten horns of its seven heads, but the dart of sarcasm has struck deep, and mirth is the one barb against which the fiend hath no defense. Laughter is the weapon of the angels.
Do not close your eyes, dear reader. The Left is a violent mob, and they will attack women and children and soft targets, they will riot and loot and burn, for this is their way. They have torn out their own tongues, so they cannot debate nor discuss. All they can do is chant and scream and whine and bellow. They have punctured their own eyes, so no ray of truth will ever illume their benighted brains. They have torn out their hearts, so no human emotion will ever afflict them or give them pause.
They have smothered the conscience, whose whisper and whose verdict would strike them like a thunderbolt if they heard its soft, still voice. All these human parts of them, they have fed to the wolf called pride, and he has grown to the size of Fenrir. Soon the wolf will slip the chain.
The fimbulwinter is foretold. Prepare for the day. But neither let your hearts be troubled. Fear heaven, not men. Such creatures triumph only when good men retreat.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
