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by Scoper...
The Real Power of the Robe
(Part III)
(For a recap: Part
1, Part
2)
Throughout the history of
the United States, the law could bind us together, even when nothing else
could. You knew what was expected of you; you knew what the rules were.
But that's changing. Judicial activism is setting us at each other's throats.
The previous two essays show
a prime example: the unending legal morass that "school desegregation"
has become in Mecklenburg county. In fact, since part II appeared last
week, the battle has resumed, with parents suing to overturn a Federal
appeals court ruling that overturned Judge Robert Potter's ruling that
overturned the Swann ruling that overturned the Brown ruling. Excuse me,
gotta catch my breath.
The example that folks will
remember for years, though, is the Florida presidential vote-count. Cal
Thomas, who sees disturbing trends beneath black robes and in society at
large, writes: "Only in the Clinton-Gore era could a majority of Florida
Supreme court judges claim to be upholding the law while simultaneously
voiding it…we have been brainwashed to elevate feelings to the level of
where the law used to be."
The conclusion is obvious
and odious: "If the Constitution is only what judges say it is and has
no objective meaning, then why not allow subjective decisions about ballots
and mind-reading decisions about voter intent?" Why not indeed?
The reason is simple. When
the law is abandoned, only chaos is left. In the Bush-Gore case, we got
36 days of "ugly," a U.S. Supreme Court that had to step in to stop the
Constitutional train-wreck that the Florida Supreme court had set into
motion, and a declared winner who half the population believes stole the
election. They will blame the U.S. Supremes, who had the bad luck to act
last, for illegally "installing" George W. Bush as president.
But this is what you get
in the Oprah-age, when feelings trump law. A lot of feelings came out of
Election 2000, most of them hard feelings.
When the law is abandoned,
the government is able to simply decide that it's quite all right to extract
money from one group and give it to another. It's possible to pillage legal
industries such as tobacco and firearms because there's a "problem" that
needs to be solved and the law is in the way. It's possible to leave "unreasonable
search and seizure" by the roadside, while the police check your car for
drugs at their "safety checkpoint."
It's possible to develop
an "entitlement mentality," empowering those such as the race-baiting ideological
arsonist Jesse Jackson who, ludicrously comparing parts of Florida to the
police dogs and fire hoses of Selma, Alabama is obliquely threatening real
arson and riots in the streets. It happened in Los Angeles.
Most insidiously, it's possible
to undo the dreams of great men such as Martin Luther King, who beseeched
America to stop judging people by the color of their skin, but rather by
"the content of their character." Now the word "diversity" is wielded like
a club, the weapon of activists who insist that quality of education is
dependent on the skin color of the child who sits next to yours, as academic
standards continue to drop.
I observed the last Mecklenburg
county school board meeting. It was boring beyond words, until you realized
what they were talking about. Race relations "by the numbers." One staff
member after another reported on the ratio of whites vs. non-whites in
various schools, and how many students would have to be reassigned to maintain
given percentages. One board member raised the question: "what about children
of mixed parentage?" That would seem to chuck another wrench into a machine
that exists for no good purpose.
But that's what judicial
activism has given us. Anger and animosity where there might have been
none before, erosion of parents' rights to raise their own children, uncounted
millions of wasted taxpayer dollars. Judge James McMillan, for your tortured
"logic" and abuse of the power granted you, I curse your memory.
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