Jefferson Strikes Again

Some years ago the so-called “new left” mounted a campaign to brainwash the uneducated masses of Americans that the Constitution established a doctrine of “separation of church and state,” which is nowhere found in the 1st Amendment.  Is there anyone in the country who hasn’t heard that was based on Jefferson’s remarks in a private letter, never intended to interpret the entire purpose of the 1st Amendment?  But does the ACLU change its tune?  It has totally convinced the uneducated this is a true statement. Their agenda, of course, is to make this a secular country, to remove all vestiges of Christianity from its shores and even to convince people that it never was a Christian country – about like England in its present state where wearing insignias of Christian beliefs has become a matter for controversy with government agencies taking the lead – almost like the days of Scrooby!

The real intent,  of course, of the First Amendment  was and is  to keep the State from establishing a State religion as functioned in the “Mother” Country at the time of the Revolution.  “A Walk Through History” has documented that to deviate from the King’s view of the Bible was to become an instant criminal and to earn a stretch in the pokey.  Some went to the stake to be burned alive.  That isn’t a fate I could contemplate easily.

Unhappily, so universal has been the acceptance of this untrue belief, it is brought out and waved  at the slightest excuse. Aye, there’s the rub:  trying to convince the uneducated masses that there is no such thing in their Constitution.  How would they know---they probably never read it but will cling tenaciously to that interpretation because that’s what they heard someone else say --or write.

The teaching in America’s public schools of  our government’s foundations went out the window years and years ago with the introduction of “social studies” creating the disappearance of the  teaching of civics, along with history of the motivations of the rebellion against the authoritarianism of the British King,  his laws, parliament and the state-supported church which precipitated the authorship of that unique document, the American Constitution which once was taught in grade school, including memorizing its Preamble. 

But no more.

Franklin Roosevelt grew angry when the Court struck down his socialistic programs and decided to “pack the court,” and sought a means to increase the number of “justices.”  He didn’t succeed at that.  If  he could have prolonged his life another half century, the Court has been swinging his way, definitely making decisions he would have liked.  During his reign, however,  columnist Westbrook Pegler commented on Roosevelt’s court:  “The present Supreme Court of the United States is a low-grade outfit, not only by comparison with some courts of the past, but on the records of its personnel.”

At the time Carl Brent Swisher, was professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins, and wrote in the Virginia Law Review that “the Supreme Court looks back on two decades of bizarre behavior.  It stands exposed as a power group, competing with other groups wielding political power in our society.

“That is why so many lawyers say confidentially they just can’t advise clients with any confidence on the law and the Constitution…..Many of the individual Justices have joined in debunking what Federal Circuit Court Judge Jerome Frank has called ‘the cult of the robe,’ to the end of revealing not only that the court is a power group but that individual justices are themselves competitors for power and the individual prestige of determining the course of legal rationalization.”

Pegler, describing Roosevelt’s “court packing” scheme said it was “consistent with the plan which Col. E. M. House set forth in his revolutionary prophecy, Philip Dru, Administrator, that I truly believe Roosevelt got it from House who was his adviser early in the New Deal.”

Another chance is coming up soon, about two weeks actually, to take the Court even further left with the appointment of Obama’s newest nominee,  Elena Kagan.  He must be secretly chortling, about putting his critics on the horns of a dilemma:  What is there they can criticize about her and not bring down the all the scorn and opprobrium of the left:   Her background is about as far from that of a Justice of the Supreme Court as you could possibly get, never having had judicial experience to begin with, not to mention her antagonism to the military because of their “don’t ask – don’t tell policy.”   Her anti-life, pro-abortion stance is not in keeping with the history of our country either—even though they are pillars of the left. Plus it seems she would prefer to interpret by means of international law, not the Constitution.

Jefferson made another comment which deserves far more widespread use than the aforementioned “separation'” and in this one, he said, “to consider the judges the ultimate arbiters  of all constitutional questions (is) a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

 This powerful nine-person elite  group more recently was described says one constitutional attorney, as performing “..in the American system of government a role similar to that by the Grand Council of Ayatollahs in the Iranian system: voting takes place and representatives of the people are elected as lawmakers, but the decisions they reach on basic issues of social policy are permitted to prevail only so long as they are not disallowed by the system’s highest authority. The major difference is that the ayatollahs act as a conservative force, while the effect of the Supreme Court’s interventions is almost always—….to challenge, reverse, and overthrow traditional American practices and values…..The salient characteristic of contemporary American society is a deep ideological divide along cultural and class lines, a higher degree of polarization on policy issues than at any time within memory. On one side of this ‘culture war’ is the majority of the American people, largely committed to traditional American values, practices, and institutions.  On the other side is what might be called the ‘knowledge’ or ‘verbal’ class or ‘cultural elite,’ consisting primarily of academics, most importantly at elite schools, and their progeny in the media, mainline churches, and generally, the verbal or literary occupations    …….they …often see it as part of their function to maintain an adversary relationship with their society, to challenge its values and assumptions. and to lead it to the acceptance of newer and presumably better values.”

So said Lino Graglia, who also has been a professor at the Virginia University School of Law, and one of several constitutional authorities who contributed to Judge Robert Bork’s recent publication, A Country I Do Not Recognize, The Legal Assault on American Values.

One legal beagle’s essay in Judge Bork’s collection said every decision since 1937 would have to be wiped out in order to get back to the Constitution.  Ha!  That has about as much chance of happening as the proverbial snowball in H….!