Theologian-in-Chief
There is a political party that has a bad habit of mixing its religion with the governing process. That's what can happen when you chuck the Constitution and nominate judges who rule by personal preference rather than by the law. You've heard of the "Living Constitution?" - that's just another way of saying "The Constitution is Dead."
The Religion of Secular Humanism, the official Faith of the Democrat Party, is the biggest threat to representative democracy in America today... with its Altar of Abortion, Mosque of Multiculturalism, Abby of Environmentalism, the Convent and Monastery of Gay Marriage, and the Temple of the Welfare State - funded of course by its Tabernacle of Taxation. The Blessed Cult of Amnesty for Illegals is a growing concern - And of course you have the "Holy of Holies" located in the Cathedral of Nations United.
The Democrats aren't interested in the majority opinion. They don't care what you think. And they certainly don't want you to be able to vote on it. Their religious agenda is to become the law - not through votes - but by decree - sent down from on high by the High Priests on the Supreme Court, and the Bishops on the Federal Bench - the unelected Clergy of the Liberal Faith.
If in 2008 we elect another Democrat Theologian-in-Chief, the process will continue.
Getting around the voters - getting around the law - seems like a clever way to further your agenda - And the Liberals thrive on this tactic. Radical Islam certainly doesn't let laws get in the way of its agenda. Oddly, conservative Christians are still trying to effect change through the voting booth - for which they are roundly criticized.
But weakening your representative democracy is always a recipe for tyranny - A bad idea... no matter where you worship.
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Paragraph 2, I don't see much of a connection between your list of perceived threats and actual threats to our representative democracy.
It would make more sense to me if you put it in terms of threats to your longed-for direct democracy in a majority evanagelical society that happens to agree with you on these issues (which I don't think exists today), and I wonder if that's what you meant to say.
Maybe you could help me see your point a little better.
Paw,
I know you see the judicial tyranny when a single judge strikes down the vote of a couple million people concerning gay marriage.
Since ruling by personal preference could swing both ways, I imagine you, a very bright man, would prefer strict constructionists who allow the people to govern themselves, unless they break faith - in the strictest sense - with the Constitution.
I'm starting to think of you as direct democracy type of guy. That fits, I think. You seem to reject some key premises behind representative democracy.
This is out of context, but I think the spirit holds true:
"....why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" Sandra D.
And I'm hoping that someone else with more time and energy than I have today takes on "the getting around the law/advance agenda/tyranny" argument. I rubbed my eyes twice in utter disbelief of the irony the first time I read that.
Take care.
Paw,
Having legislation by judicial fiat is not the same thing as a representative democracy. That would be an oligarchy, and our founding fathers didn't sign up for that.
The True Believers on the Left prefer judicial fiat to representative democracy (which means the legislature actually makes the laws, and the bums are thrown out when they get it wrong too much), because so much of the time, the Left would lose ground under the latter.
Ma chérie SkyePuppy,
I believe you're mistaken about what "we" prefer, and despite it's usefulness to your cause, callling judicial rulings "legislation" does not make it so. They are rulings, perfectly in keeping with our centuries-long traditon of representative democracy. In your comments I see another argument for direct democracy. Everyone here knows the difference, right?
Paw, mon cher,
How is relying on legislators to do the legislating "direct democracy"? Voting the bums out is also a facet of representative government.
When judges, like the Massachusetts Supreme Court, dictate legislation to the state legislature, that (IMHO) has crossed the bounds of the judiciary's proper role and stepped all over the principle of representative democracy.
The people make the laws, through their representatives. The judges weigh those laws against the constitution and either affirm them or overturn them. Their job is not to make new laws.
Ma chérie,
It feels like a dance, doesn't it? I bet you know where I'm going now...
Protections against the tyranny of the majority, checks and balances, co-equal branches, minority rights, all hallmarks of representative government and very much what our system was designed to do.
One side gets 51% and gets all the marbles, for the other 49% all bets are off until the next wild swing : direct democracy.
Direct democracy is widely considered problematic, undesirable to live under.
On the MA decision (not legistlation, decision), tell me at what point law was new law made? Where is the statute? Here is the way I would characterize MA:
1. Person brings complaint of a constitutional nature.
2. Court rules.
3. Legislature tries address ruling with a work around.
4. Court rules on the work-around's constitutionality.
Which step was out of line? What would have a court do? Not hear constitutional cases? Not review laws for constitutionality? Or maybe just not review some laws and some cases, ones of certain types that you don't want to be addressed, grievances for which we will allow no hearing or remedy.
Maybe you would reverse Marbury vs Madison, do away entirely with case law and stare decisis. If this is your position, you are indeed a radical. It might be proper to call you a revolutionary. I refer you again to the Sandra D. quote: "....why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?"
I could get on board with reform if I found an argument that was palatable. Consider me unconvinced but still open. And I know this isn't the library at Princeton. I keep hanging around here not to heckle but to challenge myself. Baring a more rational explanation, I will continue to work against you.
I'm done now. Are you done?
Perhaps I'm speaking out of turn, but I will first make the obvious point (which I am certain Paw knows) that reversing Marbury would not be the equivalent of "do[ing] away entirely with case law and stare decisis." Rather, Marbury stands for the proposition that courts have the power of judicial review over the constitutionality of the statutory enactments of the legislature. Case law and stare decisis (literally, "to stand by things decided" - i.e. the recognition of prior case law as precedent) is a different animal altogether.
As to the underlying proposition of Marbury, I will agree that it is settled law. I would note, however, that this power of judicial review for constitutionality is judicially-created. The Constitution itself does not provide the Judiciary the explicit power to pass on the constitutionality of acts of the legislature.
As to our friend Paw's reliance on the judiciary as the ultimate arbiters of constitutionality, I will defer to those wiser than myself:
"The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." - Thomas Jefferson
"[T]he Judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power…. [T]he general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter." - Alexander Hamilton
"[R]efusing or not refusing to execute a law, to stamp it with its final character … makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended and can never be proper."– James Madison
"The Judiciary … has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society, and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will." - Alexander Hamilton
In short, then, if Skyepuppy and Malott are "revolutionaries" because of their distrust of the judiciary, as Paw has charged, they would appear to be in good "Revolutionary" company.
Now I'm done too.
Sorry, in my haste to wrap up the previous post, I forgot two of my favorites from Jefferson:
"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression … that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; … working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."
"You seem … to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."
Okay, now I really am done.
Thank you, Nobody Important!
Paw, mon cher,
You mischaracterize the MA case in your item 2. The court did not merely rule. It mandated the legislation it required the legislature to produce, and then ruled on whether or not it thought the legislature got it right. That's stepping way beyond the bounds of the judiciary's proper role, and it smacks of oligarchy plain and simple.
Isn't Malott's place the Gentleman's and Ladies debating society today?
NI, you know your federalist papers. I don't think my argument reduces to the "...judiciary as the ultimate arbiters of constitutionality". I feel slightly straw-manned on that account, and by your attempted take down of a non-existent connection between Marbury and case law which I wasn't trying to make. But no matter. Those papers are good reading.
Mon amour, if we keep fighting like this people are going to talk. I won't forget what you've asked me to think about.
PAW,
...referring to your 2nd comment...
Now you know that people elect like-minded state representatives that make marriage and abortion laws for their state... Laws that fit their beliefs and values.
I approve of that - and if that makes me a direct democracy type of guy... Then I'm guilty.
You ditch the constitution when you start adding imaginary, non-existent passages that take away the rights of self governance from states and local communities.
The Living Constitution is simply a judicial power grab, and a loss of the people's rights. That's tyranny, PAW.
NOTE: I'm really enjoying [everyone's] arguments.
Paw, mon cher,
"Mon amour"? I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of commitment...
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