Posted on 09/10/2015 8:24:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A pro-choice voter in New Hampshire had a question for John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, who was making the rounds as a presidential candidate: Would he “respect” Roe v. Wade even though he is a pro-lifer? Kasich answered, “Obviously, it’s the law of the land now, and we live with the law of the land.”
Whether he knew it or not, Kasich had wandered into a debate over the courts, one in which some of the other presidential candidates are also participants. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has denounced “judicial tyranny.” When five justices ruled that the Constitution requires governments to recognize same-sex marriage, he scoffed that the Supreme Court was not “the Supreme Being.”
It’s an often-heated debate. Huckabee’s side says that the courts have established a “judicial supremacy” at odds with the actual constitutional design; the other side says that people like Huckabee are threatening the rule of law. Both sides have some reasonable points, and both could profit from conducting the debate at a lower level of abstraction.
Huckabee’s side of the argument is of course the weaker one in our political culture. Think of how often people say, without realizing they are making a controversial claim, that abortion is “a constitutional right” or that laws against it are “unconstitutional.” The Supreme Court has ruled to that effect; our shorthand treats its rulings as either correct by definition or authoritative in such a strong sense that we should describe them as though they were. “The Constitution is what the judges say it is,” as Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes said before he was on the Court.
The case against this way of thinking holds that judicial supremacy is incompatible with constitutional supremacy. The courts can get the Constitution wrong; if they could not, there would be no point to justices’ trying to get it right by reasoning about the Constitution. Judicial review, though not explicitly authorized by the Constitution, can be inferred from it: In cases where the courts have to decide whether to apply the Constitution or a statute that conflicts with it, the higher law has to take precedence. The case against judicial supremacy rests on a similar inference: In cases where a judicial interpretation of the Constitution is at odds with the actual document, it is the latter that deserves the allegiance of citizens and officeholders. Kasich is therefore wrong: The Constitution is “the law of the land,” not Roe. (You can look it up in the Constitution’s sixth article.)
The strongest argument for judicial supremacy is not that the Constitution commands it. It’s that government cannot work, or work well, if every question of constitutional meaning is up for grabs and that there needs to be a final arbiter.
Abraham Lincoln gave due weight to each side in the course of his first inaugural address. He did not, he said, deny that the Supreme Court’s
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"decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
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He would defer to the Supreme Court, to a point, but his deference would not be absolute. And so the Lincoln administration did not attempt to undo the Supreme Court’s decision with regard to the parties in Dred Scott v. Sandford but also refused to speak or act as though it were correct. It recognized that blacks could be citizens regardless of that decision, and granted passports and patents accordingly. Lincoln’s words are a great asset to the anti-supremacist side not only because of his moral and historical authority but because they are essentially unanswerable, encompassing as they do what is valid on both sides of the question.
Huckabee did not articulate a similarly balanced view, or offer a Lincolnian strategy for responding to the same-sex-marriage decision. Opponents of same-sex marriage have by and large declined to push state-government officials to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In part this may be because so many people accept judicial supremacy; in part because even many opponents of same-sex marriage are not sufficiently adamant about their view to defy the Court; and in part because they do not think this tactic would succeed.
#share#Some conservatives have instead called for a constitutional amendment, either to define marriage in the law as the union of a man and a woman or to let states adopt that policy. Many conservatives have also sought legislation to protect freedom of conscience for people and groups that reject same-sex marriage. Both of these responses are in some sense in opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling. They do not simply “move on” from marriage now that the Court has spoken, as Kasich and many others have suggested. But neither can these responses be said to defy the Supreme Court in any sense that poses even a potential concern about the rule of law.
Our anti–judicial supremacists are not, then, doing anything that judicial supremacists have any good reason to condemn. At the other end of the debate, too, the judicial supremacists refuse to rule out the practical courses of action that are open to anti-supremacists.
What, for example, does it mean for someone like Kasich to “live with” Roe as “the law of the land,” or to “respect” it? It doesn’t mean that Kasich agrees with it, or accepts its permanence. A spokesman for him clarified that Kasich “hopes that Roe is overturned.” And maybe more than “hopes”: The last time Kasich ran for president, according to news reports from the time, he said he would nominate “anti-abortion” justices. Back then, he also said he favored a constitutional amendment to undo Roe. The governor’s respect for Roe as the law of the land has not precluded him from signing laws in tension with it, including a ban on abortions after 20 weeks. His behavior and his positions, in short, are indistinguishable from those of an elected official who does not respect Roe much at all and does not wish to live with it.
Kasich isn’t the first pro-life politician to speak confusingly of his respect for Roe. John Ashcroft had been a staunchly pro-life senator from Missouri, and in part for that reason he faced strong opposition when the Senate considered his nomination for attorney general in 2001. During the confirmation hearings, he tried to defuse the issue by saying that while he thought Roe, “as an original matter, was wrongly decided,” he would “enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it. I accept Roe and Casey as the settled law of the land. If confirmed as attorney general, I will follow the law in this area and in all other areas.”
No senator thought to ask him what it would mean for an attorney general to “enforce” or “follow” Roe, which provides no instructions to the Justice Department. Did it mean he would send U.S. marshals to deal with any state legislature that tried to prohibit abortion? Ashcroft also said during the hearings that he would not ask the Court to overturn Roe, but offered the rationale that it was unlikely to take up any such invitation. He would “follow” Roe in this way, in other words, because there was no point in trying not to follow it. He neither said nor implied that the administration of George H. W. Bush had been flouting “the law as it is” when it asked the Supreme Court to reverse Roe.
There are circumstances in which “obedience” to the Court, or belief in the Court’s supremacy, could make a practical difference. Thirteen years ago a federal appeals court ruled that it was unconstitutional for a public school to make students listen to the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Republican House voted to take away the federal courts’ jurisdiction to hear constitutional challenges to the recitation of the Pledge.
The House was acting pursuant to Article III of the Constitution. Its first section gives Congress the power to create the inferior courts, which implies a power to determine the scope and limits of their jurisdiction. Its second section gives Congress the power to make “Exceptions” and “Regulations” to the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. People who believe that it’s important for the courts to have the last say on the vast majority of questions of constitutional interpretation will resist reading those provisions of the Constitution to permit Congress to deny them that say.
Even when arguments about judicial supremacy appear to have no practical import, however, they lie beneath judgments about how we should talk about judicial decisions. Kasich’s side of that argument pays rhetorical fealty to the Court: It may make mistakes, but it deserves respect even so. It is dangerous, people on that side often believe, not to give it that respect. Huckabee’s side insists that the greater danger would come from not denouncing certain rulings as illegitimate. These are the ones in which the Court gets the Constitution wrong in a deeper sense: It substitutes its own desires for the text, original understanding, and structure of the Constitution. In those cases, the Court is not really engaged in interpreting the Constitution at all.
That’s a tough charge. But it’s one that is also made by several of the dissenting justices in the marriage case. And Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion didn’t work very hard to make a constitutional argument for its conclusion — as even some strong supporters of the result have noted. The same is true of the Court’s abortion jurisprudence: Even academics who are glad to see abortion treated as a constitutional right cannot generally bring themselves to defend the reasoning of Roe.
When the Court makes an illegitimate ruling, those who recognize its illegitimacy may have to live with practical limits on their ability to undo it. If a ruling has earned no more respect than that, however, politicians and others should give not give it any — lest they make the very mistake against which Lincoln warned.
— Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor of National Review.
Most of the founding fathers were afraid of ‘judicial tyranny’. That is why, even after the Constitution was ratified they wrote extensively on the subject. And, that is why they didn’t give the court a permanent place to do business. That came much later.
Statists like Kaschich are perfectly content to allow the left to define the culture and politics of this nation. It is the “new tone”, “reaching across the isle”, aka, complete surrender.
Two clauses have swallowed the entire Constitution; “equal protection: and, “due process.”
They live under the foolish notion of, “I can coexist with them, I will be good and do as they say and they won’t hurt me. I will order round up who they want rounded up. I will guard the camps. I will kill who they want killed. I will live happily ever after. What they, in their cowardness, fail to recognize is that when their usefulness is over, their everafter comes quickly. Their line of thinking is not unique, Stalin had and used them. Hitler had and used them, only WW2 did not end in Hitler’s favor is what saved those that he had.
Once upon a time in a fairy tale Republic, the Court was greatly concerned about the legitimacy of its rulings. The Court assumed great power in Marbury v. Madison, but also expressed great reluctance to use the power for fear of its abuse. One of the notable features about previous landmark rulings was a perceived need to have the Court “speak as a Court,” in other words, to create a unanimous opinion written by the Chief Justice. Examples of this are Brown v. Board of Education and U.S. v. Nixon.
Unfortunately, the Court has become a partisan political animal. The seeds of this probably go back to the nomination of Robert Bork, where the appointment of Justices became a political circus. To some extent the Court was always conscious of political ramifications of its rulings, but historically from the standpoint of avoiding a political outcome rather than creating one. The decision of the Court which, in my opinion, finally destroyed the Court’s credibility as a judicial institution was Bush v. Gore. In that case, the Supreme Court of the United States was going to pick the President of the United States, possibly the most important single Constitutional decision ever in the Court’s history. It was a situation that demanded a unanimous decision written by the Chief Justice. What we got was a fractured 5-4 decision predictably rendered along partisan lines. It destroyed what credibility remained in the Court because it was perceived as a political, not a legal, decision. In that decision, conservatives won the battle but lost the war. Since then, the political decisions have all gone the other way.
The Court is no longer a legal institution. Just another political one. And a leftist one at that.
It is actually the destruction of the meaning of Words (pure Marxism) which has destroyed the Constitution and removed all Reason. “Equality” has been morphed to pretend (utopia) that women and men are interchangeable and the same—to destroy the Natural Family and collapse civill society and destroy all Traditions and history so Marxists can rewrite it.
We are being forced into a Marxist worldiview (Prussian indoctrination system) where we pretend there are no Natural Laws-—none-—no uniqueness in human beings, we “evolved” from slime. Males and females are interchangeable (which is a Lie)-—when you can scientifically prove the difference. They are making Law irrational so “Justice” is impossible which will destroy cultures..
“Natural Rights from the Creator” has been erased——there is no God-Given Rights anymore——we have Rule of Oligarchy now-—totally unconstitutional and “null and void” as Justice Marshall stated. We have a DUTY to disobey all unjust laws........that stated by Justice John Marshall-—and ALL judges have the duty to eject evil law immediately.
Forcing children to “think” sodomy is a Virtue is erasing all Wisdom of Western Civilization: Wisdom is discerning Good and Evil. Children being programmed by MSM and schools are devoid of wisdom-—dumb as stumps with no Knowledge of the Wisdom of Western Civilization.
(It is on purpose, so the Marxists can control all their ideas/thoughts).
What you write is exactly why the Marxists are atheists. They must deny that man was created by God, in His image, by breathing into man His eternal spirit. That is what separates man from the beasts.
When you seek to deny men these truths, rights are no longer rights granted by God but licenses granted (and revoked) by the state. They can claim that men are no more than pieces of meat, to be disposed of as the state sees fit.
The only criticism I would level against your argument is the failure to name the actual individuals involved in the attack upon Western Civilization and its Christian basis. In many instances they are not well known, in other instances it is a matter of public record; i.e. Soros.
When the USSC rules, I still must obey the law if possible, until the Constitutionally correct law is enacted. I found in both military service and federal service obeying the enacted law is the best course of action.
The USSC rules on the law, not on me.
I’m not sure that Huckabee’s is the weaker argument. He nailed Megyn Kelly when she threw Marbury v. Madison at him. MvM establshed judicial REVIEW, not judicial supremacy. And if he’d had time to finish his thought, Huckabee would probably have added that “review” entails an actual LAW, not merely a cultural leaning or current fad. Exactly as in Roe v. Wade, the Court ruled extraconstitutionally, legislating rather than reviewing specific, actual legislation.
Back in 1876, a Black Minister and Ohio State Legislator, Rev. Benjamin W. Arnett, delivered the "Centennial Thanksgiving Sermon," celebrating the Declaration of Independence, at St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Urbana, Ohio. The Sermon, which examined the nature of governments, and the history of nations, can be read online IN ITS ENTIRETY at the American Memory Section of the Library of Congress, in the African-American Collection. Below is a relatively small excerpt from that Sermon's conclusion. In it, Rev. Arnett warned about a movement among "liberals" to remove the ideas underlying America's founding documents. See if you don't recognize those ideas in what you have observed in recent years:
"The Danger to our Country."Now that our national glory and grandeur is principally derived from the position the fathers took on the great questions of right and wrong, and the career of this nation has been unparalleled in the history of the past, now there are those who are demanding the tearing down the strength of our national fabric. They may not intend to tear it down, but just as sure as they have their way, just that sure will they undermine our superstructure and cause the greatest calamity of the age. What are the demands of this party of men? Just look at it and examine it for yourselves, and see if you are willing that they shall have their way; or will you still assist in keeping the ship of state in the hands of the same crew and run her by the old gospel chart! But ye men who think there is no danger listen to the demands of the Liberals as they choose to call themselves:
"'Organize! Liberals of America! The hour for action has arrived. The cause of freedom calls upon us to combine our strength, our zeal, our efforts. These are The Demands of Liberalism:"'1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempt from just taxation.
"'2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State Legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.
"'3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian educational and charitable institutions shall cease.
"'4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.
"'5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United States or by the Governors of the various States, of all religious festivals and fasts shall wholly cease.
"'6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in all other departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation under the pains and penalties of perjury shall be established in its stead.
"'7. We demand that all laws directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
"'8. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.
"'9. We demand that not only in the Constitution of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly made.'
"'Let us boldly and with high purpose meet the duty of the hour.'
"Now we must not think that we have nothing to do in this great work, for the men who are at the head of this movement are men of culture and intelligence, and many of them are men of influence. They are led by that thinker and scholar, F. E. Abbott, than whom I know but few men who has a smoother pen, or who is his equal on the battle-field of thought. He says in an address on the duty of his leagues:
"'My answer may be a negative one to all who see nothing positive in the idea of liberty. The conviction I refer to is this: that, regarded as a theological system, Christianity is Superstition, and, regarded as an organized institution, Christianity is Slavery. The purpose I refer to is this: that, whether regarded as theological system, Christianity shall wholly cease to exercise influence in political matters. Although the national Constitution is strictly secular and non-Christian, there are many things in the practical administration of the government which violate its spirit, and constitute a virtual recognition of Christianity as the national religion. These violations are very dangerous; they are on the increase; they more and more give Christianity a practical hold upon the government; they directly tend to strengthen the influence of Christianity over the people, and to fortify it both as a theology and a church; and they are therefore justly viewed with growing indignation by liberals. Not unreasonably are they looked upon as paving the way to a formidable effort to carry the Christian Amendment to the Constitution; and the liberals are beginning to see that they must extinguish the conflagration in its commencement. I believe all this myself, with more intense conviction every day; and therefore I appeal frankly to the people to begin now to lay the foundations of a great National Party of Freedom. It is not a moment too soon. If the liberals are wise, they will see the facts as they are, and act accordingly. Not with hostility, bitterness, defiance, or anger but rather with love to all men and high faith in the beneficence of consistently republican institutions, do I urge them most earnestly to begin the work at once.'
"He acknowledges that this is a religious nation and wants all men to assist him in eliminating the grand old granite principles from the framework of our national union. Will you do it freeman; will we sell the temple reared at the cost of so much precious blood and treasure? These men would have us turn back the hands on the clock of our national progress, and stay the shadow on the dial plate of our christian civilization; they would have us call a retreat to the soldiers in the army of Christ; the banner of the cross they would have us haul down, and reverse the engines of war against sin and crime; the songs of Zion they would turn into discord, and for the harmony and the melody of the sons of God, they would give us general confusion; they would have us chain the forces of virtue and unloose the elements of vice; they would have the nation loose its moorings from the Lord of truth and experience and commit interest, morally, socially; religiously and politically to the unsafe and unreliable human reason; they would discharge God and his crew and run the ship of State by the light of reason, which has always been but a dim taper in the world, and all the foot-prints it has left are marked with the blood of men, women and children. No nation is safe when left alone with reason.
"But we have no notion of giving up the contest without a struggle or a battle. We are aware that there is a great commotion in the world of thought. Religion and science are at arms length contending with all their forces for the mastery. Faith and unbelief are fighting their old battles over again, everything that can be shaken is shaking. The foundations of belief are assaulted by the army of science and men are changing their opinions. New and starting theories are promulgated to the world; old truths are putting on new garbs. Error is dressing in the latest style, wrong is secured by the unholy alliances, changes in men and things, revolution in church and state, Empires are crumbling, Kingdoms tottering; everywhere the change is seen. In the social circle, in the school house, in the pulpit and in the pews. But amid all the changes and revolutions there are some things that are unchangeable, unmovable and enduring. The forces that underline the vital power of Christianity are the same yesterday, to-day, to-morrow and forever more. They are like their God, who is omnipotent, immovable and eternal, and everywhere truth has marched it has left its moccasin tracks.
"The Conclusion of the Whole Matter.We have patiently tried to examine the record of the nations of antiquity and learn the cause of their decay and decline, their fall, why their early death; and why so many implements of destruction around and about their tombs, and everywhere, in the silent streets, mouldering ruins, tottering columns, mouldy and moist rooms, and the united voice from the sepulcher of the dead past is, "sin is a reproach to any people." We see it written on the tombs of the Kings, and engraven on the pages of time, "sin is a reproach to any people." These are the principles of governments, Right and wrong; and the people who are the advocates of Right have bound themselves together and by their united effort they have brought light out of darkness and forced strength out of weakness.
"We as a nation have a grand and glorious future before us. The sun of our nation is just arising above the horizon and is now sending his golden rays of peace from one end of the land to the other. The utmost extremities of the members of the body politic are warm and in motion by the commercial and financial activities of the land. Her face is destined to blush with beauty when peace and justice shall be enthroned. The grand march of progress shall mark her in her onward advancement in moral strength, intellectual brilliancy, and political power. Then we can say that we give to every man, woman and child the benefit of our free institutions, giving all the benefits of our common school and the freedom to worship God under their own vine and fig tree. Then will we see written, on the banner of our free, redeemed and disenthralled country, the sublime words written, not in the blood of men, but in the sun-light of truth, that "Righteousness exalteth a nation." It will fall like the morning dew on the lowly; it will descend like the showers of May on the poor; and like the sun it will shine on the good and bad, dispensing from the hand of plenty the blessings of a government founded on the principle of justice and equality.
"Standing on the threshold of the second century of the nation's life, with the experience of the past lying at our feet, we are saluted by the shout of triumph from the millions who left their homes and business and attended the Great Exposition of the skill and genius of the world, collected at Philadelphia. We were permitted to receive the greetings from the oldest to the youngest nation of the earth. Egypt and the United States clasped hands over the waste of 5,000 years, and lay their treasures at the feet of our civilization. The material, intellectual and mechanical deterioration of the one, and the unprecedented progress of the other, stand in great contrast; in all that makes the nation great,—morally, religiously and socially, the young nation is ahead.
"Following the tracks of righteousness throughout the centuries and along the way of nations, we are prepared to recommend it to all and assert without a shadow of doubt, that "Righteousness exalted a nation"; but on the other hand following the foot-prints of sin amid the ruins of Empires and remains of cities, we will say that "sin is a reproach to any people." But we call on all American citizens to love their country, and look not on the sins of the past, but arming ourselves for the conflict of the future, girding ourselves in the habiliments of Righteousness, march forth with the courage of a Numidian lion and with the confidence of a Roman Gladiator, and meet the demands of the age, and satisfy the duties of the hour. Let us be encouraged in our work, for we have found the moccasin track of Righteousness all along the shore of the stream of life, constantly advancing, holding humanity with a firm hand. We have seen it “through” all the confusion of rising and falling States, of battle, siege and slaughter, of victory and defeat; through the varying fortunes and ultimate extinctions of Monarchies, Republics and Empires; through barbaric irruption and desolation, feudal isolation, spiritual supremacy, the heroic rush and conflict of the Cross and Crescent; amid the busy hum of industry, through the marts of trade and behind the gliding keels of commerce.”
"And in America, the battle-field of modern thought, we can trace the foot-prints of the one and the tracks of the other. So let us use all of our available forces, and especially our young men, and throw them into the conflict of the Right against the Wrong.
"Then let the grand Centennial Thanksgiving song be heard and sung in every house of God; and in every home may thanksgiving sounds be heard, for our race has been emancipated, enfranchised and are now educating, and have the gospel preached to them!
"Sons of freedom, sing the glad hymns of praise on the Western plains! Daughters of sorrow shout the joyful tidings amid the savannahs of the South-land! Proclaim it on the Atlantic's western stand and declare it on the slopes of the Pacific! Humble followers of the Son of Mary, chant the eternal truth in the temple of the Most High, that “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
"We invite every nation, kindred, tongue and people, to come to our land. Come from the bogs of Ireland; come from the dykes of Holland; come from the mountains of Switzerland; and from the sunny plains of Italy; and enjoy a government made for man! Come from the jungles of Africa or Egypt, the university of the infant world; come from Asia the cradle of humanity; come and bring your gifts from the Islands of the South Sea and spice land! Come ye men of every clime and race and see a nation founded in Righteousness, guarded by Justice, and supported by truth and equity, and defended by God!
"When thus united in one grand commonwealth of nationalities the universal prayer will be:
"Show us our Aaron, with his rod of flower!
Our Miriam, with her timbrel soul in tune!
And call some Joshua, in spirits power,
To praise our sun of strength at point of noon.
God of our fathers! over sand and sea,
Still keep our struggling footsteps close to thee." - (End of Excerpt from "Righteousness Exalteth a Nation, but Sin is a Reproach to Any People")
So said Rev. Benjamin Arnett in 1876.
It was 7-2 on the important matter of equal protection of the voters in ALL of the counties, not just Gore's cherry-picked the counties.
The 5-4 decision regarded the timing of the remedy.
-PJ
The problem isn't when one branch exerts itself; the problem is when the other branches don't reassert themselves in response. Today we have the weakest Congress I have seen in my lifetime.
The states were supposed to be the final arbiter, until they neutered themselves with the 17th amendment.
-PJ
I agree. Review isn’t all bad when that’s all it’s doing. But it’s pretty amazing (magical, even) that an appeal from one state made it to the Supremes and ended up as federal law. That’s just nonsense. But it’s the same kind of nonsense that legitimized abortion on demand.
Thanks for posting that!
Their decades-long takeover of the mechanisms for educating youth have left a great void that some bright young persons may want to fill with "going back" to studying what once was considered "wisdom of the ages."
"Ideas have consequences"(Weaver).
The ideas of 1776 came out of a set of ideas consistent with liberty.
We tend to forget, or have never considered, that other world views existed then, as now.
Unless today's citizens rediscover the ideas of liberty existing in what Jefferson called "the American mind" of 1776, we risk going back to the "Old World" ideas which preceded the "Miracle of America."
There are those who call themselves "progressives," when, in fact, their ideas are regressive and enslaving, and as old as the history of civilization.
Would suggest to any who wish an authentic history of the ideas underlying American's founding a visit to this web site, at which Richard Frothingham's outstanding 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States" can be read on line.
This 600+-page history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.
Is there any wonder that the enemies of freedom, the so-called "progressives," do not promote such authentic histories of America? Their philosophy puts something called "the state," or "global interests" as being superior to individuals and requires a political elitist group to decide what role individuals are to play.
In other words, they must turn the Founders' ideas upside-down in order to achieve a common mediocrity for individuals and power for themselves.
For too long in America, we have called Democrats "liberals," when, in fact, they are and have stood for ideas which are the antithesis of "classical liberalism."
Now, and for the past several decades they have morphed into and now identify themselves as "progressives," a term which, in itself, is misleading. The so-called "progressive" philosophy is, in fact, most regressive, for it advocates failed ideas which lead to tyranny and oppression, not to freedom, opportunity, productivity, and plenty. "Progressive" ideas are more aptly described by the word "socialist," requiring coercive busybodies who impose their will, not exploration and discovery of individual freedom and happiness.
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