Replies

PL ...

Good post.

I find this case interesting BECAUSE it hits on so many levels at one time:

Arguments about Church and State

State Rights vs Federal Control

Civil Disobedience--private citizens, public officials, judges!

Foundations of our legal system and of our Constitution

There is one more that few mention but I think is the most dangerous: judicial activism

Clearly this would not have been an unconstitutional act 200 years ago, or even 100. But it is today. Yet there have been no new laws enacted. I am not arguing here that the momument should be in the rotunda, or that it should not be. Just that the law somehow changed over the course of our history, yet there has been no new law.

Thus what has changed? Judges have begun to reinterpret the laws...or as Robert Bork and Anthony Scalia would say, rewriting the laws. While many on this thread think that is a good thing, and that it has happened many times to correct what obviously were flawed early legal decisions, Bork makes a great case that it is a road to tyranny.

Why? Because Justices are voted in for life, and do not have to answer to the people. If a current interpretation of a law is bad, then the people should force their legislature to change the law. To permit the judicary to fix injustices by reinterpreting the law is to give to unaccountable men complete, and possible tyranical, power.

I heard an interesting discussion involving Scalia one time. Someone asked him if his job was not one of being the final arbitrator, to ensure fairness and protect people's rights (just like many are arguing that the Federal Judge was right to have the momument moved because to leave it there would make some non-Christians feel like second class citizens..thus it would be unfair). He said no, that was the legislatures job; his job was not to fix injustices or to ensure fairness, but to ensure legislation passed Constitutional muster. He said if something is unfair, go to your legislature and tell then to fix it. To ask judges to do so requires the people to forfeit their right to self-governance and is antithetical to good representaive democracy. When he told this crowd that he would uphold bad laws if they were Constitutional, the crowd about fainted. But he was, and is, right.

Bottom line: These religious symbols were legal when our founding father's wrote the Constitution. At that time there were not Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims here. If it now makes many Americans uncomfortable to have these symbols around, pass a law saying that all religious symbols should be removed from public places. DO NOT rely on judges to say times have changed and America is now a more pluristic society, and thus I must reinterpret the law--a living Constitution--to address this injustice.

Call it tyranny of the majority if you want, but it is better than tyranny by the few, and our Founding Father's understood that well when they debated the Constitution (read the early writings and debates...this was about the most argued about point of the whole process of setting up our three branch government).

One man's opinion anyway.

Night!

393 posted on 08/29/2003 8:05 PM PDT by Proud Legions

fC ...

The supreme ayatolla court declared under our living constitution evolution our national religion - science ... an illegal monopoly --- forbidding any mention of the creator --- atheism ONLY - total --- SHARIA !