2004: Supreme Issue

Catholic Exchange via Denver Catholic Register ^ | 1-29-04 | George Weigel

[Salvation]

2004: Supreme Issue

1/29/04

A British officer, reflecting ruefully in 1781 on the colonies Britain had just lost, remarked that "these Americans are a curious, original people; they know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them."

Once spoken in the British tradition of good sportsmanship, the officer's observation tells us something important about us, not only about the first generation of citizens of the independent United States.

Why did Americans know how to govern themselves? They had learned the rudiments of democracy in town meetings and on congregational councils; they had formed legislatures, run courts, held elections; they had served on juries and done their time in local militias. They had made the mechanics of democracy work. But they had something else, something more: they had lived an experience of self-discipline and self-sacrifice.

No one made it in colonial America, economically speaking, without self-discipline and self-sacrifice. Society was also dependent on these virtues, as traditions like communal barn-raisings remind us. Colonial America gave a distinctive form to what Michael Novak would call, two hundred years later, the "communitarian individual" — yet, for all its American originality of form, the "communitarian individual" was the product of centuries of Christian European culture, in which men and women learned both their own dignity and their responsibilities to others.

The idea that a people can be self-governing only when they are governed "from within," by the virtues of self-discipline and self-sacrifice, is not something Americans learned first from the Enlightenment; the idea's deepest taproots are in medieval Catholic political thought, which itself drew on the wisdom of the classical world. That linkage between virtue and democracy is now under assault from what imagines itself to be the ultimate guardian of American liberties: the Supreme Court of the United States.

And that is why the Supremes must be an election issue in 2004.

Arguments about the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion and homosexuality tend to focus on the results — which are, to be sure, bad enough. Yet something else has been going on here. For forty years now, the Supremes have slowly, steadily advanced a new understanding of the freedom to which the Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. The popular troubadour of this new understanding of freedom was Frank Sinatra, who summed up the Supremes' project in one soaring, lilting, witless refrain: "I did it my way." What Old Blue Eyes took to the top of the pop charts, the Supremes enshrined in constitutional law, in the 1992 decision Casey v. Planned Parenthood: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

Write that in any freshman philosophy course, and you'd likely get an F. Write it in a plurality opinion of the Supreme Court, and the next step is the suggestion (also in Casey) that any linkage between freedom and moral truth is an act of "compulsion" that denies our fellow-citizens the "attributes of personhood." To take the obvious, and ominous, example: if you believe, on the basis of basic embryology, that the product of human conception is a human being; and if you believe that that scientific fact implies certain moral obligations to that human being; and if you try to persuade others of the legal implications of those truths — well, you're denying the "attributes of personhood" to anyone who disagrees. Or so sayeth Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, and Souter.

When the Court usurps powers beyond the Framers' imagining and the people are forbidden to settle deeply controverted issues of public policy through their elected representatives, democracy withers, and so do the habits that make democracy possible. When the Supreme Court teaches falsehoods about the nature of freedom, it accelerates the process of democratic decline that its usurpation of power began.

And that is why Supremes have to be an election issue in 2004. The Supreme Court is not only taking the country in a policy direction most Americans reject. It is doing so in the name of a false idea of freedom: a falsehood that could be fatal to the self-governance of the Republic, because it is fatal to the self-mastery of its citizens.


George Weigel is author of the bestselling book The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church.

(This column has been made available to Catholic Exchange courtesy of the Denver Catholic Register.)

[Salvation]

For your information and lively discussion.

[Salvation]

**And that is why the Supremes must be an election issue in 2004.**

[Salvation]

**When the Court usurps powers beyond the Framers' imagining and the people are forbidden to settle deeply controverted issues of public policy through their elected representatives, democracy withers, and so do the habits that make democracy possible.**

Do we have a broken system?

[Salvation]

Catholic Discussion Ping!

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[TradicalRC]

Thanks, Salvation for the post.

The Supreme court has usurped much power that was not originally granted by the Constitution. I think it goes as far back as Marbury vs. Madison but other outstanding cases such as Griswold vs. Connecticut come to mind.

I cannot for the life of me recall what SCOTUS decision caused Ted Kennedy to remark that the balance of power has shifted from the other two branches of government to the Supreme Court for better or worse for the next forty years.

The exact quote eludes me and I may not even have the right politico. Any help here would be appreciated as it has been at least a dozen years since I read that quote.

[pegleg]

The Supreme Court is not only taking the country in a policy direction most Americans reject. It is doing so in the name of a false idea of freedom: a falsehood that could be fatal to the self-governance of the Republic, because it is fatal to the self-mastery of its citizens.

This is not a new phenomena. I read an interesting article on the Catholic Church & American Culture Project by Charles DeNunzio. His position is around 1948 the American cultural landscape had been secularized to the point that a Masonically-dominated Supreme Court could begin viewing the "Establishment Clause" as a mandate to purge American civil life of all traces of religious influence. This view has prevailed ever since, on account of the fact that those who hold the "Christian America" view were by then too few to turn back the tide.

He went on to say since the United States has no official religion, there are those who started to devise one which we now call "political correctness": it has rituals, festival days, saints, a moral code, a dogmatic creed, and an "inquisition" dedicated not to defending the truth in society, but rather to defending society against the truth.

Do we have a broken system?

I don’t know that the system is broken but it sure has lost its focus.

[Bigg Red]

Excellent article. Thanks for the flag.

[Salvation]

All the way back to 1948?

I just gasped when I saw that date!!

Does that go along with T. Kennedy quote?

[drstevej]

Ping

[pegleg]

All the way back to 1948?

I believe the author cited 1948 because of this case:

Illinois vs. McCollum (1948).--The court ruled that allowing religious teachers to come into public schools to give religious instruction violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which prohibits government establishment of religion. The court said the policy tears down the wall" separating church and state -- a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Westbury Baptists after the Constitution had been written and ratified.

Does that go along with T. Kennedy quote?

I don’t believe so.

[Salvation]

I hope you meant heretic rather than hectic there. My life gets mightyu hectic at times. LOL!

[Salvation]

And then we have this wisdom:

Attempts to be virtuous that are joined to disobedience to the will of God, no matter how good they may appear, will actually work for our damnation.

 -- St. Thomas More

[Warlord David]

I get alittle carry away. You almost have to with the fact that our school and courts are going to the liberal secularist,and the legislative branch is more like a ping-pong game. I also stand correct on spelling. signing off for now.

[Warlord David]

Who said anything about being virtuous? And as for wisdom "Wisdom shall be justifyed by her children" Jesus Christ

[Salvation]

I was thinking that the Supreme Court, in interpreting the law, would try to adhere to the laws and implied virtues in the Constitution.

Sorry, you really can't know what I am thinking, just what I type.

[Warlord David]

Sorry,I step out for a break the screen was getting blurry. Im back. I agree with what you say. But virtues our apart of mans consciousness to except of not. Moral are very hard to lay down into law, because of the various form of thought that can be imagine. So many loopholes, and back doors. That why the law should be in general, so men of good consciousness may do what is right.

[drstevej]

WD your typing is getting blurry too.

[Warlord David]

I think it time for bed. Goodnight to all. And to all a good night. Your right it is getting blurry.