Bye, drolkrad."He's dead, Jim!"
Posted on 03/15/2005 10:20:51 AM PST by tahiti
I am listening to the Rush Limbaugh show at this very moment.
I am having quite a bit of difficulty reconciling Rush Limbaugh's remarks about judges imposing their morality and/or personal preferences on the rest of the citizenry as result of their constitutional decisions.
Yes, there are decisions that have been made based on a personal preference of a judge.
Most recently the Supreme Court decision to prohibit convicted death row felons under 18 years of age from being executed.
Original meaning of Amendment VIII, "...nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted," could never be interpreted to prohibit convicted felon under the age of 18 from executed without inserting an arbitrary personal preference gleened from what the "rest of the world" does.
However, Rush Limbaugh is advocating a tyranny of the majority, in a sense, through his advocation of enacting laws passed by a poplulist legislature, which would be nothing less than a consensus of morality and/or personal preferences of a group of people versus the morality or personal preferences of single judge.
The constitutions, either federal or state, are meant to limit government power and protect the individual rights of all citizens.
For example, Mr. Limbaugh, your current legal battle with the state of Florida over your use of pain killing drugs may be analyze from a constitutional perspective of original meaning.
What individual right is more fundamental than an individual, free citizen, deciding how he or she shall treat their pain?
How and where does any government entity, constitutionally exert their power to prohibit an individual from determing how much pain killer they need to consume to satisfy the discomfort of their personal pain?
And in fact, the federal constitution, the federal Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Privileges, guarantees that right to make such a decision.
Amendment IX
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others (rights) retained by the people."
Again, the constitution is meant to "limit" the power of government and the tyranny of the majority from imposing the majorities morality and/or personal preferences on an individual.
Is it not the basis of liberty, the basis of acting like a free citizen, living in a free country, to make the individual decision on what and how much an individual shall consume of a chemical or food for medicinal reasons or just plain pleasure?
Is that not a right "retained by the people?"
Without some type of "judicial" review of tyrannical laws that violate the constitution(s), how do we prevent the trampling of guaranteed rights by the poplulist, personal preference, morality driven majority? (bear arms, search and seizures, speech, religion, etc., for example)
Those citizens who are of the Christian faith, what protection of your religiion will you have if and when Muslims are the majority in the U.S., if their is no judicial review to help protect your right to a Christian religion and Muslism being imposed in your life?
The proper and constitutional way for the majority to have their will enacted is to "amend" the constitution, not to pressure legislators to enact unconstitutional laws.
When laws can deny and disparage rights, the constitutional will be rendered useless and the constitution will mean only what the majority wants, stated through their legislators and enacted laws.
Enacted laws are below the covenants of constitution(s)in the hierchacy of the rule of law, if not then there is no need for a constitution.
Well stated.
Why isn't 'tahiti' saying anything in reply to responses to his/her vanity post, let alone repeating wisdom along with you?
Bye, drolkrad."He's dead, Jim!"
Right On.... you'll get no arguement outta me
Quote: "I have asked this many times and no one has ever addressed it; Why has Congress failed to hold hearings on possible abuse of power by the High Court?"
Because the Left, ably assisted by the MSM has created the illusion that the Judiciary sits above the Executive and Legislative Branches. Thus, to hold hearings on the sacred judiciary would HAVE been unthinkable. But, as the left loses more and more elections, they have had to turn to the judiciary to enact their agenda. The problem for the left is that this has required the judiciary to utterly and completely ignore the democratic process. Their rulings become more and more outrageous and more unhinged from the Constitution. Coupled with the MSM's loss of monopoly makes the time ripe.
Huh when do I advocate that. I think there are plenty of tools to go after people without what we feel are appropriate moral standards. For example you could refuse to hire people who have had an adulterous affair. That kind of societal pressure seems legitimate to me.
The only thing I would actually advocate is a system where social pressures are applied by social groups rather than the state. The reason for that is simple. There is danger in allowing people to use the state to enforce their values. I use the religion example because it is important to note that atheism is a "value" and a society dominated by atheists could make identical and no less valid arguments about religion being counter to popular values.
I see the values argument as a convenient appeal to democracy that is used only when the majority agrees with you and when they don't you fall back to rights.
bttt!
Re: "Because the Left, ably assisted by the MSM has created the illusion that the Judiciary sits above the Executive and Legislative Branches."
A great point but Big Media does not run Congress and even a minority in Congress can get hearings if they want them. You don't really thing a majority in Congress is all that worked up about baseball do you? And it all falls apart when one considers the GOP has been in the driver seat for a few years now. Unless the GOP is part of the Left and all of these hearings and lack there of is just a smoke screen for the masses.
I understand the argument, but, IMHO, it would be far more effective to encode a positive approach akin to a VETO as opposed to a simply passive-aggressive approach of simply refusing to sign the bill in the alloted time.
A positive statement that the court was wrong would be valuable in that the precedent is removed, period. There is no interpretation, no opportunity for a later group of elected officials to start enforcing the ruling.
Shalom.
You have been repeatedly been shown to be wrong on this thread and by what Rush actually said on his program today. For your sake I would advise you to message a moderator and ask them to pull this thread before google archives it and your lack of judgement is preserved for the world to see forever.
bookmark
The evil is in the substantive majority rule. And while I agree with those who deride what Activist Judges have done to tamper with our Constitutional system--indeed, have been fighting that since I was a school boy;--I also deride what Congress has done to tamper with our Constitutional system. There has been a veritable avalanche of both.
The battle is basically between the written Constitution--and those of us who would uphold it--which looks to a much more limited role of Government in the lives of the people than we are now afflicted with--and the usurpers, whether in the Judicial, Executive or Legislative branch, who want to misuse their positions of trust, to engraft their new personal social theories on the rest of us. Anyone who truly understands the dynamics of our settlement and history, as well as reads the Constitution, will know how terribly wrong this is.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
As I see it, the Framers envisioned a representative form of government, wherein the people of each State were represented at the federal level by "Representatives" forming a House, the States were represented in a Senate, at the federal level, formed by two Senators from each State, the people were also represented in their respective States by a Legislature, usually bicameral, and, the people were "ruled" by Law whose foundation was in the written Constitution. The law was changed, as needed, by the legislature, either at the State or federal level. The federal government was to be tripartite, each part weilding powers of a different nature but designed to balance. So rather than stating that we are a nation of "majority rule" etc., I think it is more appropriate to say that we were established as a Representative Constitutional Republic based on the rule of law, which foundation resided in the Constitution. But that was then; now we are a nation of Judicial fiat with the Constitution pretty much a dead letter except when it suits some politician's purpose. Somehow we have let ourselves slip into a nation ruled by Judicial tyranny. BTW, read "the great one's" book, Men in Black for more insight!! I highly recommend it, as well as a paper, The Myth of Marbury, by Michael Paulsen (on the web), along with the Federalist Papers.
Blah...blah...blah...RUSH RULES! There would be no conservative talk radio or Fox News without Rush having started the snowball downhill. God bless Rush!!
Rush is entertaining. But I think some of the more intelligent topics of discussion are over his head. His brother got most of the brains in his family.
As an attorney, I can tell you that Rush DOES "get it."
Not only that the enemies of liberty understand Rush gets it too.
He nailed the present status of judges and their "black robe fever."
His view and description of homosexual marriage was dead on. In fact in FL when the FL bar shot down the bar's family law section from trying to overturn the homosexual adoption, Rush's analysis can be applied to the family law section ignoring the board of governor's directive and petitioning the overturning of adoption on behalf of the bar.
The writer should have listened to the whole program. Those who deal with judges on a daily basis can truthfully say Rush was on point.
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