One reason Democracies are rare is the fact that the majority is rarely just. The Founding Fathers knew that the mob, who the Greeks called the demos, the assembly, the common man could not be completely relied upon and that is why they devised a republic not government by plebiscite.
Think about it. In the 21st Century with its technology there’s no reason why the populace couldn’t chime in on each import issue by some means of internet or electronic voting on subjects such as the propagation of war, tax issues or other major issues brought to it by the Government. Why isn’t this most popular form of democracy being implemented? The conclusion is obvious.
Today we suffer under the cult of the transcendence of the common man. The fault, it is said, can’t be in the diminished capacity of someone incapable of punching out a vote on a computer card; the right of just anyone to engage themselves in the political process is sacrosanct. We should allow driveling idiots, bless their hearts, without bar to the political process. Of course it was the common man that ran the labor camps of the Gulag. The common man needs the edification of Christian principles to enlighten him. Without it he easily devolves into the beast. With Christian principles we have the worth of labor, self sacrifice, understanding that we are tied to eternal destiny with the prospect of judgment before almighty God. Thus wealth is built through honest labor with a view that our conduct will be subject to judgment in the afterlife. Without Christian Principles we eventually have the guillotine, the Gulag, Auschwitz death camp. (An argument that casts doubt on this thought will be entertained in a later blog.)
Thus we have what is called the Supreme Court to shepherd the populace from democratic excess. The Nine Supreme Magistrates, far more powerful than the British House of Lords yet quite similar, intervened in the name of justice in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). The Supreme Lords in opposition to the democratic process granted the Afro-American minority civil rights to attend the same schools as others, separate not being equal. The minority was justly rescued from inferior schools. A wrong was righted with due reference to the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. However, this group of Paramount Judges, the least of democratic institution, has used this amendment in areas not in anyways intended by the framers.
The 16th Amendment to the Constitution provided for extension of Civil Rights to all citizens of which the states could no longer deny. This was necessary due to the fallout after the Civil War (1861-5). The slaves had been freed with the 14th Amendment. But Southern states were writing law to deny their Black citizens right of movement and scope of employment, and opportunity, etc. i.e. laws designed to consign Blacks to a position of slavery in all but name. The Brown vs. Board of Education was correctly applied to this amendment. Since then however the Court has extended this Amendment to all aspects of society, such as school prayer and abortion. Very just in the minds of some especially the secular humanist, but very undemocratic. And admittedly based on my criticism of the unbridled common will, the court is seemingly quite needed.
The disgrace of this small band of antiquated lawyers is their nearly complete lack of ethical moorings. They swim in legal waters without reference to religious or philosophical schools of thought or traditions, Judeo-Christian or Western ethical systems. They were meant to follow the Constitution but recent rulings reference everything but. They follow precedent it’s said when convenient and when its not they make up their own rules. The gravest example is Roe versus Wade which overruled nearly two millennium of protection of the unborn, enshrined in Christian jurisprudence.
Just recently another ruling was made about laws regarding private behavior. As offensive as anti-sodomy laws are to the modern sensibilities there’s nothing in the Constitution that speaks to the right to sodomy including the 16th Amendment. It was the Texas legislature’s role in deciding state law regarding such matters. The Supreme ruling makes no reference to the Constitution, mind you. These antiquated lawyers are crusading like a runaway train for modern sensibilities which has no mantra accept tolerance, whose arm reaches to every corner of society. They mean to transform American society to their own liking. This may suit modern tolerant sensibilities but nonetheless this gives a small undemocratic group vast powers to transform society. (I level this criticism cognizant of the fact that I rail against the stupidity of the populace and yet the American populace is more informed, as unlettered as that may be, as to moral Christian principles than the Court.) Let me say LAW IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO THE LAWYERS. There is little sagacious about a band of jurists who’ve done little but wipe the dust off of old law books, if that, and just as easily ignored, whose scope is frightfully narrow, being essentially ignorant of religious, theological and philosophical ideas and discourse. For the most part this works fine when the Supreme Court restricted itself to narrow disputes on Constitutional issues; today their judicial purview has no limits.
Of course one can make quite the heated argument about narrow versus liberal renderings of the Constitution. The Court ruled narrowly denying civil rights to slaves. The institution of slavery was confirmed under law in the Dred Scott case (1854), which did much to lead America to the Civil War. The agreed they were humans but just didn’t have any rights under the Constitution. They were deemed chattel, property. Of course an entire society, the South, was dependent on exploiting their labor: just as one half of the work force see the need to have the option to able to dispel unwanted bio-mass from their bodies. Neither issue allowed reference to religious and philosophical tradition. Slavery of the Southern ilk was rarely seen in Western Civilization: slavery so severe that the master held complete control over the activities of the servile. The Medieval serf and the peasant knew dues and days of labor but the lives and families were their own. They could run off to the City or Monastery. In large part the Church would have had a say in that, if I guess right. American slavery denied all rights including life to the enslaved and even families were allowed to be broken up and no property was allowed to be owned.
The fault of the Supreme Court is absence of Christian framework and its moral underpinnings. The Supreme Lawyers made an error with Dred Scott with its narrow rendering of rights to Black humans. The 16th Amendment corrected that. Now it’s time for them to render that 16th Amendment strictly. In other words time for the common will to chastise the Court. But this is what I fear, without the diffusion of Christian principles, the common man will have no desire to do so.
I've had time to think the above conclusion about the Taney court's Dred Scott ruling. The Southern relied on the Bible which has no prescriptions against slavery. The Christian Church(es) could not be a prophylactic against this heinous practice. Neither the Roman Church, nor the Protestant could restrain the colonists desire for enslaved labor. It was American Liberalism steeped in a Christian idea that God endowed man with inalienable rights that no government could infringe that brought down slavery. Nonetheless the Court sadly refused to reference Christian principles in its rulling, stating the Negro were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Should the Court have made a ruling beyond the Constitution to foundation of the document: the equality of humanity? The Constitution gave no protection for the slave and the intent of the Constitution was to do nothing to restrict slavery. Slavery was enshrined in the Constitution and counted as a slave as 3/5 a person for determining the Electoral College. The result was a sad ruling. The difference today is that the Court makes neither reference to Constitution or Judeo-Christian moral framework.
