I caught a clip promoting an interview with Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan recently, and the comment they played made me stop in my tracks. She made the observation that we are a constitutional democracy. In doing some digging, I found that wasn’t the first time she’s made that observation.
In the case in 2013 where the SCOUS struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, she made this statement to Michigan’s Assistant Attorney General: “Mr. Bursch, we don’t live in a pure democracy, we live in a constitutional democracy. And the Constitution imposes limits on what people can do, and this is one of those cases.”
Couple that with her comment in a 1995 review where she wrote about what influences the rulings of a Supreme Court Justice, and you have to scratch your head and wonder how the Republicans in the Senate ever let her get confirmed: “…it should come as no surprise by now that many of the votes a Supreme Court justice casts have little to do with technical legal ability and much to do with conceptions of value.” And just whose “conceptions of values” might they be? Why, the individual justice, of course!
Our founders rebelled against being ruled by the ‘whims” of one man (King George), yet this is precisely what Justice Kagan is saying the basis for her decisions are. Never mind the concept of the rule of law, or justice being blind to all but the facts. We now are being dictated to by a subjective judicial oligarchy.
In his famous treatise, Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote: “But where, says some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you….in America, THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other.” No Justice Kagan, you are not “King” (or “Queen”) over us, though you and the judiciary of this country act like it. Law is not subjective, nor cannot it be for if so, then it fails to be law based upon principles and justice, but is tyrannical rule by a powerful few, or mob rule by majority (i.e., democracy).
After the draft of the Constitution was completed and ready for acceptance by the states, the aged Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall in Philadelphia where anxious citizens had gathered to learn of the actions taken by the convention being held there. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Justice Kagan, we are not a constitutional democracy; Benjamin Franklin stated very plainly we are a republic of democratically elected representatives of the people, and (as originally intended) state legislatively-appointed senators to represent the interest of the states (fyi, Justice Kagan, that’s called “federalism”– a great concept; maybe you could read up on it).
Elena Kagan sits on our Supreme Court and is clueless of these facts. Thanks to the likes of Justice Kagan and the ignorance of so many of Americans, unfortunately, as Franklin warned, we have not kept our republic, but instead are seeing it fast fading into the darkness of democratic oppression and tyranny.
-August 18, 2017