The filibuster has not protected the people against the tyranny of metastasizing federal power. The great tragedy of the Obama dictatorship was not the filibusters demise but that House leaders blocked fulfillment of the very promise that made them leaders. Many of todays worst problems are due not just to aggressive leftist Democrats who will stop at nothing but also to timid RINOs who stand for nothing. If RINOs are not defeated and if a genuine opposition party is not established nothing can save the Constitution or the representative democracy and freedoms that are the heritage of this country.
Thats what I fear … once Republicans get the majority its very tough to … diminish your own authority.
--- Republican Senator
Flake reacting to Nuclear Option
Harry Reids recent imposition of the Senate nuclear option left many conservatives in high dudgeon over tyranny of the majority. But the concept of majority tyranny is largely a fantasy -- contradicted for example by
Angelo Codevillas cogent showing widely accepted by conservatives that America is dominated by a
corrupt bipartisan ruling class.
There is no need to elaborate upon two obvious points: the hypocrisy of those arguing
in reverse in 2005; and the fallacy that tyranny by a majority of senators is necessarily tyranny of a majority of the people sparsely and densely
populated states having equal weight in the Senate.
Todays daunting tyranny is twofold: (a) authoritarian reign by largely leftist oligarchic bureaucratic judicial and media elite minorities over what President Nixon was once ridiculed for calling the silent majority; and (b) illegitimate domination by powerful over powerless minorities.
Much nuclear option harrumphing has been due to this: the D.C. Circuit had
nullified a few of the massive abuses of power by arrogant Obama bureaucrats. In order to accelerate such abuses Obama and his Senate lackeys want to pack that Court with leftist ideologues expected by liberals and conservatives alike to outvote the current judges.
Well wake up and smell the coffee. Under old Senate rules justices have been put on the
Supreme Court to
rubber-stamp and provide faux legitimacy to metastasizing unconstitutional legislatively created federal bureaucratic minority tyranny since the New Deal.
In league with minorities
unable to prevail democratically (i.e. using persuasion elections and legislation) as few as five lawyers willfully and with
contempt for the Constitution exercising what Justice White called
raw judicial power have imposed unpopular personal elitist morality upon an often overwhelming majority of the people.
Before fretting over appointment of out-of-control judges on lower courts consider those on the highest court appointed long before the nuclear option. Thanks to them only favored minorities and the ruling class have rights crushing those of disfavored minorities and the majority.
Consider a few among limitless examples.
Violent Crime. The most depraved individuals have unwarranted protections inconceivable to a largely unsuspecting public while law-abiding victims are treated with contempt. Many justices have such fanatic devotion to savage criminals that they callously inflict immense torture upon the victims compounding their initial trauma. Victims were once thrown out of court completely and may again suffer that indignity based solely on what Justice Thurgood Marshall
candidly declared to be new justices. The worst barbarians have been rewarded with a hallucinated constitutional right to commit
additional depravity (including murders) with no punishment whatsoever. Moreover rare capital punishment occurs only after judicial tyrants have exacted the utmost agony from publicly forgotten victimized families. This year two multiple-murderers were
finally executed for homicides
36 years earlier -- a period far longer than many victims live and during which loved ones must needlessly endure the excruciating torment of repeatedly reliving their worst nightmares.
Discrimination. In 1954
beseeched (40) by
professed opponents (26) of discrimination the Supreme Court unanimously accepted the first Justice Harlans solo 58-year-old dissent declaring that the 14th Amendment
mandated a color-blind society. (Although the 1954 decision did not use the term color-blind it was
widely accepted that that was its essence. Moreover ten years later reflecting the prevailing view at the time the Civil Rights Act
explicitly banned ethnic religious and sex classifications.)
After it turned out that those complaining about discrimination really were disturbed only that
they were not doing the discriminating the Court again pivoted holding it constitutional to discriminate after all -- against Caucasians Asians and men. Indeed some justices overtly distinguish between good (benign) discrimination (against disfavored whites Asians and men) and bad (malign) (against preferred groups). Justice Thomas
denounced the distinction as noxious ... poisonous and pernicious turning on whose ox is gored. This established the very quotas guaranteed to be prohibited by sponsors of specific 1964 Civil Rights Act language to this end. The resulting Orwellian state of affairs is that true discrimination opponents are pilloried with decades of high court approval as racists and sexists by advocates of a spoils system based on race and sex classifications supposedly prohibited by both the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act -- a system so
corrupt that rabid leftist Elizabeth Warren successfully
falsified her ethnic heritage to advance her path to the U.S. Senate.
War Against the Religious. We are a religious people the Court once
acknowledged. Nevertheless for more than 60 years tiny offended minorities and lone individuals aided by justices often no more than five lawyers out of a population of 200-300 million have subverted the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion. Thus Justice Kennedy on behalf of four justices
accused five justices of an unjustified hostility toward religion. Portraying justices unpredictable detailed religion regulations as
some ghoul in a late-night horror movie Justice Scalia wrote a
dissent that would be hilarious if it did not reveal how a minuscule minority exercises tyranny over both other minorities and the majority as well. Frequent
hair-splitting occurs as usually divided justices idiosyncratically give
thumbs up and
thumbs down to various religious displays.
Property Rights. Chief Justice Rehnquist objected to property rights being
relegated to the status of a poor relation. Starting with
Wickard v. Filburn (penalizing a farmer for growing wheat on his own farm for his own use) and culminating in the infamous 5-4 Obamacare rationalization limits on federal power on matters approved by five elite lawyers have been virtually
eliminated by abusing the Constitutions
commerce and
tax powers as well as the
due process and equal protection clauses. Under one notorious fiat the property of no person lacking influence is safe from corrupt government officials seeking to transfer that property to the powerful. As Justice OConnor
dissented (13) in
Kelo v. New London: The beneficiaries are likely to have disproportionate influence and power ... The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this
perverse result. Emphasis added.
But when it comes to perversity nothing can top...
Obamacare. After being publicly threatened by President Obama and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy Chief Justice Roberts had the effrontery to
blame the voters in justifying his
thoroughly disingenuous cave-in upholding this law now inflicting hardships on growing millions of Americans. Nevertheless there can be no better illustration of tyranny of a corrupt willful minority than this act of
government mayhem. Neither Senator Obama nor a muzzled Speaker Pelosi campaigned for this in 2008; Mitt Romney largely ignored it in 2012. Once unleashed Pelosi famously declared that the
2400-page legislation had to be enacted to find out what was in it (bureaucratic license to excrete
11000 pages of authoritarian regulations many unfathomable). Is there anyone so deluded by ideology or partisanship as to
believe that anywhere near a majority of the people ever sought or approved this monstrosity? Indeed when Obamacare was a major issue in 2010 Republicans decisively captured the House.
The only reason for continuation of this unpopular disaster is tyranny. And this is not tyranny of the majority but of the ruling class -- executive legislative judicial and media. According to Dick Armey when leftist ideologue George Miller was told most people did not want a prior Obamacare version the latter
replied that they were going to get it whether they want it or not. Rep. Miller claims to not remember but this is exactly what happened!
***
Lets not delude ourselves. The filibuster has prevented a few bad Senate actions (and many good ones). However it has not protected the people against ever-increasing federal power -- power abused with reckless abandon well before abuse on steroids by Obama.
Thus it would be highly ill-advised to so exalt the filibuster that purportedly outraged Republicans attempt to restore it. An ominous reaction to the nuclear option came from
Republican Senator
Flake: Thats what I fear. I fear that once Republicans get the majority its very tough to tell the base that youre going to diminish your own authority. (Flake is an
Obamacare enabler.) Can anything better show whats wrong with RINOs? This man not only cowers at exercising his existing power but he fears that he might not be able to reduce it!
Many of todays worst problems are due not just to aggressive leftist Democrats who will stop at nothing but also to timid RINOs who stand for nothing. Although Senator Flake fears that a Republican majority will not restore the filibuster what the rest of us should fear is the fear of the likes of Senator Flake.
It is galling that John Boehner became speaker in 2011 because Tea Party Republicans campaigned on a promise to avert the current Obamacare disaster. In January 2011 Obama had not yet been re-elected and the House Republican mandate was at its pinnacle. All Republicans had to do was not vote for money to implement Obamacare. It is
absolutely absurd to say that this required approval of the president or the Senate. The
Constitution is crystal-clear: if the House refuses to vote for appropriations there is nothing anybody else can do about it except scream to high heaven much as Republicans have done over the nuclear option. (Democrats do not care who screams and how loud; RINOs quake at the very prospect.)
Future historians will have ample reason to conclude that the great tragedy of the Obama dictatorship was not the demise of the filibuster but that at a critical historical moment and on one of the most destructive laws ever enacted House leaders blocked fulfillment of the very promise that made them leaders.
As for filibustering to block judges who would legitimize further unconstitutional abuse of power never forget Chief Justice Roberts. Those who revere the Constitution and were
shocked by Obamacares intimidated savior should remember this: reliance on judges is gambling. Heed Judge Learned Hands
warning that we rest our hopes too much upon constitutions upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes.
Above all remember that President Obama is able to abuse power only because the RINO-led House timidly refuses to constitutionally block money for such abuse. If RINOs are not replaced and if a genuine opposition party is not established nothing can save the Constitution -- or the representative democracy and freedoms that are the heritage of this country.
Originally in American Thinker; slightly modified
Lester Jackson Ph.D. a former college political science teacher views mainstream media suppression of the truth as essential to harmful judicial activism. His recent articles are collected here.
