Contempt For The Court

By Semperpapa

On June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, again, on the Second Amendment right of keeping and bearing arms. Following up on a 2008 decision that stated that the Amendment to the Constitution is an absolute protection of the individual’s right to ownership of weapons, the SCOTUS now ruled on the assertion that such right is federally insured and that individual states and jurisdictions’ ban on citizens’ ability to possess firearms is a violation of the Constitution.

The decision of June 28 was a 5 to 4 decision, clearly showing that the Supreme Court is no longer the sort of institution that Americans can depend for a clear and faithful interpretation of the law as mandated by the US Constitution. Why else would 4 justices, thankfully the minority in this case, be ready and willing to trample the rights that are clearly afforded to the American people by that governing document. The reason is clearly politically based and philosophically derived, completely ignoring the foundations of that particular right in favor of a Progressive ideology.

Of course I see the decision of the court as a victory for the American people and the Constitution, but I also see that there are four justices with such power that are immune to any reservation about disregarding the law of the land and the rights of the people, effectively taking a activist stand contrary to the very purpose of the Supreme Court.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that the difference was so minimal that any mere ideological shift on the court could have spelled disaster for one more of the rights of the people, an effort that the Obama circus seems to be all but too eager to accomplish.

The amusing part of the SCOTUS decision came from the dissenting opinions of two of the minority votes. In their dissent, Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, who had been joined by Ginsburg and, what a surprise, Sotomayor, could not even bring a legal standing to their dissent. Instead, their argument was based on what they saw as the undermining of the democratic process for the American people.

They sustain that if the people want guns to be banned they should be able to accomplish their goal by electing officials who campaign on such platform. And to that I respond “bull crap”.
The elimination of no right delineated and insured by the United States Constitution should be used by a campaigning politician to entice voters, because, by definition, it would have to be deemed unconstitutional.

Let’s take, for example, the Westboro Baptist Church. By all accounts, these miscreants are considered as low on the scale of common decency as one can imagine. These are the people that have gained some notoriety by showing their vile protests at the funerals of servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And let’s imagine that there would be a politician who would run a campaign based on his intention to suspend the First Amendment right of the Westboro Baptist Church. There is a very good probability that that politician could gain considerably in the polls only based on such position, but in reality, as much as personally I would like to shut those people up completely, any attempt to do so should not hold in court as it would be a violation of the First Amendment right.

That said, I can accept certain limitations to the location where the WBC could spill its venom, mostly as to respect the privacy and welfare of those these individuals seek to offend, but not their ability to spill their venom.

Comparably, there are literally thousands of pieces of legislation that control the possession of firearms by the American people. Many are based on suspension of Second Amendment rights for felons and criminally insane people, but so are voting rights, or at least that should be the case (I recently had the misfortune to meet a convicted drug dealer, a felon, who proudly told me he does vote, so I guess there are ways to break the rules, but I digress).

What I find utterly disgusting is the typical liberal progressive attitude. They do not seek legislation for the safety of the public, avoiding infringing on the rights of the people. They seek to deny those rights all together. If they could get away with legislating the free speech of people like me, they would not waste a minute of time.
And that is exactly what the 4 dissenting justices represent and what causes me to have contempt for the Supreme Court. Sadly, just another American institution going to hell.

Just my thoughts!