Coerced Endorsement of Gay Marriage

The views expressed by the participants here are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of this media-organization.

How often have we witnessed TV networks preface religious and other programs with disclaimers that while they enable the airing of the ensuing show, they in no way endorse its content? It is not as if reputational concern for guilt by association is alien to the non-religious. How many of those on the Left were condemned as communists by Joseph McCarthy, simply for flirting with and having attended a socialist/communist meeting decades prior.

In the recent kick-off of Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign at Liberty University, how many liberal media organizations, pundits and commentators decried the forced attendance by Liberty’s students, (on pain of civic-style fines), which gave pubic impression of tacit support and endorsement of Cruz’s candidacy? And their critiques would be right. Many conservative entities likewise declaimed the hypocrisy of speaking for liberty of conscience while in the very process violating it.

Therefore, the desire of theists and like-minded moralists, who do not wish to endorse or appear to endorse an idea or ethical principle, ought not to be beyond comprehension. One may not concur with the substance of their objection. But the yearning not to be associated is not alien. Therefore, the social denigration and legal penalties, inflicted upon those who find same-sex marriage a conceptual travesty and same-sex eros an ethical travesty, emits of a suffocating stench of rational inconsistency, sophistry and hypocrisy.

And the drumbeats of civic conflagration approach ever closer and louder.

Twilight of the Judiciary

The de facto U.S. Constitution has dramatically changed from its original conception and understanding, largely through the sleight of hand sophistries and casuistries of jurists; who have connived through judicial review (Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)) to eventually usurp and concentrate power into their lawless hands, under which no legislation escapes their purview. They have become the effectual inheritors of King Charles I; nullifying at will, the Sovereign Will of the People whenever they deign that that Will does not accord with their self-regarding Reason.

Jurists are the Talmudic Pharisees of political Constitutions, through whose myriad judicial traditions and interpretative principles, they set aside democratic will. They obfuscate the plain rendering of words; making what is, not; making what is not; is. The dissonance between what law and constitutions plainly state and the current practicable renderings by these lawless jurists, discredits the law and administration of justice and bringing it into disrepute; systematically nourishing contempt for rule of law and consensual abeyance to the laws of the land by its citizens and subjects. From their quill of hermeneutical tricks, they can and do selectively contrive to produce legal outcomes that conform to their capricious preferences and prejudices. In one jurisdiction, States rights will trump Federal jurisdiction; in another, the reverse; in order to arrive at foregone conclusions conforming with the ideological hegemony within the legal priesthood.

Through “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”¹, the law becomes opaque and inscrutable; the Secret Will of Jurists, to which no other person is privy aforehand. In inscrutability, a fundamental principle of justice has been violated. It becomes a crap shoot. Thereby, inscrutability becomes the vehicle by which the wealthy and powerful, those with deep pockets who can afford the cleverest of lawyers and thoroughgoing of legal staff to oppress those less endowed with wits or resources to purchase wits.

Instead of being interpreters of the constitutions, they have exalted themselves above constitutions; judging the constitutionality of constitutions under the discretion of their rational competence; which is in effect, their sociopolitical preferences. If Constitutions be a military General and judges their supposedly faithful subordinates; the latter have deigned to disqualify the clear commands of their general through obfuscation and sophistry. They are in effect traitors. And thus, the power and authority of the judiciary must be severely circumscribed; their representatives given political beheading; even if through extra-constitutional means; since the de facto constitution has become a lawless, inconsistent and unjust jumble, courtesy of these criminal jurists; since the de facto constitution is the very hands of these criminals of syntax and semantics.

It is lost on these glorified lawyers, overconfident in the power of pieces of paper and the words inscribed therein and their sly ability to manipulate them, that their own pretensions to the Commanding Height of political authority rests ultimately on moral authority and consent of the governed. Judiciaries do not command armies nor have they been known to successfully conscript private ones. Alphabets, syntax and semantics make lousy soldiers; especially if one has corrupted their plain meaning and enervated the confidence that a populace can place in them. It is only a matter of time before men with chests will challenge these usurpers and Pretenders. In that elected officials have shriveled testicles, it will probably and unfortunately be autocratic tyrants that decapitate the pretensions of judiciaries.

This is not a prescriptive polemic; but a descriptive warning. God forbid should I ever leave a principled pacifism. For, if it is written “what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul”², even one’s soul is worth far more than the saving of the world, were it even possible. However, like Darwin in his book “Descent of Man”, who could perceive the clear and incontrovertible logic of eugenics on the premises of Natural Selection evolution, yet could not bring himself, at least publicly, to advocate it, I can see and foresee the historical progression and rational and psychological logic of Marbury v. Madison, as did Jefferson. And as student of history, it is advised that should the judiciary not rein in their pretensions, their pretensions will eventually be reined in by others. However, in this, it will be a sign and hallmark that free civil society and politics have come to an end.

Endnotes:

1. Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
2. Matthew 16:26

Abdication of Duty: Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The Presidential Oath of Office (U.S. Constitution – Article II, Section 1)

On February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a memorandum to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John A. Boehner, informing him that President Obama’s administration “will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman”. I consider any decision to refuse to give full, proper and vigorous representation to defend all laws of the land in accordance to the sworn duties of office, to be an impeachable offense. This severe indictment has nothing to do with the gay rights issue. Rather, in the name of this issue, this administration has proceeded to violate an elementary principle of civics; which because it concerns a highly public issue, will likely invoke worse ramifications in the ensuing years.

However, before making the argument, a couple of necessary disclaimers are required. As noted elsewhere on this web site (The Problem of Gay Marriage), I consider it unwise for the state to have made or make any definition for marriage or to involve itself so extensively in legislative or judicial regulation of the Estate. Such involvement has always led to travesties and injustice of various sorts (Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act – 1753 relating to religion and age, Anti-miscegenation laws, eugenic-associated marriage laws). The benefits to the state of such laws are far outweighed by the risks to civil unrest on a matter in this day. There are guaranteed losers upon making any public definition on marriage. Either perceived violations against equality or violations against conscience will invariably suffer. And it will just add one more item to the litany of flashpoints in a culture war which will increasingly heat up in waves until its climax.

Secondly, although I might consider myself a moderate conservative, the best description of the increasingly polarized factions in the U.S. is encapsulated by The Doors. “And All the Children Are Insane” (“The End” –  1967). I would find it difficult, in good conscience, to vote for either side, even were I able. I considered the deceit of the Bush Administration concerning WMDs in Iraq, which was the purported justification to obtain public support for initiating and conducting a foolish war, to be also grounds for impeachment. Surely, if Puritanical prosecutors can beat the bushes to induce a few lies about minor scandals and abuse of power in the Clinton years, surely a whopper weave of deceit and lies such as the WMD deserves a prosecutor or two. Thus, I am an equal opportunity impeacher. And I consider the practice of de facto not forcing the law to the best of ability to be similar grounds for impeachment.

When I heard about this decision last year, the memory of the last years of the Wiemar Republic and early years of the Nazi regime came to mind. Though laws were on the books, the cops, sympathetic to right-wing and Nazi sentiments, failed to enforce the law and protect the Jewish and other minorities from thuggery as well as pick sides in riots between the Nazis and the Communists.

This issue bumped up into consciousness again last week when encountering a report concerning similar neglects of duty by Greek bureaucrats, judiciaries and cops against immigrants, minorities and political enemies without police intervention. The issue is relevant in the contemporary political setting.

For example, immigrants were first demonized by the state itself. They were interned, and their rights were cancelled in practice. Bureaucrats failed to enforce protective labour legislation. The police and the judiciary do not prosecute fascists under existing laws, which are more or less adequate, and don’t penalize racial attacks, antisemitism and spreading of hate, all trademarks of Golden Dawn.

Golden Dawn and the Rise of Fascism, The Guardian, June 19, 2012

If one faction or the other side, decides, for whatever excuse it gives itself, not to defend a duly initiated law, which in this case had acquired overwhelming support in both U.S. Congressional Houses and the executive branch; it is akin to doing to law what would occur to a charged defendant in which no lawyer would defend nor be appointed. In an already unjust judicial system, where money buys the best sophists, the dynamics of this refusal to uphold the laws of the land, on the basis of self-appointed interpretation of the law in reference to the Constitution, lends to practicable tilting of the balance of justice.

However, the great peril lies in this. It sets precedent, by which either side can effectually nullify any law that they dislike through not giving full defense of it. Certainly, the rabble rousers and the single-minded zealots within each faction may denigrate the issue of rule of law or procedural niceties of the political process, in the name of their concept of a “higher principle”. Such zealots, animated with only myopic self-interest and without principle, will not appreciate the a graver threat lies in lawlessness, even to their own long-term interests. Instigating a principle of capriciously setting aside full defense of any given law, whenever the mood strikes, soon proliferates into a habit by whichever faction acquires the Commanding Heights of sociopolitical power. Surely, the adversaries of the Obama Administration will simply retaliate when power returns to their hands, having been given full justification by precedent. And such precedents have tendency to proliferate with even more flimsier basis than those provided in this incident. The complaint by the losing liberal parties of the Weimar Republic at Hitler’s use of the anti-hate laws to suppress free expression, was legitimately cast in these liberals’ faces.

The long term consequences could include a deepening detestation of each other faction as each perceive the other as violating law and equity to pursue their own self-interests and agendas. A government of laws could hereby easily descend into a government of raw power. Free civil institutions and government will be effectually overthrown. Herein, in this most basic of civic principles, the current Obama administration shows itself to be incompetent and foolish.