Opinion
New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The recent scurrilous attack on Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is part and parcel of the Political “Progressives”’ attempt to neutralize the independence of the Third Branch of Government, the Judiciary, and its most ardent supporter of an armed citizenry.
On April 9, 2021, two years ago to this day of posting this article on the Arbalest Quarrel, Joe Biden issued an executive order, forming the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, “to examine the Court’s role in the Constitutional system. . . .”
The Commission’s purpose may seem benign. It isn’t. Fortunately, it came to naught.
The Progressives’ goal of a neo-feudalistic global empire requires neutralizing the High Court and erasing America’s armed citizenry.
The U.S. Supreme Court remains the only Branch of the Federal Government today that recognizes the importance of an armed citizenry to resist tyranny.
In three seminal case law decisions—Heller, McDonald, and Bruen—coming down in the last fifteen years, the conservative wing majority, led by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, made patently clear the right to armed self-defense is an individual right and a natural law right, the core of which Government is forbidden to interfere with.
But these decisions are at loggerheads with the Progressives’ desire to neuter the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
In a report on “progressivism,’ published on July 18, 2007, the Heritage Foundation has described the nature of and the aims of the political, social, and cultural transformation of the Nation, using the word, ‘Revolution,’ to describe it.
Progressives have since made substantial strides in undermining the Constitution and transforming America beyond all recognition.
But use of the word, ‘Revolution,’ to describe this transformation is inaccurate. Rather, this extraordinary and extensive push to remake American society is not properly a Revolution because we had our Revolution—the American Revolution of 1776—when America’s first Patriots defeated the British empire.
These Patriots constructed a free Constitutional Republic unlike anything the world has seen before or since. Having thrown off the yoke of tyranny, the framers of the U.S. Constitution created a true Republican form of Government.
This “Federal” Government is one with limited and carefully delineated powers and authority. And those powers and authority are demarcated among three co-equal Branches.
The Government comes to be not by Divine Right nor by Right claimed for itself by itself. Rather, it comes into existence only by grace of the American people, who are and remain sole sovereign.
Since the people themselves created the Government, they retain the right to dismantle it when that Government serves its interests to the detriment of the people, devolving into tyranny.
The natural law right to armed self-defense, a right that shall not be infringed, is the instrument of last resort through which the American people maintain and retain both the legal and moral right to resist tyranny that Progressives impose on Americans. See AQ article, posted on October 1, 2021.
Progressivism is a thing openly hostile to and antithetical to the tenets and precepts of Individualism upon which the U.S. Constitution rests. See, e.g., article AQ article, posted on October 6, 2018.
Adherents of this political and social ideology perceive Government as sovereign over the people, turning the Constitution on its head.
Progressivism is an evil perpetrated on the American people, coming into being without the consent of the governed. It seeks a Globalist “Counterrevolution” in counterpoise to the morally good and successful “American Revolution.” See AQ article posted on October 26, 2020.
It is in this that the arrogant and ludicrous attack on Justice Thomas comes plainly into view.
Representative Ocasio-Cortez, a Progressive Democrat, has recently brought up the subject of impeachment against Clarence Thomas pertaining to “luxury trips and outings on yachts and private jets owned by Dallas businessman Harlan Crow, according to an investigation by ProPublica . . . .” See the article published in thehill.com.
She adds, in her typical hyperbolic, rhetorical fashion,
“‘Barring some dramatic change, this is what the Roberts court will be known for: rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights.’” Id.
Impeachment of a sitting Justice does fall within the purview of Congressional authority, but it is impractical and almost unheard of in the annals of history.
Impeaching Justice Thomas in a Republican-controlled House won’t happen.
Progressives try a different tack.
“Sixteen lawmakers led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., sent a letter to Roberts on Friday requesting an investigation into ‘allegations of unethical, and potentially unlawful, conduct.’” See the article in Foxnews.com.
Asking the Chief Justice to launch an investigation of his brethren is pompous, absurd, lame, and bogus.
Roberts will do no such thing. And this will rankle Progressives.
The Third Branch of Government remains constantly, aggravatingly, tantalizingly beyond the ability of Progressives to tamper with.
Unable at present to sit more mannequins like Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Court, they continue to probe for weaknesses. As a last resort, these Democrat Progressives challenge the Court’s importance, independence, and role.
Progressives employ like-minded attorneys to undercut the authority of the High Court.
One such attorney is Barry P. McDonald, Law Professor at Pepperdine University. In an essay, posted on The New York Times, on May 26, 2016, McDonald writes,
“The Supreme Court today is both political and powerful in ways that would be unrecognizable to the framers of the Constitution. They penned a mere five sentences creating a ‘supreme Court’ and defining its jurisdiction. The judicial branch was something of an afterthought for them, because they believed that in a democracy the elected branches would be responsible for governing the country.
Judicial review, in its modern sense, did not exist.
Over time, however, and especially from the mid-20th century on, the court’s vision of its role in our democratic system changed, from dispute resolver to supreme arbiter of all matters of constitutional law, so that elected branches of government at federal and state levels were bound to accept its interpretations.
McDonald claims the founders relegated the U.S. Supreme Court to a subservient role in our Three-Branch Governmental structure.
This is not only an uncommon viewpoint among scholars, and legally odd; it is demonstrably false.
In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton made patently clear that, on matters of Constitutional authority, the Legislative Branch must yield to the Judiciary.
“No legislative act . . . contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that . . . men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. . . . It is more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.”– Excerpt from Federalist Paper No. 78, written by Alexander Hamilton and published in 1788.
Hamilton’s essay in Federalist Paper No. 78 is an outright repudiation of McDonald’s remarks about the U.S. Supreme Court. See citations, supra.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, John Marshall was certainly aware of Alexander Hamilton’s remarks in the Federalist, when he drafted his opinion in Marbury vs. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
The case lays out clearly and categorically the vital role played by the U.S. Supreme Court in our Three-Branch Federal Governmental system.
In no uncertain terms, John Marshall, made clear that it is for the Judiciary, not the Legislature, to determine the constitutionality of Congressional Statutes. We cite below a portion of Justice Marshall’s erudite opinion.
“If an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the courts, and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory; and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on. It shall, however, receive a more attentive consideration.
It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.
The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution.”
In the naked attempt to knead the Constitution as if it were a lump of clay, they show their hand.
Trivializing the role of the Court because they can’t easily control it and going after a U.S. Supreme Court Justice they don’t like because he defends a natural law right they don’t agree with, Progressives proclaim to all the world their contempt for Nation, Culture, History, Heritage, Constitution, Ethos, Ethic, and People.
They dare disparage us. Yet, it is we, true American Patriots, who rightfully ought to visit derision on them.
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