Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Where I Stand:

Ignoring high court rulings is anarchy, not conservatism

Happy Fourth. Questionable Fifth!

The Declaration of Independence, the adoption of which on July 2, 1776, we celebrate on July Fourth (a long story), is the foundational document of the United States of America.

Together with the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified a decade later, it forms the basis for the original 13 colonies’ decision to break away from Great Britain and begin our centuries-long quest “to form a more perfect union.”

The newest generation and, I would guess, a generation ahead of them celebrate July Fourth with a holiday from work or school, some fireworks and some few thoughts of allegiance to the greatest democracy on Earth and reverence for the courage, tenacity and brilliance of our Founding Fathers — you know, the folks who faced enormous odds and a really mad King George III to give birth to these United States.

But here we are some 239 years later and our grand experiment in democracy continues to flourish, however difficult the journey becomes from time to time.

Now that the Saturday celebrating is over and we have some time to reflect on our Sunday of leisure, the thought occurs to me that yet another failing of our education system is rearing its ugly head. And that is the class that discusses U.S. government, the separation of powers, the role of the Supreme Court and the implied and actual responsibility of citizens to protect and defend our Constitution.

I am sure there is another class or two that no longer makes it into the abbreviated curricula of our educational system these days — that would be the ones that deal with critical thinking — but, hey, we just celebrated a national holiday, so we shouldn’t have to think too hard today, should we?

I am thinking specifically about a couple of recent Supreme Court rulings and the reaction to them by a gaggle of political presidential wannabes.

The fact that those yelling loudest — about a 6-3 decision by the high court validating, once again , the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the 5-4 decision making same-sex marriage legal throughout the country — are people running for president under the banner of the Republican Party.

It should not be lost on anyone that most of those running for the GOP nomination are doing whatever they can to wrap themselves in the protective blanket of conservatism so they can curry favor with the GOP base and, presumably, so they can deride their ultimate Democrat opponent as a “liberal.”

So here is the news flash: There is nothing conservative about calling for the disbanding of the Supreme Court, demanding that the order of that court be ignored and starting impeachment against the justices who ruled the way they did.

By the way, reactions like these are not new — there have been such cries over past Supreme Court decisions such as the one in which the court unanimously ended segregation in the public school system (a legitimate conservative court, I might add) — but this time, the lunatic fringe is getting traction!

Whatever a person’s personal religious or political beliefs may be and however deeply felt those beliefs are, there is still no justification for vilifying the one place where the people’s rights under our Constitution are protected against the excesses of the other two, co-equal branches.

Yes, the executive and legislative branches have been known to overreach their authority from time to time. And it is only the Supreme Court and the willingness of the people to abide by its rulings that allows reason (sometimes flawed) to step in and prevail when our Constitution is abused.

Are there times when the Supreme Court gets it wrong? Absolutely. You don’t have to go too far back in history to recall the Citizens United case in which a 5-4 majority ruled that corporations were people, thus opening the billion-dollar floodgates of wealthy individuals and their companies into our election process. How is that working out so far?

This time there are people upset about Obamacare and marriage. That’s not going to change. There will always be people upset when the Supreme Court acts. That is the nature of court rulings.

What should upset us more, though, are political leaders under the guise of conservatism crying out for the impeachment of justices and the ignoring of lawful court orders.

There is nothing conservative about trying to lead people — emotionally and otherwise distraught people, depending upon the issue — toward a path of ignoring our Constitution and our rule of law. That is the way of anarchists, not conservatives.

I suppose I should get into the critical-thinking part of the discussion, but that is probably too much for the Fifth of July. It should be enough to call the loudmouths out for what they really are: political charlatans.

Our Supreme Court is essential to protecting the people from government overreach. It isn’t perfect because it is, ultimately, a creature of the voting public (yes, votes have consequences). But, it must be obeyed or the democracy so brilliantly conceived and planned by our Founding Fathers when they declared their independence from Mother England — the brilliance is in the checks and balances— will no longer exist.

And anyone who calls him or herself a conservative while calling for the impeachment of justices because of their votes on a particular matter, or worse, the ignoring of lawful court orders just because they disagree is the furthest thing from a conservative.

Our obligation as citizens is to conserve this republic and its vital institutions, namely the three independent and co-equal branches of government. Conservatives do not ignore or destroy. They work within the foundational principles and the constitutional prerogatives we are celebrating this weekend to make our democracy stronger.

If the political posers in the GOP race this election season want to put asunder what our Founding Fathers joined together as the greatest democracy on Earth, let them find another word to justify their dangerous game.

Conservative is already taken.

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy