BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE

Their actions are as loud as their words

To me, the action inside yesterday’s moment of history when Vice President Harris announced that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had been confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court that confirmed the reality we have to deal with was when Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, turned his back on those who were applauding and slowly walked out, as did all of the Republicans on the floor, leaving half of the chamber empty as the other half celebrated in a stark reflection of the partisan divide the rules the country.

Only Senator Romney remained behind to applaud; he specifically was wearing the shoes his father had worn when he stood with Martin Luther King. Say what one will about the man - and I certainly have, and will again I am sure - he rose to the occasion and gave the moment the respect the it deserved.

Even Senators Murkowski and Collins walked out; like the others, they didn’t applaud even though their votes had made the moment possible. It was like they were ashamed for having violated the tribal rules they live under.

The departure of the Republicans was the greatest act of disrespect since South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson accused President Barak Obama of being a liar in the midst of the State of the Union speech.

Unsurprisingly, worst of all was Rand Paul, who held up the vote for 25 minutes while he gave a tour of the capitol to constituents. Like the small-minded putz (that’s a Yiddish word that means “a penis that thinks it’s a person”) that he is, his action had the effect of delaying the historic moment. When he finally did vote, he didn’t even enter the chamber. He stuck his arm out through the door of the cloakroom and gave a thumbs-down, as had Senators Graham and Inhofe, who remained in the cloakroom since they had mysteriously forgotten to wear their ties when they came to work, a requirement for male senators who wish to enter the Senate chamber.

What all 46 of these despicable scum did was to go out of their way to demonstrate disrespect to Judge Jackson, to demonstrate that they do not accept the meaning of this moment in history, any more than they accepted the election of Barak Obama in 2008 as a symbol of change in this country. To them, all this is an aberration of “the way things should be.” How should things be? Mississippi Senator Haley Barbour “said the quiet part out loud” at the death of arch-segregationist Southern reactionary Strom Thurmond, when he recalled Thurmond’s split with the Democratic Party in 1948 on the issues of civil rights, running as the “Dixiecrat” candidate that year, and opined that “We wouldn’t have all these problems we have if more people had voted for him back then.” Public opinion forced Barbour to leave the Senate for that transgression, but he suffered no punishment from his party and remained a power player inside it, becoming a multi-millionaire in the process as a lobbyist.

At best, Murkowski and Collins merely demonstrated that they have no courage of their convictions. But then, the two of them have spent their entire careers putting a respectable face on fascism, which is the result of a “moderate” furrowing their brow and expressing “concern,” then voting in lockstep with the fascists - which is what they normally do. They’re allowed to do this because the gargoyles they serve need the “nice look”.

What are these people about? Rand Paul explained it very well when he appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show in 2010, right after his election to the Senate, when she got him to admit that he opposed the section of the Civil Rights Act that barred discrimination in private institutions:

Maddow: “Hold on just one second. Until the year 2000, Bob Jones University, a private institution, had a ban on interracial dating at their school, their private institution. If Bob Jones University wanted to bring that back now, would you support their right to do so?”

Paul: “Well, I think it’s interesting because the debate involves more than just that, because the debate also involves a lot of court cases with regard to the commerce clause. For example, right now, many states and many gun organizations are saying they have a right to carry a gun in a public restaurant because a public restaurant is not a private restaurant. Therefore, they have a right to carry their gun in there and that the restaurant has no right to have rules to their restaurant.

“So, you see how this could be turned on many liberal observers who want to excoriate me on this. Then to be consistent, they’d have to say, oh, well, yes, absolutely, you’ve got your right to carry your gun anywhere because it’s a public place.”

These people keep telling us who they are.

Believe them.

Believe Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee when she went after Judge Jackson about the right of privacy and access to birth control, and said she believes that is unconstitutional.

Believe Senator Mike Braun of Indiana when he says he believes the right of interracial marriage is a matter “best left to the states” to determine.

The past sixty years of social reform facilitated by the Supreme Court, which has given us the free society we live in, is based on two legal points: the first is the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that the federal government doesn't own the rights that are not listed in the Constitution, but instead, they belong to citizens. This means the rights that are specified in the Constitution are not the only ones people should be limited to.

The other legal point is the “equal protection clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment, which has been used by the court to extend to the states the equal protection of the rights in the federal Constitution. (Yes, I too was amazed when I first studied Constitutional Law to discover that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the laws in the several states, unless those rights were extended to the state’s actions this way.)

The “originalists” believe that if it isn’t written down in the body of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, it doesn’t exist. They thus oppose the court having determined that the body of the Constitution and the court decisions describing its powers contains a “right to privacy” under the Ninth Amendment.

Out of that Right of Privacy come several things the anti-democratic Right opposes.

The “expectation of privacy” on the part of citizens in their homes that can only be breached by the government through a search warrant (Mapp v Ohio).

The right to privacy of a couple of different racial backgrounds to fall in love and marry (Loving v Virginia).

The right to privacy that allows individuals to obtain birth control information and services (Griswold v Connecticut)

The right to privacy that allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy (Roe v Wade).

The right to privacy that allows people of the same sex to fall in love and marry (Obergefell v Hodges).

They also dislike the extension of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against forced self-incrimination (Miranda v Arizona).

They aren’t hiding these beliefs. They say so right out loud.

Remember: what has been given can be taken away. While courts are supposed to operate with due respect to stare decisis, the power of precedent, there is no legal rule requiring this.

That’s a good thing. Were it not for stare decisis, the court could never have overturned Plessy v Ferguson - which established judicially-approved racial separation and white supremacy - with Brown v Board of Education.

But that is a two-edged sword. It depends on judges who honor the traditions of the law. Law depends for its power on the voluntary agreement of those who are supposed to follow the laws that they will indeed do so.

But there is nothing the prevent anyone from deciding not to agree, for whatever reason. And when it is the people who are charged with defining what the law is who are the ones who decide not to agree, then anything is truly possible. Chaos is certain.

And when the law can not be depended upon, people stop obeying the law - and they stop obeying other laws the longer this judicial chaos continues.

If the six “originalists” on the court decide tomorrow that all of the decisions listed above, and the rules that came from them, were wrongly decided and reversed every one of them, judicial chaos will follow.

This will not happen all on one day, or even in one court session, or perhaps even in one political term. That’s because even the six unwise souls know that finishing their job quickly would be too radical. Revolutionary change like that would result in a revolutionary opposition.

But chipping away here and there, knocking this part off and then that part, over time... that’s the story of the frogs in the pot with the heat set at simmer. The heat of the water gradually grows hotter and hotter until, all of a sudden, the frogs reach their limit and die all at once.

The Hollywood legend Billy Wilder once told me the story of how he came to America. He saw the Nazis for what they were when he witnessed a street brawl in 1928 in which the stormtroopers were not arrested for their transgressions by the police who witnessed the event.

“Between then and January 1933, I became known to my friends as a crank on the subject of the Nazis. Everyone pointed out to me that the Nazis were obvious clowns, who could never get into power because no intelligent person would vote for them. They kept telling themselves this up to the night it was announced Hitler had been called to the presidential palace and offered the Chancellorship. That night, I packed everything I owned in a steamer trunk and called a cab to take me to the Berlin railroad station, where I bought a one-way ticket on the Paris Express. I returned twelve years later to find all of my friends were dead. Killed by the clowns.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is indeed a “game changer” that she now sits on the Supreme Court. But do not expect her elevation to change things. Arithmetic still matters and 6 is bigger than 3.

Rand Paul may be considered a ridiculous figure. Marsha Blackburn may be considered an ignoramus. Tom Cotton may be considered a moron. Ted Cruz may be considered an idiot.

But anyone who doesn’t see that these people are as serious as a heart attack isn’t paying attention.

Believe them when they tell you who they are and what they want. And their actions, like yesterday’s, speak as loud if not louder than their words.

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