Liberal Extremist Judges

Liberal Activist Judges: I’m told they’re everywhere; legislating from the bench as The Republicans say they do, so I’ve been wasting a lot of time lately looking for one, or at least hoping to find evidence for the assertion that they are here amongst us, like Witches or Commies or the Elders of Zion and making up laws that we don’t like.

I think maybe I’ve finally found one; Clarence Thomas. I read this morning that the National Black Justice Coalition released an advertisement asking if Justice Thomas’ marriage to a white woman is an offense to God. Of course the axe that they’re grinding is the question of gay marriage, currently a Straw Man paraded about by the Religious Right who not long ago told us that interracial marriage was a similar annoyance to the great Republican in the sky. Thomas, that Liberal extremist, has turned up his nose at the traditional, segregationist, Bible based values of the American Right and snubbed the will of the American People. He is a Liberal, at least as concerns his personal rights.

Until I was a senior in college, that marriage, and indeed my marriage would have been illegal in 34 states and a felony in about a dozen. The reason being that God, as represented by the Supreme Court, didn’t like it. The SCOTUS, in fact has a long history of telling us what should or should not be legal as determined by their beliefs about God rather than by the Constitution or the will of the government.

How much more of an activist court legislating from the bench can you find than a court insisting that some people are property, that women should not vote, that people of a certain color must use different bathrooms and go to different schools and only live in places with other people of certain colors? Maybe our courts have long been active in the field of social engineering, so it’s not the principle involved here; it’s the direction of the activism the running dogs of Republican repression hate so much - unless it interferes with their own desires.

What the Fox-infected Republican rabble are opposed to isn’t judicial activism at all, it’s freedom. They aren’t bothered by a judicial system that rules extra-constitutionally on biblical principles. What bothers them is a court that leans toward the letter and spirit of the law; a court that tries to guarantee equal rights and equal protection.

The tactical myth of an activist court is, like the myths about fiscal conservatism and less intrusive government, an exercise in doublethink to sell us activist courts, fiscal extravagance and more intrusive government.