By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com
Last year at this time, I expressed little to celebrate Independence Day after the White Christo Fascist Supermajority on the Supreme Court declared women less than full, sentient adult citizens with agency over their body, their life, or their future. This year, the SCOTUS6 repeated their shameful, shameless crusade to overturn diversity, inclusion, equality and progress toward the revolutionary American ideal of “freedom and justice for all” with their decisions declaring gender nonbinary humans less entitled to human rights or decency, and affirmative action in college admissions and Biden’s effort to help those struggling to get into the middle class through student debt relief after generations of systemic discrimination “unconstitutional”. They perversely cited “equal protection” and “first amendment” rights, when in fact, they are undermining the hard-won progress toward equal protection while giving supremacy to some over others in exercising rights to speech and religion.
"I am disgusted that the assault on human rights by the Supreme Court continues,” declared Governor Kathy Hochul. “This decision — released on the final day of Pride Month — to roll back the rights of LGBTQ+ couples will be devastating to people across the country who are simply looking to love the person they choose. Here in New York, the birthplace of the modern movement for LGBTQ+ equality, we remain committed to implementing laws and policies that protect this community. We will never stop fighting for equality."
Now the SCOTUS6 are stepping up their misogyny and contempt for women and children having equal opportunity to survive, let alone thrive and live in freedom, in announcing they will consider overturning a law that keeps firearms out of the hands of domestic violence abusers and protects survivors. This comes one year after the Court recklessly overturned a century-old law that established common-sense gun safety regulations in New York (at the same time overturning state’s rights, while handing the abortion issue over to states), with mass shootings now at a rate of 2 a day, 120 killed and 200 injured each and every day, and guns the leading cause of death for those under 18.
How does this square with the Declaration of Independence’s statement, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
July 4th is supposed to celebrate “freedom” from tyranny, but this Supreme Court majority that holds itself unaccountable – shielded from accountability for corrupt influence and conflicts of interest – has assumed monarchal power. We saw it in overturning Voting Rights (passed by Congress), the COVID mandates (negating the concept of “public health” and a government’s obligation to secure the welfare of its people), and climate action (overturning the Clean Water, Clean Air and Environmental Protection acts). The SCOTUS6 have basically said they have the authority to make, change or repeal law, not the Congress, and repeal any policy or action by the Executive Branch (that is, except when a Republican is in office, then the Unitary Executive theory of the Federalist Society prevails), and their decisions, no matter how contorted or contrived, cannot be questioned (and yet they have no problem reversing generations-long precedent when it suits, essentially questioning the decisions of prior justices).
What all these laws that the SCOTUS6 have overturned have in common is that they move the nation closer to its ideal of the right to life, liberty and happiness for all, not just the privileged and powerful.
So much for Checks and Balances which have preserved a government “by the people” for 247 years. These justices have said they are immune, untouchable and unaccountable by ethics or laws that govern other public officials including judges. They have the unmitigated gall to suggest the fabulous riches, luxuries and favors taken from wealthy and powerful political and ideological activists have not bought their access and favor - that smacks of how the Church sold indulgences to erase the sins of wealthy parishioners.
I give the Supreme Court no credit for its 6-3 ruling against North Carolina Republicans in Moore v. Harper, which centered around the fringe Independent State Legislature Theory – a fabricated doctrine that asserts state legislatures have sole authority to establish federal election laws without review by state courts or governors. (Three of the SCOTUS6 were fine with that egregious theory which basically would allow the state legislature to overrule popular vote and state constitution: Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito.)
That’s not the only tyranny that we Americans are being subjected to, who, like frogs in a gradually heating pot, naively believe in the inevitability, endurability of the “Land of the Free” (much as in the oxymoron, “American Exceptionalism”).
Besides the tyranny of the Supreme Court monarchists, we are ruled by a tyranny of the Minority enabled by antiquated Electoral College (established in order to preserve the hierarchal power of rich land and slave owners); Senate apportionment (Wyoming has two Senators and 40x the voting power of California while the District of Columbia with more population has no voting rights at all), the filibuster and absurd rules that allow a single Senator to put the kibosh on anything/everything in order to extort and hold government hostage (Senator Tuberville is holding up military promotions to extort an end to access to reproductive care in the military); and Congressional gerrymandering which has made a mockery of “one person, one vote” and the very notion of “equal protection.”
"Independence Day is a prominent reminder that the great State of New York remains committed to the founding principles our great country was built upon - equality, freedom and justice for all," declared Governor Hochul. "New York State stands firm in our continued commitment to upholding and safeguarding the democracy that was stood up 247 years ago.”
Contemplate this: no democracy (beyond the Native Americans) has lasted more than 250 years – not Rome, not Greece, and the United States was supposed to be the Great Experiment in self-government, the first with a codified Constitution.
There are those who confuse “patriotism” with “xenophobia”, who believe patriotism is measured by how loud, how often you can scream “USA USA,” and how big is the flag you wave or wear or hug.
At the Little Neck, Queens Memorial Day Parade, I saw a woman carry a placard that read “Honor the Dead By Opposing anti-freedom; mandates, CBDC, W.H.O. treaties. The INDIVIDUAL is SOVEREIGN in the USA!!!” and wondered how she felt about a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and to determine her own future, a child’s right to read and think, a teacher’s right to teach, a doctor’s right to treat patients, anybody’s right to go to store, synagogue, school, concert without fear of losing their life altogether. Or even the concept that the mandate to wear a mask and get vaccinated was meant to protect the lives not only of that person, but their family, their coworkers, neighbors.
The woman’s sign seemed to sum up: individual rights, not society, not community, not a nation.
I’m not understanding how self-described “patriots” hate the Rule of Law, juries, law enforcement (that is, when applied to their members), paying a fair share of taxes, or making access to voting easy and equal, or the concept of “one person, one vote”.
The WhiteChristoFascist radical rightwing SCOTUS has no problem justifying unconstitutional internment without charges or trial and torture (Bush), denying speedy trial or inflicting unreasonable fines or sentences, warrantless surveillance (Bush), or banning Muslims from entering the country (Trump) based on manufactured claims of “terrorism” and the “Unitary Executive” Federalist Society theory which only seems to apply to Republican presidents, and yet overturn actual public health orders when a fatal pandemic grips hundreds of millions of people around the US and the world, and took over one million lives here in the US (US had the highest death rate among industrialized nations), out of 5 million worldwide – a 20% figure, five times our population proportion in the world. Or the existential threat of climate change, shortage of drinking water and clean air (weakened Congressional authorization of Clean Air, Clean Water acts). When a Democrat is in the White House, there is no such thing as public health or environmental protection. This extremist Supreme Court also has a penchant for overturning any law passed by Democratic majorities in Congress. That goes for upholding states rights when the law suits (abortion bans), but denying states rights when it suits (New York State’s 100-year old gun control law).
By the way, the first non-military permanent European settlement in the New World, Plimoth Colony, was a commune. Every colonial and early American town and village had “a commons,” a public square, a “village green” and a concept of “public good.” The preamble to the U.S. Constitution that Clarence Thomas and the so-called “originalists” claim to take literally (like the Bible), begins “We the People,” not “We the Propertyowners,” “We the Rich,” “We the Corporations.”
In fact, neither “corporation” nor “God” are in the Constitution. Nor is the Supreme Court’s power of “judicial review,” which it has assumed and now weaponized to make law, not interpret law, based on the radical Majority’s extremist political and personal ideological agenda.
But “common defence” “general welfare,” “our posterity” points to the view that we are in this together. There is more a sense of “public good” (which would include environmental protection, climate justice, universal health care) than there is “thou shalt be able to kill anyone who enters your sphere of individuality.”
The Supreme Court must be reformed. Very few of its decisions now come out of due consideration – oral arguments, written and signed opinions – but are rather decided clandestinely, in a “shadow docket” without any accountability. They claim it is because there are just too many cases (odd, when they seem to claw cases into the court before they are “ripe,” before a plaintiff can show actual harm or even have standing to bring suit, but because they want the outcome – the ends justifies the means).
The remedy for that is expanding the Supreme Court, say to 13 (matching the number of federal districts), and having a random rotation of 9, with much more robust rules (not suggestions) for recusal. Also, term limits, say 16 years, with every president getting one appointment per term (men rarely lived to 70 when the concept of “lifetime appointment” was written into the Constitution).
The self-proclaimed law-and-order crowd who used the George Floyd protests to justify allowing people to mow down and shoot protesters (Kyle Rittenhouse, Ron Desantis), who justified sending military troops into cities, who based their political campaigns on the evils of cashless bail, have no concept of “justice,” let alone “criminal justice,” or even the “Rule of Law” as being equally applied to everyone.
Here is what it means to be a “Patriot”: pay your fair share of taxes; serve on a jury when summoned; respect the equality, humanity and democratic rights of others; help your neighbor and your community; defend your country against enemies foreign and domestic; stand up for the Rule of Law, “justice for all”, and free and fair elections; and most of all, exercise your sacred right and obligation to VOTE.
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