I’m not really sure if there are many people walking this planet who I have such utter disdain for as I do Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He’s an arrogant blowhard who has no business on our Supreme Court. But there he’s been for nearly three decades, since Ronald Reagan appointed him in 1986.
He’s a big reason why I’ve advocated that Supreme Court Justices should have limits on how long they can sit on the bench. It’s absurd to think that a justice could be appointed and rule for several decades. Not only that, but it’s nearly impossible to remove one from their position. They’re not elected and have almost no system of checks and balances. For all intents and purposes, they’re a group of nine dictators that wield power over the United States and there’s almost nothing Americans can do about it.
Well, during Scalia’s time on the Supreme Court he’s made it pretty clear that his personal views drive his interpretation of our laws. Not our actual Constitution. He’s often ruled against cases that sought to protect civil rights, women’s rights, equality for women and minorities.
In other words, he’s nothing more than a radical right-wing conservative wearing a robe. He defines what it means when someone uses the term “activist judge.”
Take for instance his recent comments where he essentially pissed all over our First Amendment, claiming that religion should be favored over secularism.
Scalia said, “I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.”
Actually, our First Amendment makes that pretty clear. Religion should be kept out of government – period.
“We do him (God) honor in our pledge of allegiance, in all our public ceremonies,” Justice Scalia continued. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It is in the best of American traditions, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose it on all of us through the Constitution.”
You’re telling me a Supreme Court Justice isn’t aware that the phrase “one nation under God” wasn’t in the original text of our Pledge of Allegiance? Besides, our pledge has nothing to do with Constitutional values, considering the original version wasn’t written until 1892 and the “under God” passage wasn’t added until 1954. So, tell me, what the heck does our Pledge of Allegiance have to do with Constitutional rights?
But there’s more…
“Our latest take on the subject, which is quite different from previous takes, is that the state must be neutral, not only between religions, but between religion and nonreligion,” Justice Scalia said. “That’s just a lie. Where do you get the notion that this is all unconstitutional? You can only believe that if you believe in a morphing Constitution.”
Where do we get that notion? From our First Amendment!
If our government cannot establish a religion, and laws cannot be based on religion, how can it be Constitutional to then pass laws based on religion?
It’s like I’ve said before, the words “God,” “Christian,” “Christianity” or “Jesus Christ” don’t appear in our Constitution one single time. Why, if our Founding Fathers wanted this nation to be ruled on Christian values, did they omit any mention of Christianity in our Bill of Rights? The omission of these words wasn’t by accident, but by design.
Conservatives claim these men were “Christians” (which isn’t true, many were deists), and were undoubtedly brilliant, yet they “forgot” to mention that by freedom of religion they “only” meant Christianity? You’re telling me if you gathered a group of top Republicans together right now to rewrite our Constitution, they’d omit any mention of their religion in that document?
Yeah right. Christianity would be the driving theme behind their version of our Constitution. References to it would be littered throughout the text.
These same people claim that the Founding Fathers would agree with them – yet didn’t include a single mention of religion in our Constitution outside of our First Amendment which clearly states that we cannot establish religious rule.
Scalia isn’t ruling based on Constitutional interpretation, he’s ruling based on his own warped personal views of these issues. Which is exactly what a Supreme Court Justice is not supposed to do. They’re there to interpret the law, not advocate for policies from the bench. But, unfortunately, that’s what our Supreme Court has turned into. A place where nine people convene to mostly vote not based on actual objective views of the law, but based upon the political ideologies that they support.
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