Reality Check 101

It probably goes without saying that not many people watched much if any of the U.S. Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch from the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals.  It’s understandable.  The process is as much about political preaching as it is about any kind of genuine verification of a candidate’s qualifications.

Every so often important things surface through and in spite of the grandstanding.  Within any flood of unnecessary words, words always mean something and words always count. Such was the case during the Gorsuch hearings.  Take a look at two revealing quotes:

“If we were to dogmatically adhere to originalist interpretations, then we would still have segregated schools and bans on interracial marriage, women wouldn’t be entitled to equal protection under the law, and government discrimination against LGBT Americans would be permitted … In essence, it means the judges and courts would evaluate our constitutional rights and privileges as they were understood in 1789 … I firmly believe the American Constitution  is a living document, intended to evolve as our country evolves.”  (Sen. Dianne Feinstein)

“I worry that it goes beyond being a philosophy and it becomes an agenda.”  “It is not contrary to the duties and obligations of a Supreme Court justice to consider the effects of their rulings.”  (Sen. Patrick Leahy)

The glaring and patently false assertion was that if conservatives adhere to the exact words of the Constitution as it stands, all his listed evils would prevail.  Here is a fact-checking exercise of the Constitution of the United States that anyone can do for themselves at http://constitution.findlaw.com/.  There are no prohibitions against interracial schools, interracial marriage, equal protection under the law for women or suppression of anyone based on their perceived gender.  There are no races, ethnicities, sexes or gender perceptions singled out in the Constitution’s articles or Bill of Rights.  There are not even any male or female pronouns in the entire document.

The 13^th Amendment that abolished slavery never mentions race.  It applied to all forms of involuntary servitude for everyone (human trafficking).  The 14^th Amendment which defined citizenship rights for all Americans never mentions race or sex/gender.  It covered everyone.  The 19^th Amendment which supposedly “granted ” women the right to vote does not use male or female references.  It applies equally to men and women.  The 24^th Amendment which specifically settles the issue of voting rights does not use words that reference race, sex or gender.  It protects all citizens.

If conservatives are guilty of sticking too closely to words, we and all those under our influence, women, children, racial minorities and any other self-declared oppressed persons are in excellent shape.  That is why there are no lists of cultural icons or conditions in the Constitution.  If liberals (“progressives”) are truly devoted to protecting the marginalized through the Constitution, they need to join conservatives.

The fact is that liberalism is not “pro-gressive” in any sense of the word.  Simply because it claims the title does not make it true in the real world.  In the real world, liberalism is “re-gressive”, a compulsion away from something in a quest for anything else; from a unified identity to fragmented identities, from wholeness to a remake of the parts.  In order to make established principles of law and the Constitution (or a Supreme Court nominee) compliant to the flowing currents of history and culture, parts are isolated and remade to accommodate ever-changing demands.  Hidden “penumbras” and “emanations” (Griswold, 1965) emerge to satisfy the people’s demands.

Sen. Leahy’s “worry” about a conservative agenda affecting the Court is as absurd on its face as Sen. Feinstein’s idolization of the “living document” philosophy.  Regressivism (liberalism) cannot exist without an agenda to drive it any more than anyone else can.  Their demand for an evolutionary interpretation of a signed legal contract, the U.S. Constitution, instituted as a legal document by and for The People is a more coercive agenda than any conservative one.

David Barton illustrates the point well, “In 1945, George Orwell penned Animal Farm.  One of his characters was Squealer the pig, who arbitrarily redefined words so that they would mean what he wanted.”  Edwin Meese put it this way in 1985, “A constitution that is viewed as only what the judges say it is is no longer a constitution in the true sense.”  As President Reagan noted, “The words of the documents that we think govern us will be just masks for the personal and capricious rule of a small elite.”

Almost every aspect of life depends on the integrity of words, whether they are spoken or read.  The mirage of liberalism is that it claims the right to irrationally pontificate with words about how to redefine words which run counter to their social and political goals.  The Constitution and the judiciary are targets of liberalism’s regressive deconstruction just as the values of society itself are.  The only antidote to regressionism is originalism’s hold on the plain, normal, public meaning of a text.