Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
…Thomas Jefferson

Why did I vote for Trump and why am I likely to vote for him again?  It is not because I trust him.  I am disappointed and surprised when I see so many who I believed to have had principles of decency and consistency of political philosophy, enthusiastically support this man.  He is a bad example and appears to be running the administration like a corrupt New York union dock yard.  The reason I voted for him and may vote for him again is because the alternative further jeopardizes the Republic.

During the American revolution the cry went up, “no taxation without representation”.  When the constitution was drafted it was designed with the knowledge that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".  So, it pit conflicting interests against each other.  There is the House of Representatives that is elected by the people for two-year terms.  The Senate is elected by the states for 6-year terms.  The Presidency is elected nationwide by a weighted average so as to limit the threat of tyranny by the majority.  The Supreme Court is appointed by the President but confirmed by the Senate.  Supreme Court justices serve for life, and therefore do not need to campaign or curry favor.  The Federal government was given limited law-making power and all other law making power was reserved to the states and the people.  Each branch had its area of authority and they were to have to work together to get things done.  

That's the way it was designed.

That is not the way it has been working, and because that is not the way it has been working the Republic has been being diminished and a bureaucratic state run by special interests and the power hungry has been gaining ground.  It has been gradual, and we the people, are the proverbial frog in the pan of hot water.  

The best check against that is a Supreme Court that reads and applies the Constitution to the cases brought before it.  But when the court applies a "living constitution" interpretation to its deliberations, it invalidates the Constitution that was actually written.  The Supreme Court then, substitutes its judgement for that of the Presidency and the Congress.  There is a provision in the Constitution for amending it.  It is cumbersome and hard to do by design, but we have done so several times in our history.  Living Constitution justices amend it from the bench using their own judgement and values.  Originalist justices look at the Constitution, as written, and apply to it the meaning that it was understood to have at the time of writing.  It is those originalist justices that have some hope of slowing, and ideally reversing the devolution of our republic into just another nation ruled from the top down instead of the bottom up.

The Democrats in the Senate and the left wing throughout the country announced it was going to oppose, by any means necessary, whoever Donald Trump nominated to the Supreme Court.  I won't go into the fine details here, but the attack on Brett Kavanaugh appeared to be timed to delay the confirmation vote until after the mid-term elections, it was based on an accusation of something that had supposedly happened when he was a teenager and was unsupported by outside evidence.  With no evidence to support the claim every Democrat, but one, voted not to confirm him.  The way in which the left moved as a monolith to oppose an originalist judge was nothing but an attempt to control the court which, in turn, would allow the left to concentrate more power.  

Does Donald Trump want power?  Boy howdy does he.  But no more so than the Democrats.  He is just less artful about it.  Did everybody in the country who opposed Brett Kavanaugh's appointment do so because they had bad motivations.  Of course not.  Was Kavanaugh guilty of the accusation?  Probably not.  There was not only no evidence to substantiate the claim but there were several who testified or swore of knowledge that he was not the perpetrator, but I was not there and cannot say with certainty.  

When we elect Senators, Representatives, and the President, we are putting men and women in a position of great power and great opportunity to make decisions in their own self-interest that we will, often, never know about, but decisions that will impact the rest of us for the rest of our lives as well as the lives of our children and grandchildren.  Then they tell us what to think and believe and it is often difficult to know how much of what they are telling us is the truth.  Our best protection against that is an originalist Supreme Court.  

So, I don't like or trust Trump.  But as long as he appoints Supreme Court Justices who will uphold the Constitution that was written, and not some imaginary Constitution that the Court thinks should have been written, it is a bargain I have to make.  

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