By Howie Rich
It’s one of the most compelling storylines of the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court – the notion that a 5-4 conservative majority could end up blocking the left-leaning agenda of a unified Democratic power structure in Washington.
It may also be the next battleground in America’s emerging presidential slugfest, as supporters of Barack Obama are already sounding the alarm that their candidate’s so-called progressive agenda could be stymied by “judges appointed during the right’s ascendancy.”
Columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. lent voice to this so-called populist rage last month, bemoaning the “danger” inherent in the Court’s recent “spate of 5 to 4 conservative decisions,” which incidentally included a long-overdue affirmation of individual Americans’ Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Dionne, however, frets incessantly over the possibility that the majority of justices “could keep conservative ideas in the saddle long after the electorate has decided that they don’t work anymore.”
Of course, what Dionne fails to mention is that this is precisely what liberal judges have been doing in our country for the better part of the last three decades – shoving a high-tax, big government, anti-liberty agenda down the throat of a country that clearly expressed its preference for lower taxes, less government and more individual freedom.
So where was the outrage from Dionne and his fellow bleeding hearts during this period?
Not surprisingly, it was nowhere to be found.
Instead, the liberal chattering class was busy writing column after column in support of these judges, praising them for standing up to the will of a misguided conservative majority.
As a result, artificial tax increases and automatic funding increases were established completely independent of the electoral process. Reverse racism was institutionalized as “affirmative action.” Private property rights were trampled upon, and gun rights, too. And states attempting to outlaw the savage practice of partial birth abortion were told they lacked the authority to do so.
In Philadelphia, one District Court Judge even began putting hundreds of criminals back onto the streets each week because she believed the city’s jails were too full.
These liberal judges waged a non-stop “culture war,” targeting the individual freedom of American citizens and the rights of local governments whenever it suited their ideological purposes – no matter what the majority of those citizens believed.
And so the judicial branch, which the Founding Fathers specifically envisioned as being the “weakest branch” of government, became masters of the law as opposed to its servants.
All the while, government continued growing by leaps and bounds no matter which party was in power.
Voters indeed rebelled against Republican rule in 2006 – but it wasn’t because the GOP didn’t grow government enough, it was because the party grew government too much.
As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted, Republicans lost their majority because they lost their way on spending and became seduced by many of the same special interests that control the Democratic Party.
But Dionne and other backers of the true die-hard liberal interests – like organized labor – conveniently gloss over this reality in their headlong rush to expand taxpayer subsidization of their political activities. Dionne’s endorsement of the union’s “card check” legislation, for example, shows precisely the sort of “change” they seek under an Obama presidency – more of the same cow-towing to the special interests they depend on to get elected.
Hypocritically complaining about so-called obstructionist judges on the right (after ignoring decades of obstructionist judges on the left) is just the latest ruse to deflect attention from the fact that the more things “change” in Washington, the more they stay the same.
The author is Chairman of Americans for Limited Government.
