Harriet Miers is a "strict constructionist" in his view. He knows "her heart." She is not going to change over the next twenty (20) years. However, he sidestepped a direct question over Miers' views on abortion. He knows what she believes on many issues, but has never discussed this with her?
Come off it, Dubya.
It is clear from the outset that Dubya expects this appointee to seek limitations of personal liberty. He expects her to bring a form of conservatism to the Supreme Court that seeks to review and possibly overturn centuries of precedent that have sought to implement the goals of our Founding Fathers.
Two of the most important and verbal of this nation's Founders – Jefferson and Adams – fully understood that mob rule was a bad thing. Both favored religious liberty. Jefferson might have been accused of heresy under laws extant in many nations of his era, and favored religious liberty.Jefferson lived in a moral grey area that has been commented on by many. He wrote the founding ethic of our American government, declaring that all men have the right to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." He lived well beyond his means. He fathered his own "property" with a slave he apparently loved. He did not allow his wife, his mistress, or other females in his household to vote.
Adams, whose draft of the Massachusetts Constitution provided a pivotal blueprint of our three-branched government, feared the tyranny of religion. Unlike Jefferson, he lived within his religious views and upbringing in most ways. However, he greatly loved and respected his educated wife, making her more a partner than most women of that era.The Founders wanted people to make their own moral choices. They made their own moral choices. They expected government to keep out of these choices. They expected the Federal government to keep a long nose out of the business of states. The business of states includes personal contracts, marriage rights, family rights and obligations, and civil law not affecting interstate or international commerce.
Finally, the Founders expected the judicial branch to exist to protect individual liberty, to curb the excesses of the majority, to prevent the mob from persecuting the harmlessly different minority. The judicial branch was brought into being because Adams (ironically, a believer in an "established" state church) knew that minorities would lose basic rights when movements created national fervor.In short, Dubya, you and your appointee misunderstand what the Founders sought. We can only hope that the Senate will see this, and will block her appointment.
Copyright © 2005 by Gregory P. Lee. All rights reserved.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 2
However, in this time when books like Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki tell us quite a bit more about the power of the great masses when they get their hands on wireless technology, we should be asking everyone more about our collective right to participatory freedoms that go way beyond the ballot box. Perhaps there are several things that our Founding Parents got wrong in that regard that a bit of experience could show us? Which makes me even more nervous when Bush thinks it is a good thing that his candidate is supposedly a good judicial person because she most likely will have the same opinion in 20 years that she has now. I would hope that someone in this position would have some appreciation of the techno-wireless revolution in the making and perhaps even be willing to adjust what he or she believes of the voices of the people en mass.
Sheeeee .... What a shockingly idiot comment. And scary silence from those who should know better.
Allan