Opinion-- A Quick Note On The Supreme Court's Originalists

 

A quick note on the Supreme Court's "Originalists"

They are a bunch of liars, sophists, and seditious conspirators. If anti-government terrorist Timothy McVeigh had studied law, he would have been an Originalist, and fit in quite well on this Court. 

Now that I got that off of my chest, I'll elaborate. This group of the misnamed "Federalist Society" Neo-Confederate Justices invokes what they claim to be "the original intent" of the Framers of the Constitution in justifying all of their decisions. 

For the moment, let's put aside what we might think we know about those majority of Framers who were slave-owners, hostile towards the original peoples or negligent in their treatment of women. 

There were five Framers that count, in my view. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,  John Jay, and John Adams. The others played a secondary role, except to the extent the delegates from the slave states tried to sabotage everything. (The origin of the awful but practically necessary 3/5's Compromise, without which there would have been no Union)

Franklin, who was anti-slavery, was the true author of the Declararation of Independence, the number one statement of the founders intent.  Jefferson was the draftsman, enlisted in part because of his superior penmanship. Jefferson was too immoral and conflicted to have written it himself.

Hamilton, Madison and Jay were the prime movers, along with Franklin in organizing the Constitutional Convention itself. They were the authors of the Federalist Papers, statement of intent number two, which were printed en masse and distributed as pamphlets to motivate State Legislatures to ratify the Constitution. (John Adams helped author the Massachusetts State Constitution which was an early model for the Federal one).  

"The Federalist" essays lay out in precise detail the "necessary and proper" role of the Federal Government in our system. It was decidedly weighted against the power of the States, and the Papers warned specifically against the forces of factionalization and division which would come to fruition were not the Federal government to assume both it's "expressed and implied powers" to chart a course for the future. The precedents and formulations on behalf of these principles obviously came later, as the United States went through a convulsive evolution. 

Thirdly, the other and possibly most important statement of intent was embedded in the Constitution's Preamble, also known as "The General Welfare Clause". This opening statement as to why the need to form a Union, and it's role and function, is explicit. It says, in effect, that the Federal Government is responsible for doing those things which the States and the people cannot do themselves, to insure "the blessings of liberty, provide for the common defense, and defend the general welfare for ourselves AND OUR POSTERITY".

The General Welfare principle is that which underlies Lincoln's concept of the Union which he chose to spill blood to defend. That is the committment behind Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which saved America from collapse, communism, and fascism, both at home and abroad. That is what was invoked to bring about the Twentieth Century's revolutions on behalf of civil rights, voting rights, equal rights for women and later for the rights of LGBTQ Americans. 

In the recent acts of domestic legal terrorism by this rogue Court, intended to overturn eighty years of relative economic and social progress, nowhere, I repeat nowhere are those Framers, these specific writings, and their intentions honestly represented in any of their recent rulings. 

In rejecting those five Framers, and shelving their actual statements of intent, they chose to instead "cherrypick" the vomitatious legal opinions of quacks, bigots, Confederates, religious and other right-wing Jacobin lunatics who are more versed in the Confederate Constitution than that of the United States. 

Originalism, as this Court represents it, is an amalgam of "creationism", racial Eugenics, social darwinism, neo-fascist autocracy and theocracy. It is a steaming pile of fermenting sophistical garbage, not unlike the legal arguments described by Plato in his Trilogy on the Trial Of Socrates, leading to his conviction and judicial execution. 

What is unfathomable is not that these Justices are capable of going so low. It is the degree of self-induced blindness, delusion, corruption and obliviousness that controlled those who voted to confirm these judges, or who risked almost nothing to prevent it. 

That, right there, is your textbook definition of tragedy, and as well a catastrophe against which the best of our Framers warned. "Originialists" my ass.

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Addendum, Q&A with a reader: (not edited) 

_________Great read. Why do you admire Madison but not Jefferson, they seem pretty similar. And I think Jefferson was more than a scribe.

Me: _____ ______ great question. It actually deserves a full article, more than the "off the cuff, as memory serves" answer you are getting here. 

Madison personally took the initiative to organize a movement to replace the Articles of Confederation and call the convention together. He understood more than most the dangers of the growing autonomy of the States, which were becoming more separate, and more dysfunctional in their economic relations. And he made sure the new Constitution was adopted afterwards with his essays in the "Papers" and organizing. Most of what we know about the convention, the framers intentions, and their arguments, comes from his notes. Meanwhile, Jefferson didn't like the new system very much, and became a kind of "loyal opposition" leader to Washington's first Presidency from within.

Yes, Jefferson was more than a scribe, I was being a little sardonic and provocative. Jefferson in the Declaration wanted to use the pro-slavery and feudalistic formulation of John Locke, "pursuit of life, liberty, and property". Franklin intervened to assert "happiness" instead. Franklin was rooted in the natural law philosophers of Europe such as Leibniz who represented the opposite of Locke, Hobbes, etal.  Jefferson, though a great intellectual was conflicted because he opposed the Federal system preferred by Hamilton and Washington, and supported greater state sovereignty.

 Jefferson wanted something philosophically along the lines of the John Locke authored constitution of the Carolinas, which was closer to "The Articles" than the new system.. Jefferson opposed the First National Bank, the US Mint, the Debt reorganization, and Hamilton's "Report On Manufactures", preferring an agrarian system. Washington had to agree to locate the US Capitol in what is now DC to get Jefferson to not obstruct the Bank, without which we would have collapsed financially early and fell apart due to the war debt. Jefferson's sabotage of Washington's first term was so extensive that Washington gave him his blessings to take off and go to France in order to get him out of the way, in effect. 

Speaking of Insurrection, there was one, which we know as the "Whiskey Rebellion." Hamilton used a Whiskey tax to help capitalize the Bank. An armed anti-tax mob marched eastward in reaction to overthrow the government which was turned back when President Washington himself led an expeditionary force to confront them. Jefferson praised the mob. He said something to the effect of we need to overthrow the government once in a while to keep the spirit of revolution alive. Not surprising, given he was supporting the Jacobins in France at the time. 

He also did major damage to the US by bringing in the Swiss connected banker Albert Gallatin (a prime mover behind the Whiskey Rebellion from Western PA) as his Treasury Secretary while President. With Hamilton dead and little opposition, Jefferson and Gallatin virtually dismantled the US Navy and used the money to pay down the national debt. This made us very vulnerable to the British invasion a few years later. 

So his rotten Lockean concept of "property rights" which Franklin (who was the Declaration's editor, and rewrote aspects of it) insisted be taken out, Jefferson's espousal of states rights, his conflicted relationship to slavery, the fierce opposition to Hamilton's economic system to promote manufactures and the Federal role in both funding infrastructure and minting a unified currency, his attempts to stop the First National Bank, his support for the Jacobin style Whiskey Rebellion, all of these things together took Jefferson down a few pegs in my eyes relative to the other founders. 

Jefferson did do the right thing in joining the Revolution, and later allying with Hamilton in opposing Burr, who was a traitor. He did do the right thing in making the Louisiana purchase from Napoleon. (which ironically he might have opposed years earlier as a case of "Federal government overreach") And he did promote the sciences. I'll give him credit where it is due. But in terms of the battle back then between "states rights" and slavery vs the Washington/ Hamilton Federal system, Jefferson were he living today would be on the wrong side, he'd be right there with the Federalist Society trying to tear down the role of the Federal Government. 

So, that's my thumbnail kind of reply, but like I said, I would need a full article with sources to really make the case. 

Thanks for reading and for being provoked, 😄😄.