Jakubczyk on Common Sense

Applying faith and reason to ideas, issues and events in today's world

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

TYRANNY OF THE JUDICIARY


As we ponder the price of our freedoms and the sacrifices made by our soldiers and sailors today and in days past, we do well to consider the ever increasing encroachment by our judiciary at the state and federal courts upon our liberties and our right to direct our government and its representatives.

All who have visited this site can attest to the most egregious example of judicial interference in the role and rule of law. The legal disaster that is Roe v Wade has not only been responsible for the killing of over 40 million children but it has wounded the law and gutted the moral purpose for government and our legal system. Because there are those who truly care for the rule of law and the sanctity of life, the ba ttle has been engaged for the last thirty-three years. Though abortion is still allowed, it has never achieved the acceptance in society its perpetrators demanded. And as much as the Supreme Court, the liberal media and the entertainment types with their leftist lackeys in government have tried to force this down the throats of the American people, there has been a reaction and a response objecting to this acquiescence to wholesale slaughter of innocents. Granted many people just as soon never address the problem because of the commitment it requires. Still there is a gut reaction by most ordinary people that abortion is a bad thing.

Yet abortion is not the only means by which the judiciary in this country seeks to establish themselves as the aristocracy of our nation. Whether it be interference in obvious state matters or an expansive reading of plain language, more judges are sitting as if they were the philosopher-kings of Plato’s ideal Republic. They only problem with such moralizing is that their decisions seem to run contrary to anything remotely resembling common sense.

The latest attack on the democratic process has been a running story about a cross, a city and a park.

A long time ago some people wanted to honor their war dead in a seaside town known as San Diego. These people erected a cross on one of the hills called Soledad. And so it happened. And for many years the people of San Diego looked with pride recalling the sacrifices made by those who served their country. The fact that San Diego had the Naval Training Camp and North Island, along with the Marine camp at Pendleton only underscored this city’s respect for those who served.

Then along came an atheist who filed suit, claiming that the erection and maintenance of this cross, violated the First Amendment. Instead of throwing this lawsuit out as being a frivolous action, the court actually entertained the suit and ruled in favor of the atheist. So the people of San Diego tried to transfer the cross to a private foundation. No good, said the judge. Then the people voted 75% to give it to the Federal government as a formal war memorial. Again, not allowed said the judge. The judge ordered the cross be removed or the city would face fines and penalties. Indeed the order was to have it removed in two weeks. So we thank Justice Kennedy for putting a stay on hat order. And we thank those lawyers who have stood up against this tyranny of a sitting federal judge.

Congress should impeach this fellow. He should not be a judge.

Reminds me of a fellow named King George.



Monday, July 03, 2006

Understanding the meaning of Independence Day

As we continue our examination of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, we need to consider that the times during which the document was written constitute a changing from one mindset as to the role and purpose of government to another. This new attitude toward government had its seeds in Magna Carta and now in the New World found the fertile soil for its full growth and development. Aside from the notion that all men were created by God, something pretty much of a given in those days, the concept of equality was still something being considered. Some still held to the class system and the notion that all was preordained, despite one’s best hopes and desires. Yet in America there was a sense that if a man could exercise his wits and ingenuity, there was allowed for him opportunity to succeed, and the recognition that with success came a place at the table.

Thus the history textbooks dramatize the birth of colonies that were populated by the excess of Newgate prison and other debtors’ jails. A chance for freedom was worth whatever the risk. The opportunity to make something of oneself gave the person hope.

This is the genesis then of our founding document: that men might have the opportunity to make something of themselves. The Declaration addresses the wrongs dome against the colonies because these wrongs affected their ability to make something happen in this new world. The complaints by these young Americans addressed the whole notion of respect for freedom. Further the writers were not asking for license or anarchy, but for an order that allowed for the flowering of a new society.

Thus do we see that the roots of our own right to life movement are found in this acknowledgement of the Creator’s hand in giving us life, in seeking His will that we might live in liberty so as to truly and freely choose to love Him, and to have the opportunity to exercise the talents, skills and gifts He gave to each of us in order to discover who we are so that we could be happy.

But there is a condition for this to happen. We must recognize it in each other. We must accept the fact that these rights rest in every person. We must revere and protect each person so he or she can exercise these rights. Thus becomes the role and purpose of government.

Unless we respect all human life, we respect none. Unless we acknowledge the right to life of every person, none of us can claim the right. It is an all or nothing proposition.

Our founders knew this. Even as they failed to address the issue of slavery, they knew this. Our history reminds us that each person is entitled to due process in application of the law. History sadly notes those times when man’s inhumanity to man destroyed the systems that were designed to insure these protections.

Only when Roe v. Wade is seen for the cancer in the law that it has become, only when this generation excises this cancer from the body politic, only when all persons are protected in law, only then will the ideals of this Declaration have the chance to be fully lived.