Jindal, Roberts and Scalia bring an unexpected shift

More than a decade ago, I experienced a departure; a kind of exile. I no longer trusted the Supreme Court to interpret law as per the Constitution. The Supremes had yielded to political persuasion; no longer trusted the Congress to make law — congressional integrity had yielded to money and lobby groups; no longer trusted the presidency to advance foreign policy. And frankly, no longer trusted the American people, stuck in what John Kenneth Galbraith called a “culture of contentment” to rise to a crisis that threatened to devour them.

{mosads}Solutions were still possible, but not in the dominant tradition since 1865. We would have to turn to Jefferson again and to the states. With very few others, we polished off the “Kentucky Resolutions” and declared that our states in northern New England need not participate in the invasion of Iraq.

This was new thinking. First off, people said “You can’t do that.”

Why not? There had been flaws in the constitutional process from the very beginning, even at the writing of the Constitution.

To my surprise, the idea began to catch on a few years later. In February 2009, with a new president who had as little regard for the Constitution as the last, two Republican state representatives in New Hampshire, Dan Itse and Paul Ingbretson, cited the “Kentucky Resolutions” for the second time since since 1798. They said the president’s new ObamaCare law was unconstitutional and as per Jefferson’s and Madison’s view expressed in the “Kentucky Resolutions,” New Hampshire need not participate.

It caught on like wildfire. Soon hellions everywhere were railing at the federal government. Glenn Beck, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, too. The Tea Party was born in anger.

The rhetoric was rich, but nothing like what we heard this week from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). They have brought us out of exile and joined into the dissent, oddly enough, against the Supreme Court itself.

Scalia declared that the court’s gay marriage “decree that says my Ruler and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”

He called the decision a “threat to democracy” and a “judicial putsch.”

“Scalia’s FACE-MELTING dissent on gay marriage,” one pundit posed, “Justifying a second American Revolution?”

Roberts said the court had basically transformed the societal institution that has held together humanity for millennia.

“Who do we think we are?” he asked.

It certainly seems a heavy lift, taking on not only Jesus Christ and Abraham, but even Joseph Smith and the 10 avatars of Vishnu. Yet the mainstream political establishment of politics and press has its shoulder to the wheel on this. The court’s decision was received with widespread glee. Surely this is the new Grand Design, the new millennial vision. After all, “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said back in April. And changed they now are.

Jindal was right there with Roberts and Scalia: “Let’s just get rid of the court,” he said.

It had been proposed before, by us pariahs and Tenthers a few years back. Here at The Hill, in fact, in 2010, in a piece that was tagged by the Tenth Amendment Center, first to enlist in the states’ rights rebellion. It was written about California, but could just have easily applied to Jindal’s Louisiana or Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) Texas today:

California’s fate [or Louisiana’s or Texas’s] today begins to suggest that of Tibet. It is a free and independent place with its own unique culture and vital life force, and its will is clear. But self[-]governance is quashed by autonomous and arbitrary magistrates thousands of miles away.

Here is a proposed amendment for the fledgling California constitutional convention: “No one should judge Californians but Californians. The California Supreme Court is the supreme court in the land. Citizens of any sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious persuasion or lack thereof can be California Supreme Court justices provided that they were born in the state and graduated from a California law school. The California Supreme Court’s ruling is the final appeal and the supreme law of the land. It can only be overturned by a majority vote in a state referendum.”

Because freedom is not free and it must be taken because it is never given.

With Scalia’s, Roberts’s and Jindal’s radical divergence, the status of this dissent is raised astronomically, away from us hillbilly ranters in the cold mountains of New Hampshire, to the highest channels of American engagement.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.