Alan Keyes
High court on DOMA: borderline insane
By Alan Keyes
In their argument against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court justices in the majority allude to the fact that marriage and the regulations of law and administration connected with it have always been regarded as matters to be determined by the state governments, under the auspices of the people in their respective states. They rely on the impression that this longstanding practice means that the Constitution prohibits the federal legislature from constraining the acts of state governments in this regard.
Yet with respect to abortion, the court majority in Roe v. Wade discovered a shadowy aspect of individual privacy rights that supposedly makes it an exercise of right for a mother to procure the murder of her nascent offspring. But if longstanding practice precludes the federal government from constraining the regulatory decisions of the state governments where marriage is concerned, what authorized the federal judiciary to interfere with what was the longstanding practice of the state governments to prohibit the murder of nascent human beings in the womb?
According to the principles of the organic law of the United States (in particular the American Declaration of Independence), the opinions, laws, and actions that employ the just powers of government are supposed to secure the rights intrinsically derived from each individual's voluntary decision to implement (exercise) the right, as authorized by the Creator. When they are demonstrably inconsistent with this defining premise of just government, there is, on the face of it, good reason to suspect that the exercise of government power is unlawful and illegitimate, at whatever level of government it takes place.
According to the court's abortion jurisprudence, a speciously fabricated, constitutionally shady notion of privacy rights authorizes the federal judiciary to interfere with actions taken by the state governments to prohibit the self-evident violation of unalienable rights involved in slaughtering millions of innocent human offspring by way of abortion. By contrast, in the DOMA the U.S. Congress simply sought to implement by law the constitutional obligation to respect the natural law's provision for the human family, including the unalienable rights of biological parents. These rights include the parents' exercise of authority over their children, as well as their obligation to provide their children with food, clothing, shelter, and all things otherwise required for their reasonable care. In principle, these unalienable rights do not depend on government power. They arise directly from the endowment of the Creator, an authority antecedent and superior to all human governments whatsoever.
The Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states unequivocally that "the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In their attack on the DOMA, the majority in United States v. Windsor pretends to have respect for longstanding views and practices affecting the authority of governments in the United States. In this regard, the longest-standing view of the American people, stated in the very act by which they declared their independent existence as a people, holds that human beings are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," and that "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men."
This longstanding view, cited innumerable times in every conceivable aspect and expression of America's political life and law, specifies that the Creator is the authority from which all people may claim an endowment of rights. There is, therefore, no mystery about the source of the unenumerated rights retained by the people. Nor is the logic obscure by which such rights may be recognized and rationally substantiated. They are not shadowy constitutional fabrications, like the spurious privacy right in Roe v. Wade, visible only to the high priests of legal mumbo-jumbo. Nor are they fanciful legal prosthetics, applied without reason or reasoning, to give the appearance of legality to heinous wrongs and injustices that degrade and demoralize the American people. As Alexander Hamilton observed, "They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself [emphasis mine]; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." ("The Farmer Refuted," 1775)
The unalienable rights of the natural family are self-evidently among them. They have been taken for granted practically in every age, in every precinct of the earth. They became clear, in part, because of human experience with nature at large, as human reason applied itself to the task of appropriating nature's resources in order reliably to sustain human life (animal husbandry, for instance; if people hadn't realized the importance of getting roosters and chickens to interact...and so forth).
So on the one hand, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence relies on the notion that the federal government can act through the courts to secure a mother's patently spurious right to murder innocent children. But on the other, it purports to keep the U.S. Congress from protecting the right of the human institution that is the focal point of all the God-endowed natural rights of family life and procreation. This is so patently irrational that it raises a suspicion of insanity. Or else it suggests malice toward human life and human nature that is so malignant its intensity beggars description. Yet this is the notion the Windsor majority wants Americans to accept as lawful. However, in light of America's organic and constitutional principles of law, it can be seen as lawful only in some tyrannical sense of the term. Tyrants ultimately do not submit to reason, which is the natural law, but only to the unreasoning force of superior power.
By the unreasonable illogic of their so-called jurisprudence, the justices in the Windsor majority's decision fall short of establishing that their decision on the DOMA has any rational connection with the Constitution's provisions. Indeed, it is clear that they are part of the ongoing insurrection against the very foundation of the Constitution's authority that has been spreading through the American judiciary for some time. But apart from the authority of the Constitution, the justices have no claim to represent the justly sovereign will of the people in any way whatsoever. And where they have no authorization from the rightful sovereign, they can have no claim to dictate law or justice, unless they mean to rely on government's coercive power, unjustly abused.
But, as Alexander Hamilton accurately observes in Federalist 78, under the U.S. Constitution the Supreme Court does not command the coercive force of government. That is the prerogative of the president of the United States, who is vested with its executive power. At the moment, the opinion of Windsor majority's justices coincides with the stance of the lawless clique presently in control of the Executive Branch. Is this what gives the justices confidence that the law of tyrannical force will suffice to impose their opinion, even if their irrational and self-contradictory jurisprudence leaves no reasonable support for the claim that they speak with the force of law? If so, the Constitution provides the means to correct their tyrannical arrogance, provided faithful Americans have the intelligence and courage to see and make use of them.
July 1, 2013
In their argument against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court justices in the majority allude to the fact that marriage and the regulations of law and administration connected with it have always been regarded as matters to be determined by the state governments, under the auspices of the people in their respective states. They rely on the impression that this longstanding practice means that the Constitution prohibits the federal legislature from constraining the acts of state governments in this regard.
Yet with respect to abortion, the court majority in Roe v. Wade discovered a shadowy aspect of individual privacy rights that supposedly makes it an exercise of right for a mother to procure the murder of her nascent offspring. But if longstanding practice precludes the federal government from constraining the regulatory decisions of the state governments where marriage is concerned, what authorized the federal judiciary to interfere with what was the longstanding practice of the state governments to prohibit the murder of nascent human beings in the womb?
According to the principles of the organic law of the United States (in particular the American Declaration of Independence), the opinions, laws, and actions that employ the just powers of government are supposed to secure the rights intrinsically derived from each individual's voluntary decision to implement (exercise) the right, as authorized by the Creator. When they are demonstrably inconsistent with this defining premise of just government, there is, on the face of it, good reason to suspect that the exercise of government power is unlawful and illegitimate, at whatever level of government it takes place.
According to the court's abortion jurisprudence, a speciously fabricated, constitutionally shady notion of privacy rights authorizes the federal judiciary to interfere with actions taken by the state governments to prohibit the self-evident violation of unalienable rights involved in slaughtering millions of innocent human offspring by way of abortion. By contrast, in the DOMA the U.S. Congress simply sought to implement by law the constitutional obligation to respect the natural law's provision for the human family, including the unalienable rights of biological parents. These rights include the parents' exercise of authority over their children, as well as their obligation to provide their children with food, clothing, shelter, and all things otherwise required for their reasonable care. In principle, these unalienable rights do not depend on government power. They arise directly from the endowment of the Creator, an authority antecedent and superior to all human governments whatsoever.
The Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states unequivocally that "the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In their attack on the DOMA, the majority in United States v. Windsor pretends to have respect for longstanding views and practices affecting the authority of governments in the United States. In this regard, the longest-standing view of the American people, stated in the very act by which they declared their independent existence as a people, holds that human beings are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," and that "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men."
This longstanding view, cited innumerable times in every conceivable aspect and expression of America's political life and law, specifies that the Creator is the authority from which all people may claim an endowment of rights. There is, therefore, no mystery about the source of the unenumerated rights retained by the people. Nor is the logic obscure by which such rights may be recognized and rationally substantiated. They are not shadowy constitutional fabrications, like the spurious privacy right in Roe v. Wade, visible only to the high priests of legal mumbo-jumbo. Nor are they fanciful legal prosthetics, applied without reason or reasoning, to give the appearance of legality to heinous wrongs and injustices that degrade and demoralize the American people. As Alexander Hamilton observed, "They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself [emphasis mine]; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." ("The Farmer Refuted," 1775)
The unalienable rights of the natural family are self-evidently among them. They have been taken for granted practically in every age, in every precinct of the earth. They became clear, in part, because of human experience with nature at large, as human reason applied itself to the task of appropriating nature's resources in order reliably to sustain human life (animal husbandry, for instance; if people hadn't realized the importance of getting roosters and chickens to interact...and so forth).
So on the one hand, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence relies on the notion that the federal government can act through the courts to secure a mother's patently spurious right to murder innocent children. But on the other, it purports to keep the U.S. Congress from protecting the right of the human institution that is the focal point of all the God-endowed natural rights of family life and procreation. This is so patently irrational that it raises a suspicion of insanity. Or else it suggests malice toward human life and human nature that is so malignant its intensity beggars description. Yet this is the notion the Windsor majority wants Americans to accept as lawful. However, in light of America's organic and constitutional principles of law, it can be seen as lawful only in some tyrannical sense of the term. Tyrants ultimately do not submit to reason, which is the natural law, but only to the unreasoning force of superior power.
By the unreasonable illogic of their so-called jurisprudence, the justices in the Windsor majority's decision fall short of establishing that their decision on the DOMA has any rational connection with the Constitution's provisions. Indeed, it is clear that they are part of the ongoing insurrection against the very foundation of the Constitution's authority that has been spreading through the American judiciary for some time. But apart from the authority of the Constitution, the justices have no claim to represent the justly sovereign will of the people in any way whatsoever. And where they have no authorization from the rightful sovereign, they can have no claim to dictate law or justice, unless they mean to rely on government's coercive power, unjustly abused.
But, as Alexander Hamilton accurately observes in Federalist 78, under the U.S. Constitution the Supreme Court does not command the coercive force of government. That is the prerogative of the president of the United States, who is vested with its executive power. At the moment, the opinion of Windsor majority's justices coincides with the stance of the lawless clique presently in control of the Executive Branch. Is this what gives the justices confidence that the law of tyrannical force will suffice to impose their opinion, even if their irrational and self-contradictory jurisprudence leaves no reasonable support for the claim that they speak with the force of law? If so, the Constitution provides the means to correct their tyrannical arrogance, provided faithful Americans have the intelligence and courage to see and make use of them.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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