THE WANDERER, JULY 22, 2004
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
A Losing Strategy
The proposed constitutional amendment defining
marriage as a union between people of different sexes has
met inglorious defeat in the U.S. Senate. It was a bad
idea. As so often happens, social conservatives led with
their chins, picking a fight they couldn't win.
And didn't need. Like the recurrent
anti-flag-burning amendment, it was a disproportionate
reaction to a minor problem. Homosexual "marriage" may be
in vogue in a few areas right now -- the usual wacky
precincts, from San Francisco to Boston -- but it doesn't
have much of a future as an institution.
Massachusetts's Supreme Court, enacting its
self-imposed duty of repealing Western civilization,
brought the issue to the fore by finding that equal
rights means that sodomy must be put on a par with
procreative unions. This was a clever strategy to invoke
the "full faith and credit" clause requiring all 50
states to honor even the most bizarre laws of any single
state, even if it's the Bay State. There is no logical
limit to such absurdity, which might require all the
states to recognize the lobster as a mammal if
Massachusetts says so.
The courts have been getting too big for their
britches for many years; and, not content with
legislating rather than just interpreting the law,
they've now decided to overhaul the dictionaries too. The
politically correct has become the linguistically
preposterous.
The correct response to a judicial power play is to
treat it as null and void. The courts depend on the other
branches of government to enforce their decisions. But
those other branches are also entitled to interpret the
Constitution, and they may, and should, refuse to enforce
what they deem unconstitutional rulings.
And if the courts refuse to respect their limits,
there is the ultimate remedy of impeachment. It should
have been used long ago, when the courts began usurping
powers never assigned to them. If usurpation of power,
destroying the balance of power among the three branches
of government, isn't grounds for impeachment, what is?
Nobody can honestly say that the Massachusetts court
is merely interpreting the law; it is imposing its will,
the current liberal agenda of sexual revolution. No
dispassionate reader of the Constitution has ever
concluded that it means what this court wants it to mean.
The idea could only have occurred to an advocate of the
homosexual cause. And judges aren't supposed to be
advocates.
In his famous dissent, Justice Byron White called
the majority ruling in Roe v. Wade an act of "raw
judicial power." He was exactly right: It was a
usurpation of power, and therefore an abuse of power.
Unfortunately, the country, or at least its political
class, had by 1973 long since formed the habit of
pretending that such abuses were perfectly legitimate
exercises of judicial authority. If ever a judicial coup
called for impeachment, that one did. But nobody even
proposed it. Instead, opponents of legal abortion assumed
the burden of amending the Constitution or at least
gradually replacing the court's personnel.
But it wasn't a personnel problem, and the
Constitution wasn't the problem either. So, at about the
same time a president was being impeached for relatively
minor abuses of power, the runaway judiciary continued on
its merry way; as it still does.
And conservatives are still letting the courts not
only rewrite the law, but determine the ground rules
under which they escape all responsibility for even their
most arrogant presumptions. It's impossible to conceive a
more hapless strategy than trying to amend the
Constitution every time the courts violate it. This has
failed every time, and it has just failed again. (And
even if it succeeded every time, the Constitution would
wind up as long as the Federal Register.)
But don't expect the conservatives to abandon this
approach just because it never works and never can work.
They seem to enjoy nothing better than offering futile
constitutional amendments. It must be a great
fund-raising tactic; but for achieving political results,
it's like playing Russian roulette with one empty chamber
in the pistol.
So whose purposes does this strategy serve?
President Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove have
decided that sodomatrimony is a great election-year
issue, a chance to highlight Republican "family values"
in contrast to John Kerry's Massachusetts liberalism; and
Bush endorsed the amendment. It cost him nothing; and it
was effective sucker-bait for the conservatives who still
want to believe he is "one of us" at heart and who
wouldn't blame him if it was defeated. After all, he did
his best, didn't he? He talked about the "sanctity" of
marriage and all that. It's not his fault if the
Democrats and tepid Republican moderates didn't back him
up.
Bush and Rove no doubt calculate that conservative
frustration, carefully stoked, will pay off in passionate
support in November. This is no time to abandon a losing
strategy.
Further Confirmation
The Senate Intelligence Committee's report has
concluded, unanimously, that the Bush administration's
case for attacking Iraq was pretty much groundless. It
stopped short of suggesting any official mendacity, and
even cleared the administration of pressuring the CIA to
tell it what it wanted to hear. Still, it said the agency
had "overstated" the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and
was guilty of "group-think" in misinterpreting the
evidence so badly.
Even Pat Roberts, the committee's Republican
chairman and an ally of the White House, suggested that
he might not have favored the war if he'd known then what
he knows now. Other committee members said more bluntly
that an accurate presentation of the facts would have
prevented the war.
No pressure? Maybe the Bush team didn't twist any
arms to get the results they wanted, but it was hardly
necessary. The pressure was in the air itself, and only a
hermit could have failed to know that Bush and Company
were eager for justifications for striking Iraq.
This report was an exercise in supererogation. By
now Bush's case for war has been demolished so many
times, by so many witnesses and by events themselves,
that it has become monotonous. His defenders are reduced
to carping about Michael Moore's exaggerations. They
remind one of the Irish politician's indignant complaint:
"Half the lies our enemies tell about us aren't true!"
Bush himself doggedly insists that the Iraq war has
made us "safer," even as his crack Homeland Security
experts issue heightened warnings of new terrorist
attacks. The future is always uncertain, but by now we
can assume that any further revelations about the Iraq
war will be embarrassing.
+ + +
Good news about war! SOBRAN'S finds hopeful evidence
about the stubbornness of the human conscience. If you
have not seen my monthly newsletter yet, give my office a
call at 800-513-5053 and request a free sample, or better
yet, subscribe for two years for just $85. New
subscribers get two gifts with their subscription. More
details can be found at the Subscription page of my
website, www.sobran.com.
Already a subscriber? Consider a gift subscription
for a priest, friend, or relative.
--- Joseph Sobran
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read this column on-line at
"http://www.sobran.com/wanderer/w2004/w040722.shtml".
This column copyright (c) 2004 by THE WANDERER,
www.thewandererpress.com. Reprinted with permission.
This column may not be published in print or Internet
publications without express permission of THE WANDERER.
You may forward it to interested individuals if you use
this entire page, including the following disclaimer:
"THE WANDERER is available by subscription. Write
subscription@thewandererpress.com for information.
Subscription price: $50 per year; $30 for six months.
Checks can be sent to The WANDERER, 201 Ohio Street,
Dept. JS, St. Paul, MN 55107.
"SOBRAN'S and Joe Sobran's syndicated columns are
available by e-mail subscription. For details and
samples, see http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml, write
PR@griffnews.com, or call 800-513-5053."
This page copyright (c) 2004 by THE VERE COMPANY.