Judge Barrett refuses to telegraph how she will rule on major cases
Fox News chief legal correspondent Shannon Bream has the latest on 'Special Report'
The coming fight in the full U.S. Senate over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett really comes down to one point of contention. It’s not the timing.
It’s not Senate Republicans confirming her in an election year after refusing to confirm Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.
It’s not COVID-19 or social distancing at the hearings.
No, it’s just one question: are Americans allowed to disagree with the left?
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Under the Constitution, there is no question here. The whole point of the Framers’ system was to accommodate the diverse views of a uniquely diverse nation, and indeed to harness Americans’ diversity to the good of all.
Back in the 18th century, Boston Puritans and Pennsylvania Quakers and Maryland Catholics, urban New Yorkers and Appalachian backwoodsmen were as different as Texans and Vermonters and Californians today.
The Constitutional Convention was organized to devise a system of government that would enable majority rule while protecting minority rights.
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The idea of the Constitution was to take the three traditional forms of government – monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy – and blend them together in such a way that Americans could enjoy the benefits of each while avoiding the downsides of each.
Congress was given the most political power, but also the most accountability – two year terms in the House and the requirement that both the House and the less-democratic Senate agree on legislation.
The presidency was endowed with the strength of executive leadership – decisiveness, especially in international and military affairs – but its powers were strictly limited to prevent its occupant from becoming a tyrant.
Federal judges were given lifetime terms to protect Courts from political pressure, but they were given only the power to interpret the law, not make it. Each branch was given certain powers over the other. And of course, the central government’s powers were limited, too, dwarfed and checked by the broad powers enjoyed by each – more homogeneous – state.
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This system of checks and balances was designed for our nation, by people who were fully aware of how diverse we were, culturally, religiously, economically, politically.
It was an unprecedented attempt to allow different people to come together as one nation while respecting and tolerating each other’s differences, to empower our myriad, interwoven majorities and minorities to pursue their happiness according to their own values and priorities.
It’s the Constitution that protects our right to happily, freely disagree.
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And that is why so many of the rising, radical left hate it.
In recent years, the hard-left has morphed from a political movement trying to persuade citizens to a religious movement bent on hunting heretics.
Now in overwhelming control of the news media, our education system, popular culture, professional athletics, and corporate boardrooms – Big Tech in particular – the left increasingly operates like an elite mob, threatening the reputation and livelihoods of anyone daring to disagree.
Pro-Life? You hate women. Religious traditionalist? Homophobe. Dislike illegal immigration? Racist. Support welfare reform? Racist, again, and you hate the poor.
Do you like the Senate or the Electoral College, or stand during the national anthem? Probably a white supremacist.
Believe there are two sexes, corresponding to one’s genetics? Hate speech. Believe the United States was founded in 1776? White nationalist.
Believe, like the World Health Organization itself, that we can reopen schools, safely, while managing the risks of COVID-19? Child abuser.
Believe we can mitigate the risks of climate change through technological innovation? You might as well believe the earth is flat. And on and on and on.
To too many on the left today, religion is hate. Superstition is science. Freedom is oppression. Lies are truth. The Rule of Law is bigotry. The Constitution is evil. And America is irredeemably racist.
To them, the whole point of the unaccountable power of the Supreme Court is to allow progressive Justices to impose their values on every business, church, school charity, city, county and state in the nation.
For all their rhetoric about “democracy,” progressives revere Supreme Court decisions that overturn or rewrite democratically passed laws according to their values – Roe, Casey, Lawrence, Obergefell, and the rest.
The woke left wants the Court to remake America according to the faddish whims of the richest, most powerful (almost all of them white) people in the country.
They want to outlaw dissent, and forcibly convert the public to their One True Faith of Progressivism… or else.
President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, on the other hand, holds the quaint view that the Constitution protects the equal rights of all, and that Courts are supposed to be impartial referees, ensuring the law follows the Constitution and is enforced with justice.
She disagrees with the left on this, and on much else, and promises to afford the same right to all her countrymen.
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This week, woke leftists are going to try and crucify her for it, not just to stop her – which they can’t – but to send a message to the rest of us about what awaits people with the temerity to think for themselves.
Which is exactly why Americans of all creeds, races, and political ideas need her on the bench.