JUST SAY NO TO JUDICIAL TYRANNY
A Speech by Don Feder to the Conservative Political Action Conference, January 22, 2004

There's a movie - just released on video and DVD - called "Open Range." It's a morality tale set in the Old West. In one moving scene, Robert Duvall tells the townsfolk, "A man's got a right to protect his life and property. Ain't no rancher or his lawman gonna take that away!" Similarly, we could say, " A man or a woman's got a right to protect his faith, family and freedom. Ain't no judge gonna take that away!"

For the past 40 years, judges have been unmaking the Constitution. Now, it's time for us to begin unmaking judges.

Judicial tyranny didn't start with the infamous Massachusetts decision in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health.

On Aug. 1, 2003, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building violated the 1st. Amendment's establishment clause. Let's we forget, the amendment reads in part, "Congress shall make to law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

That must mean Roy Moore is Congress, and his monument to Mosaic Law is a state church.

In 2002, the U.S. 9th Circuit Appeals Court held the phrase "one nation under God," made it unconstitutional to say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. Poor Abraham Lincoln had no idea he was violating the establishment clause when he uttered those immortal words, "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom," in dedicating a federal cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Last June, in Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court discovered a heretofore unimagined right to homosexual sodomy in the First Amendment - probably in the same non-existent clause that supposedly guarantees the "right" to abortion on demand.

Curiously, 14 years earlier, in Bowers vs. Hardwick, the same court held there was no such right. It's amazing how much the inherent meaning of the Constitution changed in those 14 years.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor voted one way in Bowers and the other in Lawrence. Which compels one to ask, "Madame Justice, what it about the Constitution that you were confused about 14 years ago, but that you now understand?"

Of course, the Constitution didn't magically transform itself in those years, nor did O'Connor's ability to grasp the inherent meaning of the 1st Amendment. What changed is the culture. Liberal judges read the Constitution by the light of a cultural candle. The culture says sodomy is a right? Well, so must the Constitution! The culture ordains homosexual marriage? It must be in there somewhere.

Within days of Lawrence, the Supreme Court ruled the 14th. Amendment - which was intended to outlaw race-based discrimination - in fact mandates racial discrimination.

Which brings us, inevitably, tragically, to the infamous Massachusetts decision of last November, when (by a single vote) the state's highest court found a right to same-sex marriage in the Massachusetts constitution - a charter originally written at the time of the Revolutionary War. Who would have thought that John Adams - who said of the U.S. Constitution was "written for a moral and a religious people, it is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other" - intended to put society's seal of approval on what then were called unnatural acts when he wrote the Mass. constitution.

I could go on, but what's the point - other than to stress our enslavement by a gang of black-robed plantation masters. I can't wait for the day when some court, somewhere in this troubled land, rules that democracy is unconstitutional. As a matter of fact, they already have - without using those exact words.

Constitutionalists usually focus on three solutions to this crisis:

Let me propose a third - Just say no to judicial tyranny.

How about simply ignoring the unlawful, unconstitutional edicts of black-robed Jacobins?

Andrew Jackson - who fought redcoats and duels for his wife's honor - was confronted with a similar situation during his tenure. Old Hickory declared: "Mr. Marshall has made his decision. Now, let him enforce it." We need to be equally defiant.

What enforcement powers does any court have? All rely on our acquiescence. In other words, we let them get away with it.

Take the crisis at hand. Say, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (reputed to be a Republican) issued a directive to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to order city and town clerks not to issue marriage licenses to him and him, or her and her. What would the justices of the state's high court do? Hold their breaths until they turned blue? Kick and scream?

Let's be clear about one thing: What I am urging is not civil disobedience - which means to violate the lawful authority of the state. Ignoring the attempted usurpations of un-elected officials - social Bolsheviks -- is the highest fidelity to the Constitution and rule of law.

I call this the Roy Moore principal. Last Summer, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court said to a gang of judicial activists : "You're telling me the 1st. Amendment will not allow me to acknowledge God in a public place? Wrong. Unconstitutional. Not going to do it." In so doing, Moore fired the opening volley of the next American revolution.

All that's lacking is the political will to stand up for the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian morality on which it is based. The will to stand up for original intent, to stand up for the grand vision of the Founding Fathers, to stand up to judicial Saddams and Osamas.

In so doing, we will have to combat an entrenched mindset. Most Americans honestly believe that judges are magicians and the Constitution (federal or state) is a magic hat from which these hyper-active Houdinis are allowed to pull the most grotesque and deformed mutant rabbits which all are expected to venerate.

But the day will come - mark my words - when the American people will have had enough, when the masses revolt.

And then we will pull down this Dark Tower of judicial tyranny with our bare hands.

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Symposium
By Don Feder
Q: Should more conservative officeholders defy outrageous edicts of federal courts?
YES: Otherwise democracy will die, and a radical judiciary will transform America in ways that make it virtually unrecognizable.
The courts have created a crisis in American government. The usurpations of federal judges have become so subversive to majority rule and the moral order on which our civilization rests that they must be opposed if liberty and Judeo-Christian values are to survive.
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