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 The Guardian
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 RaNdoM
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The Guardian
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RaNdoM
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The political circus in Florida continues unabated in the 2000 presidential election. Who knew that the feared social and financial chaos predicted as a possibility for Y2K would come, not in the form of computer glitches at the start of the year, but at the end of the millennium. Judge after judge swirls his or her fingers in the muck of this rapidly degenerating electoral process. The resultant mess would be comical were it not so sad and disgusting.
Courts hear arguments to end hand recounts. To restart concluded hand recounts. To force an extension of deadlines for vote certification. To uphold the actions of a duly elected secretary of state performing her duties. To reverse a lower court decision and prevent her from doing what the legislature authorized her to do. To count ballots that sport "dimpled" or "pregnant" chads. (Can there possibly be anyone left in this country who is not sickened to death of hearing the word "chad"...?)
The federal circuit court in Atlanta refuses to act. The Florida Supreme Court acts where no one asked it to and engages in egregious character assassination of the secretary of state. Up and down. Back and forth. It's no wonder the Republican vice-presidential candidate ended up in a hospital with chest pain...
Some accuse the Florida Supreme Court of rewriting the law, arbitrarily altering a vote certification date mandated in one statute. The members of that court definitely seemed to have no reluctance leaping into the fray. Yet curiously, those same judges (one hesitates to call them "justices") are strangely reluctant to "interfere" with the counting of questionable ballots. While gung ho in trampling upon executive and legislative prerogatives when those counter their peculiar prejudices, they are the souls of discretion when it comes to giving free rein to local authorities pondering "voter intent" from indented marks on rectangles of flimsy cardboard.
These county referees apparently care not a whit that standards for evaluating ballots are as flexible as a flag flapping in a breeze. What counts as an invalid vote one day is miraculously salvaged from oblivion the next when the goal of overtaking their foe glimmers more dimly. Accusations of fraud launched by their opponents do not deter the officials whose slimy wrigglings will likely determine the final outcome of this election. By hook or by crook, they will plod on, turtle-like, until they cross the goal they have set their sights upon.
Their willing accomplices clad in flowing black robes and sitting so prettily behind their raised benches go through the motions of "fairness" while not so subtly steering the outcome in the direction they desire.
Once upon a time in this country, judges could rightfully and proudly claim the title of "justices."
Once upon a time, judges worked to interpret the law within the confines of the United States Constitution.
Once upon a time, judges sought to remain impartial and focused only upon the facts and their adherence to the rule of law.
Perhaps the most significant reversal of this ideal occurred when one of our worst presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, cowed a recalcitrant Supreme Court into rubber-stamping his corporativist political agenda. (And don't tell me about the recent proclamation by various historians of FDR as a "great" president.) Since that dark era, courts have devolved more and more into mere reflections of their partisan supporters.
There have, of course, always been political influences and ramifications in our judicial system. Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall butted heads. One can also look at the Dred Scott decision and the doctrine of "separate but equal" education for examples.
Despite individual aberrations, however, the overall tenor of our court system and the attitudes of those who adjudicated from their seats of power were quite different in earlier centuries. The ideals of "equality under the law" and "a nation of laws, not men" held sway in a land which, implicitly at least, celebrated and demonstrated the Enlightenment principles of rationality, individualism, and freedom.
Courts that have enforced busing of students to achieve "racial equality" in schools; that have stood idly by while regulations have run rampant under the approving gaze of Congress; that have refused to condemn an unconstitutional War on Drugs and its abuses of individual rights; that have transformed the Constitution into a "living document" in which nothing means what it says; that punish dissidents who believe in jury nullification; that have essentially legislated in accordance with their whims or popular opinion; such courts and the judges who run them have become the norm rather than the exception.
The mercurial standards that blatantly are tolerated in Florida are merely one example of the overall assault on objectivity, reason, and logic our academics have fomented over the course of the past fifty years. It is hardly surprising that so few condemn a "rule" that mutates day-by-day when the so-called intellectuals in this country deny that principles exist which are binding upon us all. Who can be shocked at the dearth of outrage at the abuses bubbling up in the Sunshine State when the Perpetrator-in-Chief is not laughed out of office when he says, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is"? There can be little to ponder when a man who may well win the presidency at the start of the Twenty-first Century utters bald-faced lie after lie and lie and still manages to garner 49% of the votes cast nationwide.
Though many judges and the politicians who appoint them have all the integrity of a three-dollar bill, they nevertheless ultimately reflect the values of the American people. As has been said many times before, for evil to triumph, good men need only do nothing. In this case, the "good" citizens have allowed themselves to be hornswoggled by an educational and political system that bribes them with their own money; that pits one class or group against another in brazen appeals to collectivism, greed, and fear; and that denounces principles, morality, and truth as "subjective," "insensitive," and "oppressive."
Fearful of being judged "judgmental," too many people refuse to judge, at all. Rather than being confident in their beliefs and philosophies, such individuals are "other-centered," worrying about what their neighbors and friends think of them above all other considerations. These are the folks that Ayn Rand named "second-handers" and Nathaniel Branden called "social metaphysicians."
Such a person "cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. [Have you looked at a politician lately?] He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. [Inventing the Internet, anyone?] He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. [The cheering sycophants crowding about our national "leaders"?] The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed [Who is it that "feels your pain"?], in order to establish his own superiority by comparison... [You can't be trusted to spend your own money properly, now can you?]
"They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' [Consider the obsession with polls and 'focus groups' demonstrated by the current administration.] Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. [Today, intentions are all, actual outcomes irrelevant.] Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. [FOB's: Friends of Bill.] Not merit, but pull. [Lobbyists swarm over Washington, D.C.]...When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality... Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. ['Let's do something,' even if it's wrong.] Power without responsibility. ['Executive orders' spew from the White House] ...He's not open to reason. ['Don't confuse me with the facts!']... They forgive criminals. [Just say, 'I'm sorry,' and you can prosper in politics.] They admire dictators. [The good ol' buds, Bill and Fidel or Bill and the Chinese or Bill and...] ...They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. [The widening web of intrusion, surveillance, and regulation that typifies your friendly, neighborhood politico.]" (From The Fountainhead, in For the New Intellectual, p. 69 - 70.)
"It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: 'But people won't like you!" ("The Argument from Intimidation," in The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 141. Emphasis in original.)
In a very real sense, too many people today (including most "judges") are essentially incapable of true "judging." To judge implies a capacity to understand causes and effects; to weigh evidence; to evaluate logical arguments; to infer. (Check your Webster's.)
Most of all, it implies a willingness and ability to think.
Unfortunately -- for whatever reasons -- this capability and responsibility is too frequently abrogated by our fellow citizens when it comes to dealing with political issues.
The courts have become pimps for a public clamoring for the services of the prostitutes they purchase with their votes and their taxes. "I want it" trumps all objections or appeals to rights or morality. Our judicial system long ago ceased being a guarantor of our freedom.
As Bernard Siegan writes in Economic Liberties and the Constitution:
One can easily apply these same ideas to the situation in Florida. Instead of business owners appealing to legislators to fix outcomes, politicians scramble to induce the courts to declare them "winners" in what should be a straightforward election process.
The primary function and purpose of the judiciary is to protect our rights and our liberties. Perhaps one day, the courts will do so as the rule rather than the exception.
The antics in Florida do not, unfortunately, offer us much hope.