By Bob Topper\PeaceVoice
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
One could understand the Dobb’s decision. The Supreme Court was wrong to ignore precedence, reason, and evidence when it took away a woman’s constitutional right to choose. But when one recognized that the majority of the justices were devout Catholics who had been indoctrinated with the belief that abortion was wrong and against their Gods law, the decision was at least consistent.
But how does one understand the oral arguments concerning Trump’s claim of total immunity from prosecution? At its core, this case is about a president being above the law and having the absolute immunity of a king. The justices are fellow Americans who, we would hope, value our basic principles, in particular that here the law is king and not the other way around.
The charges brought against Trump, his complicity in the attack on American democracy and subverting the transfer of power, are supported by his words, and must be adjudicated. Judge Chutkin and the appeals court rejected his claim for total immunity with the simple reasoning that, unlike Russian, American presidents cannot assassinate their opponents with impunity. That should have been obvious to the Supreme Court as well.
The Supreme Court is obligated to evaluate the lower court’s findings, nothing more. But conservatives on the court decided that it is more important to consider hypothetical cases rather than judge the one that is in front of them. In Justice Gorsuch’s words, “I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” and added, “We’re writing a rule for the ages” … hubristic nonsense.
He and others on the court must know that delaying this trial may well prevent justice from being served. If Trump is found guilty it will most certainly influence the coming election. And they also know that if the trial is delayed beyond the election, and Trump should win, he will appoint an attorney general who will quash the case. This is of course Trump’s strategy to stay out of federal prison.
Supreme court justices take two oaths of office. The first:
“[to] support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;”
And the second:
“I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me,”
By delaying this trial conservative justices ignore both. The essence of the charges brought in this case is an attack on the Constitution they have sworn to defend, and delay favors former president Trump, which can hardly be the “administration of justice without respect to persons.”
What would compel the justices of the nation’s highest court to abuse their oaths of office? There is no way to know another’s motivation, but what is disturbing is that the question must be asked.
America’s founding principles of freedom, equality and democracy have never been fully realized. In the beginning, slavery was a most blatant violation. But our liberal democracy with laws grounded in reason and evidence has steadily worked to fulfill those ideals. The Civil War ended slavery, and laws enacted in the last century ensured racial and gender equality.
Most recently laws have been passed protecting homosexual and transgender people. There was no factual evidence to support the shunning of the LGBT community and so there could be no prohibitions. Unfortunately, these laws conflict with fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
There is also no fact-based evidence to support the denial of a woman’s right to choose. And so, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court guaranteed this unalienable right, which also conflicted with fundamentalist Christian belief. But given America’s founding principles the fulfillment of these individual rights was inevitable.
Fundamentalist Christians refuse to see these rights as a realization, but rather as an attack on their religious beliefs. Of course there is no attack on religion. Christians are as free to believe that the bible is the word of God, and that abortion and homosexuality are wrong just as they have always been; that right is guaranteed by our constitution. But fundamentalists must now accept that others share the right to live life as they choose. And they must also accept that religious liberty is not a right to religious prejudice. But their refusal to accept LGBT and abortion rights, is part of the heart of the anti-woke and anti-liberal crusade.
MAGA Republicans and the Trump campaign are following an anti-liberal playbook. By establishing an authoritarian regime and subverting democracy they will force compliance with their fundamentalist ideology, which has been rejected by the majority of voters. They plan to further restrict the rights of women by passing a nation-wide abortion ban and they will further constrain LGBT rights. Moreover, a second Trump term will move an already extreme anti-liberal Supreme Court farther right.
Delaying Trump’s trial demonstrates that the anti-liberal crusade has infected our Supreme Court. This was first evident in the Dobbs decision, written by Justice Alito, in which the court overlooked reason and evidence to decide that states could allow a majority of voters to impose their religious belief on others even though that idea had been resoundingly rejected 165 years ago. The majorities in the southern states had believed slave ownership was their right but were overruled by Lincoln and the Civil War.
Alito also speaks openly against liberalism calling it a “growing threat to religious liberty and free speech.” The irony is that Alito wants prejudice and bigotry to be protected by religious liberty and the First Amendment. Other justices have similar anti-liberal views. Thomas wanted to apply the reasoning of Dobbs to allow states to legislate gay marriage. And Gorsuch shows his disdain for the First Amendment characterizing it as “the so-called separation of church and state.”
Robert Kagan in a recent Washington Post op-ed notes that Trump’s election “may be their [anti-liberals] last chance to effect their counterrevolution.” That would explain why the Supreme Court is so desperate to find a way to avoid saying what is obvious, American presidents do not have absolute immunity.
Anti-liberalism is not an American phenomenon, but a worldwide movement that rejects liberal democracy and science. The Muslim fundamentalist groups, Hamas, Al-Qaida, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations are fighting the advance of Western culture, as is Putin and one hundred million Christian Orthodox Russians who justify the invasion of Ukraine as a battle against the decadence of Western societies. But at its core, this is a struggle between the advance of secular humanism and regression to religious fundamentalism.
Bob Topper, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a retired engineer.
