How Important Is This Presidential Election?

HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? ~ I believe better questions would be:

How important is YOUR family ~ your children, your grandchildren?

How important is YOUR American freedom and life?

How important is YOUR Christian faith?

How important is it to YOU to Restore America to the Constitutionally guided and Constitutionally driven nation which our founding fathers envisioned - and which has been our guiding light for two centuries - until the cancer of Liberalism and Socialism began to creep in and metastasize throughout the governing halls of America?

For years I have been subscribing to Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College (Hillsdale, MI) - because I view this publication one of the most balanced and informative publications, a snail-mail and online newsletter which shares the Conservative Values which built America.  The following is an abbreviated synopsis, excerpts, of the full Imprimis article, "The Next Supreme Court Justice." 

The message of this article should be extremely important to all Americans when YOU enter the voting booth in November.  YOUR VOTE will help Restore America - OR - help pull America deeper into the swamp of Liberal Socialism which has been working to weaken America and make America a controlled state under the World Rule of the United Nations.

First read these excerpts.  Then, do yourself, your family, and your American homeland a favor - read the full article found at the URL link below:

Imprimis: The Next Supreme Court Justice
July/August 2016 • Volume 45, Number 7/8 • Scott Pruitt
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/next-supreme-court-justice/2/

The following is adapted from a speech delivered by Scott Pruitt, Attorney General, State of Oklahoma, on June 30, 2016, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.

When Justice Antonin Scalia passed away this February, talk turned almost immediately to who would replace him - although in a large sense he is irreplaceable.  Even those who disagreed with Justice Scalia acknowledge his profound impact. .  .  .

In thinking about the kind of person who should take his seat on the Court, it is worth reflecting on Justice Scalia’s principles of jurisprudence.  One of the chief principles he championed, as a scholar and as a judge, is that the law, whether statutes or the Constitution itself, must be applied according to its text.  In other words, judges should not apply the law based on what is good policy or what they suppose Congress may have intended (but did not express) in passing legislation.

In addition, Justice Scalia believed that the words of the law should be understood as they were understood by the people when the law was enacted. .  .  . Thus what is legal one day - may be illegal the next without any textual changes to the law.  Justice Scalia rejected this notion.  He held fast to the idea that the meaning of laws is fixed by the meaning ascribed to their words at the time they were enacted.

These two principles, textualism and originalism, are rooted in a third characteristic of Justice Scalia’s jurisprudence: an unwavering respect for the idea of popular government.  Laws, including the Constitution, receive their legitimacy from the people.  The Constitution is not an autonomously evolving document that spins out new “rights” and obligations to which the people have not given their consent. .  .  .

Along with this opposition to creative interpretation of the Constitution, a fourth characteristic of Justice Scalia’s life work was a conviction that the rights actually guaranteed in the Constitution should be tenaciously defended, from the right of free speech to the rights of criminal defendants.   Beyond these enumerated rights, Justice Scalia recognized that the Constitution’s primary protection of liberty is its structure of checks and balances between branches and its division of powers between the federal government and the states.

In short, Justice Scalia rejected the judicial activism of inventing law while embracing judicial engagement - by ensuring that the limits on government are strictly enforced.

Ensuring that the next justice appointed to the Supreme Court is someone in the mold of Justice Scalia is surpassingly important.  Not since the New Deal has the country had a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.  For 60 years, the Court has been either decidedly liberal or split between liberals and conservatives.  For 25 years, the Court’s most controversial and closely-divided cases sometimes had a liberal outcome, sometimes a conservative one.  .  .  .

Make no mistake: the liberal justices on the Court nearly always vote as a bloc.  Whereas the conservative justices occasionally depart for reasons of judicial philosophy from what some might consider the conservative outcome - as Justice Scalia often did - one is hard-pressed to find decisions where a liberal justice’s vote is in question.  .  .  .

Let me provide a survey of the important issues the Court might decide in coming years, once a ninth justice is appointed.

One of the issues coming before the Court will concern a basic liberty essential to democracy: freedom of speech.  Under assault these days is the freedom to spend (or not spend) money on political speech.  For example, before Justice Scalia’s death, the Court voted to grant review of a case called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, in which public sector employees wanted the right not to pay compulsory union dues.  This case raises an important question about free speech: can the government force you to contribute money to a political cause you oppose? .  .  .

The First Amendment also protects religious liberty, another of our endangered core rights.  Before Justice Scalia passed away, the Supreme Court granted review in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley, a case which will decide whether certain state laws called “Blaine Amendments” are constitutional. .  .  .  This means that states running programs that provide resources to private institutions must discriminate against religious institutions, even if the program being funded is not religious.  In the Trinity Lutheran case, a Missouri program was providing scrap tires for flooring in playgrounds to make them safer for children.  Because of a Blaine Amendment, the State refused to provide tires to church schools. .  .  .

Freedom of religious conscience also hangs in the balance.  We have seen this in the Hobby Lobby case, where the Court protected the right of religious employers not to fund abortions.  So too in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, where the Court has, for now, narrowly avoided the question of whether Catholic nuns can be required to cover contraception in their health insurance plan.  Other cases regarding freedom of conscience are on the horizon. .  .  .  a case may soon reach the Court to decide whether civil rights laws can be used to force, for example, a Christian photographer to use her artistic skills to celebrate a same-sex wedding.
 

Moving to the Second Amendment, the next justice will likely cast the deciding vote on whether to continue to recognize an individual right to “keep and bear Arms,” or whether to interpret that right so narrowly as to effectively do away with it. .  .  .

Other issues that hang in the balance include the death penalty, affirmative action, regulation of the abortion industry, and voting laws. 

But I want to focus on one final set of constitutional questions that have reached their tipping point in recent years - questions having to do with the structure of our Constitution.

Contrary to what many believe, the primary guarantee of our liberty in the Constitution is not the Bill of Rights.  Rather it is found in the structure of government under the Constitution, which is designed to prevent accumulation of power and oppression of the people. 

The Constitution separates powers between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the federal government - and divides powers between the federal government and the states. .  .  .  These constitutional structures provide the greatest and broadest guarantee of liberty by limiting governmental power.   And today they are under threat.

Since at least the New Deal, the Executive Branch has been accumulating more and more power, and the current administration has taken unilateral executive authority to new levels.  President Obama has on numerous occasions effectively engaged in lawmaking - an activity strictly delegated to Congress by the Constitution - when Congress refused to pass laws that he desired.

Most recently, the President and his agencies have attempted unilaterally to mandate accommodations nationwide for Transgender people by rewriting laws like Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.  They are attempting to do so by redefining the word “sex” in the law - understood when Title IX was passed by Congress to refer to biological sex - to mean “gender identity,”  - which the administration defines as a person’s “internal sense of gender.”   A new justice will likely cast the deciding vote on whether courts should check this type of executive overreach as well.

Another way President Obama has expanded his power is by refusing to enforce laws he does not like, effectively repealing them.

He has done this with Immigration Laws by designating entire classes of people as having “legal status” - even though the law clearly states that they are unlawfully present. 

Similarly, his administration has effectively legalized marijuana in certain states by refusing to enforce federal laws prohibiting it. 

The extent to which presidents must follow their constitutional mandate to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” is a hotly contested issue - on which the next Supreme Court justice might provide the pivotal vote.

The next Supreme Court justice will not only decide the outcome in pending cases, he or she will also influence the type of cases that make it to the Court in the first place. 

Businesses are less likely to challenge exorbitant or unfair rulings against them knowing there is a majority of justices hostile to their interests.

Conservatives will be less likely to put their time and resources into defending the Constitution if they know the Court won’t enforce it.

Meanwhile, liberal groups will be emboldened to bring cases that attempt to roll back First Amendment and Second Amendment freedoms, among others.

They will also bring cases attempting to establish new “rights” - to government welfare payments, to free attorneys in civil cases, .  .  . , etc. - as well as things like a prohibition on racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes, an exception to the First Amendment for so-called “hate speech,” and a prohibition on sex-segregated restrooms.

The appointment of the next Supreme Court justice could be the most legally significant event for our country in a generation. 

IF the next justice is in the mold of Justices Ginsburg or Sotomayor, the rulings of the Court will shift dramatically to the left.

IF the next justice shares the principles and philosophy of Justice Scalia - the ideologically balanced Court that we have grown accustomed to in the last quarter century will likely remain.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political, and educational issues.  The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered to Hillsdale College-hosted events.  First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over 3.4 million subscribers.

Get your FREE print subscription to Imprimis:  http://lp.hillsdale.edu/imprimis-print/?utm_source=imprimis_sidebar

 
My Friends, I urge every American to VOTE.  And, although I cannot tell you, or anyone, how to vote - I sincerely and strongly urge YOU to study and seriously consider Voting Conservative.  It is my heartfelt and deeply held belief that America MUST return to her Conservative Constitutional Roots - or - she will continue to decline into Liberal Socialism, only one step removed from Communism, and eventually United Nations domination.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill