Happy Fourth of July

hen I heard that Justice Scalia of the United States Supreme Court had died under somewhat mysterious circumstances and without an autopsy while vacationing in Texas a while ago, I must confess that my first thought was to regret the loss of his brilliantly terse and direct dissents from the zeitgeist that leads many of the court's rulings astray (in my humble opinion, at any rate). As the fires of partisanship and social "justice" consume the impartial rule of law, one must value the little things, after all.

But in his dissent over the recent Court ruling, declaring it an "undue burden" to ask abortion clinics to locate themselves nearby (within 30 miles) of a hospital in case of an adverse outcome of their surgeries to the mother (although applying such a term as "mother" to her stretches the limits of language), Justice Clarence Thomas, like a modern-day Elisha, seems to have inherited a part of the spirit of the departed Scalia. The dissent is as scalding and accurate a critique as one could hope for. (Skip to about half-way down the scroll bar for Thomas's portion).

His conclusion is particularly touching, as it is mostly a direct quote from his deceased erstwhile colleague:

Today’s decision will prompt some to claim victory, just as it will stiffen opponents’ will to object. But the entire Nation has lost something essential. The majority’s embrace of a jurisprudence of rights-specific exceptions and balancing tests is “a regrettable concession of defeat—an acknowledgement that we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.” Scalia, The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175, 1182 (1989). I respectfully dissent.

What is politics doing on this blog? Although I try to stay clear of politics and focus on theology, I am increasingly convinced that the old Right and Left labels on politics have increasingly little benefit for our civil discourse. Rather, what is relevant is "Western Civilization" and "anti-Western Civilization". What we have here increasingly from the Supreme Court are attacks on the impartial rule of law in general, one of the fundamental bases of Western Civilization and that which used to separate us from banana republics, theocracies and Communists.

The subject matter, abortion rights, is indeed heinous and evil. But what is even more heinous is that the democratically expressed will of the people as enunciated by their representatives gathered in a State congress is swept aside by an unelected body of judges.

Western Civilization is the Civilization that Christianity founded. It has raised not only itself, but also much of the World, out of savagery and early death into our present condition. But the more we abandon Christianity, the more we find that Civilization crumbling away. The founders intended a nation ruled by laws and a government limited in its reach and power. So today I do not so much celebrate as I mourn for the dream that once was reality, but has now passed out of time. America is dying. Western Civilization is dying. Our birth rates are stagnant. Our abilities to defend ourselves and to identify from those who seek our destruction are anemic. Most disastrously, our Faith in God is shaken, vague, and fading. Let us then repent, turn back towards God, and rebuild from the ashes what has been thrown away.