The Elena Kagan Supreme Court hearings began this week and as much as I hate the theatrical, sound bite-pandering bullshit of it all, I must say that it continues to be striking to me how sacred Republicans hold the original document of the United States Constitution as if they perceived it in a higher regard than their first favorite book—the Bible. In fact, if the Constitution had a dick that could be sucked, I think conservatives across this grand nation would be searching out every glory hole in every highway rest stop and every airport bathroom in hope to find it and drink up its hallowed jiz. It is this same kind of cooked-up fetishization of the United States Constitution and the founding fathers that created it that’s been adopted recently by the Tea Party movement. And I would like to quite simply put forth in this blog that such feelings are nothing more than a contrived crock of shit. The idea that the U.S. Constitution—a document that was created more than two-hundred years ago by a group of white Christian men some of whom owned slaves—should not be interpreted through a more modernistic perspective of American social justice is absolutely insane. It’s about as fucking crazy as the belief that there is an old man in the sky watching over us and, with all the death and destruction and heartache in the world, what he’s really worried about is whether or not we have impure thoughts about our neighbor’s wife. I would argue, therefore, that, similar to the religious extremists who interpret the words of the Bible as literal, the true activist judges on the Supreme Court are those unwilling to view the constitution through the historical context of the present day and, in doing so, have perpetuated a grave injustice on the American public—one that continues to be a clear misrepresentation of our current population.
During Monday’s opening statements, the Republican Senator John Cornyn from the state of (brace yourself) Texas spoke of the troubling notion that Elena Kagan had sited Thurgood Marshall as a Supreme Court Justice that she admired. It was stated by the Texas Senator that due to the Justice Thurgood’s deep connection to the civil rights movement before his nomination that he became an activist judge throughout his tenure on the Supreme Court who ruled on behalf of his own self-interests. Personally, I’d guess that Senator Cornyn is most likely correct in this assumption and I believe that, if it weren’t for such judges standing up for the rights of all citizens from the perspective of their own personal passions, that the social progress of this country would have been further inhibited in the years that followed. I also contest that it is due to the continually simplistic interpretations of the United States Constitution on behalf of the conservative side of the Supreme Court that it’s become increasingly difficult for judges to establish precedents which properly represent the greater good of all United States citizens.
I find it no coincidence that the U.S. Constitution, a document written by a group of white landowners, is being used by conservative groups such as the Tea Party movement whose intent are to maintain the status quo so as not to upset our current social order. A perfect example of this can be seen in the latest 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago. This recent decision appears to void Chicago’s 1982 handgun ordinance that banned city residents from possessing handguns for their personal use. After the ruling, one local woman praised the decision saying: “To those who would prey upon the citizens of the city of Chicago, to the criminals — I would like to say the Chicago crime buffet is over. We are not prey.” To me, such a statement has always been a scared cry of ignorance that is deeply rooted in self-interest and does not view city and state gun control laws and statues through the practical eyes of the present day—a time when the city of Chicago is so plagued by the disproportion number of handgun-induced homicides. I do, however, like the way this woman uses the word “prey” because clearly the ruling of this case sets out to define who exactly we deem as defenseless prey. I’m sure that the mothers of children lost to handgun fire in the streets of Chicago may have a different perception of that word. And it would seem to me that the true prey in this latest Supreme Court decision are not the guns-rights activists, but those Americans who continue to be directly affected by these stringent interpretations of the United States Constitution and those narrow-minded individuals who like to hide behind it.
So, perhaps it’s time for such constitutional-loving folks to step out from beneath their sacred document as a new group of Americans finally decide it’s worthwhile to exercise their mutually-defined rights under the second amendment.
- Freemont Barrington
