I think I’m past anger and depression and all the other typical rounds of things you feel when something traumatic happens and now I’ve reached acceptance. It’s over. The experiment is more or less over. It was a good democratic experiment and it had some really grand moments it its time, but ultimately it is over. The democratic process eventually ran itself aground in order that the people who are a part of the democracy could feel good about something instead of worrying about deciding something for themselves. Democracy has proved itself to be too hard, take too long, and in general is too burdensome for the people who had to be ruled by it.
So you’re asking “What kind of terrible bigot are you, that you think that giving gay people the right to marriage has destroyed America?” My first response is that I don’t think giving gay people the right to marry destroyed America. I think the Supreme Court giving gay people the right to marriage has put a final nail in the coffin of what little democracy we had left in the United States. Two very different statements. You see gay marriage rights really isn’t the key here. The important part is that the Supreme Court made the decision. As you may or may not know, the Supreme Court is made up of nine judges appointed for life by the President. In the beginning, as in from the get go of the Constitution, their power was actually quiet limited. As time moved forward this changed, sometimes rapidly, like when Marshall declared that they had the power to review laws for Constitutionality. But in general, as time has moved forward the Supreme Court’s power has always increased in comparison to the Legislature’s and President’s.
Ultimately the fault for this comes from two directions. The first is the format of the judicial system. Judicial systems run on precedent. Precedent works to make the system easier and more fair. When presented with a similar problem, or near similar problem, it is more fair and easier for a deciding judge to copy the decision of the judge that came before them. This does have the result, however, that every decision a judge makes is in fact not just a judgement on the case before him, but on all cases of similar nature that will come in the future. This also works up and down the scale, as high courts make decisions it sets the precedent for all the courts under them. Because the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land, any decision they make sets the precedent for all courts everywhere in the United States. So as the Supreme Court makes decisions over time, they become more powerful, because every decision they make is the precedent, so every decision becomes theirs.
The second way the court has gained power is squarely our fault, and is tied invariable to the nature of cases we as citizens decide to bring to the Supreme Court. The one real check or hold on the court’s power is that they can’t make decisions for something that isn’t brought before them as a case. The unfortunate truth is that we bring everything before them as a case, even when it shouldn’t be. If we all read and stuck to the portions of the Constitution that talk about the kind of cases the Supreme Court is supposed to be reviewing and judging on, then almost none of the cases that actually get brought to them would get brought to them. They are supposed to make judgments on whether cases meet or don’t meet statutes as written by law. What we bring them are “We don’t like this law, and the democratic process didn’t work in our favor, so we want you to invalidate or castrate the law.” cases. We bring cases to circumvent the democratic process, to specifically get around the fact that most people don’t agree with our position, but maybe five out of nine un-elected judges might. We use the Supreme Court when we feel democracy has failed, because someone’s feelings are being hurt. And so we bring them everything. So the Supreme Court gets to pick and choose from every conceivable kind of case in order to make whatever rule they want to make in whatever way they want to make it, because we’ve given them the ability to pick and choose and the nature of their office lets them make those decisions for the rest of time.
We live in an America where all rules and all laws, no matter what level of government they are crafted by, are manipulated at whim by a group of nine un-elected people. Who will manipulate the rules and laws at whim, regardless of what the Constitution or the laws say. Here, both to us who have given them this power and to them who have taken it, feelings are ultimately far more important than law and order and that is the government we are now under. Nine un-elected people hold the ultimate power. All voting power I have can and has been swept away by them. My decisions do not matter. No other branch of government has a point to assail them from. They are our Constitutionally and self-appointed dictators.
I hope in the future they like the same things I like and feel the same way about things that I feel, because that is the only way I will fit in America. Anyone divergent from their views and their feelings will be, in general and possibly by law, un-American.
