Jefferson’s fears were well-founded

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Thomas Jefferson said his greatest concern as to whether our country would survive as a democracy was that the U.S. Supreme Court would become too powerful. He feared that the executive and legislative branches would become subservient to its dictates. His fears were well founded!

Sandra Day O’Connor will go down in history as the justice who made sodomy a constitutional right, paving the way for same sex marriage, allowed the continuance of the practice of murdering babies in the womb, and made race-based preferences another right. She wrote the majority position last week which negated the First Amendment right of free speech by restricting campaign finance contributions and advertising. While her liberal friends and predecessors on the court have supported these positions, she will be remembered as the justice who provided the swing votes and narrow majority opinions in rewriting the Constitution during this part of our history.

Even more frightening, she recently stated that the court needed to accommodate international law in its decisions. Has she forgotten her oath to uphold the Constitution and protect it from enemies foreign and domestic? It certainly seems so. While we face a terrible terrorist threat, we have within our midst a more insidious enemy – liberal, activist judges who remake the Constitution to their own liking. This is far from what the Founding Fathers intended when designing our form of government and the guidelines that it would operate under. I shudder to think how she and the court will vote on whether we can keep “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Camano Island