Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Death of Robert Bork, Constitutional Originalist


"A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable." -- Judge Bork.

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Greatness is often measured by the great feats people accomplish, but sometimes greatness can be measured by how a person handles adversity, and outright evil, against them, and still maintains his integrity, and purpose.  Robert Bork was one of those men, and the great judge died yesterday.  He was 85.

Bork's fame came from his Supreme Court nomination where he was known to be a Constitutional Originalist, and the original intent of the Founding Fathers drives the liberal left nuts. They had to destroy the man, and Teddy Kennedy was just the man to do it.  The vicious lies launched the democrat strategy of the politics of personal destruction that the liberal left continues to use to this day.

Robert Bork's death was caused by complications from heart disease.  While in a hospital in Virginia his heart beat wildly until it was too much for his tired organ, and he passed away.

A brilliant author and judge, he was the solicitor general for Richard Nixon.  When Nixon ordered the "Saturday Night Massacre," a firing of a number of people in the executive branch, his attorney general refused to do it, so Robert Bork grabbed the reins and did it.  Following that he became an established author, and then reached real fame when Ronald Reagan nominated him to the United States Supreme Court.

Until Bork's nomination, though politics had been nasty, and the liberal left was underhanded, nobody was prepared for the scandalous lies launched against Bork.  The character assassination of Robert Bork took politics into a whole new world, a brave new world where the democrats would simply launch vicious lies against anyone they didn't like to get their way.

Bork deserved the seat on the Supreme Court, and was devastated by the attacks from Senator Edward Kennedy.  Bork had reached the pinnacle of his field, but the nomination of his brilliant mind to the Supreme Court was stopped by ideology, and vicious attacks never seen before in the Senate Chambers.

Because Robert Bork believed in the original intent of the Constitution, he was a threat to the democrats, and the liberals felt they had to do whatever they could to stop him.  Bork was accused of being a threat to women's rights, minority rights, and that he was someone who would take America back to the Stone Age all by himself if he was confirmed to join the United States Supreme Court.

Here is what Senator Ted Kennedy said on June 23rd of 1987, that was so devastating, and was simply nothing more than lies, the politics of personal destruction, and the model from which the democrat's framework for politics against their opposition works today:

Kennedy: Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, and school children could not be taught about evolution. Writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government. And the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is and is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

The most obvious lie is the premise in the first place. As a strict originalist, Bork believed that the Constitution limits the authorities of the federal government, and that many issues the federal government was engaged in were State issues.  He believed in State Sovereignty.  As a man who believed in the limiting principles of the Constitution, as they were originally intended by the Founding Fathers, why would he believe in the federal government taking a bigger role in the issues Kennedy mentioned?  Why would he believe that the federal government should act as a ruling force in a police state, where writers and artists were censored, and rogue police were breaking down people's doors?  Freedom would not mean eliminating Darwin's erroneous theory of evolution from the schools, but adding other points of view that also deserve examination.  Originalism means leaving abortion to the States to decide, ensuring that nobody is treated differently under the law because of their race as per the 14th Amendment, and ensuring that the freedom of speech remains protected, even in the works of writers and artists.

Kennedy's attacks were outrageous, but effective, and Bork was not confirmed.  Kennedy's attacks were insulting and slanderous, and if Kennedy didn't have the protection of being a Senator, Bork would have been able to sue him for it.

Bork was not confirmed to the Supreme Court, and the Democrats celebrated it - adopting Kennedy's style against other people - effectively used against Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, to name a couple. The media also learned to become more complicit.  The politics of personal destruction became a normal part of the Democrat Party.

Kennedy also said: America is a better and freer nation than Robert Bork thinks. Yet in the current delicate balance of the Supreme Court his rigid ideology will tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be. The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is not rejected by the Senate, could live on far beyond the end of his presidential term. President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate, and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and on the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

Those words, words that held no truth to them, dashed away Robert Bork's dream to sit on the United States Supreme Court. He would have been a great Supreme Court justice.

Bork died yesterday.  Even after the events that kept him off the Supreme Court, he battled on, teaching the Constitution, and what the Founding Fathers originally intended.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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