Letter to a Young Conservative . . .

Spotty has been ruminating about this one for a while. But here goes. There is high school senior in Edina who runs a blog called http://ih8liberals.blogspot.com/. Spot really doesn't have to describe it to you. Now, Spot sometimes has sharp words for people, including specifically Geoff Michel. But Spotty doesn't hate Geoff Michel; his politics are dismal, and Spot tries to be quick in pointing out instances of that whenever he can, but he doesn't hate Geoff Michel. The Senator seems like a nice guy, which makes him especially dangerous.

There is one post on http://ih8liberals.blogspot.com/ that particularly bothers Spot. It is this one from March of this year, shortly after the Town Hall Meeting involving Senator Michel and Representatives Erhardt and Peterson, all from District 41. Here's the post:

Sunday, March 20, 2005
Interesting thing about local dems...

About 2 weeks ago I went to my Edina Town Hall meeting. When Sen. Geoff Michel spoke about having gay marriage being put to a vote only me and 2 other conservatives clapped about letting the people decide. Isn't this shocking, it's like the democrats don't trust the people to make their own minds up. They have to be saved by unelected judges and when they do get to vote the judge should be able to overrule them because they don't know what's in their own interests. Abortion is also related to this, if democrats are so confident that people are generally pro-choice (which I am by the way) shouldn't they put it up to all 50 states to vote weather or not they want legal abortions? Well, of course the Supreme Court always knows what's best for us, we can't question their judgement...

The question this raises is one of the great tensions, and Spot says one of the great geniuses, of American democracy. That is, of course, when and how that passions of a majority, perhaps a transient majority, should be restrained to protect the rights of a minority. This is something the drafters of the Constitution wrestled with, and we still wrestle with it every day. What does it mean to be a citizen of these United States? Does it mean that we are all subject to the whims of whatever torch and pikepole crowd can be assembled? Or does it mean, as Spotty thinks it does, that we are all entitled to some basic civil rights, deriving principally from the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, the latter promising, among other things, due process and equal protection for everyone. And, ever since Marbury v. Madison was decided in the early days of the Republic, it has been the Supreme Court that is the final arbiter of the meaning of the constitution. And as society grows up and learns things, our ideas of constitutional protections are going to evolve (a bad word in some circles these days).

It is not only conservatives who think the Supreme Court is a nuisance some times through obstructionism or activism. FDR was spitting mad over the treatment of his early New Deal legislation by the Supreme Court.

The Congress and state legislatures also serve to restrain majoritarian excesses, through the filibuster (a dirty word to our young conservative, I know), the committee system, and longer terms for Senators, insulating them somewhat from white-hot political pressure. The ability to restrain the mob is a precious thing. Consider the case of Sir Thomas More, the Chancellor of England during the reign (or part of it, anyway) of Henry VIII.

As a Catholic, he couldn't swear to the Act of Succession or the Oath of Supremacy. The oath was to swear that Henry was the head of the Church of England, renouncing the Pope and Rome. He was charged with treason over this, and ultimately beheaded.

There is a famous play and a movie about these events; it is called A Man for All Seasons. Thomas More was played on stage and screen by British acting icon Paul Scofield. At one point in the play, More has a conversation with Richard Roper, a court sycophant who is Henry's Solicitor General and who is trying to trick More into committing treason here. He is not successful, but it is on Roper's perjured testimony that More is ultimately convicted of treason. I reproduce a portion of that conversation here:

More: There is no law against that.

Roper: There is! God's law!

More: Then God can arrest him.

Roper: Sophistication upon sophistication.

More: No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal not what's right. And I'll stick to what's legal.

Roper: Then you set man's law above God's!

More: No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact - I'm not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a forrester. I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God....

Alice: While you talk, he's gone!

More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

This last remark from Thomas More is the best defense of due process and equal protection that Spotty has ever heard. He still trembles on reading it.

Yes, my young conservative friend, liberals do want to restrain the pious moralism contained in the impulse to diminish further the equal protection of a group of people who have been scorned and demonized through the ages and are just getting at least close to their own little spot in the sun. Like More, I want to live under man's laws, not somebody else's notion of God's law with which I may not agree.