From the Supreme Court to America: Happy Individual Independence Day.
OK, the court didn’t actually say that, but its key rulings did.
The final cases rang out with a consistent clarity that the Constitution favors individual liberty over group rights and government power.
The distinction is what helped make America different from the start, yet to witness the hysterical outcry against the rulings, fewer and fewer Americans understand the founding principles.
Either that or they want to trash American exceptionalism so they can force everybody to think alike.
You don’t have to read the opinions to see the pattern.
You only have to see who is furiously denouncing the court as a right-wing instrument of hate and exclusion.
The list includes the usual suspects — President Biden, The New York Times, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and all the petty potentates of the progressive-media-government complex.
They are united in demanding more sweeping government power and fewer rights for individuals who dissent from their orthodoxy.
Their distorted descriptions of the rulings amount to disinformation as they try to rally their shock troops and rile up their donor bases.
Expect a fall onslaught against the court, more personal attacks on the justices and a new surge of demands for court packing.
Selective outrage
The words and subjects change, but the goal is always the same — far-left Democrats want to get from the Supremes what they can’t get from Congress.
When the court says no and sticks to the Constitution, it is a threat to democracy.
An inflammatory headline on Axios captures the madness: “Supreme Court rules businesses can refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers.”
In fact, the 6-3 majority ruled a Colorado web designer’s First Amendment rights mean she cannot be forced to accept commissions for same-sex weddings that would conflict with her Christian beliefs.
In simple terms, her constitutional freedom of speech trumps a state law that would force her speech to conform to its dictates.
That so many in the media denounced the ruling shows they don’t understand or believe in the First Amendment that makes their occupation possible.
In contrast to the rile-’em-up rhetoric, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing eloquently for the majority, said: “The opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong.”
Joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Gorsuch added that “the First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”
Bravo!
Naturally, the court’s left flank trotted out a parade of horrors that might result from speech it doesn’t like.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling “heartbreaking” and veered into end-of-the-world alarmism.
“The immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status,” she wrote for herself and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Hmm, is a “symbolic effect” really an effect?
The pattern was repeated with the ruling that Biden exceeded his authority in wiping out student loan debt.
He wanted to allow 43 million borrowers to skip repayment of up to $20,000 each, costing $400 billion.
Opponents cited the vast scope and the inherent unfairness of forcing taxpayers, many of whom paid their own way to college or couldn’t afford to go, to cover the debts of others, many of whom borrowed for useless graduate degrees.
Even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Biden didn’t have the power to cancel the debt, but the left demanded it so loudly that the White House crafted a fishy plan and hoped the court wouldn’t dare say no.
Fortunately it did, again with the same 6-3 split.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority that the law “requires that Congress speak clearly before a department secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.”
In other words, a president is not a king and the people express their will through Congress, which never approved Biden’s bailout.
Sen. Warren reacted in her usual voice of rage, declaring “an extremist Supreme Court substituted politics for the rule of law, denying hard-working Americans life-changing relief from crushing student debt.”
Yada, yada, yada.
The left reflexively accuses the Supremes of being “extremist” and playing “politics” when the court rules against them.
Warren, a Harvard law professor, should know better, but she wants the court to bless every program she favors — or it’s corrupt.
The mother of all decisions, of course, concerned affirmative action.
Initially, the words meant broadening the applicant pool for jobs and college admissions to make sure those who had been excluded on the basis of race had an equal chance of being hired or admitted.
Over time, the protected categories expanded and affirmative action came to mean outcome rather than opportunity, much as equity has replaced equality.
But the blatant favoring of one race must come at the expense of others, and that’s clearly unconstitutional, as the court declared.
The same 6-3 majority ruled that admissions decisions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The pattern at Harvard was obvious in showing many qualified Asian-American students being rejected while less qualified black students were accepted.
Roberts’ majority opinion said too many colleges had “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our Constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Thomas, the court’s second black member, has long railed against the stigma of racial preferences.
His concurring opinion called the schools’ policies “rudderless, race-based preferences” that “fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution.”
Doom forecasters
The other side of the coin comes from a PAC fundraising for the ever-more-radical Congressional Black Caucus.
It sent an email denouncing what it called “racist, corrupt Justices.”
The Times was more restrained even as it, predictably, predicted doom.
An editorial insisted that states where racial preferences were banned in higher education saw declines “in the percentage of Black students, in some cases dramatically.”
It said black enrollment at the University of Michigan was 4% in 2021, down from 7% in 2006 when Michigan voters eliminated race as a factor in admissions.
Framing the argument that way proves the court’s point.
While racial diversity is a good goal, it cannot be the deciding factor if it means more qualified applicants are rejected on the basis of race and ethnicity.
That’s racism and never should have been permitted, but the Times, which effectively has a quota system in its newsroom, favors racial preferences so the hell with equal protection for all.
Fortunately for America, we have a strong majority on the Supreme Court that doesn’t agree and takes seriously its oath to support the Constitution.
Happy Independence Day.
