The Ordered Life

Courtesy of faithmouse.

Chris at Midwest Conservative Journal points out an article about Western aid to African nations. The Kenyan economist interviewed in the story provides excellent insight into the problems of African poverty and disease. In our well-meaning but poorly-designed attempts to help Africans, we are contributing to their problems. Western societies, particularly the United States, have reached the consensus that money solves everything. From this story, we can clearly see the fact that, sometimes, money only creates problems.

Citizen magazine recently featured a story about how U.S. attempts to help decrease sexually-transmitted diseases in Africa have resulted in the erosion of valuable and effective abstinence-based efforts. We must reconsider what harm we’re doing to the developing world by not allowing them to develop and, instead, treating them like domesticated animals. Domesticated animals–a household cat, for example–depend on their masters to provide for their every need; they can never take responsibility for their own lives because they don’t have the faculty of reason and the faculty of instinct has been numbed through domestication. We provide babies with the essentials and, as they mature, they take responsibility for their own needs and obligations; fledgling or precarious African democracies are the same–they can only sustain their commitments to freedom by being responsible for it themselves.

The abstinence-based, faith-based programs in a certain African nation has flourished:

The prevalence of AIDS cases in Uganda plummeted from nearly 30 percent to just 6 percent within the last decade.

Why do we want to destroy that success by handing out condoms and promoting promiscuity?

Today, we weep with those whose family members and friends have been brutally murdered in the cowardly attacks on the innocent in London. May God watch over these who mourn and may they be comforted by his Spirit. May those who have harmed his children be brought swiftly to swift and sure justice. Those who have slain the innocent shall give their own blood in return.

May there be no harbor for terrorism, terrorists, or those who support them. May they be rooted out and annihilated in accord with the punishment fit for murderers.

Lord, have mercy upon the people of London and all those whose loved ones have perished. Strengthen them by thy Spirit and minister thy grace unto them. In the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Rick Scarborough, president of Vision America and chairman of the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, writes today of Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement.

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR’S REAL RECORD
The liberal media is praising her to the sky as a moderate and centrist who brought balance to the Supreme Court. Democrats like New York’s ultra-liberal Charles Schumer are saying they expect the president to pick someone just like her to fill the vacancy on the high court.

Why is Sandra Day O’Connor receiving such fulsome praise from the left? A look at her real record makes it easy to discern. From a constitutionalist perspective, O’Connor–one of Ronald Reagan’s two worst mistakes (the other being Justice Anthony Kennedy)–was an unmitigated disaster.

This so-called swing vote swung to the left more often than not. In the Court’s two recent Ten Commandments cases, O’Connor voted with the majority to ban displays in Kentucky courthouses, and voted with the minority, which wanted to prohibit a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, she provided the crucial fifth vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, thus assuring the ongoing slaughter of unborn children. In Stenberg v. Carhart, she found that the Constitution protects the hideous practice of partial-birth abortions.

O’Connor also discovered a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), a right she herself said did not exist in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986).

Sandra Day O’Connor seemed to think interpreting the Constitution meant balancing competing interests and splitting the difference (Washington wags said she’d resolve the Ten Commandments dispute by declaring the first 5 constitutional, and the rest not)–which amounts to managing the sweeping social revolution which the court’s majority unleashed, beginning with the Warren Court.

By all accounts, she is a gracious and charming person. As a Republican-appointee to the highest court in the land, she left much to be desired.

I read an Associated Press article that referred to Justice O’Connor as “generally conservative.” Only in the eyes of liberal anti-constitutionalists could she be seen thus.

Our Constitution isn’t broken. Why are we trying to fix it?What’s broken is the sacred trust of judges to apply the law. What’s broken is the accountability of the judiciary. What’s broken is the will of the legislature to check the actions of the judicial branch.

If the problem we have is judicial tyranny, why do we think changing the Constitution is the remedy? After all, members of our judiciary have begun looking to the laws of other nations when deciding cases tried under U.S. law. If judges aren’t even interpreting the laws of this nation, why does it matter what our laws say? If the power of the judiciary isn’t exercised subject to the authority of the federal Constitution, how will changing that Constitution alter the abuse of judicial power?

If we tack a federal marriage amendment on to the Constitution, will our problems be over? Hardly. The problem isn’t that our Constitution is ambiguous or that the laws already in place are unconstitutional. The problem is that judges aren’t faithful to the Constitution, aren’t faithful to their oaths to uphold the Constitution. If judges can disregard the plain text of the Constitution, why do we think that adding more words to it will make a difference?

From what I’ve seen, most of those who support the FMA do so out of respect for the God-ordained institution of marriage. I am certain that, by voicing support for the FMA, they are acting out of the highest regard for the sanctity of marriage and their concern for its protection. However, the FMA is a short-sighted plan. It doesn’t stop the long-term erosion of constitutional law, the administration of justice, and the protection of liberties we have experienced and continue to experience in this country.

What is the solution? It obviously hinges on accountability. Congress must hold federal judges accountable. The President must speak out against judicial tyranny, instead of lauding it’s cohorts and appointing them to the bench. The electorate must choose men for office who will protect the rights of the people and who will work to keep judicial tyrants in check. Congress already has powers granted under the Constitution that would stop much of the judicial abuse we see today: the power to regulate jurisdiction of the courts, the power of the purse, and the power of impeachment and removal from office.

Let’s not create solutions for problems we don’t have. Adding the FMA to the Constitution seems to be the easy way out–until we realize that it’s not really a way out at all.