Patrick J. Buchanan
September 1 2003
The granite monument of the Ten Commandments has been rolled out of the Alabama
Supreme Court building in Montgomery. Chief Justice Roy Moore has been
suspended. Yet, in his defeat there is victory.
For Judge Moore's defiance exposed to all Americans the naked hostility of the
court to any official expression of belief that we are a nation under God. His
defiance revealed how far America has traveled from the Constitution of our
Founding Fathers.
We no longer see through a glass darkly. We can see clearly now.
Under the Ninth and 10th Amendments, our Constitution reserved to the states and
the people all powers not specifically ceded to the national government. Can
anyone believe the Constitution gave to federal judges, who did not even exist
in 1789, power to order sovereign states to tear down monuments that had God's
law, the Ten Commandments, engraved upon them? Does anyone believe the
Constitution would have been ratified, had the free and independent states
understood they were ceding such powers?
In the last 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has erected a judicial dictatorship
over a nation of 280 million, usurping powers never granted to it by the
Constitution. Possessed of a deeply anti-Christian bias, that court has
progressively de-Christianized America and established state atheism as our
national religion.
In every election, every poll, every survey, Americans decry it. Now Judge Moore
has forced us to face up to it. Only by repeated acts of courageous defiance
like his will we force President Bush and Congress to restore the republic that
has been stolen from us.
Judge Moore's stand has separated the sheep from the goats among our brethren.
Some Christians cast their lot with Caesar, as others scattered like the
disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane when the Roman soldiers came for Christ,
sword in hand.
Is it really right, our milquetoast brethren bleat, for us to defy lawful
authority? Ought we not obey, as the Bible commands? But the question is: Whose
law are we being ordered to obey?
Are the federal courts acting constitutionally? Are they acting in a way that
commands obedience when they declare that no state may in any way acknowledge
God, when our own coins say "In God We Trust"?
Just who and what is Judge Moore defying?
The First Amendment, declares U.S. Judge Myron Thomson. But that amendment
reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor
prohibit the free exercise thereof."
Was Chief Justice Moore really trying to establish a Church of Alabama when he
had placed in the rotunda of the courthouse that monument of the Decalogue? What
church? The Ten Commandments are taken from the Old Testament sacred to
Christians and the Torah sacred to Jews. Catholics number the commandments in a
different order than does the monument.
Chief Justice Moore was only acknowledging that God Himself is the supreme
lawgiver and we are subject to his law. This may be offensive to Judge Thompson
and Justices Souter, Stevens, Breyer and Ginsberg, but it was not offensive to
the Founding Fathers. Finally, Judge Moore is saying, enough is enough. It is
time to defy tyranny because all other recourse has been exhausted.
A half-century ago, the Supreme Court purged prayer from the public schools, an
exercise of raw judicial power uncountenanced by the Constitution. Congress did
nothing. The court then declared abortion a constitutional right. Forty-two
million babies have since passed under the knife. Now, the court has declared
sodomy to be a constitutional right.
This renegade court is not following the Constitution; it is distorting the
Constitution, perverting the Constitution to impose its ideology upon an
unwilling nation, and relying upon the spirit of obedience of a law-abiding
people to get away with it. What are we supposed to do?
If you don't like the decisions, they say, go pass a constitutional amendment.
But that requires the approval of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and
three-fourths of the states in seven years. And who decides what the amendment
means when it is ratified? The same justices of the Supreme Court.
By usurping powers never granted to it, the Supreme Court has imposed a
revolution upon our nation. Congress has refused to resist it. Presidents have
refused. It is time for a counter-revolution to overthrow this rule of judges
and restore our Constitution.
The Founding Fathers who overthrew a king, less odious and tyrannical, would
have understood.