Tuesday, July 1, 2008
A few weeks ago I was on an Antonin Scalia kick. So I watched some interviews on line and read about him. Fascinating fella.
Today I decided it was time to get to know Clarence Thomas. Admittedly, I did't know much about him. This interview is fascinating. Read it to get to know more about his upbringing and how he thinks.
But here's what jumped out at me, probably because it's really been on my mind the last few days.
Thomas believes the real issue being fought over during his confirmation was all but unspoken. "The issue was abortion. That's the issue today," Thomas says. "That was the elephant in the room."
"In what sense?" Kroft asks.
That was it. That's the issue. That is the issue that people apparently are so upset about. That you determine the composition of your Supreme Court and your entire federal judiciary, it seems now," Thomas says.
"Your opponents were afraid that you might at some point rule against or help overturn Roe V. Wade?" Kroft asks.
"I have no idea what they thought. But they knew one thing. They weren't in charge of me. So, I wasn't gonna do their bidding," Thomas says.
Thomas believes the issue of abortion is not addressed in the Constitution and should be left to the states to decide. If that were to become the majority opinion on the court, abortion could be outlawed in 40 percent of the country.
Scalia and Roberts may or may not vote to overturn Roe V. Wade because not only are they originalists, but they are also firm believers in the concept of stare decisis, which means keeping with the precedent of prior Supreme Court decisions. In 2004, Scalia revealed that Thomas is not.
Scalia added that "if a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right. I wouldn't do that."
Stare decisis is a fancy Latin term that stands for a bedrock proposition of U.S. law: that the Supreme Court will uphold precedent and not disturb settled law without special justification.
Here's my reason for this post:
Abortion is evil, evil, evil, evil, evil.
Prepare yourself first, but then go look at this website - abort73.com - It's the best anti-abortion site I've ever seen.
And listen to Pastor John:
And then I ask myself, am I doing enough? I don't know. I doubt it. But I have come to this:
There's nothing wrong with being a single issue voter, if saving the lives of MILLIONS of children is the issue. I believe that we must vote for John McCain, and then put pressure on him to appoint Supreme Court Justices that might overturn Roe V. Wade. I know that's not popular to say. Liberals don't mind making that their litmus test, but conservatives seem to be too scared to.
I think maybe (myself included) that I may be too much like these people:
In a small church on the East Coast a pastor delivered a sermon on abortion and after the service a German man who had lived in Nazi Germany told of his experience:
I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!
Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the jews en route to the death camp. Their screams torment us.
We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.
Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Chrsitians and yet did nothing... (From Hitler's Cross by Erwin Lutzer, Moody Press, 1995, pp.99-100)
Of course, the unborn don't scream, so all we have to do is fill our thoughts with other things so we don't have to think about the massacre that is occuring in slaughter houses disguised as clinics, instead of gas chambers disguised as showers.
God have mercy.
After that series I haven't touched a coke since, only to discover pepsi is a better product.
I'm afraid what re-visiting history would keep me from.
But I'm game.