The Progressive Charter For Governmental Force: The Bill of Rights

The last piece of the fundamental transformation that President Barack Obama promised nearly eight years ago may have just fallen into place. With the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the progressive left has an unprecedented opportunity to shape the way the courts and government interpret the U.S. Constitution.

Going back to early in the president’s political career he famously criticized the Constitution as a “…charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf."

That has been largely true considering the Supreme Court has mostly been able to interpret and defend the Constitution as intended, and corrected contradictory lower court decisions - although from time to time the court system has been able to reinterpret the Bill of Rights enabling government to drive social, economic, and environmental justice.

Bill of Rights (Karl Knighton) 

Instead of interpreting the Bill of Rights as our protection from government authority as intended, the court system has been able to use the Bill of Rights as a weapon for government intrusion.

It starts out with our political class turning the citizens against one another and then coming to the aid of one of the parties claiming their civil rights are being denied by the other. This is where the president’s basic philosophies rest… and what better entity to be the guardian of “justice” and the Bill of Rights than the entity that is supposed to be restrained by it?

When government becomes the arbiter of our Constitutional Rights all our freedoms are at stake.

Freedom of the press is currently in danger with Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against Center for Medical Progress for exercising their constitutional right of investigative journalism. Religious liberty is at stake when government courts successfully punish individuals for practicing their own beliefs. Bakers, photographers, t-shirt printers, and florists are all currently in danger of being harmed by government for not wanting to participate in events that fly in the face of their religious tenants.

And let’s not forget that essentially every government restriction on our Second Amendment is based on a balancing act against some other group’s professed right. Only a month ago the president outlined his ideological balancing act while discussing further restrictions on the Second Amendment:

All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important. Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about as well. And we have to be able to balance them, because our right to worship freely and safely — that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina.

And that was denied Jews in Kansas City, and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights too.

Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette. Our inalienable right to life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high-schoolers in Columbine, and from first-graders in Newtown.

At the time it frustrated me that the president would diminish our Constitutional rights to simple day-to-day social interactions. Our right to peacefully assemble is not meant to protect us from a crazy person while seeking entertainment; it is meant to protect political speech against government powers. And our right to worship is our protection from government intrusion into our religious sacraments.

Social Justice (Karl Knighton) 

To suggest that an all-powerful government needs to balance our rights in order to protect us from each other is ludicrous.

But this progressive journey has never been about balancing or protecting rights, and is more consistent with advancing a political ideology. It’s a movement to obtain a Constitutional mandate to push whatever government program, law, or philosophy it determines is in society’s best interest regardless of how the society may feel about it.

With this type of elitism present in our highest courts, is it possible the left could negate any law or right if it doesn’t meet their desired constitutional interpretation?

Up until now President Obama and the progressives have lacked the last key component restraining their desired authority, the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s hope our politicians have enough resolve to stop the president from advancing his radical ideology onto the Supreme Court.

And more importantly, let’s hope the voters have enough sense to elect a true constitutional conservative as president. We need someone more than ever who has demonstrated they will not compromise or back down to the progressives’ dangerous ideology.

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