In the middle of the 19th century, the insightful defender of liberty, Johns Stuart Mill commented on how laws were not always necessary to systematically control people. In his famous tract, On Liberty (in an insightful critique of the cancel culture of his day), he claimed that the ostracization of people from society was enough to force any man to hold his tongue and fall in with the orthodoxy. In other words, fear of consequences if a powerful force that can have just as much power as actual laws.
The tactful Franklin D. Roosevelt must have known this in the 1930s when he proposed court packing. He sought to add justices to the Supreme Court in order to pass his radical New Deal legislation. Although he failed miserably, the Supreme Court was startled enough at his actions to allow much of his legislation to be rendered legally valid. FDR didn’t need to pack the court because the threat of it was enough for him to accomplish its goals.
As with many things, history has repeated itself and today we find ourselves in exactly the same predicament. Democrats are using the threat of court packing in order to put fear into the hearts of our most powerful judges. Speaker Pelosi recently said that she would not bring forth legislation to pack the Supreme Court, but would also not rule out the possibility.
Her underlying meaning; “do exactly as we say or we will destroy the function of your branch of government in order to make it our slave.” Another accurate way of saying this is; “ignore the Constitution. We are the Constitution.”
All of this begs the question; what are Democrats trying to force members of the Supreme Court to do (or rather not do)? The truth is that they do not care about the rule of law or a faithful interpretation of the Constitution of this country. If they did, they would have thrown their full support behind Amy Coney-Barrett. Calling her a conservative judge is an insult, she is an originalist.
In fact, every single “conservative” justice on the court is an originalist and a textualist. This means that they interpret the Constitution and laws based on their original and textual meaning. Democrats however, would like justices to promote a “living” interpretation of the Constitution. What this really means, is that they would like justices to make decisions not based upon the law, but based upon their personal viewpoints about what they think the laws should mean. It is apparent that they think our fundamental rights are meant to be tinkered with by judicial professionals who use their personal whims to determine what the laws of this country are.
In another use of fear mongering, President Joe Biden recently supported the exit of companies from Georgia in a boycott over their new voting law. He stated that, “I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly — I would strongly support them doing that.” Once again, Democrats are using their preferred tactic; fear. The fear that any state or person who strays from liberal ideas will be crushed, cancelled, and ostracized.
It is absurd that people on the left who love to reference the evils of McCarthyism during the 1950s could be so blind. They are the new McCarthys and they will do anything in their power to bully those who disagree with them into submission, whether it be an individual, state, or even the Supreme Court of the United States.
