I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but the rule books of all the sports we love playing and watching are essentially, as Barack Obama would put it, charters of negative liberties. The rule book tells you that you should not grab the other guy’s mask, but it is utterly silent about what, if anything, you SHOULD do. If you choose to do nothing and let him score a touch down, that’s perfectly OK by the rule book. Even if your team is up 40 to zero because the other team’s star quarterback has got the flu, the rule book does not say that you cannot sack their backup quarterback, as long as you do it while he has possession of the ball.
In Judaism, there are 613 commandments, which are designed to keep you playing by God’s rules. Of that number 365 are “negative”, demanding that you refrain from doing something, perhaps like coveting your neighbor’s wife and 248 are “positive”, asking you take action, by honoring your parents, for example.
Major League Baseball only has 71 rules, most of them “negative”. When they are “positive”, they only concern themselves with fairness, such as staying in the batter’s box to allow the pitcher a clear view of the catcher’s glove.
Why the glaring discrepancy between the Torah and professional sport? Well, you see, the Torah is rooting for you to win. She wants, passionately, to help you win the war against sin and in support of that provides you with a detailed map that guides you to victory should you choose to follow it.
In contrast, sport rule books want to ensure fair play. They specifically avoid making rules that favor one team or handicap another. Even if in a given match the teams are widely mismatched due to injury or other factors, the rules still provide for fair play and nothing else.
The American Constitution, written before the time of organized sports and before the word “sport” took on its modern meaning, is nevertheless just like a sport rule book. Its only goal is to guarantee fair play. The Constitution was designed to offer protections to all Americans against the abridgment of their right to fair play by those, whether other individuals or the government, who may want to use their excess of power to skew the playing field in their favor. Unlike the Torah, the Constitution purposefully avoids giving anyone advice on how to win; it does not protect the weak by affording them extra rights. It protects them by not letting the powerful take their existing rights away.
Sport umpires interpret the rule book and apply it to every play. They do not make rules and whatever their ruling is, it applies only to the play in question. If they rule that a Caucasian boxer’s jab to an African American boxer was below the belt, it certainly does not mean that from that point on every jab to the body by a Caucasian boxer thrown at an African American boxer will be judged to have been below the belt. Nor does it mean that African American boxers can now wear shorts that cinch under their nipples, while Caucasian boxers’s shorts hug their waistlines. Conceivably, such as rule could be made following the proper procedure set up by the boxing governing body, but that procedure is purposely slow and cumbersome, specifically designed to avoid making stupid rules like that one.
The Supreme Court was set up by the Founding Fathers to be the ultimate umpiring crew for the rule book we call the Constitution. They were supposed to rule, case by case, play by play. There was also an elaborate process put in place to amend the rule book and add to it, should a super majority of the American people and the American states so desire. This was supposed to guarantee that rules are not changed on the fly by a small number of unelected officials and that a broad consensus is maintained at all times with respect to the rule book itself.
The Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke has just recently wondered whether the Constitution was any longer relevant to America. It is rather disingenuous on his part, since it was his types that made sure it wouldn’t be, but substantially, he is right. The Constitution was betrayed by the people whom American citizens placed in positions of power from the latest freshman representative to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Whether you think it sad or not, whether you grieve for it or not, the system of constitutional governance in America no longer exists. Among the nine SCOTUS justices, there may yet be one or two who believe that the constitution should act as a rule book ensuring fair play and nothing more. There may be one or two who doubt the constitutionality of laws, like affirmative action and minimum wage that prejudice the playing field against one group and in favor of another.
There are likely no justices currently serving that oppose the tyranny of judicial precedent, which is the very tool that totalitarian progressives have used to destroy the American Republic and the Constitution that underpins it. Every nominee for a SCOTUS seat must pledge at his confirmation hearings that he will view judicial precedent as “established law”. Who cares that a federal law forcing all states to provide on-demand abortion to the point of natural birth and beyond could never pass in the congress or be signed by a president? All that matters is that a certain combination of justices four decades ago decided that that’s what the Constitution mandated, thus circumventing the will of the American people and destroying the Constitution that they swore to uphold.
The American rule book is no longer made in Congress and no longer does it have to pass the muster of being non-preferential towards any group of individuals. It is made behind closed doors by unelected elitists, who, drunk with power, make up rules as they go, knowing full-well that the rules they make will bind their successors. There is a reason why the American progressive left throws such extreme tantrums for every SCOTUS nomination; they have been transforming the country via the the tyranny of judicial precedent for over half a century now and they don’t want to stop. The American rule book that exists today is illegal in its entirety because it was not passed by the Congress, nor signed by any president. It consists merely of the prejudiced musings of a handful of individuals who have put in place a ratcheting mechanism by which every decision is an infallible precedent and every decision that follows can only build on that precedent rather than tear it down.
If America had any true Constitutional Conservatives, their goal would have been to yank on the lever that releases the ratchet, that pulls back the stopping gear so that the tension in the strap can begin to unwind. They would advocate that all the “infallible” SCOTUS decisions that are have acquired the power of absolute law be reviewed through the methodology of constitutional law-making. Each and every one of these precedents should be put in front of the House and the Senate and voted upon to see if it does or does not enjoy popular support as expressed by the bicameral legislature and whether it can merit a presidential signature.
But of course, there is not a single senator that supports such a measure. Instead, so-called constitutional conservatives simply worship at the altar of the Supreme Court, no matter how corrupt, how far removed from its original purpose and role it had become. In doing so, these “conservatives” have made themselves into the progressives’ most effective tool, because they give their clearly unconstitutional actions the cover of legality. This cover is crucial, because it guarantees the acquiescence of the general public and assures control of the military and law enforcement.
The problem with progressive totalitarians is not that they don’t believe in God, but that they don’t believe in Gods greatest gift to mankind, the gift of free will. They want to regulate every aspect of human behavior. The Torah, with its 613 commandments, lays out a road map for a virtuous life; taking that road is up to us. There are no rabbinical courts that punish Jews for flipping a light switch on the Sabbath; that is between them and Him. Not so the progressives. They have an infinite arsenal of carrots and sticks with which to affect every aspect of our behavior, to herd us like cattle into what they see as the path of righteousness and that, of course, is the very definition of tyranny.
The Constitution was put in place to protect us against tyranny, but it fell to us to protect it from debasement and usurpation. In this task we utterly failed. History does not allow u-turns and we are way too far gone down the path to tyranny even if it did. There is no longer anything to “conserve” in America. A new country is being built around us as we speak. It has the old name, but it is no longer a federation of free states and the states are no longer an assemblage of free individuals acting on a level playing field watched over by an impartial umpiring crew. We are no longer citizens, we are subjects to tyrants big and small, in black robes and in pant suits.
There is nothing to conserve, there is no going back, but there is still going forward. Forward to liberty, to individual freedom, to rejection of tyranny and acceptance of God. We still have His greatest gift, let’s make good use of it!
3 comments
Mr. Pletner, well written article. I have a number of friends who understand your explanations and would like to see correction made “before it is too late.”
But it is too late. All of the people that I know who are aware of this problem are just like you and I, which is to say, in the older generation. On the other hand, the millenials will not even talk about this issue. They do not understand, and do not want to understand. And the government? Fortget it. When did you last hear a politician talk openly about individual liberty?
Thank you very much for the kind words! As to the government, yes, it’s broken beyond repair and needs to be rebooted. I am a little bit more optimistic about Millennials and the next generation. People grow, they develop. Millennials were told by their parents and by society at large a bunch of horrible lies and now they are enraged and rightly so. Hopefully, they will come to realize that the solution does not lie in doubling down on the lies.
Thank you! I do agree about the government; it is broken beyond repair and needs to be restarted. I have hope though that the Millennials as they grow up may change their ways. They were lied to by their parents and by the establishment and it is hard for them to come to grips with reality.