It would be hard to fault the offended supervisor. She has only been in the country for 14 years, during which time she has risen to a high level of achievement, made a good salary and, as with a number among the new wave of immigrants, never had or felt a need to show loyalty to the country for her great fortune. It isn’t her country … this USA … some nation in Africa is … and the honoring of the shedding of American blood abroad to protect it was apparently of little consequence to her.
These three stories currently in the news represent the types of issues that may very well end up in the United States Supreme Court.
Enter Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the living, breathing, constitution philosophy she and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Barack Obama embrace. Under the original interpretation of our rights, pastor and Mrs. Jones would have had the right to hold a Bible Study in their home, but the newly-found interpretation of the “right to privacy” which more enlightened judicial minds most recently found to protect abortion and homosexual relations may in the future not protect Bible Study, which by the way, is the source of objection for both.
While the ever-evolving interpretation of the First Amendment right to free religious expression currently extends to Muslims with prayer rugs in public school and prisons, future justices with an agenda may no longer see it extending to Christians in their homes.
Homeland Security’s new concern over “right-wing extremists,” including those who are pro-life, those who believe in a strict interpretation of the Bible, others who oppose illegal immigration and, horror of horrors, embrace state control rather than federal, has given us yet another interpretation of the First Amendment. The right to free speech, primarily guaranteed for the purpose of political dissent may soon not include political dissenters who display politically incorrect concerns with unpopular slogans on bumper stickers.
The Constitution is said to protect the burning of the American flag, but its guarantees haven’t devolved yet so that the display of it is criminal. Don’t think that couldn’t change. Our current president thought it inappropriate to wear the flag on his lapel while campaigning. While other American leaders have proudly worn it in the past, he called it a “false patriotism.” And his friends on the left agree. Newfound rights not to be “offended” together with immigration laws that have made it too tempting for some immigrants to reap the benefits of this country while disdaining and undermining it have made the flag unacceptable in many quarters. While their rights to claim offense may be protected by the new understanding of the law, our right to display the flag could well be threatened.
What’s at stake with the nomination of a judge like Sonja Sottomayor are real-life consequences for ordinary American citizens. What we don’t need is a justice taking the bench with the notion that somehow the Constitution doesn’t mean what it has always meant, who proceeds to twist it to reflect his or her own viewpoint—a justice like Sonia Sotomayor, the older, wiser Latina female, who in her own words “would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male…” judge.
The dangers of her attitude are exactly why the Constitution isn’t “living.” Its principles were established to endure for generations so that such men and women, persuaded by their times, could not recklessly adjudicate while claiming “new wisdom.” Methods change, circumstances change, but principles and carefully-crafted law based on those principles stand like a rock for all time.
A wise Latina woman and a wise white man will more often than not reach the same conclusion: One reflective of enduring wisdom and not the folly of our times.