CommentsTHE VIEW FROM HERE - On Sunday, August 27, 2022, 60 Minutes ran a story about terrorist attacks on the power grid.
While claiming ignorance the perp’s identities, all the attacks had one common element. The attacks left no lingering vulnerabilities to be capitalized on later. Although the federal government’s response was usually anemic, it more or less remedied the damage. Near San Jose, CA, for example, they build a wall so that future snipers could not fire bullets into the transformers from a nearby field.
“On the night of April 16, 2013, a mysterious incident south of San Jose marked the most serious attack on our power grid in history. ¶ For 20 minutes, gunmen methodically fired at high voltage transformers at the Metcalf Power substation.” Aug 28, 2022, Vulnerable U.S. Electric Grid Facing Threats from Russia and Domestic Terrorists
As 60 Minutes concluded, the entire national grid is still vulnerable, but once a defect is noted, it does not just sit there for years, waiting for another attack at the same weakness. The opposite is true for attacks on the US Constitution. In the beginning, the greatest fear of the Framers was that some tyrant would gain enough power to take over the central government in order to behave like a domestic King George. For that reason, the nation was founded on individual inalienable rights including, but not limited to, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The purpose of forming a government was to protect and advance inalienable rights.
Some wannabe tyrants see the government and all its documents as their own personal property. Other factions follow the Grover Norquist approach – make the federal government so weak and feeble that it can be drowned in a bathtub. "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Wiki That sure sounds like a terrorist attack on the Constitution, a subset of Epistemicide, the systematic extermination of an entire knowledge system or intellectual heritage of a group, society or people.
A Republic’s Rule of Law vs. A Democracy’s Tyranny of Majority
The Articles of Confederation showed that a weak central government was unable to operate a federated system. The only way for the government to achieve the goal of the Declaration to secure individual inalienable rights was for the federal government to have sufficient power to protect our basic rights without resort to the ballot box. When rights are subservient to the whim of the voters, there is no rule of law as voters may eradicate any right. Thus, the founders fashioned a Republic where individual inalienable rights were insulated from the voters.
Not only did voters not determine who was on the High Court, but they did not directly elect the President who nominated new members or the Senators who confirmed them (The 17th Amendment changed that). The popularly elected House plays no role in selecting Supreme Court members. The High Court’s members also have life time appointment. The logic of separating the Supreme Court from the voters was to protect individual inalienable rights.
The Framers’ faith in the integrity of the Electoral College and the state legislators has proven naive. If we had a Twilight Zone time machine, I suspect Benjamin Franklin and the authors of the Federalist Papers (never to be confused with the rants of the Federalist Society) would not be surprised that it was the Speaker of the House who twice sabotaged Trump’s Senate trials. December 12, 2019, CityWatch, A Nation of Vicious Back Stabbers Cannot Long Endure The House is directly elected and has the greatest motive to pander to the whim of voters and the least motivation to preserve the rule of law.
It seems that the vast majority of Americans have forgotten that the Declaration’s individual inalienable rights were intentionally designed to improve everyone’s quality of life. The third enumerated right is the Pursuit of Happiness and not the Acquiring of Property. Thus, Pelosi’s Identity Politics which divides people into ascriptive groups and compares the success of the groups was not designed to protect each individual’s inalienable rights. Her purpose is to gain a coalition of voters to replace the GOP in the nation’s governance. As explained in August 25, 2022, Wokerism Is More Dangerous to the Republic than White Supremacy, the racialization of poverty blinded Americans during Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Era to the actual problem, i.e. the predatory nature of society. Group Rights are not promoted to improve people’s lives but rather to have different groups fight against each other, while the 1% robs us blind. April 8, 2021, Hate Money Stalks America
The Dred Scott and the Dobbs Decisions Were Terrorist Attacks on the Constitution
Like recent Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. ___, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 back in 1857 negated the concept of inalienable rights by ruling that the US Constitution did not mention that Blacks had constitutional rights. Not finding any explicit mention of Black constitutional rights, the Court ruled that Blacks only had those rights which the voters of each state might vote to extend to Blacks (Popular Sovereignty). While most claim that the firing on Fort Sumter started the Civil War, in reality it was The High Court’s terrorist attack on the Constitution which made the Civil War inevitable.
Why the Term “Terrorist” Attack?
Inalienable rights are intangible; hence, an attack on them has to be intangible. When the purpose of the attack is to destroy our constitutional system, then “terrorist” is the appropriate term. When the government is powerless to protect our inalienable rights, it becomes worthless.
“That to secure these [inalienable] rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government” Declaration ¶ 2
Dobbs apes Dred Scott. Women do not have inalienable rights. They lack the right to Life as voters may outlaw abortions which are necessary to save a women’s life; women don’t have Liberty as the voters can take away all control over a pregnancy. Religiosity already threatens the right to contraceptives. The Pursuit of Happiness is gone since a woman may be forced to give birth to a rapist’s child. Who knows, some day scads of women may have little Kavanaughs running about their houses.
The religious fanatics on the Supreme Court have marked Gays as having no rights. President Nixon’s EPA is on the chopping block. The logic of Dobbs is that no constitutional right can be so definitively described in the Constitution that a constitutional terrorist cannot find a way to stop the federal government to protecting it. The only rights on ascent are the right of religious fundamentalists to impose their dogmas on others and the right to own a gun in order to kill federal officials who try to protect inalienable rights. What good is a federal government which has become so feeble that it stands silent while 50 squabbling states abolish our rights to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness?
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected]. The opinions expressed by Mr. Abrams are solely his and not necessarily those of CityWatch.)
