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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Wokers are feuding kissin’ cousins, kind of like the Hatfields and McCoys. They’re both cut from a similar anti-Constitutional cloth in their opposition to individual inalienable rights.
Wokeism is a political philosophy that White Europeans are the oppressors of everyone else, and thus, society needs to be re-adjusted so that the minorities have equity of outcomes. Equity is based on group membership. Wokers are unalterably opposed to individual inalienable rights such as liberty because Wokers measure social justice by comparing the outcomes of groups and ignoring the individual. In fact, wokers believe that individual liberty is a social evil as it gives rise to inequitable outcomes. If individuals in one group value education, hard work, and intellectual endeavors, those individual efforts can result in the group as a whole accumulating too much wealth, too many positions in corporations or academia. Under Wokeism, a White group with the better outcomes oppressed others, and thus, social justice requires equitable adjustment.
Samuel Alito also promotes an anti-inalienable rights agenda. As is evident in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), inalienable rights do not attach to individual human beings. Rather, they attach to actions. Thus, women do not have an abstract right for any control over their bodies. To ascertain whether any inalienable right exists with respect to a woman, the court must undertake an analysis of her action. If the action is explicitly okayed in the US Constitution, i.e., abortion, then women have an inalienable to take that action. Since the Constitution is silent about abortion, women do not have an inalienable liberty to abortion.
Alito allows for a second analysis of whether an action is an inalienable right. Has history consistently recognized that right? If history at times did not recognize the right, then the right cannot be inalienable as society, from time to time, did not allow it. Thus, if Justice Alito can find an instance where at some time and in some place, abortion was outlawed, women have no Liberty to have abortion.
This analysis applies to Gays. Since Gays are not mentioned in the US Constitution and they have faced massive historical discrimination, they have no inalienable rights. In fact, one is hard put to find any action which is so specifically detailed in the US Constitution or so universally acknowledged by mankind for a person to have that inalienable right. Black voters cannot have the inalienable right not to be gerrymandered. The word “gerrymander” is not in the Constitution, and gerrymandering is a American political tradition.
Alito’s and Wokers’ Solution - a Democracy Where Voters Decide Rights
Alito, however, says that each state’s voters have the right to confer, or to withhold, rights. Thus, each state may vote to completely outlaw abortion and impose the death penalty for any doctor who performs an abortion or it may allow abortions. Voters may decide that Gays may not be teachers, as exposure to Gays sexualizes children. Rights exist only by the grace of the majority of voters.
Why Alito and Wokers Hate Inalienable Rights
Inherent in a constitutional Republic, individual inalienable rights make the rule of law supreme which overrides the majority of voters on both a federal and a state level. The majority of voters cannot enforce a law which violates an individual’s inalienable rights. Power-mongers like both Alito and Wokers want no restriction on their actions to remake society in their image. Lynching Blacks who vote is A-OK if a majority of voters approve lynching. People who poo-poo that voters could become that extreme deny mankind’s repeated resort to genocide. They claim, “It can’t happen here,” while it is happening here.
Both Alito and Wokers Replace the Rule of Law with the Passion of the Voters
Rights become like the Cheshire Cat, now you see it, now you don’t. In a country with a cohesive culture where consensus is highly regarded, a democracy is less likely to degenerate into totalitarianism. In a multi-cultural society which has fallen prey to polarization, both extremes fight to gain enough power to impose their vision on all of society. Nancy Pelosi’s Identity Politics and Wokers declare that as soon as the minorities are the majority of the voters, they will replace the Whites. Their goal, which is a form of political tyranny, undermines the concept of the rule of law. For Identity Politics and Wokers, Whites (whoever they may be) cannot seek protection in the US Constitution since Wokers proclaim that the voters’ will is supreme. Likewise, Alito does not recognize inalienable rights, only rights which voters enact.
“Our Nation’s historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated.” Dobbs, p 31
Being a deceitful and disingenuous person, Alito takes a general statement with some element of truth and perverts it to abolish the inalienable right of Liberty. The same logic would justify taking the maxim that “one may not yell fire in a crowded theater” to justify imprisoning someone for criticizing the Supreme Court. The concept that all inalienable rights are subject to some statutory regulation is inherent in the Declaration. Alito substitutes his personal interpretation of the Declaration’s concept of “ordered liberty” to negate the Constitution’s express purpose to “secure the blessings of Liberty.” Alito reaches back to bygone eras, which the Declaration and the Constitution seek to end, and resurrects them to abrogate inalienable rights in favor of the transitory whim of voters.
True believers in totalitarianism, be it Alito or Wokers, find the rule of law to be an obstacle to their objective. Alito’s position leads to one result, the inability of the federal government to function. If there are no federal inalienable rights, then society reverts to a Hobbesian state of nature, where the strong devour the weak. The Union ceases to function when each state can enact conflicting statutory schemes. Texas may criminalize abortions and same sex marriage, while California may confiscate the property of Whites and re-distribute it to Blacks as slavery reparations.
Destruction of inalienable rights in favor of the passions of the voters in each state will drive us farther apart until the country becomes ungovernable. At that point, people will support whatever strong man promises peace, like Lenin in Russia. The war between the White Russians and the Red Communists lasted from 1917 to 1923 with totalitarianism the winner.
(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].)
