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The Culture Wars and The Rule of Law

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

There can be no doubt that our country is in the midst of a culture war.  While this is a disturbing trend, what is even more disturbing is the fact that people on both sides of the war are willing to trample the rule of law in order to impose their values on others.  While much of the destruction of our legal foundations has been achieved by those on the left, the right is getting into the act too.  Unfortunately, by the time they are both finished, we are likely to have a tyranny that harms everyone.

For many years, the left has been eroding the rule of law by calling a Constitution a “living” document, which means that it can be twisted and redefined to mean anything the judges want it to mean – effectively bypassing the requirement for a formal amendment in order to change the law.  If the U.S. and state Constitutions effectively can be amended without bothering to go through the formal amendment process, then the structure and protections that they had provided us are gone.  From Roe v. Wade, in which the court found a right to abortion in the “emanations” and “penumbras” of the Constitution, to the recent Massachusetts court decision requiring the state to provide for homosexual marriage, to the recent California decision in which a Catholic institution was required to provide its employees with health coverage including birth control, it is clear that the courts have gone out of control, eliminating the security and stability that had been a part of our heritage since our country’s founding. 

Now, the right also is getting into the act, ignoring the spirit, if not the letter of the law.  For example, President Bush is now promoting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage.  While the frustration of the right is certainly understandable, undercutting the principle of states’ rights with such a constitutional amendment is not the way to achieve the desired outcome.  The real problem is that judges are making up the law as they go along, and a single amendment defining marriage is not going to solve that problem. 

Back in the mid to late 1800’s, the religious right promoted the government takeover of education, which previously had been a successful private institution, in order to forcibly impose Protestantism on Catholic immigrants.  Having used government force to impose its views on others, the religious right now finds itself the victim of that same government force, with the government schools now being used to impose relativism and atheism on Christian children.  You would think Christians would have learned their lesson, that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, but apparently not. 

Now we see the right abusing political power in places like Louisville, where it is imposing severe regulations of strip clubs and other businesses with the goal of regulating them out of business, effectively stealing their property rights and destroying the investments that have been made by their owners.  Again, while it is understandable that people who want to support and defend the family should not want these types of businesses in their community, they should not be using regulations to steal private property or to prevent business owners from serving their adult customers. Instead, the Christian approach should be to encourage a voluntary change from the inside, or use persuasion, not to use the law to pummel people into submission.  Just as Christians have been victimized by the government control over education that they created, they can expect that the expanded government power that they create in order to destroy strip clubs will eventually be turned against them as well. 

What we have today is a kind of arms race.  People with various agendas are vying for political power in order to impose their views on others by force.  They may be forcibly taking money from one group to give to another or forcibly imposing other types of regulations.  This aggressive use of force promotes balkanization, with resulting winners and losers, and with the losers then seeking power in order to exact revenge.  Without a stable rule of law and constitutional restraints on the use of government force, we can expect to find ourselves in a downward spiral of ever-increasing brutality.  The crassness and viciousness of the current political debate and of the maneuverings to control the appointment of judges is only the beginning.

How do we break this cycle of the escalating use of force against one another?  How do we return to a rule of law, in which government force is restrained, and people treat one another with respect?  It will require a recognition on the part of all sides that everyone is better served by a restrained government, which demands that all people be respected, than by an all-powerful government that can give you everything you want but that can also take away everything you have. 

Instead of a constitutional amendment imposing a definition of marriage on everyone, we ought to be using that energy to promote a Constitutional amendment for reining in wayward judges, such as "The Enumerated Powers Amendment.", which you can see at http://PatriotPetitions.US/Amendment28.  The enumerated powers amendment would add this clause to the U.S. Constitution:  “any change or alteration to the express provisions of this Constitution shall be by amendment alone. Any judicial Officers of the United States, bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this Constitution, who imply or infer rights or obligations, requirements or restrictions, not expressly stated in this Constitution, shall be remanded to the House of Representatives for removal from office by a majority vote."  Such an amendment in the U.S. Constitution, and similar amendments in state constitutions, would go a long way toward returning us to the security and stability afforded by a respect for the stable rule of law.  For the sake of our children and future generations, I hope we do it.

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