Trying To Figure Out Trump, The Constitution, and the Court

THERE WAS ONCE A TIME, not so very long ago, when American conservatives tended to believe that the constitution of the United States of America is sacred, inviolable, carved in stone, and that all decisions made by all the courts across freedom's land should be predicated very strictly upon the literal truth and meaning of the sacred document, and that only the original intent of the authors of the constitution should be taken into consideration in rendering justice from the judicial bench. James Madison, who stood five feet four, dressed entirely in black each and every day, was nicknamed "little Jemmy", and wrote the constitution based upon earlier documents which prevailed among the former colonies, most notably Virginia, is never mentioned specifically by the "strict constructionists", quite likely because they are not aware that he wrote the constitution. Madison, however, like his friend and mentor Thomas Jefferson, firmly believed, ironically, that his document was destined to be in use for a generation or two, then replaced by an updated version, and he certainly understood that the very act of reading words on paper requires interpretation, no matter how fervently one might wish to believe that they are chiseled into stone, and not parchment, and that it is possible, when reading words on paper, to somehow know exactly what the person who wrote them was thinking. Madison also feared that a "bill of rights" might be superfluous, forgotten, and ignored. Then came Trump, threatening to issue an executive order abolishing the fourteenth amendment. Since its inception, the Supreme Court has consisted of a small group of legal scholars with very strange attitudes towards the law. At one point the court defined human beings who were slaves as property, rather then people. Although the high court has tended to avoid the issue, it now seems to believe that corporations are human beings. The court seems confused about what human beings are. It used to strike down minimum wage and work place regulations like fly swatters swatting flies. It no longer does this, but might soon begin again. Little wonder that President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to add so many members to the high court that it would be an incoherent mob, ineffective, impotent, and malleable. These days nobody is allowed to become a member of the Supreme court without being a card carrying conservative. The high court has become, as they say, "politicized". Actually, its always been politicized. President Thomas Jefferson invited Aaron Burr to dinner, not long after Burr had murdered Alexander Hamilton in a childish duel, to try to persuade the still Vice President Burr to favor removing Supreme Court associate justice Samuel Chase from the court - for being too politically biased. Chase was impeached, but not removed. Burr was of no help, so he lost his job as Vice President, and lived the rest of his life in ignominious hiding, after a brief attempt to start his own empire. Ignominious not because Chase remained on the court, but because he (Burr) had killed the popular Hamilton. Jefferson, who hated Hamilton but did not like Burr either, probably approved of Burr's killing of Hamilton, although he never said one way or another. One can rest assured that if Trump signs his, shall we say, highly questionable executive order abolishing the fourteenth amendment, he will be supported by the American conservative community, which does not like immigrants, and can dispense with strict constructionist original intentism at the drop of a gavel. The whole affair might make it all the way to today's Supreme Court, where the issue will be decided by a group of legal scholars with strange opinions about words on paper, two of whom sit on the court despite the likelihood that they are former sexual predators. And who knows how people like Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas might rule? The fourteenth amendment might be gone, as they say, with the wind. If we are jurisprudently fortunate, we won't all lose our citizenship amid the jurisdictional confusion, even those of us who were born here.