2018 Strict Interpretation of the Constitution?

Friday, September 19, 2008

Senator McCain, when asked on "The View" a few days ago about appointing Supreme Court Judges likely to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, said that abortion would not be a litmus test, but that he would try to appoint judges who were strict constitutionalists - who interpreted the Constitution in the way that the Founding Fathers meant it when they wrote it, to understand what the FFs had in mind and rule that way. He doesn't consider the Constitution to be a living document, changing with the times.

I have a lot of trouble with that. It seems to me that people, even those who want to be called "strict constitutionalists", interpret it any way they want, to justify anything they want to do, or ban anything they don't want you to do.

I've brought up the following point in every government-oriented class and every Constitutional law class I've ever taken, and I've never got a satisfactory answer.

The country was named "The United States of America". Not just "America". Before the states united, they were separate. They were almost like separate little countries, and they were very jealous of their separateness, their desire to govern themselves. Delegates from the separate states met to form a sort of super-government, for the common defense, to allow free commerce among the states, and so on. I don't believe the individual states ever meant to give up their sovereignty, and that's why they were all given equal representation in the senate. I really believe that is what was in the minds of the Founding Fathers. Witness that the states can elect or appoint their senators and representatives to the union in any way they want.

The states joined voluntarily. (It's sort of like the United Nations.) It so happened that all the states did join, but they didn't have to if they didn't want to. Some, even among the original 13, didn't join right away. Every state (except purchased territories) joined the union of states voluntarily.

Think of it as a subscription. Sovereign states subscribed to the union of states, the United States. The big advantage of membership was defense against attack from without, and free trade among the union members. I believe that was the intent of the Founding Fathers. I do not believe there was an intent to meddle with anything within a state.

Have you ever subscribed to something, a magazine or service that offered a 60-day free trial, but you had to give a credit card number to start the free trial, and then 30 days into the trial you decided it was crap, so you tried to cancel? And you couldn't get them to cancel? And they kept charging your credit card month after month for things you kept trying to tell them you didn't want? That's illegal. They can't DO that.

I fully believe, moral issues aside, that the southern states had every right to cancel their subscription to the union when the price-setting of cotton by the northern states made membership in the union of states no longer economically comfortable. I believe they had every right to secede from the union when it no longer served their interests to be a member.

There was no way the northern states were going to allow export duties on cotton to increase the price of cotton (yes, that's a simplistic depiction, but basically true, slavery became an issue only later, to gain the common citizen's moral support for the war when "help the rich folks" didn't work), and all of a sudden the intent of the Founding Fathers no longer mattered.

On "The View", when McCain mentioned strict interpretation of the Constitution as the FF's intended, Whoopi asked if that meant she'd have to be a slave.

Well, if we get a Supreme Court who REALLY interpreted the Constitution as the Founding Fathers were thinking, then they'd have to declare the Civil War as an illegal war, let states secede, and maybe Whoopie would have to be shipped off to the Carolinas to pick cotton. And I KNOW the FFs NEVER intended for women to vote. I'm sure that never entered their mind. Or for women to inherit, either. Or to get the same jobs, let alone the same pay.

All McCain means by "as the FFs intended" is judges who think that a fertilized egg has a right to life. And then someone is going to point out that birth control pills and IUDs and the like don't prevent fertilization of the egg, they prevent implantation, which amounts to nothing more than very early abortion, and we could find those forms of contraception banned, too.

So I get pissed when "they" blather about strict interpretation. That's pure bull poop.
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