Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with
my guest, we were really...
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Well, we were disagreeing.
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And it really comes down to
what's the public discussion
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in the US.
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What is the role
of the Supreme Court,
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the highest legal
body versus the President,
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and of course, the
people's representatives?
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And there are so
many forces at play.
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But in this present discussion
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we're looking at
some worrying trends
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on the Supreme
Court is exemplified
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by two of your favorite people,
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Neil Gorsuch, Justice Gorsuch
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and Clarence Thomas,
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I couldn't think of his
first name for a second.
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Of course, there
are other individuals,
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and they all have
their little agenda.
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But what more
do you want to say,
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I know you have a particular.
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But now one of the
directions they're taking.
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Well, first of all,
let me finish my statement
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before the break.
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I don't believe that
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this reflects a
trend in society,
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I believe that it reflects...
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You think they're
creating a society?
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I believe that it
reflects essentially
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a conspiracy by conservatives,
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particularly
the Christian right,
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to infiltrate the courts,
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and to accomplish their agenda,
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which is very clear.
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If you read their writings,
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it's very clear what
they're trying to do,
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and it's very clear.
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They are a minority of society,
there's no question about that.
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In fact, they're, I think,
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a decreasing
minority of society.
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But they have way more power
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than their
numbers would indicate
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because they're very
well organized and focused.
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So they have been able to
infiltrate the court system,
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and as well as other
branches of government,
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but the court system
is the most dangerous
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because you particularly
in the Supreme Court,
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you have nine people
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who are determining the
rights of the whole country.
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So who those nine people
are is a very important thing.
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So as far as
Thomas is concerned,
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he has developed a lot more,
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he's punching way
above his weight lately
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because of the new majority
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and because he has
Gorsuch on his side.
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Well, you know, I like the...
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Not so much like,
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but I can respond
to conspiracy comments.
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But, you know, we need
to look at it another way.
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It's not secret.
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The rise of the religious right,
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in my view, it really,
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they really started
to appear in the '70s
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as a separate politically
oriented organization,
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and it's not all Christians.
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But it's Christians
with a political agenda
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and a willingness
to use political means
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to accomplish
spiritual purposes.
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And I tried to
tell people, in my view,
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as a Seventh-day Adventist,
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I share most of the concerns
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of the
so-called religious right.
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They're not unusual concerns,
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they're very consistent with
what a Christian would have.
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They have embraced
the wrong solution,
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which is political power.
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And since they are a minority,
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they've been forced to
reduce to extraordinary,
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"conspiratorial
means to accomplish it."
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And as they see themselves
as more and more rather
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of an endangered minority,
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then they do
extraordinary things.
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They're sort of gaming
the system whenever they can.
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That's what I see.
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Well, I agree with
you to some extent.
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I think, though,
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that some of
their motives are moral.
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I will, you know,
and some of their aims
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I essentially agree
with, but many of them are not.
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The racial component this
particularly become obvious
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in the last few years.
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Well, yeah, but I
wasn't getting into that.
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The US story is light and dark.
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It's aspirational
with the Constitution.
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But I love
history, outside of history,
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is a dirty
undercurrent of racism
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and jingoism and
of moneyed interest
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against the poor and so on.
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If you want to
attract that, it's bad.
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And Christians,
through the whole US history
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have used theology
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to justify some
of the worst things.
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And you're
inheriting a lot of that.
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And you and I were
talking earlier about
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even the dominionist view,
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which is very strong in
the Christian right now.
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You know, that's a rape
the earth sort of an approach
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and do what you want
because I have the power,
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God gave it to me,
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it's sort of the
Protestant analog
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to the Catholic entitlement.
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You know, the inherent,
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I'm trying to think
of the word they use,
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the inherent power
given to, supposedly,
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to Peter by Jesus,
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and so you can
dispose it as you want.
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This is all problematic.
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But, you know, I think we have
to acknowledge the simple fact
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that from the beginning,
this was an overwhelmingly
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Protestant society,
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which it still is
demographically barely.
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But within that,
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there is a
smaller and smaller group
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who are active
about their Protestantism,
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and they see it
as sort of the lost,
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borrowing from the Civil War,
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the lost cause,
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and they want to
recapture America.
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Well, it's full of some
bad people, my churches,
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any churches, that, you
know, you can't judge the whole
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on some mixed motives.
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But generally speaking,
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I think their trouble
that the loss of faith,
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the ebb of this
mythical, religious Americana,
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and they want to recapture it.
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So their mistake is
not the views they hold,
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their mistake is that
they, as all minorities,
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sometimes
become revolutionaries.
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You know, the revolutionary
first waves the flag
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rally to meet
people, when they don't,
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then you start
attacking the villages.
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There's an element of that,
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I think it could be very
dangerous against America
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as a whole for these people
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to recapture what
they see as America.
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And this is what
you're describing
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on the court,
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basically a fifth
column on the court,
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to subvert it, they
think to a higher end.
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Well and that, and
Thomas's other viewpoint
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really plays into that.
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Thomas believes that
the Establishment Clause
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does not apply to the States.
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And that's,
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there's a lot of
technical reasons for that,
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but basically...
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Well, before the 14th Amendment,
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that would be a
true, wouldn't it?
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Well, essentially, it would be,
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but there are
two aspects to that.
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First of all, he believes
that the Establishment Clause
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was not intended to
be a personal right,
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it was intended to be
essentially a States' rights,
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which I think ignores
the historical evidence.
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And the second
part of his argument
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is that the 14th Amendment,
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which was adopted
after the Civil War,
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to protect the
rights of the former slaves
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has been interpreted by
the court to apply almost
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all of the Bill of
Rights to the States.
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He believes that was improper
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and should not
have happened in that.
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The framers of that
amendment didn't intend that.
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Well, that also ignores a
lot of historical evidence
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that the framers intended
all eight of the first...
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All eight Amendments
of the Bill of Rights
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to apply to the States.
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So he takes establishment out.
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Now, establishment
is the first clause
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of the First Amendment.
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And it's with
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a whole bunch
of other clauses...
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Congress shall make no
law establishing religion.
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Right.
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It's bundled with a
bunch of other clauses
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that clearly refer
to individual rights.
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So I don't
understand how he can say
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that antiestablishment
is not an individual right.
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And then even
if you do say that,
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then you have to
look at the framers
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of the 14th Amendment.
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And it seems to me it's
clear that they intended
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that the Establishment Clause
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as well as the other amendments
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in the Bill of
Rights apply to the States.
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I mean, you're correct.
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I agree with you on
this, and it's very worrying.
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Where does this leaders,
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what do you think is
the immediate consequence
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of his view?
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Well, that's a good question.
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What's the present danger
we have from a changed idea
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which is not good?
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I think
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because Gorsuch has seen fit
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to take Thomas's doctrine
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and slip it into a
decision as if it were the law.
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That is an
extremely disturbing concept
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because that
takes one man's opinion
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and makes it
essentially a majority opinion.
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And I don't know whether
he will be able to do that
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with any of, either
of, Thomas's doctrines,
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but it's very
disturbing possibility.
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And just the fact that
he has Gorsuch on his side
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is disturbing as well
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because Gorsuch is
a much better advocate
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for the positions than Thomas's.
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Let me really
play constitutional,
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what is with you?
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You know, there's a
lot of foolish talk.
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I think it's foolish
because of present realities
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of impeaching the President.
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I mean, certainly
allowed in the Constitution.
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People forget,
Supreme Court justices
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could be impeached too.
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Do you think an
overreaching court
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could ever so on
an issue like this,
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so offend the constituency
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that they would do
in responding them?
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Well, I don't know.
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It's very hard to say.
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But it's not beyond
the realm of possibility,
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but I think it's highly unlikely
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it's never happened.
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And I don't see any
reason why it would happen now.
00:10:07.47\00:10:10.04
Not too long ago
while flying coast to coast,
00:10:13.11\00:10:16.11
I paid the
necessary few dollars,
00:10:16.14\00:10:19.08
slipped my card
through the reader
00:10:19.11\00:10:21.38
and intending to watch
00:10:21.42\00:10:22.85
some entertaining
diversion on the TV,
00:10:22.88\00:10:26.79
I instead ended up watching
the confirmation hearings
00:10:26.82\00:10:30.13
of the most recent acquisition
to the Supreme Court,
00:10:30.16\00:10:33.53
their opinions pro and
con, as you would expect,
00:10:33.56\00:10:36.83
but I was horrified
00:10:36.87\00:10:38.20
at the style of the proceedings.
00:10:38.23\00:10:40.74
I was horrified at
the antagonism shown
00:10:40.77\00:10:44.77
toward how the
court would function.
00:10:44.81\00:10:48.04
I was horrified at the outbursts
00:10:48.08\00:10:51.91
from any number of people
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not excluding
the nominee himself.
00:10:53.35\00:10:56.35
And I realized that
we have reached the point
00:10:56.38\00:10:58.99
where people see
the judicial process
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as basically a sideshow
00:11:02.12\00:11:03.56
or an example of
sort of politics run amok.
00:11:03.59\00:11:09.46
I hope that
reason decisions prevail,
00:11:09.53\00:11:13.07
and I hope that at
least the scales of justice
00:11:13.13\00:11:16.64
recognize the touch
of the Master's justice,
00:11:16.67\00:11:20.78
and not just
human sensibilities,
00:11:20.81\00:11:23.04
biases, and
partisan expectations.
00:11:23.08\00:11:28.22
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:28.25\00:11:32.25