Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program designed
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to bring you
up-to-date information
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and analysis of
religious liberty developments
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in the US, particularly,
but around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And I want to get into something
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very
contemporary in American life
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at the moment,
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but to do so, let
me go back a year,
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before BC I would
call it, Before COVID.
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That was the last time
that I visited Australia,
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and I took the
long flight from Los...
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Actually from Chicago,
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I think it was,
nonstop to Australia.
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These Airbus 380s...
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No.
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Start again. My
memory is failing me.
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I know that they don't let it go
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from Chicago.
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Where did we go from?
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You know, the Airbus 380,
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I know it flies from
Texas nonstop to Australia,
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but the Chicago one I think
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we took a flight
from Chicago to...
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Anyhow, static in and all.
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I don't want to give untruths
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because all it takes is
you're wrong on one thing,
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and then people call up...
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They doubt it. They
question everything.
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Right.
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I mean, that's not a
fact that means much,
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but it'll sort of signal
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that he's making other stuff up.
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Six, five, four, three, two.
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Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
designed to bring you analysis,
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news, and updates on
religious liberty events
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in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and I want to discuss
something that's of great,
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immediate relevance
in the United States.
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Supreme Court and
who might be on it.
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But to do so let me go
back to at least one-year BC,
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Before COVID,
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that was the last time
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that I flew to my
homeland of Australia,
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one of those big Airbus 380s,
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amazing double-decker plane
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that's like a
cruise ship of the year.
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And on that long, long flight
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that worries a lot of
people who haven't done it,
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but it's so long
that you sort of develop
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a cycle of watching the
movies, eating meals, sleeping,
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and so on and
before you know it,
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you're there.
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And leafing through
the electronic listing
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of many, many movies,
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I noticed there
was one on the life
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of Justice Ginsburg
of the Supreme Court.
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Already a legend,
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but because of this film
and a subsequent documentary,
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you know, she was
almost a household word
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for many people.
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And I watched
captivated for a couple of hours
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as I saw the last
story of this amazing woman
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who was an
activist for women's rights.
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In fact, she
famously said, at one point,
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I think it was in
response to the question
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of what she wants.
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And she says we
women want you men
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to get your feet off our necks.
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That's all we want.
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And it's worth remembering
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that the original Constitution
of the United States
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as written did not
grant the vote to women,
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of course, slaves as well.
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So amendments
to the Constitution
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of partially fixed
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some of the problems
of the original document,
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and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
really powerfully pushed
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for some of these things.
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Now she was famously
credited as being a liberal.
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I think these
conservative liberal badges
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are a little demeaning
to some of the justices
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because by my judgment,
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there's not a direct correlation
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between the faction
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that puts people
onto the Supreme Court
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and the way that they vote.
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Thankfully, God be praised
that even to this light point,
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by and large,
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these justices when they're put
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on the Supreme Court
and given lifetime tenure,
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and they are trained lawyers
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and judges that
they follow the law,
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they follow their
conscience and of course,
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as human beings, they
have biases, we all do.
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But, you know, thankfully,
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the judiciary have a
sense of responsibility.
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And perhaps,
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with the
exception of Justice Thomas,
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I think he is an
ideologue of the first degree,
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but even then bound by law.
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And I do remember,
quite some years ago,
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this thing to Justice Scalia,
who was the most outspoken,
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"conservative" on
the Supreme Court,
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who had some rather
extreme personal views,
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but he told us, he says,
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"You don't have
to worry about me,"
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he says, "I'm
constrained by the law
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and by the Constitution,
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from following
through on my views."
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That one of his views,
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which was quite bizarre, really,
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he said famously on
two or three occasions
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that he felt that Sunday
laws were constitutional.
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I think he came at that
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because the blue laws
that still exist in about 20 US
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are a state matter,
not a federal matter.
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But, you know, again,
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when I look at the Supreme Court
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at the moment,
people are roiled up
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and ready to go to war about
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who will be the next current
depending when this is shown,
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but you know, at the moment,
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there's a rush
together another justice there
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because if
that's not done quickly,
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then the other faction
will put their person on.
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By and large, the justices
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having executed
laws fairly well.
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There are a few
gross exceptions to it
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of course.
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Many people, "the
famous Dred Scott" case.
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Back before the Civil War,
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there was a
slave called Dred Scott
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that if you read the
story, it's very complicated,
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like a lot of legal cases.
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Dred Scott and his
wife were both slaves,
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passed between one
owner and the other,
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they lived variously and
slave and then free states.
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And he had owners who
really hardly executed
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the slave relationship with him,
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but still, he was under contract
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or under bondage.
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And so he made
application for his freedom.
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And finally,
after cases that he said
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that he could have it
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then denied it in another court,
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went to the Supreme Court
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and they said that
under the Constitution,
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Dred Scott could not
be a citizen, period.
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Now I think they
were right on one level,
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because if you read
the original Constitution,
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slavery is
embedded in the Constitution
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because the concept
of property ownership
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still remains
the overarching theme
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of the Constitution.
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Very narrowly did they
avoid early on deciding
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that only
property owners could vote,
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wouldn't have been
a universal suffrage.
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But it was a case that
offended the abolitionists
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and somewhat
directly led to the Civil War.
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That was a bad decision.
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More recently, a
couple of decades ago,
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the Supreme Court in case
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that looked at
whether Indians could smoke
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a hallucinogenic drug Peyote
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is part of their
religious ceremonies.
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It was called the Smith
case, they decided that yes,
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they could restrict this
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because this was a
generally universal law.
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And so they restricted
the religious practices
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of Native Americans.
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Bad case.
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And many Christians
today look at Roe v. Wade,
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and the empowerment of abortion
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as being a horrific case.
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Unfortunately,
for people of faith
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that it had, at the
time, general backing,
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it does line up
with the general idea
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of the freedom of the individual
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and the right of
self-determination.
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But it led
clearly to very immoral
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and gratuitous practices
toward the value of human life.
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You could argue easily
that this is a court judgment
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that might better not have been.
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But yet, I don't
think any of this proves
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that the Supreme Court
are the source of troubles.
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You can look at the
legislature and over the years,
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many and manifold crazy
laws have come out of Congress,
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and the Supreme
Court and a number of them
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have exercised their right
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by saying these
things were unconstitutional.
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You can look at the presidency.
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And admittedly
the modern presidency
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is far more autocratic
than the earlier model
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where it was intended
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that he be the
executer of the people's laws,
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more and more, we're
getting the imperial presidency,
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but even then,
generally speaking,
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they're within general law.
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But the President
has exercised his right
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to pass executive orders,
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which are stopgap measures
that pass laws if you like
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that until they're countermanded
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by the executive
or by the legislature
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or by the Supreme
Court might held some value.
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But the Supreme
Court is not the problem.
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As a Seventh-day Adventist,
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I'm very much guided
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by the words of
Ellen White visionary,
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counted as a prophet
by Seventh-day Adventists,
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and she says that at
the very end of time,
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when the United
States does turn its back on
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on principles of freedom
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and religious
freedom in particular,
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that it is the legislature
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responding to the
clamor of the people,
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whereby legislation
on the day of worship
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comes into pass.
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And I feel happy with that
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because even though
that's the wrong way to go,
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that tells me that the model
that the country was founded on
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will be
operative right to the end.
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The people
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working with
their representatives,
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that's how it should be.
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There's no question
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rather than by
mandate of the president
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or the interference
of the Supreme Court.
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The Supreme
Court, by definition,
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is hamstrung in
legislating from the bench
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as some people say
00:11:29.15\00:11:30.49
because they cannot just decide,
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for example,
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with this court
that appears to be
00:11:35.12\00:11:38.53
stacked for conservatives,
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they can't just decide,
00:11:40.63\00:11:41.96
"Well, now
we're going to do away
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with Roe v. Wade."
00:11:43.37\00:11:44.70
No, they have to wait
till a case bearing on that
00:11:44.73\00:11:47.30
makes its way up
through the courts.
00:11:47.34\00:11:49.90
And then they
could make a judgment
00:11:49.94\00:11:51.67
whether or not this
is unconstitutional.
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The Bible says that
at the very end of time,
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the judges pervert justice
00:12:00.22\00:12:03.15
or it puts it in the concept
00:12:03.18\00:12:05.52
of a society that's on collapse.
00:12:05.55\00:12:07.92
I'm thankful that by and large,
00:12:07.96\00:12:10.83
whether it's Justice
Ginsburg or the other justices,
00:12:10.86\00:12:14.60
by and large,
they are honest judges
00:12:14.63\00:12:19.37
that they look
to legal precedent,
00:12:19.40\00:12:21.74
and they're not a
wild group of partisans,
00:12:21.77\00:12:25.81
who will do whatever
regardless of legal norms.
00:12:25.84\00:12:31.91
Maybe this is a good
time to take a break.
00:12:31.95\00:12:33.58
And after the
break, we'll come back
00:12:33.62\00:12:35.18
and I want to
share with you something
00:12:35.22\00:12:36.79
that I wrote in Liberty Magazine
00:12:36.82\00:12:38.79
on I'm sure I'm mispronouncing
a Latin legal term
00:12:38.82\00:12:42.89
that the judiciary follow
00:12:42.92\00:12:44.26
called Stare
Decisis, settled law.
00:12:44.29\00:12:48.06