I've been a one-issue voter since this campaign season got into full swing, that issue being the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices the new president will appoint.
Last week the very articulate Kevin D. Williamson put into precise language why it's going to matter in The Book-Burners. His focus is on free speech and how Democrats of Hillary Clinton's ilk seem ready to chisel away the 1st amendment because they so oppose the ruling in the Citizens United case which held that prohibition of a movie critical of a political figure was unconstitutional.
Let's get beyond that particular case and draw out some of Mr. Williamson's words about Clinton's attitude about the Supreme Court and its role in America. Here's an excerpt:
She began by arguing that the Supreme Court, and lesser federal courts, should be political partisans who take sides in disputes rather than adjudicate them according to the law. Many politicians — perhaps even most — believe that, or act in a way that suggests they do, but most of them feel at least the need to shamefacedly insist that judges are there to impartially apply the law. Not Mrs. Clinton. The Supreme Court that exists in her mind is the worst version of the highest judicial body, which is to say the American answer to Iran’s Guardian Council. The justices already wander into American-ayatollah territory too often, and it is only shame that constrains them. It is impossible to overstate the damage this is doing to our constitutional order, and to the legitimacy of the federal government itself.
What is worse — if something can in fact be worse — is that Mrs. Clinton seeks to unmoor the Supreme Court from the Constitution in order to pursue her own repressive and self-interested political program, namely the censorship of publications, organizations, and institutions that are critical of her.
Mr. Williamson is rightly concerned about the 1st amendment. But those of us out here in flyover country are concerned about the entire bill of rights. Once the court is "unmoored" from the Constitution, Obama would have been deemed correct, our great nation is indeed unexceptional.
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