By Erick-Woods Erickson
Editor’s Note: “The United States is a republic, not a democracy.” After all, the word “republic” — deriving from the Latin phrase res publica, or “the people’s concern” — suggests a measure of popular involvement in government. And the authors of the Constitution, who were radically republican, at least for their age, believing that the only legitimate form of government was one in which public authority derived entirely from the people. This does not mean we the public dapple in every effort of government.
The Biden campaign would rather talk about threats to democracy than kitchen table issues. They’d prefer to lecture Americans that their lives are better than they realize; they should be grateful to Joe Biden; and democracy is at stake in the election, not the price of steak.
The problem is their actions and words suggest Democrats really do not care about democracy.
In both the Cargill case decided last week and the Dobbs case decided a couple of years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal judiciary is without powers to change statutes and grant rights that lack historic ties to the constitution.
In Dobbs, the Supreme Court agreed with Ruth Bader Ginsburg that Roe was a terribly decided decision. The Court simply said abortion is not a historic right and therefore not a part of the federal constitution. So states or Congress can act, but the Court cannot.
In Cargill, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress must change the statutory definition of a machine gun. Neither a bureaucracy nor the Supreme Court can alter a law with a clear definition written by Congress.
Both decisions by the unelected, life-tenured Justices result in the elected, democratic bodies in our republic having to act.
But the left insists that unelected government officials saying they have no power is both radical and anti-democratic.
The Supreme Court of the United States demanding the democratic institutions operate is somehow anti-democratic.
In reality, this is about the left not controlling institutions and, therefore, lacking power. The left does not care about democracy, they care about power. They will delegitimize any institution they do not control and are willing to allow our unelected, life-tenured black-robed masters to alter statutory definitions written by democratically elected bodies in order to suit their whims.
In her emotional outburst that amounted to a dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor said a bump stock makes a semi-automatic gun a machine gun because of the rapid fire rate. She wrote, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”
Actually, the United States government specifically classifies certain birds as ducks, maintaining an annually revised list of several parameters for classifying ducks that extends to over 1100 entries. Under the law, not every bird is a duck just because Sonia Sotomayor thinks it walks, swims, and quacks like one.
Likewise, under the law, a machine gun is defined as a gun that allows the release of multiple bullets with a single pull of the trigger. A device that allows a user to rapidly pull the trigger multiple times to allow a single bullet with each release, but in rapid succession, is not a machine gun under the plainly written definition drafted by Congress.
To claim that a bird can be a duck because it swims, quacks, and walks like a duck is not a legal definition and to alter a democratically decided legal definition on the whim of one unelected life-tenured black-robed judge is not democracy.
But that is exactly what the left wants. Because it is about power, not democracy.
