Jul 2, 2022 5 min read

The funny thing about living in an historic moment is that most people don’t realize they are.

This past week for the Supreme Court has to qualify as an historic moment. The court handed down three specific decisions that were heroic defenses of constitutional principles and will be discussed for generations.

The first decision dealt with religious freedom and school choice. The second decision was a major Second Amendment victory that clarified “Shall Issue” requirements for concealed carry and underlined the “shall not be infringed” language of the Second Amendment. The third decision, of course, is the decision in defense of unborn children striking down Roe v. Wade. It is hard to imagine three decisions, in three areas of our national life, with greater impact.

The first decision strikes at the deeply held liberal desire to choke Christian education by preventing public funding from going to schools with religious curriculums. In this case, Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that “while a state need not subsidize private education, once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

The second decision struck down New York State’s heavy-handed law on the issuance of right-to-carry permits. New York required its citizens to demonstrate a compelling need for such a permit in clear violation of the plain language of the Second Amendment, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, noted that, “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than other Bill of Rights guarantees.”

The third decision was a huge win for the voiceless of our society, the yet to be born. Justice Samuel Alito, in the majority opinion, said, “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak and the decision has had damaging consequences. … It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

These decisions are huge because they strike at three of the core tenets of liberalism; creating an atheist state beginning with our children, disarming the proletariat and determining who is worthy of life.

Liberals have long tried to defund religious education and to drive anything religious out of schools. By using the false claim of “separation of church and state” (a non-existent constitutional claim) to deny funding to any educational institution with a religious curriculum, they are promoting extreme secularism and providing an open field for the teaching of their own “religion” through programs such as critical race theory. Roberts stuck the knife in that idea.

There is probably no truer saying than “The Second Amendment defends the other 26.” Liberals would love nothing more than to disarm the populous. We have seen examples lately of what might take place should that happen. Thomas emphatically guaranteed that our citizens will be able to defend themselves. It is now up to an armed citizenry to protect that right.

It is unthinkable that anyone has the right to terminate a life simply for their own convenience and yet, according to a recent study, only 12% of abortions involve health issues. It is not a long step from mid-term to late-term abortion and then to after birth murder. This is not something anyone wants to imagine. Alito made sure we won’t have to.

Despite the anguished hand-wringing of liberals, the Supreme Court did not outlaw abortion. This Supreme Court clearly understands that the purpose of the court is to interpret the Constitution and to determine whether laws comply with the Constitution; not to make law and public policy as some previous courts have. The court reversed a terrible decision made 49 years ago and returned the decision making authority regarding abortion to the states where it rightfully and constitutionally belongs. In the states, the elected representatives of the people can decide how they wish to handle abortion.

The justices made a clear and rational decision despite unlawful protests outside their homes attempting to intimidate them. Protests that Attorney General Merrick Garland, at one time proposed as a Supreme Court justice, proved incapable of or unwilling to handle.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as soon as the decision was announced, spewed out a disgraceful diatribe of remarks impugning the integrity of the court. She waxed endlessly about how terrible it was that they should overturn a precedent that had stood for 50 years, obviously unaware that the court has overturned its own precedents more than 230 times, including overturning the decision upholding segregation and the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery. Is she saying those should not have been overturned?

President Biden, not to be outdone, declared that the court “took away a fundamental constitutional right.” Just to keep the record straight, the court determined that there was no right to abortion in the Constitution and never had been.

It was a great week for the constitutional principles upon which this nation was founded. It was good, once again, to see that we are still a nation of laws.

God bless this great nation.

Dave Ball is chairman of the Washington County Republican Party.