U.S. Constitution Too Old, Ginsburg Says
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must have missed the memo about Egypt’s radical Islamist transformation over the past 12 months. Since Hosni Mubarak’s government crumbled under heavy pressure from the United States, Islamic extremists have been assaulting Coptic Christians, raping their wives and daughters, and burning their homes and churches to the ground. They’ve ambushed Israel’s embassy, prompting a late-night emergency evacuation in September. They won’t recognize the State of Israel and they’ve vowed to dissolve the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Last month, Islamist hard-liners, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, won 72 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliament. So much for the supposedly unpopular,bumbling Brotherhood, to paraphrase what the New York Times wrote a year ago. “There is little reason for the United States to fear a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood,” the Times assured its readers last February. Today, of course, Islamic fundamentalists are now in charge. Just this week, Egyptian authorities decided to prosecute 19 Americans accused of fomenting unrest in Egypt.
Yet, despite the transparent nature of Egypt’s Islamic revolution, liberal elites in the West continue marching along in total darkness, fantasizing about what rights the new Egyptian constitution might guarantee for homosexuals and women. These blind guides act as if a piece of paper will prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from implementing tyranny and enforcing sharia law and usher in a new era of Western-style freedom and peace in Egypt.
“It is a very inspiring time—that you have overthrown a dictator, and that you are striving to achieve a genuine democracy,” Ginsburg said last week while visiting Cairo. She lavished praise on Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections, saying they were free and fair.
After that, she proceeded to trash the United States Constitution—the very document she’s sworn to support as one of just nine sitting justices on the United States Supreme Court.
“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” Ginsburg told her foreign audience. Egypt needs a more recent document to work from, she believes, like South Africa’s constitution. South African law guarantees citizens the rights to housing, education and health care—all high-ranking items on the liberal agenda. South Africa’s free speech clause, on the other hand, is much more restrictive than the U.S. Constitution and could be used by oppressors as an easy excuse to squelch any expression deemed to be “controversial.”
“It really is a great piece of work,” Ginsburg said, referring to the South African document. As for America’s Constitution, it’s just too old, she told her Egyptian interviewers.
Of course, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hardly the first progressive to call for a more flexible constitution that can be periodically adjusted to accommodate a radical leftist agenda. But it’s still shocking to hear a Supreme Court justice, of all people, insult the supreme law of the United States in front of a foreign audience.
On the other hand, in today’s upside-down world, if you’re a Supreme Court justice with a hankering to bash the U.S. Constitution, what better place to receive a warm reception than in Cairo?
Cairo, remember, is where President Obama spoke in 2009 about Islam’s “proud tradition of tolerance.” British-American “colonialism,” on the other hand, “denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.”
If only those old documents, like the Constitution and the Magna Carta, would have guaranteed more rights for Muslims. Think of the peaceful and cooperative spirit there would be between Anglo-Saxon nations and the world of Islam!
In another interview this past Sunday, nbc’s Matt Lauer asked President Obama to respond to critics who say he hasn’t been the kind of transformational political figure he promised to be.
“What’s frustrated people,” the president said, “is that I have not been able to force Congress to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, you know, it turns out that our founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes” (emphasis added throughout).
If it wasn’t for that old document, we’d be a lot further along with our radical agenda of fundamentally transforming the United States of America!
The president has long desired to cast off the restraints of the U.S. Constitution. During a 2001 interview, many years before he became president, Mr. Obama criticized the document as being a charter of negative liberties. He said, “It says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”
They’re not exactly concealing their contempt for the Founding Fathers and the rule of law. But then again, why should they? Most Americans are far too busy watching reality shows and sporting events to actually take note of what’s happening. And then there’s the liberal media establishment. It’s full of devoted followers who worship before the altar of progressivism.
Early this week, for example, the New York Times rushed to the defense of Justice Ginsburg’s near-treasonous remarks in Egypt. It referred to a Time magazine article from 1987, which estimated that out of 170 countries in the world at the time, more than 160 nations had “written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”
But oh how times have changed in just one generation. Today, the supreme law of the land is losing its appeal around the world—and even here in America, in the case of liberal progressives.
“There are lots of possible reasons,” the Times explained. “The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.“
The ignorance is stunning. America is besieged by all kinds of problems and evils. Its stature and influence among nations has been massively diminished. And yet, rather than view the Constitution as a way to solve our problems, many of our leaders see it as part of the problem!
God says these radical “progressives” will soon get what they want—a more malleable, ever changing constitutional document.
We are evolving, as my father wrote in No Freedom Without Law—evolving into anarchy!