Our Founding Fathers knew the dangers of authoritarian government whether it’s the British King or Parliament. The American Colonists were not allowed the same rights that Englishmen enjoyed. The Founding Fathers determined that a new system of government in the new world needed to be established. It was a new system inherited from ancient Greece and Rome, from the Magna Carta of 1215 protecting the political liberties of Englishmen, and inherited from the British parliamentary system. This new system was designed to protect the natural rights granted to us by our creator, that evolved to be inclusive of all citizens, regardless of our race, gender, creed, national origin, or political opinion, that every citizen is entitled to equal justice and rights under the law, that cannot be usurped.

Our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the State Constitutions, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights formed the blueprint for a system of government with checks and balances to protect the individual citizen from government overreach. The three branches, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial are balanced so that one branch doesn’t have power over the other.

In America, the individual is supreme, and government, secondary. This has allowed the Judicial Branch to assume great importance in protecting the rights of citizens from the power of government.  Our Founding Fathers warned future generations to be on their guard against powerful government trying to take away our rights. The Judicial Branch has come to be the protector of the people’s natural rights.

But recently the Judicial Branch has been compromised by politics over principle. The Judicial Branch should always be impartial and be based upon the rule of law and our Constitution. There are forces in America that want to change that system for the benefit of the few, that would weaken the protection of the rights of the individual. The Constitution guarantees these rights: freedom of the press, speech and assembly, religious freedom, the right to bear arms, right to a speedy trial by a jury of one’s peers, right to due process, protection from search or seizure of one’s property without a search warrant, and the right to remain silent.

These are the rights we expect to be upheld, that we fought battles and wars to preserve, that our flag represents to which we pledge our loyalty. But there are ominous forces that want to undermine them, represented by the progressive left of the Democrat Party, who place ideology over and above our rights.  In the last 20 or more years, they have been sabotaging our political institutions, our schools, media, big tech corporations, and now the final assault is on the Judicial System, our system that protects the rights of the individual.  The assault on our Judicial System has recently played out as follows:

1. The selection of judges who are ideologues. Instead of upholding the original intent of the Constitution, they believe in a dynamic interpretation that changes according to their narrative and ideology. Democrats have succeeded in confirming their political allies to serve as our judges, district attorneys, attorneys general, and Supreme Court Justices. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a woke activist in robes, was confirmed to the Supreme Court. She is a political creature of the left with friends in high places, namely the White House. She confirmed that she is not a constitutional originalist, meaning she intends to bring her political agenda into the courtroom.  She denied the fundamental principle of natural rights, when responding to a question by Senator Ted Cruz during her confirmation hearings, writing: “I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.”
2. The progressive left claims that the jury system doesn’t work when the courts don’t rubber stamp their political agenda, and cases aren’t decided their way. They took to the streets and screamed “miscarriage of justice” and “no justice in capitalist courts” when the jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges. The jury found that he acted in self-defense after he fatally shot two people, and wounded a third during the riots, looting, and protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, August 2020. Likewise, they didn’t like the verdict of the Michigan jury that acquitted two men accused of plotting to kidnap Governor Whitmer, so now they want to trash our system of justice. The jury concluded that it was an FBI set-up, where agents entrapped these two innocent men in a violent plot, who were simply enraged by the governor’s tyrannical COVID restrictions. The FBI agents fabricated a “domestic terrorism” conspiracy used by Whitmer and Democrats to inflame the public against President Trump shortly before the 2020 election.
3. When Supreme Court cases don’t go their way, Democrats want to pack the court with activist judges who uphold their political ideology and tear justice to shreds, in the name of “social justice.” Democrats want to break the law and confirm as many activist judges in the mold of Ketanji Brown Jackson, as they need to take over the highest court in the land, and undermine our Constitution and individual rights, and rig elections to make one-party rule permanent.
4. State courts are a danger when one party has a super-majority in the state, and will select judges who toe the party’s ideological line in the courts, which will undermine the rights of citizens. The seven judges on New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals are all Democrat appointees. The Democrat super-majority has gerrymandered partisan maps in their favor, so that Republicans may lose four congressional districts. The Democrat Party stood by their partisan gerrymandering shenanigans, knowing full well that they’ve always been against it, and overriding the majority of New Yorkers who voted for an independent non-partisan redistricting commission in the 2021 ballot propositions. The lower court ruled the maps unconstitutional, but the Dems hope is for the higher state courts with their appointed judges, to put a stay on the gerrymandered maps. They believe the ends justify the means, even if it’s unconstitutional, in order to save Congress from a Republican majority.
5. Due Process has been undermined and replaced with “social justice.” Bail reform laws, lenient judges, and soft-on-crime DA’s have released violent repeat offenders to the streets to commit more crime. However, many of those arrested on January 6th, 2021 for minor non-violent offences, are still being held without bail and without trial, and held in deplorable conditions. Many of the rioters who burned down our cities that year haven’t been prosecuted. The violent thugs who threatened Senator Rand Paul and other Senators’ lives have not been arrested.  If Trump would have been declared the winner, they would have burned down America with impunity.

The Democrats’ catastrophe on our southern border crisis is another example of how “social justice” has trumped the rule of law. Our Founding Fathers, who inscribed the people’s rights granted to us by our creator, in our founding documents, never planned for a nation where individual freedoms and natural rights would be taken away by a small minority who put ideology first.   

There is one way to stop this, and that is by VOTING. Any elected official or candidate who doesn’t uphold the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, and our Judicial System should be voted out of office. It’s the people who didn’t vote, who gave us DA Alvin Bragg, and leftwing DA’s throughout America who let our cities burn. A small minority, a pathetic 21% of the registered voters came out to vote in the election that gave us DA Bragg. We must vote, openly express our views, organize, and get involved in the political process, in our school boards, civic associations, community boards, and our local party organizations. We all have to get out and vote, and then we will stop the assault of the progressive left of the Democrat Party on our rights, on our country, and all its institutions.

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Phil Orenstein is the president of the Queens Village Republican Club. Established in 1875, it is America’s oldest Republican Club.  www.QVGOP.org.  Historian, Jerry Matacotta, founder of History Seminar Series, was advisor for this article.