Constitutional Chaos From the Left

Recently my wife’s uncle, Roger Fitzpatrick, made a run for Congress in the new 9^th district in northeast Georgia. The focus of Roger’s campaign was the Constitution. (How sad that that need be the case!) As he saw it, many of the problems currently facing the U.S. are a result of an abandonment of our founding documents. We were very close to the campaign, as my wife Michelle was Roger’s unofficial campaign manager.

Though Roger lost in the primary, his effect on the race was significant. After his late entry into the race, much of the focus of the debates and forums in which the three candidates (Roger, Doug Collins, and Martha Zoller) participated centered around the Constitution.

Never has a focus on our Constitution been more necessary and appropriate. Several recent events highlight this.

First of all, there is Boston mayor Thomas Menino. Practicing his version of “tolerance” and completely ignoring the First Amendment, Menino threatened Chick-fil-A after its president Dan Cathy declared his support for traditional (biblical) marriage. The threat wasn’t personal. Menino stated that, “If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult—unless they open up their policies.” What’s more, Menino also penned a letter to Cathy, urging him to forego plans to open a restaurant in Boston. “There is no place for discrimination along Boston's Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it,” he wrote.

Not recognizing the hypocrisy and Constitutional disregard, Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel, along with a Chicago Alderman, doubled down on Menino’s threats. Alderman Proco Joe Moreno stated that due to Cathy’s comments, he would not allow Chick-fil-A to open a location in his ward. Emanuel backed up Moreno by announcing that “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values.”

Completing the “tolerance trio” was San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. Lee tweeted “Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.”

Then there’s Senator Harry Reid. Last week, in an interview with the eagerly complicit Huffington Post, Reid claimed that about a month earlier, a Bain investor called him and told him that Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years, and that was the reason behind Romney’s refusal to release further tax returns.

Reid shamelessly added that, “You guys have said his wealth is $250 million—Not a chance in the world. It's a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don't pay taxes for 10 years when you're making millions and millions of dollars.”

A couple of days later, Reid took his accusations to the Senate floor. There he boldly declared that, “the word is out that [Romney] hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn't. We already know that from one partial tax return that he gave us, he has money hidden in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and a Swiss bank account.” In other words, the presumption of innocence and due process be damned; “Dingy Harry” put the accusation out there, and now it is up to Romney to prove it isn’t true.

Now we have another wicked maniac with a gun, killing innocent Americans. After the shootings at the Sikh temple on Sunday in Wisconsin, liberal pundit Jay Bookman of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution declared that, “the tragedy in the Wisconsin case is compounded by the fact that its victims were gathering in a place of peaceful worship, and were apparently targeted because of their faith...Hate crimes that target groups have a much longer list of victims than do acts of blind, random violence such as that in Aurora.”

Bookman concluded that, “the Wisconsin shooting should serve as a caution to those in public life who stoop to targeting religious or ethnic groups in their irresponsible rhetoric, and who by doing so validate the anger, fear and resentment that apparently motivated this tragedy.”

Of course the implication here is that the shootings in Wisconsin are more tragic than those in Colorado because the Wisconsin gunman was acting out of “hate” (another term liberals have hijacked and turned into a “snarl-word”). Also, another implication, just as Obama made after the Gabby Giffords shootings, is that we (conservatives) need to tone down our “dangerous” rhetoric.

It is this kind of thinking that led to “hate-crime” legislation, which is nothing more than criminalizing thought and speech. What a dangerous slope this places us on, because, of course, many liberals would love nothing more than to criminalize words such as those spoken by Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy.

All too often, today’s liberals are engaging in willful ignorance or blatant disregard when it comes to our founding documents. I’m not just talking about your run-of-the-mill liberal neighbor with his “Hope and Change” bumper sticker, or even prominent liberal talking heads. When we have the highest ranking democrat in Congress, and a Mayor who was formerly the U.S. President’s Chief of Staff, along with other leading liberal politicians, so blinded by their “progressive” political agenda that the U.S. Constitution is an after-thought, where are we as a nation headed?!

Yet, no matter such egregious Constitutional errors, come November at least 40% of Americans will vote for the party behind this nonsense. There’s no way around it: America needs a constitutional revival (along with a spiritual one).

Copyright 2012, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com