Stephen Breyer wants to kill the Constitution
Stephen Breyer, when on the Supreme Court, was a “living Constitution” advocate. The letter of the Constitution, the clear historic record and Founder’s intent, meant little to him. He was a reliable vote for “equity,” not equality, long before the term came into common usage. He has carried his anti-liberty/equality values into retirement:
Graphic: X Screenshot
In a recent interview with Politico, former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer claimed that the current conservative majority on the court will give the U.S. a Constitution that “no one wants.”
Breyer spoke to the media outlet ahead of the release of his new book, titled, “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism.” In it, the former liberal justice spent time criticizing the interpretations his former conservative colleagues have been making in landmark Supreme Court cases.
Breyer’s jurisprudence was of the kind that would give more and extra-constitutional rights to favored victim groups, his definition of “Pragmatism.” Black Americans were, during Breyers tenure, the recipients of that thinking in a variety of affirmative action preferences over merit. But because equity is the opposite of equal justice for all, because Breyer focused on equitable outcomes rather than equal opportunity, and in so doing ignored the Constitution, black Americans now find themselves, to their dismay, no longer the left’s favored victim group.
The journalist asked Breyer about his point in the book warning about “originalism,” noting that Breyer has called this lens of interpretation “inherently ‘regressive,’” writing that it “will not permit modern solutions to modern problems” as well as consigning “us to a set of views and values that predominated during a period when many groups of people today were not equal citizens.”
Breyer ignores history, damning the Founders for not giving slaves and women full rights. He judges the conventions of the past rather than eternal principles. Many of the founders, even those that held slaves, understood legislating their immediate liberty would ensure the Constitution would not be ratified. The Constitution they established, followed by the Bill of Rights, laid the groundwork for the equality of everyone under the law, which inevitably followed. Like a true leftist, Breyer interprets backward:
Later in the interview, Breyer described what could result from this originalist interpretation of the Constitution over time, stating it “will move the interpretation of statutes away from the direction of trying to help people,” and “will move the law away from the direction of trying to produce a society where 340 or 330 or 320 million people of every race, every religion, every point of view, can live together more peacefully and productively.”
The Founders, among the most intelligent, erudite and insightful men of any age, knew human nature and wrote our Constitution with a mechanism for amendment, but a purposely difficult mechanism so that it would not be amended for “light and transient” reasons, as they wrote. They knew men like Breyer and knew there would be more, men who would ignore, change or interpret the Constitution to achieve temporary, transient aims.
Calvin Coollidge, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the inspiration for the Constitution, wrote:
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Breyer is dangerously wrong. All that’s necessary for Americans to live peacefully and productively is for all to willingly obey the Constitution and the rule of law, to thereby embrace equality, never equity, and equal opportunity and merit over race and gender. Breyer wants judicial tyranny unrestrained by the Constitution, a fast way around the amendment process, law today that will, without bedrock principles, be overturned to another’s benefit tomorrow. America is fortunate indeed he is no longer on the Supreme Court.
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.