krebscycle

The Republican partisans on the Supreme Court just reminded us that like every other nation in the history of nations, the United States is ruled by power not what is written on pieces of paper. That power is a combination of votes and elected and appointed offices, money, protests, civil disobedience, public opinion, and ultimately violence. The Supreme Court’s Dredd Scott decision was overturned by killing a whole lot of Confederates, not by legal scholars.  Supreme Court decisions that the Constitution prohibited states from limiting working hours were defeated by the combination of union power and the electoral success of the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt. The words of the Constitution didn’t change, massive violent strikes and sweeping electoral victories changed the the power to interpret those words.

The text of the Constitution and the intent of its drafters  is obviously and totally incompatible with the dishonest claims made by five Supreme Court Judges. The 15th amendment specifically gives Congress, not the Courts, the authority to legislate to protect the right to vote. It was specifically intended to over-ride state governments. 

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Clear as a bell. And yet, the Felonious Five have  the power to ignore that and to give another assist to Republican voter suppression. They have that power because Ronald Reagan and G HW Bush won earlier elections and the resulting GOP Court majority installed GW Bush in another exercise of raw power and he put two more extreme partisans on the Court. And all through this, we have been urged by “well meaning idealists”, libertarians, and privileged cynics to not worry about it, to avoid narrow partisanship, to “hold Democrats to account”,  to refuse to give in to “blackmail” about what Republican judges would do, to withhold our votes on any excuse,  to “stand with Rand”, to panic whenever a strong Democrat dares to exercise any power, and to above all respect the “rule of law” and the role of precedent. 

Nearly 2500 years ago, the Greek Historian Thucydides wrote this description of what the Athenian Army sent to the citizens of a small city they were about to destroy:

“For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses [about why we are right] and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying […] that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

Law only operates as a way of fairly mediating disputes when the the disputes are "between equals in power”. Otherwise it’s just a  “specious pretense” of the powerful for doing what they want to the weak.

The Felonious Five have raised a challenge. Will the people be strong enough to overcome voter suppression by any means necessary or will they fold?