Beware The Fascists

In 1987, when his terrible disease had already damaged his mind, then-President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to a vacancy on the US Supreme Court. It was a disastrous decision, one decreed entirely by political ideology, and which led to one of the most bruising and ultimately unsuccessful nomination battles in US history. The Judiciary Committee voted Bork down, followed in turn by the full Senate.

Bitterly disappointed, Bork left the bench and took up a lucrative career with the American Enterprise Institute -- a group that believes the people should be governed by the corporations and the weight of private property not by the will of the people. Today he is still writing his bigoted rubbish.

In the current edition of "First Things", Bork has an essay on the dangers to society caused by people having the freedom to think what they want. Bork doesn't like freedom of thought. He hates what he calls "the anarchical spirit of extreme personal and group autonomy that is the driving force behind much of our cultural degradation." In particular, he actively campaigns against any Court -- the Supremes, especially -- who profess to give people choices. He believes it is entirely wrong to suggest, as the Supreme Court has on a number of occasions, that

"[a]t the heart of liberty [protected by the Constitution] is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

Clearly Bork believes that people like him should make the rules and that everyone else should follow slavishly (a deliberate choice of phrase). This is a man who believes that giving women rights over their own bodies is "judicial incontinence", that no individual has the right to be a "sovereign nation" with their own thoughts and capabilities, that same-sex marriages will lead inevitably to a rise in crime, drug usage and unstable relationships, and that personal freedom of thought is a "catastrophe."

Why am I talking today about a has-been bigot like Bork? Because I believe the only real concern in the US Presidential election this year is who will control the US Supreme Court. If Bush is re-elected we will certainly see a more Bork-like court for a generation or more, a court that will throw out legal protections for womens' rights and put the rights of property above the rights of individuals. Kerry won't do much better in most policy areas than Bush, but at least he won't try to destroy two generations of judicial advances.