The current Supreme Court majority is an existential threat to the Republic

Now that the Supreme Court has gotten the attention of the more "moderate" Democratic Party supporters, this is perhaps a good time to alert you more explosions from the US Supreme Court are coming in the next few days:

1. The Federalist Society's 20 plus year project to redraft the Constitution to fit anti-Federalist philosophies will be revealed in the upcoming decision on the ability of the EPA to regulate climate change issues. The language in the upcoming decision will reflect Gorsuch's and Kavanaugh's hatred of the New Deal and undermine activist administrative state jurisprudence that goes back to Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), and before that Alexander Hamilton's administrative law development in the first Treasury Department under George Washington. The anti-Federalist project also undermines and in fact goes against Madison's Federalist Paper no. 10, where Madison said the federal government's regulation of various economic interests "forms the principal task of modern legislation." See here from a blog post I wrote in January 2022 and here is another blog post I wrote from the time Trump nominated The Handmaiden to the US Supreme Court in the fall of 2020.

2. The Supreme Court is going to blow a big hole in protecting younger children from having to hear organized teacher or administrator led public prayer in school. Remember, we have always maintained the private right to say a prayer to oneself in school, or even organize a group of co-schoolmates in prayer at the playground or before a class starts. The idea behind the "school prayer" decision from the early 1960s was to end sectarian (one religion) organized prayer led by teachers or administrators. The upcoming decision involving a football coach who, after games, would gather players (they were "free" not to go, but...you know) at the fifty yard line to say prayers, will open the door to teachers "voluntarily" leading prayers. In smaller areas of our nation, one religion will be the only game in town.

Promoting an anti-Federalist philosophy at odds with the US Constitution's Framers, starting with hamstringing economic regulation, has been the true goal of the misnamed "Federalist Society," a right wing law group which Trump and McConnell directly consulted with to provide court nominees. Abortion, religion, and guns have been the Trojan horses to get a certain part of the working classes and rural folks to go along. The sad part to me is this has long been understood, but the way the Democratic Party functions is to fall defensively down the rabbit hole of culture wars, not even shout back when the majority of Americans agree with the so-called "culturally liberal" positions on the topics--and worse, ignoring the economic ramifications of these right wing judicial philosophies that strike at the heart of the US Constitution on behalf of those who would instead exult and promote private corporate power.

I have said this for awhile now: The US Supreme Court, as it is functioning, is an existential threat to the Republic.  

I would also add it may be a good time for more people to read early to mid 20th Century Yale Law School professor, Fred Rodell's Nine Men: A Political History of the US Supreme Court from 1790 to 1955 (1955). The book's only true fault is Rodell suffers from a Dunning School interpretation of the post-Civil War era, but even that does not mar Rodell's overall recognition that the US Supreme Court, for most of its existence, has politically functioned on behalf of economic and political elites, and, how, even when it breaks from its usual cultural conservatism into what seems to be cultural liberalism (most of which occurred after Rodell's book was published in 1955), the Supreme Court remains elitist, not radical in any true sense. That was, interestingly enough, then Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell's point in evaluating Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in his remarkable essay that formed the basis for what was then properly called "critical race theory."  

Finally, Congress may finally have to start reining in the US Supreme Court by passing legislation with a proviso that says neither the US Supreme Court nor any federal court will have jurisdiction to hear cases involving the legislation. That, and expanding the number of justice on the US Supreme Court. Both are proper under Article III of the US Constitution, and past Congresses, mostly in the 19th Century, have exercised both powers.

The Communist Horizon as an aesthetic

I know it's been a long while since I posted at the Blog. I have been on FB, where at least I have about 70 followers.  But, I posted this at FB just now and thought it belonged in a more accessible in the future location:

I do agree with Paul Campos here. We so easily idealize aspects of the past, and it can be a very dangerous thing--and nearly always reactionary. It is why I wrote the controversial ending to my alternative history novel. We should applaud our technological advances among those of us fortunate enough to be able to use those technological advances to protect and sustain us. Beyond that, the fight remains what it was for so long before us, which is creating a society where all may benefit in a relatively equal way. 

Though Campos would likely want to get off the train I am about to get on, his post helps me have a moment to say the following: 

The older I get, the more I understand the need for a Communist Horizon, as we simply cannot rely on Sky Gods any longer, and if we are, we are already in deep trouble. Michael Harrington, in perhaps his least read book, The Politics at God's Funeral (1985), tried to warn us we must live, theologically and politically, with a philosophical uncertainty if we are to try to move beyond killing each other.  It is not because we are substituting the Communist Horizon for the Sky Gods. It is because we need to have the Communist Horizon as a literary and political aesthetic, which by the word "aesthetic" I mean to recognize the following proposition: 

The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the more we as individuals are interdependent upon each other's good will and support. It is not to completely throw out competition or capitalism. That is itself a type of utopia which the 20th Century should have taught us can be mass deadly in its operation. It is, however, to have a softer aesthetic which allows for give-and-take in good faith, and to reform or recreate systems which avoid the also mass deadly consequences from an ideology extolling competition and capitalism to a level where moral and communal oriented judgments are demoted, distorted, or lost.