The founding fathers of the United States wisely set in place a system of checks and balances of government operation that consists of the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches to protect the foundation of democracy. Since the early 1950s, however, there have been perfidious factions that have systematically chipped away at these safeguards under the guise of some divine directive.
By coincidence there has, in this same time period, been an alarming increase in what can only be termed religious hucksterism in the United States, and this can be traced directly to the advent of television technology. (See also May 9, 2009 blog God’s Political Addiction.) Affordable television sets in the early 1950s brought the means for enterprising religionists to tap into a lucrative source of self-promotion, and televangelism was born. Unfortunately, the pulpit entrepreneurs can only offer their version of ancient mystics’ interpretations of man’s place in the scheme of things, which did not then and do not now translate as ultimate truth.
In addition, no organized religion has ever been founded or conducted on democratic principles; they are always profoundly authoritative, martially oriented, swamped by self-righteousness, and heavily seeped with discrimination. The promised “reward” that they offer for the “chosen” or “saved” is always pictured as a “kingdon”—which supports their code of belief that there is no god-given right to self-rule. Man’s brain, they seem to assume, was not intended by whatever power that caused it to evolve to be used for responsible self supervision. By their calculations man is meant only to scrounge in a subservient state and god will provide man with enlightened overseers—meaning themselves.
This brings us, in a very round-about way, to the United States Supreme Court and the six justices named by the court by Republican presidents through heavy behind-the-scenes evangelical manipulation. Thus the placement of these justices became a highly questionable factor in the 2000 US national election when the court’s alleged nonpartisan reputation became compromised with an agreement to hear disputes over suspicious election tallying—not just one intrusion into majority choice but two times–at Republican candidate Bush’s request. Of course there could be no higher appeal in the question of fairness of the court’s interference: it was only coincidental that three of the justices were appointed by H. G. Bush or that three others had been appointed by Reagan and another appointed by Ford.
True democratic principles collapsed under the court’s ideological interference in the presidential vote recounts. Glaringly obvious in the court’s suspension of hand recounts of thousands of questionable ballots was the fact that the Supreme Court failed miserably as the nation’s nonpartisan guardian of the nation’s laws.
After the Supreme Court’s interference with the vote counting in 2000 there was, according to the Washington Post and ABC News, a sixty-three percent loss of confidence in the Supreme Court. The religious right, however, has steadily gained strength from this court’s ideological leaning, and evangelical pressure can now, with fair ease, taint issues presented to this court on items such as abortion, prayer in schools, marriage definitions, creationism, etc.
The founding fathers must be spinning…
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