🏳️‍🌈Best Pride Month Ever

In 279 BC, at the Battle of Asculum, King Pyrrhus of Epirus beat the Roman Republican armies.  Pyrrhus poured his forces into the battle against the Roman might, overwhelmed them, and crushed them.  Pyrrhus lost most of his troops, many of his top generals, and several friends.  But he won the day.  Unfortunately for Pyrrhus, Rome had reserve forces.  Pyrrhus had none.

“If I achieve such a victory again, I shall return to Epirus without any soldier,” Pyrrhus reportedly said.  Because of the devastating casualty toll, Pyrrhus had to withdraw against the Romans despite his victory.  All of his territorial gains would be taken by the Romans.  To this day, we remember Pyrrhus’s defeat through victory as a Pyrrhic victory.

The Supreme Court, on the last day of Pride Month, gave Joe Biden just such a victory.  In Biden v. Texas, the President went all the way to the Supreme Court seeking the power to end the “Return to Mexico” policy of the Trump Administration.  That policy required all illegal aliens seeking to cross into the United States return to Mexico to await processing.

Even after the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade a week ago, immigration remains a more important issue to voters.  The Court handed Biden his Pyrrhic victory.  Biden can end Trump’s policy and allow illegal aliens to stay in the United States.  The victory comes as a huge summer wave of illegal aliens is headed north to our Southern Border.  Now Joe Biden has an immigration crisis on his hands and Republicans can legitimately say the President fought all the way to the Supreme Court to make the crisis happen and have tax payers pay for it.

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You progressives’ problem is not that you think democracy is dying but that you now have to engage in it instead of short circuiting it with judges.

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The 2021-2022 term of the Supreme Court really made this the best Pride Month ever.  In the course of a few weeks in June, the Supreme Court has restored democracy, expanded gun rights, and expanded religious liberty in ways few thought possible.

For democracy, the Court returned the abortion fight to the states.  It never should have been in the Supreme Court.  Unlike gun rights, which can be found in the constitution, the document is silent on abortion.  That means it should have been a state issue.  But in 1973, seven life tenured justices chose to pre-empt democratic conversations and debate and read abortion into the constitution.  Over forty-nine years, the pro-life movement, playing by the rules of American politics, worked within democratic institutions to reshape the Supreme Court and ultimately won.  Though the press will never credit it as such, the American pro-life movement is one of the greatest demonstrations of democracy in history.

Additionally, for democracy, the Supreme Court ruled the Environmental Protection Agency cannot make regulations on climate change without Congress giving it that power.  For the past hundred years, Congress has passed the buck to federal agencies to legislate so Congress could avoid having to make difficult decisions.  The Supreme Court ruled Congress cannot pass the buck to unelected bureaucrats without passing clear laws.  Progressives hate the ruling, but it will force Congress to actually legislate instead of abdicate responsibility.

On guns, the Court reaffirmed the second amendment right to keep and bear arms and denied states the subjective power to deny concealed carry permits.  Only six states were affected.  Those states allowed judges or others to subjectively decide if someone could get a carry permit.  California’s law, for example, allows stated political beliefs to be taken into account. All the other states have objective requirements to get a carry permit, some including gun safety classes.  That will now be the law in all fifty states.

Lastly, the Court finally got rid of Lemon v. Kurtzman and the so called “lemon test,” which essentially required government to default into forced secularism.  The Court ruled that if states cover the costs of private education, the state cannot discriminate against religious schools.  The Court also ruled public employees can express their religion publicly.  Both protect religious liberty.

This was a major year for the Supreme Court and its decisions these last few weeks have made this the best Pride Month ever.

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Check Your Privilege, Progressives

Now, a word please. I was a bit fired up and passionate on Twitter yesterday so I will be more diplomatic here.

Those of you who are screaming about the Supreme Court this week can, in your words, check your privilege.

Conservatives have spent over fifty years watching the Supreme Court give you everything you demanded, including a novel right to kill children unheard of in American jurisprudence until 1973. When those of us on the right operated through the nation’s democratic and republican institutions and the elected bodies of our nation, we saw the Supreme Court repeatedly snatch those wins away from us for you.

We operated by the rules and you’d run to the Supreme Court and get them to stop us. Along the way, you let your persuasion skills atrophy.

Meanwhile, we had to refine our arguments to persuade different groups of people to give us power via elections so we could spend fifty years altering the composition of the Supreme Court by altering the compositions of various legislative bodies and presidencies. We did it patiently and repeatedly through several setbacks.

You people have been able to rub your SCOTUS genie and get court imposed wins that no one could challenge democratically and now you can’t do that anymore. We’ve worked democratically to make sure of it. Now, to win again, you’re going to have to do what we did — change hearts and minds in places as varied as Alabama and Iowa. Why? Because we are a republic and states matter, not just people. We have fifty states and 350 million people. Your coalitions of angry rich white people on MSNBC won’t work anymore.

You can’t rely on coastal elites and the Ivy League anymore either.

It took our side forty-nine years to get here. So stop your bitching and start persuading voters. You’ve spent this entire time only having to persuade five black robed, life tenured, mostly male justices to have your way. Spare me your outrage about the death of democracy.

You progressives’ problem is not that you think democracy is dying but that you now have to engage in it instead of short circuiting it with judges.