Attack on the Court, Pt. 1

I grew up in post-WW II America and was lucky.

My father survived combat in the Pacific and from age 3 to 18 my life was unaffected by poverty or Muslim persecution experienced by my Armenian grandparents. Two of my mother’s brothers were Deacons in our Missouri Synod Lutheran Church where I attended grades 1-8 in the parish school.

Changes in American culture were visible, however, in San Francisco’s Haight-Asbury and New York City’s Greenwich Village and in celebratory events like Woodstock (1969).

Fifty-three years later, all large American cities are “value-free zones.” Almost all colleges and universities, Protestant churches and Catholic dioceses are dominated by “progressives.”

Drug use and sexual intercourse have become “recreational” and how we live has become a “lifestyle.”

Though “Judicial Review” of the Congress of the United States was rejected by the framers of the Constitution, the Judicial Power was increased by Mr. Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison and by post-Civil War Amendments that were interpreted as imposing protections in the Bill of Rights on the State. Before the 14^th Amendment, the Bill of Rights were protections solely from actions by the National government.

Today American politics is roiled by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States reversing Roe v. Wade (1973). We will soon see whether and how attempts to constrain the Judicial Power become law and whether a consequence is transformation of American representative government into an Empire.

That is the subject of Rise and Fall of the American Empire.