Peering Into the Mind of An Activist Federal Judge, Part One

It is really hard to say which groups are doing the greatest harm: Those attacking our rights, or those defending our rights. The problem comes from the very simple fact that neither side, not even in the most hallowed halls of legal erudition, has anything but a totally inadequate grasp of the nature and application of the concept of rights.

Take sections from this article, 9th Circuit Judge Sets Standard for Liberal Activism, by Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer. The article demonstrates magnificently the problems on both sides; and, if anyone thinks these concerns and arguments are trivial, then that person should be advised that these are the people abrogating our rights and destroying our Constitution--Left and Right!

(CNSNews.com) - The "right to privacy," which liberals maintain is implied in the U.S. Constitution and which was used by the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize abortion in 1973, apparently mattered little to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month when he ruled on a case involving parental rights.

On Nov. 2, Reinhardt wrote the Ninth Circuit Court's decision declaring that the "right to privacy" did not apply to parents who wanted to prevent public school officials in Palmdale, Calif., from giving their elementary school age children a sexually explicit survey. The ruling is but one of many that Reinhardt's critics say qualifies him as one of the most liberal and activist judges in the nation. "Parents have a right to inform their children when and as they wish on the subject of sex," Reinhardt wrote in Fields v. Palmdale School District. "They have no constitutional right, however, to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so."

We cover the issue on which the judge ruled in two articles on 6th Column Against Jihad as Rights Differences Between Children and Adults and The Right to Privacy. Judge Reinhardt's ruling, cited by the article, is totally wrong, but not as an issue of the very legitimate right to privacy. Obviously, this judge does not know rights.

The issue of rights is much more fundamental than "liberal versus conservative," since both are usually totally wrong on all accounts about rights. Fortunately for us, Judge Reinhardt speaks openly enough for us see just how the mind of an activist judge of the Left works:

"How can you tell a judge is a liberal?" Reinhardt asked law students during a speech at Georgetown University. "Liberal judges believe in a generous or expansive interpretation of the Bill of Rights. We believe that the meaning of the Constitution was not frozen in 1789; that, as society develops and evolves, its understanding of constitutional principles also grows.

"We believe that the Founding Fathers used broad general principles to describe our rights," Reinhardt continued, "because they were determined not to enact a narrow, rigid code that would bind and limit all future generations."

Regarding the Constitution, Reinhardt wrote to [SCOTUS Justice] Breyer that he should "Carry on the work of the court's great progressive thinkers.

"It was progressive justices with a view of the Constitution as a living, breathing document who gave full measure to that instrument," Reinhardt wrote, "not the legal technocrats, not those whose view of the Constitution was frozen as of 1789.

"When lawyers and judges adhere too rigidly to legal rules," according to Reinhardt, "they lose sight of the broader purposes for which those rules were created: to do justice."

(Emphases mine)

Before going any further, we must dissect just what Judge Reinhardt is telling us; he tells just how the mind of a Leftist judge works. Let's break down those phrases in bold type which the article provided.

• "Believe." This may seem innocent enough. After all, don't people use this word commonly? This is true, but this man of legal precision refers to a serious epistemological error on the Left, one which common usage may or may not mean. Leftists try to think with emotions instead of reason. They live in a mental world of feelings, wishes, desires, and the like, and they give their core feelings a pseudo-credibility of convictions by calling them "beliefs" or something similar. An emotion-dominated set of convictions by-passes something Leftists hate, namely objectivity. Objectivity requires that words mean something particular and that thinking be clear and logical. Feeling-based pseudo-cognition allows one to act on out-of-focus mental contents which boil down to going with what one likes or what one dislikes. Herd animal pseudo-thinking with feelings makes Leftists share pretty much the same likes and dislikes among themselves. That is one reason why most if not all Leftists seem to have come from the same mold.


• "A generous or expansive interpretation of the Bill of Rights" implements the foregoing "beliefs." What this phrase boils down to is a license by the Left to undercut the precision and crystal clear intent of those who wrote the Constitution to sabotage, subvert, and literally destroy the Constitution. Sections are literally "interpreted away" by refusal to adhere to objective standards.


• "Court's great progressive thinkers" and "progressive justices" do not refer to the Progressive Era in the early part of the 20th century. "Progressive" is a mask term, meant to hide the real meaning: "Socialism." Socialism does not sell in America, and it has been a dismal failure in every instance in human history. That fact does not stop the feeling Left, whose thinking is sufficiently abnormal so that they overlook inconvenient facts in order to stay with their "beliefs," i.e., their feelings. They want socialism, and they hate capitalism. If they told the truth, assuming they recognized it, about their desires and thinking, they would be rejected by vast numbers of Americans, so they use code words, like "progressive." Capitalism is based on and fully recognizes the Rights of Man; socialism subordinates the Rights of Man to the authoritarian state in order to control people. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) loves to refer to herself and her ilk sanctimoniously as "progressives." What she means is what they all mean: they want to control you.


• "Living, breathing document" refers to the Left view of the Constitution, meaning that it is a rubbery document that can be stretched to mean anything they want. When the Left use this term, they confess their epistemological error, which they seem completely unaware of. Their use of these terms refer to words (concepts) as having no objective (contextual) meaning, matching the vagueness of the contents of their thinking. In fact, words do mean something, something in particular, and without that degree of objectivity, no one would be able to communicate anything. Leftists want to cheat reality and get away with it, and this statement reflects their desires and intentions well. A "living, breathing document" would mean that the document would mean nothing in particular, which means that it would mean absolutely nothing. Can there be any doubt that Leftists want and need this meaning in order to be able to control people? Well, if there is any doubt left, try the following analogy on for size; it makes "living and breathing" very clear. It comes from Dr. Walter Williams, the brilliant free market economist: Dr. Williams asks if you would like to play poker with him, using "living
  rules." That makes it all very clear, even to the Left. The cardinal point to remember is that PRINCIPLES DO NOT CHANGE with time or changing circumstances. By this, we mean moral and political principles. The Constitution is a document of principles, and these principles "live" because they apply today just as well as they did in 1789. That is the nature of principles. Now, you can see what the Left want to get away with.


• "To do justice." Justice requires absolutely objective evaluation of all obtainable facts measured against existing laws. This ethical and legal virtue requires holding reality and truth sacred, and keeping context scrupulously, to render the best judgement for or against any person or issue. When Leftists speak of "justice," they mean something entirely different, so different that is no longer justice. By "justice," they mean: following an agenda. This is subjectivity, not objectivity. Thus, Leftists come up with bastard terms such as "social justice," which means to take from the haves by force to redistribute in ways Leftists wish, then to call it "concern for the poor." In the rubber language of the Left, "justice" in its real meaning is something to escape from, to distort it into what it is not. Thus, we read of phenomena such as the Vermont judge who no longer "believes in punishment," so he sentenced a multiple offending child rapist to 60 days in jail.

Judge Reinhardt tells us that he is a proud member of the Left, thus is a total judicial subjectivist. He rules by feeling and wish, i.e., by whim. He rejects objective reality in favor of a reality conforming to his wishes, and he rejects all the objectivity of the Constitution. In fact, he clearly rejects the Constitution.

He does what he does and calls it "doing justice." He may as well have said that he was "doing lunch." This man holds his position for life, and he is an arch-typical representative of the Leftist activist judge.

We must save our justice system.

(To be continued...)