Is it so hard to stay in your own corner?

Right now I'm pissed at almost everybody in the god damned government because they can't lay the fuck off. Seriously.

Here's the deal. There are activist judges out there, people who are legislating from the bench. Even if their decisions are morally right and even in line with things I stand for; free speech, smaller government, a morally proper form of equal rights, etc.; they're still doing it the wrong way. Government doesn't work when parts of the government assume authority they do not have.

Further, we have sort of a standoff with respect to the courts versus the executive and legislative branches. When the courts make a ruling, there is the first recourse of appeal, but appeals may be denied arbitrarily, leaving legislators with no choices other than constitutional amendments or relegislation; the former being notoriously difficult in the federal legislative branch, while further legislation can always be struck down again.

However, all of the screaming and crying in the world about "activist judges" does not justify irresponsible legislature and political penis-waving with respect to amendments and legislature. Take in particular the Federal Marriage Amendment. Even its supporters know they are sending it to die. It is not likely to even pass the House, who has reliably passed the flag burning amendment (another irresponsible amendment to the Constitution; or must I remind you that there is only one amendment on the books which abridges the rights of the people, and that it has been repealed?) Why then would our president and several of our congressmen--who are so pressed with bigger issues, like reigning in excessive spending or "winning" the war on terror (which at this point we have already lost, reigned in by a government responding to fear and putting us deeper and deeper into debt over it)--be so intent on sending this amendment to die?

I cannot fathom any reason other than campaign rallying. They are using it as a beacon to unite neo-cons under the Republican Voting Banner. If we take a step back though, we see that neo-cons traditionally stand for things which were not part of the Republican party's credo. Republicans traditionally stood for smaller government--less industrial regulation, lighter gun restrictions, and less government interference in general.

Neo-cons, however, are more concerned with pressing their religious agenda into the home and into the rest of the nation, in the form of Concerned Parenting Organizations who seek to introduce legislature to regulate what mass media can and cannot publish, in the form of federal marriage amendments which seek to restrict the ability of the individual states to choose who they will and will not recognize marriage between, in the form of a crusade against the ability of women to govern their own body, in the form of a war on drugs which costs more lives and money than it saves, and in the form of a great crusade in the Middle East.

We have a lot of convenient targets in this country. Plenty of people poorly-represented enough to make good scapegoats, and well-represented enough to make a ruckus when targeted. Consider that gay rights groups are some of the most vocal minority representation groups in America. They play right into a perfect political trap; if they don't speak up, the government can walk all over them. If they do, though, they form an ideal distraction for an administration fraught with failures and a rallying point to pull the bigot vote.

Do not misread me. Not all Republicans are neo-cons, and not even all neo-cons are closed-minded bigots, but the fact is that the agenda that the administration and those actively supporting it are playing to is one which seeks to encroach upon the ability of the people to live as they see fit, and introduce restrictions onto activities which are not violent, which are not threatening to the American way of life, and which produce no viable reason for imposing these measures.

Further, it is undeniable that the reasoning behind this is to distract attention from their other power-grabs. The NSA scandal was tearing, but outrage can only focus so many ways. People can only attend so many protests and make so much noise, and if the noise is split in enough directions, it becomes confused and garbled and conflicting, even as all the voices are screaming for relief from the same agent.

It is within the rights of the federal government to introduce a federal marriage amendment. It is blatantly irresponsible to do so though, especially for the reasons the government has. Since 2001, there has been an ongoing movement by almost every single man and woman in Congress, and in the White House, to put more and more power in the hands of the federal government, be it a carte blanche to spy on our own citizens or the ability to stop people from saying 'fuck' on TV.

Much of this has been a response to moronic judges who have overstepped their authority in ruling things to be void, has played right into the Republican party's hands in generating issues with which to distract the American people. That gay marriage and straight marriage should be equally acceptable in the eyes of the law is unquestionable, but the manner in which it was provided for in some states was utterly reprehensible, and the unconscionable conduct in flagrant violation of the due process of the law committed by judges acting outside of their authority has provoked a grand rebellion amongst the people, an equally irresponsible act of outrage, even as the outrage itself is understandable and even cause for celebration.

There's a lot of material here. I had a good rant about wanting to hit Antonin Scalia for being a smarmy bastard to the press and undermining the value to the people of his decisions by being a shit in his public face, but I'll save it for later.

For right now, chew on this. The judiciary is taking a morally upstanding position in an uncondonable way against an Executive and a Legislature who are taking uncondonable positions in a procedurally upstanding way.

How did it happen that our government is populated with well-intentioned devils and ill-intentioned angels?

--A. J. Libertarian