“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” —Thomas Jefferson (1809)

In October 2016, in “How Will You Vote?” I wrote, “The Patriot Post’s mission to advance American Liberty is timeless — not tied to any political cycle or candidate.”

In answer to that title question, I wrote: “I answered the same way I have responded to that question in every quadrennial election since I cast my first presidential vote: ‘I vote for our Constitution — meaning the candidate who I believe will honor his oath ”to support and defend“ it, and thus, in particular, will nominate constitutionally constructionist judges to our Supreme Court who will, likewise, abide by their oaths. My vote will be for the candidate who will defend American Liberty against relentless assault by the socialist Democrat Party — and its statist leaders who are, at their core, devoted to central government power and tyranny.” I added emphatically, “I will vote for Donald Trump.”

Despite the contentious division Trump had created among Republican constituencies, and the Trump Derangement Syndrome that would follow, anyone — ANYONE — who did not vote for Trump in effect voted for Hillary Clinton. If your vote didn’t offset a vote for Clinton, that counted as a vote for Clinton.

That being said, there were three SCOTUS decisions last week — one on First Amendment religious freedom, one on the affirmation of Second Amendment freedom, and one on restoring protection for the most vulnerable and precious among us, babies before birth.

For those decisions, we owe a debt of gratitude to Sen. Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump, who paved the path to these decisions.

McConnell stood fast in 2016, refusing to allow Barack Obama’s leftist nominee, Merrick Garland, to go forward. With Garland now Joe Biden’s attorney general, we get a clear picture of how unqualified he was as a jurist.

For his part, Trump, as promised, nominated three of the nine Supreme Court members, which decisively moved the Court toward those who correctly advocate constitutional Rule of Law versus those who arrogantly and errantly advocate for the rule of men.

On the first decision, as Doug Andrews noted, “The High Court ruled in favor of religious freedom and school choice.” In a case that challenged the State of Maine from withholding funds from schools with religious curriculums, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “[The state] requires rural communities without public secondary schools to either sign contracts with nearby public schools or to pay tuition at a private school chosen by parents that is a 'nonsectarian school in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.’” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that while “a state need not subsidize private education,” “once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

I met with faith-based school leaders a day later, and they indicated the decision could have far-reaching implications for funding of private and charter schools nationwide.

The second decision was a significant win in a case against the State of New York, which, amid the Democrat-induced surge in violence nationwide, had grossly suppressive restrictions on the issuance of right-to-carry permits for its residents. These restrictions were clearly an infringement on the plain language of Amendment II of the U.S. Constitution: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Nate Jackson outlined the question before the Court: “At issue … was New York’s ‘may issue’ concealed carry permit regime, under which authorities could deny an application for a permit simply because they didn’t think the applicant showed sufficient cause. Instead, should New York follow the lead of 43 other states with ‘shall issue’ permits?”

Thanks to the constructionist majority, he noted: “Yes, the Court concluded, which will obviously have implications not only in New York but in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia as well. A combined one-quarter of Americans live under such Second Amendment-restricting regimes.”

As Justice Clarence Thomas noted for the majority, “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’”

Justice Thomas concluded that New York’s “authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability.” He noted further: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense. … The Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”

Predictably, Biden responded: “This ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all. I call on Americans across the country to make their voices heard on gun safety. Lives are on the line.” Right on cue, Kamala Harris regurgitated the “common sense and the Constitution” canard.

It was no small irony that on the same day as the SCOTUS 2A decision, the Demo-controlled Senate passed its “compromise bill,” the so-called Safer Communities Act, which was promptly passed by the House and signed by Biden.

Despite the support from some Republicans, this legislation will do little if anything to reduce murder and violent crime.

While the provision of additional mental health funding and security resources for schools and more stringent background checks for gun purchasers under age 21 sounds good, the funding incentives for states to adopt so-called “red flag” laws and closing the “boyfriend loophole” are both plagued with staggering affronts to civil liberties and due process. Red flag laws can be easily abused by local authorities and vindictive individuals. And while those who are convicted of felony charges are rightly prohibited from owning weapons, the “boyfriend loophole” will extend Bill Clinton’s enactment of misdemeanor charges as a disqualifying factor for purchasing a firearm to anyone in a relationship convicted of some form of threat. In no case should a misdemeanor charge exclude an individual from owning a firearm.

Those last two provisions will face enormous legal hurdles when tested in the courts, and that is the calculus of Republicans who supported it.

To be clear, there were 21,000 murders last year, almost half of which were black on black or hispanic. For the record, 96% of all mass shootings since records were first maintained in 1950 occurred in so-called “gun-free zones.” In other words, people were killed in places where the victims were most likely unable to defend themselves. And 90% of those firearms were obtained illegally.

Fact is, only law-abiding citizens abide by laws, and making lawful citizens helpless clearly does not make outlaws harmless.

(A note on media coverage of the SCOTUS 2A ruling: Even The Wall Street Journal is subject to MSM echo chamber group think. It noted, “The 6-3 decision in the case … marks the widest expansion of gun rights since 2010, when the court applied nationwide a 2008 ruling establishing an individual right of armed self-defense within the home.” Rights didn’t “expand,” and neither has the Court “established” any gun rights. It merely affirmed preexisting rights. This is precisely why one of our Patriot Post team strengths is that our grassroots publication and editors reside far outside the New York/Beltway media recycling cesspool.)

And last but certainly not least, the big win for the most innocent among us — children before birth.

The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, returning the issue of abortion to the states, where in many cases it will end up as a ballot measure.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” noted Justice Samuel Alito writing for the majority — ending almost 50 years of Court-legalized infanticide. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito concluded, along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. He continued: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives… The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision… Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Roe v. Wade was the infamous case in which Norma McCorvey was used as a plaintiff by leftists to overturn laws restricting abortion in Texas. A decision upholding Texas law was ultimately overturned on appeal by the Supreme Court, which found a heretofore unprecedented “right to privacy” in the so-called “due process clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment, a right that SCOTUS claimed entitled a mother to end the life of her baby before birth. Simultaneous with Roe v. Wade, in Doe v. Bolton, using the plaintiff Sandra Cano, the Supremes determined that any complaint could be used as grounds for requesting an abortion.

Since both decisions, McCorvey and Cano have recanted their testimonies. McCorvey said plainly: “I think abortion’s wrong. I think what I did with Roe v. Wade was wrong.” Cano declared: “Using my name and life, Doe v. Bolton falsely created the health exception that led to abortion on demand and partial birth abortion. … My name, life, and identity have been stolen and put on this case without my knowledge and against my wishes. One of the Justices of the Supreme Court said during oral argument in my case ‘What does it matter if she is real or not?’ Well, I am real and it does matter.”

It is estimated that since 1973, there have been almost 65 million abortions – an act which Demos prefer to euphemistically refer to as “family planning "and "reproductive rights.”

Biden protested: “The most important thing…we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law. And the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that. If the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights…we provide an exception to this…an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court [Dobbs] decision.”

Fifteen years ago, the same Joe Biden when he was much more lucid, declared: “I do not view abortion as a choice and a right; I think it’s always a tragedy. And I think that it should be rare and safe. And I think we should be focusing on how to LIMIT the number of abortions…”

That won’t get anywhere but it gives his leftist Demos a chance to look like they tried to do something ahead of the midterms.

For the record, there were plenty of distinguished legal scholars and influencers on the Left who objected to the sweeping Roe decision.

Harvard’s Lawrence Tribe: “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”

Yale’s John Hart Ely: “[Roe] is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure.”

WaPo’s leftist scribe Richard Cohen: “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision — the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution — strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy.”

Even leftist jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed: “Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the court… Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”

To that end, recall that in the final 2016 presidential debate, Hillary Clinton declared, “I strongly support Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a constitutional right to a woman to make decisions about her healthcare.” Actually, no. The 1973 decision created a right to abortion out of thin air — there was and remains no constitutional right to take the life of babies before birth.

This week, Clinton asserted, “Most Americans believe the decision to have a child is one of the most sacred decisions there is, and that such decisions should remain between patients and their doctors.” Indeed, it is as sacred as life itself, and the time for that decision is when a father and mother conceive a child.

Notably, just before her death, Ginsburg observed, “At the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” She was referencing the fact that the Roe decision was seeded 50 years earlier by Planned Parenthood’s racist founder Margaret Sanger as a means to stop the growth of “unwanted” ethnic breeds. Sanger characterized the poor as “human weeds, reckless breeders, spawning … human beings who never should have been born.”

Of the decision, George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley affirmed: “People talk about Roe v Wade as if it’s an inviolate decision. … Roe wasn’t an inviolate decision, it wasn’t widely accepted in terms of its analysis. … [The decision to overturn Roe] was not that abortion should be unlawful, but who should make that decision.” In other words, turn it back to the states and to the people.

One thing that has not been addressed in regard to how the states will handle regulating abortion, is the fact that more than half of abortions are the result of the prescription medication Mifepristone, a series of pills that can be ordered by mail, taken to terminate a pregnancy.

Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, declared he will protect the interstate trafficking of these drugs, saying, “States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.” Despite FDA’s “expert judgment,” the abortion pill is dangerous.

Of course, the two highest-profile pretend Catholics in the nation, Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, objected to any restrictions on killing children before birth. Nate Jackson covered their unbridled hypocritical responses. My activism in the pro-life movement was stewarded thirty years ago by genuine Catholics – Biden and Pelosi are a blight upon the church.

There will be substantial political fallout from the Roe decision, and that will include midterm challenges and renewed calls for Biden to pack the Court. Democrat-controlled states will double down on advocating abortion. But Republicans should hang around their necks the most repulsive abortions, like killing children partially born, and make sure voters across the nation know what these leftist politicians are actually advocating.

The Left will have a difficult time emerging from the fact that, as noted in the Wall Street Journal, “The inability to draw a line between the defense of a right to abortion and the celebration of its practice poisons the pro-choice message.”

Get ready for the Demo Party haters to provoke and support more violence. Roe will be their 2022 midterm version of their 2020 “systemic racism” lie, and they are going to release their rage dogs again. Attacks on crisis pregnancy centers will ramp up now that two University of Georgia professors have published the addresses of those centers nationwide, referring to them as “fake women’s health centers.”

There are already plenty of social media examples of pathological decompensation by some post-aborted women (here and here). Affirming life is an abrupt challenge to their rationale for taking the life of their unborn child, and they don’t know how to process the deep pain of that decision other than through emotionally incontinent outbursts.

Some of that incontinence is the result of myths about what this ruling will and won’t do.

Post aborted women fall into four main categories: Those who are too dullard to articulate any meaningful position on abortion; those whose advocacy for abortion insulates them emotionally from the reality of the fact they took their child’s life, women who are experiencing remorse but maintain their secret; and finally bold women who have acknowledged the life lost, and are reconciling the pain and suffering from making that choice.

Two resources for healing are the National Memorial for the Unborn, a place of encouragement for women and men irrevocably scarred by abortion, and “Empty Arms,” a book with 60 life-giving stories of hope and healing after abortion.

And for organizations ramping up services to women with unplanned “crisis” pregnancies, here is the profile of an average woman seeking abortion: She is an unmarried low-income mother of at least one other child in her late 20s, she is in the first six weeks of pregnancy and considering her first abortion, and, of course, lives in a Democrat-controlled urban area or state.

Finally, mark my words, because the Demos’ cadres of haters have promoted violence against jurists, never in our history have members of the Supreme Court been more vulnerable to threats of assassination, as populist calls for such violence grows on social media platforms that have suddenly become tolerant of those promoting violence. It is worth noting here that almost 45% of leftist young men think political violence is an acceptable means of achieving their political agenda.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh has already been targeted. Now Justice Alito who authored the Roe opinion, and Justice Thomas who wrote a concurring opinion that SCOTUS should review same sex “marriage” and the awarding of special rights affirming gender confusion, will be high profile targets.

Of course if a sitting Justice was murdered, Biden would deflect blame and call it a “gun problem.”

Update There was another significant case in support of religious Liberty. SCOTUS ruled in favor of the coach who prayed on the field.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776