How is it that the nation has come to expect that Democrats, with plenty of help from their equally contemptuous allies in media and academia, will attempt to savage Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett?

Two reasons. First, they despise the idea that Barrett is a “constitutionalist,” as in someone who takes the original meaning and text of the document — every word of which was fiercely debated — seriously. In other words, Barrett will decide case law based on what the Constitution says. This stands in stark contrast to the liberal wing of the Court for whom the phrase “living Constitution” is the basis of “penumbras” that allow them to discover previously undiscovered meanings in the document. Meanings that almost invariably advance the leftist agenda.

Moreover, in the mold of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, left-wing members of SCOTUS have also taken it upon themselves to use foreign and international law sources for constitutional interpretation. Ginsburg herself defended the practice in a 2010 speech where she insisted that America’s judicial system “will be the poorer, I have urged, if we do not both share our experience with, and learn from, legal systems with values and a commitment to democracy similar to our own.”

That such reasoning makes a clearly written Constitution infinitely malleable? For the American Left, that’s precisely the point. Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy gets right to the nub of why a justice like Barrett is their worst nightmare, noting that she believes “federal judges are not supposed to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to advance a political or social agenda that they can’t get by the voters, which means that she believes that the law is not supposed to be politics practiced a different way.”

Yet the reality that leftists rely on the judicial branch to advance an agenda they cannot advance in state legislatures and/or Congress is precisely why the Supreme Court has taken on a far greater role than the Founders envisioned. Amplified by Marbury v. Madison (1803), wherein SCOTUS essentially conferred upon itself the power to be the final arbiter regarding the constitutionality of congressional legislation, the Court has indeed become a “mini Congress” in direct proportion to Congress’s increasingly divisive atmosphere, where subversion of one side by the other has become far more common than cooperation or compromise.

In addition, as the Court expanded its domain, states’ rights were eroded, and the resulting one-size-fits-all fiats trumping state legislation — with the overwhelming approval of the Left — has exacerbated our divisions.

Take abortion, for example. Nothing engenders more leftist hysteria than the idea that a Court with a majority of conservatives could overturn Roe v. Wade, a ruling that has precipitated more than 60 million abortions since 1973.

Yet if it was overturned, abortion would not become illegal. States would get to craft their own abortion legislation, and maybe some of them would take a more nuanced approach than New York, which made abortion right up to the moment of birth legal. Others would eschew Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s view that a delivered baby would be kept comfortable — while his mother and her doctor decided whether or not that baby would live.

Would such flexibility be so terrible? For an American Left that has made its appetite for unassailable power — obtained by any means necessary — the only “principle” to which it consistently adheres, the answer is a resounding yes. Thus anyone like Barrett who might believe otherwise, even though she has stated she won’t let her personal beliefs influence her jurisprudence is, as a religion-hating Bill Maher put it, “a F—ing Nut! Really, Really Catholic.”

The second reason Barrett has brought out the bloodlust of the self-professed most “tolerant” people in the nation? “Christianity is a threat to the left because it acknowledges an authority higher than the Democratic National Committee,” explains Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

That appeals to a higher authority are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence? That the entire Constitution is about the limits of government power? For far too many leftists, both ideas represent the ultimate impediments to their ambitions. Ambitions that have metastasized to the point where arson, looting, and violence are viewed as political tools rather than anarchy. To the point where the Rule of Law itself is so capriciously applied, it is rendered both meaningless and selectively oppressive. To the point where opposing racism is itself deemed racist.

Thus, quite predictably, race must be part of the equation regarding to Barrett’s qualifications. Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, led the charge, denigrating Barrett and her husband — for adopting two children from Haiti. “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children,” he tweeted. “They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”

And for clarity’s sake, he added this gem: “And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.”

That might come as a bit of a surprise to a number of white, progressive Hollywood celebrities who have also adopted black children. Perhaps some biracial adoptions are “more equal” — and less “colonial” — than others.

John Lee Brougher, the former chief technology officer for Texas Democrat Wendy Davis, offered a different slant (read: smear) on the issue. “Transracial adoption is fraught with trauma and potential for harm,” he asserted, “and everything I see here is deeply concerning.”

What should be even more deeply concerning to Americans is the number of leftists in positions of power and influence wholly devoid of common decency.

Not all leftists are similarly inclined. Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman admits he disagrees with Barrett “on almost everything,” but nonetheless insists, “[She is a] brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them.”

Who’s kidding whom? Leftists and the Democrat senators who will lead the assault on Barrett’s beliefs and reputation have no interest whatsoever in the basic criteria for being a good justice. They want a Court with a majority of justices who will rubber stamp their agenda.

Moreover, their hypocrisy is searing. During Barrett’s confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Senator Diane Feinstein declared that Barrett’s “dogma” of Catholicism “lives loudly” within her.

Nothing lives more loudly in leftists than their own dogma — in all its secularist, morally relative glory — wielded by as many entities as they can co-opt. All dissent will be dismissed as the bigoted ranting of systemic racists for whom nothing less than a government-enforced theocracy will suffice.

In other words, we could see a reprise of the Kavanaugh confirmation debacle — or worse.

It’s what unhinged zealotry is all about.