Now Trumpist treason may be about to break out in the courts
The Federalist Society was created for this moment
For years the Federalist Society—the shill organization for “conservative jurisprudence”—has been preparing for this moment.
“Conservatives” have always known that the people might some day catch on to the massive con that Republicans have been inflicting on America. They always knew that their ability to manipulate the electoral system and the voters might evaporate.
It seems that the day has come. The monstrous evil of Trump and Trumpism have combined with the fake religiosity of “conservatives” to produce a Republican party that the majority can no longer pretend is a legitimate part of our politics. It now looks like this fall’s elections may not turn out well for Republicans.
The most devious “conservatives” have always foreseen this possibility. That is why they have been preparing since the 1970s for their scam to move out of politics and into the courts. That is why the Federalist Society was brought into existence and why Republicans have spent decades moving its members into positions in the court system where they could block legal action by the majority when it finally turned against conservative politics.
The Federalist Society was explicitly founded to manufacture legal strategies to support the interests of “conservatives.” It exists to use the legal system to get what “conservatives” want. And what “conservatives” want is power to control others in order to assuage their atavistic fears and insatiable greed.
The Federalist Society is not in fact a legal group at all. It is a massive con job. Just as Fox News is a political propaganda network pretending to be a news organization, the Federalist Society is a political activist network pretending to be a legal organization.
And its rotten roots are visible in the very first words of its mission statement, which says that the Federalist Society is founded on the principle that “the state exists to preserve freedom.” (See the whole statement HERE.)
This is as wrong as can be. No state exists to preserve freedom. A state comes into being for precisely the opposite reason: the state exists to curtail freedom.
You only have to think about this for a second or so to understand that it is true. Without a state, everyone has the freedom to do whatever he or she likes and can get away with.
Theft, fraud, assault, rape, murder—whatever anyone is strong and ruthless enough to try and get away with.
People who don’t want to live in this savage condition band together to form a state. And the purpose of that state is to curtail the freedoms of all those who want to steal, beat, and kill others.
At best, the state considers freedom as a secondary matter. Once undesirable freedoms have been curtailed, then government considers what sorts of freedom it will allow within the previously established limits. This is called liberty—the freedom of citizens who have agreed to curb their desires and cede their violent and uncivilized freedoms.
So the Federalist Society could not be more wrong in the very first principle. If it were a real judicial organization, it wouldn’t stand on the principle of freedom. It would instead stand on the principle of justice.
No less an authority on American government than James Madison pointed out that government itself exists not to establish and promote *freedom*, but to establish and promote justice. “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” (Federalist 51.)
Now if the end of government itself is justice, you would think that any organization involved with the court system, which is more particularly involved with justice than other parts of government, would care about justice more than other parts of society.
So why does the Federalist Society care more about freedom than justice?
It’s simply because freedom can be perverted into selfishness, power-hungriness, and domination of others, whereas as justice cannot.
To “conservatives,” freedom means stopping people they dislike from voting, rigging the election system to favor themselves, using the law to impose their “religious beliefs” on the entire society, and essentially doing anything they want to maintain their power.
As long as they keep the discussion about “freedom,” they can always make an argument that their abominable self-centeredness is a “right.” Because, after all, aren’t we all about “freedom”?
No. We are not. As I pointed out above, government is not mainly about freedom. America is not mainly about freedom. It ought to be mainly about justice.
But “conservatives” cannot support their selfishness if they have to talk about justice. If you’re going to talk about justice you have to make arguments about fairness, equity, even-handedness, mutual understanding, compromise, and even sacrifice.
“Conservatives” cannot abide such things. And they cannot justify their monstrous inhumanity on the ground of justice. So instead they stand on the ground of freedom.
Now we have a whole cadre of perverted Federalist Society “justices” embedded in the court system throughout the nation, just at the time when the “conservative” hold on American politics is letting go. Does anyone think that the Federalist Society will not continue the “conservative” mania for power inside the court system now that Republicans seem to be losing their ability to do it in the political system? That is why they were put there in the first place.
The Florida judge who issued the egregiously wrong order to stop the DOJ from investigating Trump’s stealing of government documents is a Federalist Society hack. She was appointed to her position by Trump precisely because she is a Federalist Society hack—for the same reason that all Federalist Society hacks have been appointed by Republican politicians, namely, to rule for “conservatives.”
I for one don’t have much confidence that judges who prefer freedom to justice have the intelligence or the integrity to rule against their tribe when their tribe is pursuing unjust ends.
Will the notoriously “conservative” Eleventh Circuit to which the DOJ is appealing the judge’s universally panned order—a circuit filled with Federalist Society hacks—side with justice against one of their own? Especially since the stakes are now the highest ever—the fall of “conservatives” in the person of the criminal president they still support.
And even if they do, Trump’s lawyers will appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, which is also filled with Federalist Society hacks. Will they be willing to side with justice against “conservatives”? Especially since siding with justice will mean that Trump—the anointed savior of “conservatives”—will finally be revealed as the criminal they wanted all along to do their dirty work for them?
It would be a surprise if those who spent four or five decades getting their hands on all the levers of power in American government don’t pull those levers to benefit themselves.
But it would be a welcome surprise. If they stand up for justice in the end, it will mean the end of “conservatism” as a power movement in America. Trump and his minions will be revealed as the criminals that they are. They will continue to try to raise hell in our politics, but they will not have the political base to do it. Once wavering independents and non-Trumpist Republicans stop voting with the insurrectionist right, Democrats will take power.
With that power, Democrats can put an end to the anti-democratic filibuster in the Senate. They could then expand the Supreme Court to dilute the venom of its Federalist Society hacks.
And they could finally start to investigate the Federalist Society to reveal it for the judicial racketeering outfit that it has always been.
And maybe then, with the rotten roots of the Federalist Society laid bare, America will begin to see justice take its proper station above freedom once again.
You’re the best, Scott